The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

In cooperation with

M. BRAINARD, Frankfurt • R. BRUZINA, Kentucky J. DRUMMOND, New York • A. MICKUNAS, Ohio T. SEEBOHM, Bonn • T. SHEEHAN, Stanford

edited by

BURT HOPKINS STEVEN CROWELL

IV - 2004 The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy

General Editors Burt Hopkins, Seattle University Steven Crowell, Rice University Contributing Editors Marcus Brainard, Frankfurt/Main, Germany Ronald Bruzina, University o f Kentucky John J. Drummond, Fordham University Algis Mickunas, Ohio University Thomas Seebohm, Bonn, G erm any Thomas Sheehan, Stanford University Consulting Editors Pierre Adler, New York, New York Patrick Burke,Seattle University Damian Byers, Sydney, Australia Richard Cobb-Stevens, Boston College Natalie Depraz, University o f Paris IV (Sorbonne) John Drabinski, Grand Valley State U niversity R. O. Elveton, Carleton College Parvis Emad, La Crosse, Wisconsin Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University Kathleen Haney, University o f Houston, Downtown James G. Hart, Indiana University Patrick Heelan, S.J., Georgetown University Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann, University o f Freiburg, Germany Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University, Korea Christian Lotz, U niversity o f Kansas James Mensch, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada Dermot Moran, University College, Dublin, Ireland Harry Reeder, U niversity o f Texas, A rlington James Risser, Seattle University Hans Ruin, Sodertorn University College, Sweden Karl Schuhmannt, University o f Utrecht, Netherlands Marylou Sena, Seattle University Nicolas de Warren, Wellesley College Olav K.Wiegand, University o f Mainz, Germany Edith Wyschogrod, Rice University Dan Zahavi, Copenhagen, Denmark

Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in the Philosopher's Index. Copyright ®2004 by Taylor & Francis ISSN 1533-7472 ISBN 13: 978-0-9701679-4-1 (pbk)

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any infor mation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Aim and Scope:The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy will provide an an nual international forum for phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy in the spirit of Edmund Husserl’s groundbreaking work and the extension thereof in the phenomenological tradition broadly con ceived. The editors welcome the submission of manuscripts containing original research in phenomenolo gy and phenomenological philosophy, contributions to contemporary issues and controversies, critical and interpretative studies of major phenomenological figures, investigations on the relation of phenomenolo gy and phenomenological philosophy to the natural and human sciences, and historical studies and docu ments pertaining to phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. Translations of classic and contemporary phenomenological texts are also welcome, though translators should make arrangements with the editors in advance.

First published 2004 by Noesis Press

Published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Groupy an informa business This page intentionally left blank Contents

/. Essays

RUDOLF BERNET HusserPs Transcendental Idealism Revisited 1

IAN ANGUS In Praise of Fire: Responsibility, Manifestation, Polemos, Circumspection 21

DIETER LOHMAR The Transition of the Principle of Excluded Middle from a Principle of Logic to an Axiom: HusserPs Hesitant Revisionism in Logic 53

TORSTEN PIETREK A Reconstruction of Phenomenological Method for Metaethics 69

RENAUD BARBARAS Sensing and Creating: Phenomenology and the Unity of Aesthetics 109

CHRISTIAN LOTZ Recollection, Mourning, and the Absolute Past: On Husserl, Freud, and Derrida 121

KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER Adieu: Derrida's God and the Beginning of Thought 143

ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER Husserl versus Neo-Kantianism Revisited: On Skepticism, Foundationalism, and Intuition 173

SEBASTIAN LUFT A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer 209

V HERIBERT BOEDER Truth in the First Epoch of Philosophy 249

MARCUS BRAINARD Epoché and Epoch in Logotectonic Thought 263

II. Texts and Documents

EDMUND HUSSERL Tobacco-logisches / 274 Tobaccology 275

MARK VAN ATTEN AND KARL SCHUHMANN"** Introduction: Johannes Daubert's Transcript of Husserl's Mathematical- Philosophical Exercises (Summer Semester 1905) 284

JOHANNES DAUBERT Notizen zu Husserls Mathematisch-philosophischen Ubungen vom SS 1905/ 288 Notes from Husserl's Mathematical-Philosophical Exercises, Summer Semester 1905 289

LESTER EMBREE Introduction: Dorion Cairns's Review of Eugen Fink's "The Problem of Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology" 319

DORION CAIRNS Review of Eugen Fink's "The Problem of Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology" 323

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 341

Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism Revisited

Rudolf Bernet Husserl-Archives, Leuven

It is widely known that Ideas I,1 appearing in 1913, was the first publication in which Husserl explicitly argued in favor of a phenomenological idealism. It is also well known that this standpoint immediately incited dispute as well as astonishment, with the controversy surrounding it still alive today. The surprise of the students and first readers, as well as the fact that Ideas I never uses the term ‘idealism’ by name to characterize the nature of transcendental phenomenology, managed to make it seem as if it came about as a result of a sudden or at least hastily made about-face on Husserl’s part, and not through a decision that had been extensively reflected upon. Thanks to a recently published volume of Husserliana which compiles the principal texts by Husserl on transcendental idealism,2 we can take account of how the Husserlian position concerning phenomenological idealism had, for the most part, already been established by 1908. Likewise, the famous “Nachwort” to Ideas I written in 19303 clearly shows that Husserl maintained his idealism up until the end of his days—all the while insisting that Ideas I had gone astray in suggesting that such a form of idealism coincided with a solipsistic conception of transcendental subjectivity. —————— * Translated from the French by Basil Vassilicos. 1. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuh- mann, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Intro- duction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1982); henceforth cited as Ideas I. 2. Edmund Husserl, Transzendentaler Idealismus. Texte aus dem Nachlaß (1908–1921), ed. Robin Rollinger and Rochus Sowa, Husserliana XXXVI (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003). Following the initial reference, all volumes from Husserliana are cited as Hua with volume and page references. 3. Edmund Husserl, “Epilogue,” in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 405–30.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 1–20 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 2 RUDOLF BERNET

The phenomenological idealism of Ideas I, such as it is set out in its “Fun- damental Phenomenological Consideration,” is the outcome of a phenomenological investigation concerning the conditions of the possibility of authentic knowledge of objective reality. Because the establishment of these conditions of possibility is for Husserl a matter of an examination of the manner in which objective reality is intuitively given to consciousness, rather than any sort of inquiry into the logical nature of reason, the analysis of “external” perception comes to play a predominant role therein. Already this perception (and not only the judgment based on it), involves a “positing” (Setzung) of the reality of things and the world. Moreover, it is incumbent on this form of perception— inasmuch as it is the experience of a givenness of the thing itself, “in the flesh” (leibhaft)—to justify belief in the existence of the world. However, such a legitimization of objective reality by perceptual consciousness can only avoid the contradictions of psychologism on the express condition that this consciousness, serving as the epistemological foundation for the existence of objective reality, does not itself belong to that reality. This is why the task of a “phenomenological reduction” is to purify perceptual consciousness of any apperception as an empirical reality before perceptual consciousness can be given the task of validating or “constituting” the existence of a transcendent empirical reality. For a phenomenology that, as a “critique of knowledge,” can only hold the positing of the existence of an objective reality to be legitimate to the extent that, at the same time, this existence is testified to in “pure” consciousness in the form of an intuitive phenomenon, the meaning of the existence of the world necessarily depends on transcendental consciousness. For the most part, phenomenological idealism is nothing other than the solemn proclamation of such a dependence of the truth-value of the positing of the existence of the world vis-à-vis intentional, perceptual, and pure consciousness of that world. This form of idealism therefore does not have to make any claims as to what the reality of the world could be independent of the positing of a transcendental subject’s knowledge of it. That is to say, outside the subject’s pretension to having knowledge of a real object4 and the justification of this subjective —————— 4. By ‘real’ or ‘actually real’ we mean an actually existing object (wirklich) in contrast to a merely possible object or a fictive object. It is worth mentioning that this sense of ‘real’, meaning that which actually exists, is not synonymous with what Husserl himself calls ‘real’. First of all, ‘real’ in the Husserlian sense means anything concerning an empirical or sensuous thing (res) and is thus to be distinguished from anything relating to an ideal object. A fictive sensuous object is hence a “real” object for Husserl, even though it has no actual or “real” existence. ‘Real’ then refers to a possibility of experience of an object insofar as it would be founded on an experience that has already been actually (wirklich) accomplished. Such a “real” possibility (reale Möglichkeit) of experience of an object is to be distinguished from an “ideal” possibility (ideale Möglichkeit), which is the product of pure phantasy rather than of any actual experience. This difference between real possibility and ideal possibility is just as applicable to the experience of empirical objects as to that of ideal objects. How- ever, we shall see that there is a fundamental difference between ideal objects and empirical objects regarding their actual existence (Wirklichkeit): while a really or only ideally possible HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 3 pretension by an actual act of perception had by a pure consciousness, this sort of idealism need not make any claims about the reality of the world. If Ideas I does not rest satisfied with merely stating this thesis—it being one that is fairly banal once one accepts its premises—this is especially because no external perception, nor any finite series of harmonious external perceptions, can definitively assure us of the actual reality of a transcendent thing. For lack of an adequate givenness of the thing, the assertion of the dependence of the thing’s actual reality vis-à-vis a pure perceptual consciousness is thus accompanied by a compunctious reservation that draws our attention to the fact that the testimony to the thing’s actual reality by such a consciousness is always only provisional. Likewise, though nothing in the preceding course of our experience allows us to foresee it, in principle it is never out of the question that a subsequent perception may come to contradict the previous perceptions of the thing, to the point of annulling our faith in the thing’s existence. Must one conclude, then, just as is done in Ideas I without a second thought, that the only thing about which the phenomenologist can be apodictically certain is the existence of pure consciousness just as it is given, that is, adequately, in an “internal” perception? From such a line of reasoning, is one justified in drawing the patently metaphysical conclusion that consciousness—in contrast to the actual reality of the world of transcendent things—is an enduring or substantial being that “nulla ‘re’ indiget ad existendum”?5 Is that not to confuse the (presumptive) form of a particular thing’s existence with that of the world? Is it not to take away from consciousness its transcendental character, which is to say, its power to constitute transcendent reality? Is it not to close up the field of phenomenological investigation by confining it to a consciousness that can only be given to me, where I am the sole person who may have an internal perception of it? In what follows, I wish to show how a text almost contemporaneous with Ideas I develops a version of phenomenological idealism that is not only more precise but that is also less problematic. It has the great advantage of no longer relying on the Cartesian opposition between the sphere of immanence of my own consciousness, of which I can be apodictically certain, and transcendent reality, the actual existence of which forever remains problematic. In this text, which came about in the context of his revision of the Sixth Logical Investi- gation,6 Husserl is inspired (at least implicitly) more by Leibniz than by Des- —————— ideal object cannot but have an “actual existence” (or validity) in the world of essences, the experience of the ideal or even real possibility of an empirical object never suffices to assure us of its actual reality in the empirical world. In the present essay, we shall reserve the terms ‘reality’ or ‘actual reality’ (Wirklichkeit) to denote actually existing empirical objects and their world. 5. Husserl, Ideas I, § 49. 6. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Ergänzungsband. Erster Teil: Entwürfe zur Umarbeitung der VI. Untersuchung und zur Vorrede für die Neuauflage der Logischen Un- tersuchungen (Sommer 1913), ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana XX/1, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002). 4 RUDOLF BERNET cartes. In it he analyzes the actual givenness of the reality of the transcendent world as being the outcome of a “realization” of a possibility that precedes and predetermines the experience of the actual existence of that reality. Since it goes without saying that the (ideal or real) possibility of an object necessarily depends on the power of consciousness to have a representation of it, the dependence of the possible object with respect to consciousness of its possibility need not be demonstrated at length. This is why the phenomenological theory of knowledge will be able to devote all its efforts to the examination of the difference between an empty assumption and a justified assumption about the possibility of an object. It follows that Husserl’s interest shifts from the analysis of the relationship between immanence and transcendence to the analysis of the justification of a positing of an object as possible or actually real by means of an intuitive fulfillment of that act of positing. In successively investigating the phenomenological consciousness in which ideally possible, really possible, and actually real objects are given, Husserl is never moved to cast doubt upon the intentional correlation between the act and its object. Furthermore, he will no longer have any reason to confuse the dependence of the modes of being of the object vis-à-vis intuitive consciousness with an independence of this consciousness vis-à-vis its intentional objects. This new meditation on the meaning of phenomenological idealism reaches its apogee in the examination, on the one hand, of that which sep- arates and at the same time links together an intuitive consciousness that phenomenologically assures us of the solely possible existence of an empirical object and, on the other, of that which assures us of its actual reality. Making headway in this direction, Husserl is not only brought to distinguish between a broad versus a strict sense of phenomenological idealism, but will also show that the transcendental consciousness that assures us of the actual reality of the world must be a consciousness that is at once both embodied and intersubjective.

§ 1. Possible and Impossible Objects The new conception of phenomenological idealism, such as Husserl sketches it in the framework of his revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation, is essentially the product of a new phenomenological analysis of the intentional consciousness of a possibility. The completely new chapter that the texts of July and August 1913 devote to possibility and impossibility7 replaces the former fourth chapter of the Sixth Investigation, which was entitled “Consis- tency and Inconsistency.” As the change in the title already suggests, Husserl moves from an ontological analysis to a phenomenological analysis of possibility and impossibility. The previous ontological understanding of possibility as —————— 7. “Möglichkeit und Möglichkeitsbewußtsein” (Possibility and the Consciousness of Possibility), Hua XX/1, 171–230. HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 5 compatibility studied the way in which parts are able to be integrated into a whole. “Verträglichkeit” (consistency) was thus a matter of “Vereinbarkeit” (compatibility), and this possibility or impossibility of reuniting parts into a whole was governed by the laws of formal ontology and, secondarily, by those of material ontologies. To the extent that the Logical Investigations considers all objects as objects of possible significations, this theory about the compatibility of parts and wholes also pertains to formal apophantics, and more particularly to pure grammar. It quickly becomes clear, however, that in leaving behind the ontological treatment of possibility in favor of a phenomenological treatment of it, one does not speak of two different things, but of the same thing in different ways. More precisely, the phenomenological analysis of the modes of intuitive intentional consciousness, in which an object or a signification is originarily given as being possible or impossible, allows one to clarify the meaning and to justify the validity of an ontological or semantic compatibility or incompatibility. Were it not that it would take us too far off course here, it would be fascinat- ing to show how this phenomenological analysis of possibility instates, almost incidentally, an epistemological foundation of predicative logic. In the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation, this phenomenological foundation of logic is already carried out in the form of a genealogy, like the one found in the much later analyses in Experience and Judgment. The various modes of consciousness of a possibility or an impossibility are those experiences that lead us to make a positive or negative judgment, in the form of an assertion or a question, a hypothesis or a relation of logical consequence. All of these issues are at stake in the text on possibility of concern here, and Husserl cannot resist the temptation to add a long “Excursus on Initial, Founding, and Inferential Positings.”8 Subsequently, we shall study, above all, the manner in which this new phenomenological treatment of possibility prepares the way for the phenomenological foundation of actual reality and the phenomenological idealism contained in it. We will see that the intuitive consciousness in which the being real of an object finds its verification (Rechtsquelle; Hua XX/1, 193) is to be understood as a “realization” of an intuitive consciousness of a possibility. Through- out, it is a question of a “correlation” between intuitive consciousness and its intentional object, and this is meant to account for the possible or real mode of being (Seinsmodus) of the object.9 Hence, Husserl examines, in turn, the intuitive consciousness in which something’s being ideally possible, being really —————— 8. Hua XX/1, § 65: “Exkurs über Ansätze, Grund- und Folgesetzungen.” 9. Hua XX/1, 256: “Alle Seinsmodalitäten fallen . . . unter den Begriff des Seins. . . . Sein im weitesten Sinn ist notwendig bezogen auf Bewußtsein. Jederlei Sein, Sein über- haupt, ist wesensmäßig undenkbar ohne mögliches Bewußtsein, in dem es eventuell in ver- schiedenen möglichen Graden der Fülle gegebenes und speziell gesetztes bzw. erfaßtes Sein ist.” 6 RUDOLF BERNET possible, and being real are given. We shall see that these modalities of being in principle affect all types of objects. One and the same empirical (“real”) object can thus be ideally possible or really possible or actually existent. In the same way, an ideal (“ideal”) object can be either ideally possible or really possible or actually existent—even if, for such ideal objects, the distinction between possibility and actual existence (or validity) no longer has the same importance. This means that ideal possibilities, which we shall examine first, affect the givenness of empirical objects (Tatsachen) as much as they affect the givenness of ideal objects, such as essences (Wesen). Moreover, by adding the observation that ideal objects can be either essences or eidetic singularities, we then have at our disposal the entire conceptual apparatus necessary for our reflections on Husserl’s phenomenological idealism. In accordance with the general doctrine of the Logical Investigations, the being possible examined by Husserl in the first place concerns significations. However, since the phenomenological foundation of the possibility of a signification depends on the possibility of an intuitive givenness of its object, Husserl’s main interest lies in the possibility of objects. Moreover, since the question for phenomenology is to examine the experience of an evidence that could serve as an epistemological justification for the assertion of a possibility, Husserl takes for granted from the beginning on the phenomenological equivalence between possibility and intuition.10 Let us be more precise and distinguish, following Husserl, between the case of an ideal possibility (ideale Möglichkeit) and that of a real possibility (reale Möglichkeit). The ideally possible is anything that, in one way or another, we can imagine without believing, for all that, that it could actually exist and belong to the realities of our familiar world. For Husserl the typical example of such a (solely) ideally possible object is the centaur. Such an ideal possibility of an empirical object must be distinguished from those other general ideal possibilities that concern essences, whose intuition takes the form of an “ideation.” In both of these cases of ideal possibility, phantasy (Phantasie) plays a decisive role. We recall that by ‘phantasy’ Husserl means an act of presentification (Ver- gegenwärtigung) of an object that is to be distinguished from a corresponding (sensible or categorial) perception both by the intuitive mode of givenness of its intentional object and by the neutralization of the positing of its actual existence. Hence, ideal possibilities are the dominion of the freedom of phantasy, and this dominion is comprised not only of imaginary empirical objects such as centaurs but also includes the ideal objects of the logical and the eidetic sci- —————— 10. Hua XX/1, 177: “Jede Anschauung als solche ist eine originäre Quelle von Möglichkeiten hinsichtlich des in ihr Angeschauten, und sie ist es, wie wir sagten, ‘als solche’, das heißt, sie ist diese Quelle unabhängig von dem intuitiven und qualitativen Modus”; see also 184. HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 7 ences. These general ideal possibilities are thus what concern “phenomenology qua eidetic science relating to ‘consciousness in general’” (Hua XX/1, 181).11 By contrast, the establishment of a real possibility entails additional constraints and hence only comes at the price of a reduction or a limitation of the initial freedom of phantasy.12 In other words, not everything that one can imagine is really possible—even if it goes without saying that everything that is really possible is also, eo ipso and a fortiori, ideally possible. What more must there be, then, in order for an ideal possibility to become a real possibility? Husserl says that real possibility is characterized by the fact “that it is not a simple possibility, but is a possibility ‘for which something makes a case,’ and which does so, now in a stronger manner, now in a weaker manner.”13 What is it, then, that in the case of a real possibility makes a case, and for what does it make a case? In making a case, the issue is clearly to show that the possible object could fit in with the realm of reality. But what is reality for phenomenology if not the ensemble of objects whose existence has been established by the preceding course of our common experience? In other words, does the phenomenological account of reality not hold that the preceding course of our common experience justifies the trust we have in the existence —————— 11. To be more precise, one should add that this phenomenology studies the ideal possibility, which belongs to the essence of consciousness, of relating either to ideally possible objects, to really possible objects, or to really existing objects. Even if, as we shall see, a phantasy act is insufficient for demonstrating the actual reality of an object, and even if phenomenology establishes the necessity of an actual act of perception to be related to the real object, this is still a matter of an ideal and general necessity. Such a necessity of an actual perception of actual reality is given to the phenomenologist in the form of an act of ideation or as Wesensschau, for which the phantasy of an actual experience of reality constitutes an entirely satisfactory point of departure. Put differently, the fact that phantasy constitutes “the vital component” of phenomenology does not at all exclude that such a phenomenology would be forced to show that an intuitive act, in the form of a phantasy, is incapable of verifying the existence of an empirical object. Properly speaking, it does not incumbent on the phenomenologist to verify the existence of some or other empirical object. For the most part, Husserl’s phenomenology rests satisfied with showing which type of experience is required in view of such a verification. 12. If the intuitive givenness of every possibility implies a phantasy act, and if one must distinguish between ideal and real possibilities, then one has to conclude that there cannot be only one type of phantasy at the source of these two sorts of possibility. One should thus distinguish, as Husserl frequently does in his texts dealing with phantasy and imagination, between a “pure” or “absolute” phantasy (meaning it is disconnected from any relationship of motivation with one’s actual experience of the real world) and an impure phantasy (meaning one that is contaminated by its origin in the perceptual experience of reality). To be precise, one would still have to add that the act that posits an object as really possible (which is to say, as actually able to exist) necessarily goes a step further than the neutrality of the impure phantasy act which nevertheless serves as its basis. The originary consciousness of a real possibility is thus something like a positional type of impure phantasy, or in other words, what Husserl calls an “assumption” or, again, a “supposition.” 13. Hua XX/1, 178: “daß sie nicht bloß Möglichkeit überhaupt, sondern eine Möglichkeit ist, ‘für die etwas spricht’ und bald mehr, bald weniger spricht. . . .” 8 RUDOLF BERNET of these objects? The really possible object is thus an object about which we can assume that, were it actually given, it would be integrated harmoniously into the actual reality that is the field of our common experience. The really possible object is not yet an actual object, but it is already something more than an ideally possible or purely imaginary object. This is because it is an object for which we have good reasons, not yet to posit (setzen) its actual existence, but at least to sup-pose (vermuten) its probable existence.14 What can make a case for such a probable existence if not the preceding course of our experience? An object is really possible when we posit its existence as being probable, and this on the basis of our preceding actual experience. The really possible object is hence an object whose possibility of existence is “motivated” by what we have already perceived. In truth the preceding actual experience is not only what justifies our faith in the real possibility of a perceptual givenness of an object, but is also what gives rise to that faith: the “supposition” (Vermutung) of the probable actual existence of an object is already the response to an invitation (Anmutung) that the previous experience gives us.15 An object is therefore really possible not only to the extent that its givenness would be harmoniously integrated into the field of our actual experience, but also to the extent that its givenness would come to complete and enrich our previous experience. It is thus clear— even if Husserl does not insist on this point—that real possibility, inasmuch as it is motivated by the past experience, is accompanied by the anticipation of a future experience. Hence, one need only cross a very narrow threshold for a real possibility to become an actual reality, and this threshold that leads a possibility to its realization is for Husserl the accomplishment of an act of fulfillment. However, before further examining the status of the actual reality that, in the case of transcendent empirical objects, remains a presumptive reality, it might be worthwhile to sharpen the Husserlian distinction between ideal possibilities and real possibilities. For an object to be ideally possible, it suffices that one be able to imagine it. There is no need to assume that the object could belong to the real world such as we know it, and there is no need for the phantasy act, which leads to the positing of its ideal possibility, to be motivated by the actual course of our preceding experience. Such an ideally possible object can subsequently turn out to be either really possible or really impossible. It is really possible when all of our preceding experience brings us to believe that it can (or even will) be actually perceived and that this would not fundamentally call into question the existence of the real world such as we know it. An ideally possible object can —————— 14. Hua XX/1, 179: “Jede Vermutung entscheidet sich für eine reale Möglichkeit.” 15. Hua XX/1, 185:“daß das originäre Erfassen des Seins einer realen Möglichkeit als Unterlage . . . eine originär gebende Anmutung erfordert”; see also 179. HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 9 also be really impossible in cases where its actual givenness would be incom- patible, either with the established nature of a particular real object or with the existence of our real world. The possibility of a conflict (Widerstreit), be it local or global, with the actual course of our harmonious perceptive experiences is thus what signals a real impossibility, and such an evidence of conflict between the real and the possible allows us to come to a conclusion about a real impossibility. For an object to be really impossible, it does not suffice that nothing in one’s previous experience would lead one to suppose its existence. Rather, what is necessary is that all of our previous actual experience be opposed to the possibility of its existence. Hence, it is not sufficient that an object appears without our having foreseen it or that it appears differently than we had envisioned it. It must not be able to exist. In the most extreme case, which we termed a global conflict, the real impossibility amounts to a possible annihilation of the real world (Weltvernichtung) as we know it through our previous actual experience. Take the following example: even if it is not really possible that President Bush would acquire a volume of Husserliana for his personal library (nothing in our past experience of the person makes a case in favor of this possibility), it is not really impossible and is, beyond all doubt, ideally possible. This example also shows that, between real impossibility and real possibility, there is a vast gray zone that would deserve a more attentive examination. It also gives us to understand that an impossibility is something other and much more than the simple negation of a possibility.16 These reflections on an object’s being possible already establish, in an un- obtrusive fashion, the bases of phenomenological idealism. For an object to be phenomenologically possible, it must be able to be intuitively given. Without the possibility of an intuitive consciousness of the object, the assertion of its being possible would be unfounded and thus phenomenologically impossible. We have seen that different forms of intuitive consciousness correspond to different modes of possibility and different types of objects. However, throughout all these differences, one finds confirmation of the same thesis of a strict correlation between the mode of being of the object and the mode of accomplishment (Vollzugsmodus) of the acts of the intuitive intentional consciousness. It goes without saying that the assertion of such a correlation is a phenomenological thesis and not a metaphysical one. Husserl does not make any claims about a meaning of being—possible or real—that would precede or sur- pass our mode of knowledge. He only says that the only thing that can justify the assertion of a possibility is an intuitive datum of that possibility. Since the task of phenomenology is precisely to establish this type of justification, —————— 16. Hua XX/1, 173: “Der Möglichkeit reiht sich die Unmöglichkeit als eine gleich- berechtigte Idee an, die nicht bloß als Negation der Möglichkeit zu definieren, sondern durch ein eigenes phänomenologisches Datum zu realisieren ist.” 10 RUDOLF BERNET phenomenology can only admit of those possibilities of which it has shown, in the form of an intuitive fulfillment, that they are truly possible. The phenomenological idealism that comes to a conclusion about the dependence of the mode of being-possible of the object vis-à-vis intuitive consciousness therefore goes no further than the assertion of a necessary correlation between intuitive consciousness and the object’s being true, which is to say, its being known. At issue here is thus an epistemological type of idealism that is exclusively concerned with the relationship between knowing and the known. To assume that there could be a knowing consciousness without there being anything known by it would be just as strange as assuming that consciousness could be intentionally related to a being that, in its reality in itself, would be totally unknowable.

§ 2. The Existence of Real Objects Let us begin our analysis of the being real (wirklich) of an object with three clarifications. First, for Husserl the being real of an object is not at all the par- ticularization of its reality (Wirklichkeit).17 This means that one cannot grasp the reality of an object without that object’s being really given, and, inversely, it means the assertion of its reality is nothing other than making the intuitive givenness of the real object conceptually explicit.18 Reality, as an essential characteristic of an object, thus entirely depends on the intuitive and actual givenness of this object, and the givenness of the object qua real is not at all a particular case of the essence of reality. Second, among all really possible objects, it is the phenomenological validation of the reality or existence of transcendent empirical objects—what we usually call ‘things’ (Dinge)—that poses the most ar- duous problems. The existence of ideal transcendent objects—such as the states of affairs referred to by the a priori sciences—does not pose any particular problems, for it is equivalent to their real possibility. With respect to immanent objects, one sole intuitive datum suffices to assure one of their existence. A single act of “internal perception” will do in their case. The same does not hold true for the objects of “external perception,” and to them we therefore will have to devote the majority of our reflections here. If no external perception, nor even a finite series of harmonious external perceptions, suffices to verify the actual existence of a thing, then what distinguishes the actual reality of the thing from its real possibility? Third, the question of the meaning of a phenomenological idealism is posed with the greatest poignancy precisely with regard to these very transcendent empirical objects. For the objects immanent to consciousness, no one would hesitate to admit that the intuitive conscious- —————— 17. See Hua XX/1, 197. 18. Hua XX/1, 198: “Die Wirklichkeit ist nur durch aktuelle Erfahrung gewährleistet, und die Gewährleistung reicht in ihrer Gradualität genau so weit wie die Erfahrung selbst. Mit anderen Worten, die Wirklichkeit ist genau so weit gegeben wie das Wirkliche selbst.” HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 11 ness that we actually have of them suffices to legitimate their being real. Is the same true for the things that not only are not found in consciousness but also whose existence cannot be definitively verified by an actual intuitive consciousness, as protracted as it may well be? The process of “realization,” which makes an actual reality out of a real possibility, is equivalent for Husserl to a process of intuitive fulfillment. On Husserl’s view, things work a bit like the way in which Leibniz explained how God created the real world by making a choice from among all possible worlds. Husserl writes: “At each step of our actual experience, there occurs a selection from among the infinity of series of possibilities that, up until that moment, had been equivalent.”19 The realization of a possibility thus amounts to a progress in knowledge, and this progress consists just as much in choos- ing the possibility to be realized as in discarding or postponing until later the realization of other real possibilities. In making this choice, consciousness con- sents, once more, to a restriction of its freedom. We recall that the passage from an ideal possibility to a real possibility already came at the price, for consciousness, of a surrender of part of its sovereign power. In fact, of all that is ideally possible for it to imagine, only that which can be integrated into the actual and harmonious course of its perceptual experience is really possible for intentional consciousness. And of all that is really possible for it to anticipate, only that which is actually perceptually given to it merits the name ‘real’ (wirklich).20 Hence, one should bear in mind that it is not a sovereign subject but the actual course of harmonious experience that makes the choice between the possibilities to be realized. This is why Husserl speaks of a restriction of subjective freedom. One must bear in mind as well that a real possibility only becomes reality by being realized in an actual (aktuell), intuitive (anschaulich), and positional (setzend) act of consciousness.21 The phenomenologically founded claim of an object to actual reality thus depends on an intuitive and positional consciousness that is not merely possible but that actually exists. We shall have to make more precise the nature of this actual and factical (faktisch) consciousness and gauge the weight of evidence it brings to bear in the argument in favor of phenomenological idealism. But first we must attempt to understand better the criterion as a function of which the actual experience chooses to realize some particular real possibility or other to the exclusion of —————— 19. Hua XX/1, 194: “In jedem Schritt aktueller Erfahrung vollzieht sich dabei eine Auswahl aus der vordem gleichberechtigten Unendlichkeit von Möglichkeitsreihen. . . .” 20. Or, in approaching this process of successive selections from the other direction, one can say: “Nur aktuelle Erfahrung kann sozusagen aus den unendlich vielen und unendlich vieldeutigen bloßen Möglichkeiten die eine, einzige Wirklichkeit ‘des’ Dinges, des ‘an sich’ völlig bestimmten, herausschneiden” (Hua XX/1, 198). 21. Hua XX/1, 193–94: “Nur ein Fortgang aktueller Wahrnehmung oder Zuzug son- stiger aktueller Erfahrungen (z. B. intuitiver Erinnerungen) schafft neues originäres Recht, bereichert die schon durch die Ausgangserfahrung eröffnete Rechtsquelle.” 12 RUDOLF BERNET all the others. And, furthermore, we must attempt to understand the status of reality that befits a transcendent empirical object, meaning an object that cannot be actually and intuitively given in an adequate way. We shall see how these two questions converge. For Husserl the criterion of selection in the realization of real possibilities cannot be anything other than a better knowledge of the real object. And this progress in the knowledge of a thing is measured by holding it up to the ideal of an adequate knowledge of that very thing. It is thus a question of a normative type of relation, but one such that the norm is not imposed on the process of knowledge from the outside. The norm is, on the contrary, inherent in the actual and harmonious course of the experience, and this already in its origin. It is already there at the beginning because nothing other than the anticipation of the thing “in itself,” as adequately given, directs—in the form of a teleological principle—the course of the experience. However, it still remains to be seen more precisely how the idea of such an adequate givenness of the thing—despite the fact that it is not only unrealizable but also contrary to the essence of the thing, according to which a thing can be given only in the form of adumbrations (Abschattungen)—can nevertheless govern the actual course of the experience of the thing. In other words, how can the unrealizable direct the realization of a real possibility? Or again: how is one to be assured of the reality of a thing if, on the one hand, this reality can be guaran- teed only by the course of an actual experience and if, on the other hand, there is no question of the totality of the thing ever being actually given in the course of such an experience? We know how Husserl finds a way out of this labyrinth of questions in Ideas I. All of his exertions converge in the notion of the “the Idea in the Kant- ian sense.” Thus there is nothing surprising about the fact that the texts of the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation, written just a few months after the publication of Ideas I, still borrow much from the solution proposed in Ideas I. Nevertheless, one must not forget that these questions were posed with a particular urgency in the framework of that revision, on account of the failure of the analyses that the Logical Investigations had devoted to the status of the ideal of adequation at work in the perception of the transcendent thing.22 We shall also see that in clarifying the difference between “the Idea in the Kantian sense” and “the essence” of the spatial thing, the text of the Revision substantially refines the doctrine of Ideas I. In the text of the revised fourth chapter of the Sixth Logical Investigation, Husserl writes: “One must conclude that the actual reality of the thing is an —————— 22. For a more precise comparison of the treatment of the “thing in itself” in the Sixth Logical Investigation and in the Ideas I, see also Rudolf Bernet, La vie du sujet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994)—and in particular the chapter entitled “Finitude et téléologie de la perception” (121–38). HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 13

‘Idea’ in the Kantian sense, and that this Idea is the correlate of ‘the idea’ of a ‘certain’ course of perception—a course that is never totally determined in advance but that is, on the contrary, able to take infinitely varied directions and to be infinitely enriched.”23 The real thing or “thing in itself” is thus the thing such as it would be given in an actual and adequate intuition. Since no finite series of partial, perceptual, actual, and harmonious experiences can definitively assure us of the reality of the thing, Husserl, the good mathematician, has recourse to the infinite. The positing of the reality of a thing can thus be held to be justified only at the end of an infinite course of actual, perceptual, and harmonious experiences. Even if, with each new experience, the positing of existence is confirmed according to the extent to which the evidence of the actual reality of the thing increases, it is not impossible that there could occur an actual and perceptual experience that would be discordant and that would thus once more place in question not only such and such determination of the thing but even its very existence as well. This possibility—not in the least being motivated by the previous course of actual, perceptual, and harmonious experiences—can only be an ideal possibility. However, even if nothing inclines us towards it, one can still think or imagine that the harmonious course of experience would run up against an insurmountable conflict, which would place the actual reality of the thing in question. If, contrary to all expectations, this purely ideal possibility were to come to be realized, it would at the same time efface both the previous reality and the real possibilities accruing to it. It would therefore be a new and unexpected actual reality that would be substituted for an older and familiar reality. That is to say, the idea of a conflict that would lead to an annihilation of all actual reality, meaning an annihilation of the world, is a problematic hypothesis. Without being an ideal impossibility, it nonetheless is never a real possibility in the sense defined by Hus- serl: nothing in the course of our preceding actual experience of the world in- vites us to expect such a possibility of a total annihilation of the world. The least one can say is that one is not forced to make an argument for phenomenological idealism based on this improbable hypothesis (as Husserl still seemed to have done in § 49 of Ideas I). If the stakes of this idealism are to show how the actual reality of the world depends phenomenologically on the actual reality of consciousness, which is to say, on the actual course of pure experience, then the annihilation of the world likewise amounts to an annihilation of every consciousness that would be related to this world.24 —————— 23. Hua XX/1, 197: “Danach ist Wirklichkeit eines Dinges eine ‘Idee’ in Kant’schem Sinn, Korrelat der ‘Idee’ eines ‘gewissen’, aber im voraus nie vollbestimmten, vielmehr unendlich vieldeutigen Wahrnehmungsverlaufs, eines ins Unendliche erweiterungsfähigen. . . .” 24. This is why, in the reflections the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation de- votes to phenomenological idealism, one can read: “Denken wir alle Dinge durchgestrichen, so haben wir auch aus der Wirklichkeit alle die Bewußtseine durchgestrichen, in de- nen die dingausweisenden Erfahrungsverläufe vorkommen bzw. einer Regel nach angelegt sind” (Hua XX/1, 270). 14 RUDOLF BERNET

But let us return to the question of the status of the actual reality of a singular thing. We have already said that the possibility of a definitive phenomenological validation of the actual reality of the thing is accompanied by the impossibility of realizing the adequate intuitive givenness that such a validation of the reality of the thing would require. Husserl’s whole argument consists in showing that this impossibility is accompanied, all the same, by a particular sort of possibility. It is in fact possible to have adequate evidence regarding the fact that an apodictic verification of the existence of the thing requires an infinite course of actual, perceptual, and harmonious experience of it. But does this not come down to confusing the evidence of the existence of a singular thing with that other sort of evidence, namely the one concerning the essence of all transcendent empirical objects, according to which the verification of the existence of such objects would require an infinite series of actual, perceptual, and harmonious experiences? To escape from this confusion, one must therefore distinguish between, on the one hand, the anticipation of an adequate givenness of the thing such as it is effected in the experience of a particular thing and, on the other hand, the fact of knowing that the essence of every thing demands an infinite series of experiences for the thing’s existence to be experienced. In the first case, it is a question of the actual reality of a particular thing that is presented in the form of an Idea in the Kantian sense; in the second case, it is a question of an intuition concerning the phenomenological essence of the actual reality of all things. Even if in both cases one appeals to the idea of an infinite course of experience, one must not confuse the Idea in the Kantian sense with the idea in the sense of the essence of an empirical reality.25 What is at stake in this subtle distinction? First of all, the assertion of the fact that the Idea in the Kantian sense—in contrast to the essence of empirical reality—can never become the object of an adequate intuition. In other words, I know in an apodictic and adequate way that the reality of each and every thing is given in a series of experiences that is, by a priori necessity, infinite. In the same way, I know that since we do not possess such an infinite experience, the reality of a thing can never be either adequately given or established in an apodictic way, and hence that it forevermore remains a presumption. Thus it is this adequate knowing that I have of the phenomenological essence of the givenness of a thing that tells me that the Idea in the Kantian sense can never be realized. Second, the distinction between the Idea in the Kantian sense and the essence of the empirical thing makes us pay attention to the fact that the particular thing itself—meaning, in Husserl’s terms, “the thing in itself [Ding an —————— 25. Hua XX/1, 261: “empirische Realität als allgemeines Wesen”; see also 265: “Die einzelne empirische Wahrheit ist wie empirisches (reales) Sein eine Idee im Kant’schen Sinn, aber nicht eine Idee im Sinne einer spezifischen Einheit.” HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 15 sich]”—rather than the essence of the thing, is what plays the role of the norm or teleological ideal anticipated in the course of the actual experience of a particular thing. The Idea in the Kantian sense is the idea of the thing in itself, meaning the idea of the complete givenness of the thing, nearer to which each new actual, intuitive, and harmonious experience draws me, without my ever reaching it completely. Far from being an idea in the sense of an essence, the Idea in the Kantian sense is thus the idea of a particular reality. And it is this idea that guides the infinite progress of my experience of the thing. One could also say that the Idea in the Kantian sense is the ideal of an adequate givenness of a particular reality and that this unreachable ideal—which does not have the status of a real possibility—nonetheless guides all the actual experiences of the thing and all the real possibilities related to it.

§ 3. A New Conception of Phenomenological Idealism Despite all appearances, this conception of the reality of a particular thing as an Idea in the Kantian sense does not in the least imply a rallying cry, on Husserl’s part, for a retreat to the positions defended by the Neo-Kantian philosophers of his time. The reality of the “thing in itself,” while spurning any sort of apodictic verification that would have the form of an adequate actual perception of the thing, is not a fiction, which is to say, a simple ideal possibility.26 The “thing in itself,” inasmuch it is the Idea in the Kantian sense—even though it is unrealizable—remains a real possibility, namely the possibility of a harmonious ever-continuing prolongation of the actual perceptual experience of the thing. In each actual perception, despite its partial character, the thing itself is given “in the flesh” (leibhaft). Each new actual and fitting perception provides us with additional evidence concerning the actual reality of the thing. It brings us closer to the total givenness of the thing in itself. Therefore, one must not confuse the ideal of a total givenness of the thing in itself, such as it functions within partial givenness, with a fiction. Nor must one confuse the presumptive character of the reality of the thing in itself, meaning the fact that this reality can never be established in an apodictic way, with a simple ideal possibility. In contrast to an ideal possibility, the (necessarily incomplete) verification of the reality of the thing cannot be realized by means of a simple act of thought or phantasy; it demands an actual perception of the thing itself. Let us therefore recall that the phenomenological meaning of being of the being real of a thing amounts for Husserl to an intuitive fulfillment of the positing of the actual reality of the thing through an actual perception.27 Stated —————— 26. This is what Husserl very explicitly points out at Hua XX/1, 267: “Bloße ideale Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis von einem transzendenten Dingrealen ist nie und nimmer gleichwertig mit dem wirklichen Sein.” 27. Hua XX/1, 270: “nur wirkliches Bewußtsein in Form wirklicher Erfahrung kann reales Dasein rechtfertigen.” 16 RUDOLF BERNET differently, the actual existence of a thing depends—for its phenomenological validation—on a consciousness that is not only possible but that is “actual” both in the sense of wirklich and aktuell. Only an “empirical” or “factual” consciousness can justify the positing of the existence of an empirical fact.28 Does this mean that the properly phenomenological conception of a “pure” consciousness, meaning a consciousness purified by means of a phenomenological reduction, is once and for all incapable of accounting for the existence of an empirical thing? That would be disastrous, for it would relegate phenomenology to the fictions of the Neo-Kantians. For a phenomenological validation of the being real of an empirical thing to be possible, it has to bear out the existence of an intuitive consciousness whose “purity” would be compatible with its “facticity.” This is precisely what Husserl sets about doing in writing that an empirical reality or “transcendent truth” is such that “belonging to its esse, there is the real possibility of a percipi and thus equally the real possibility of empirical egological subjects. . . . This is not conceivable without an actual consciousness with its actual pure ego. . . . The pure, meaning phenomenologically reduced, consciousness is the support of the real world, insofar as it is an actual, and not a merely possible, consciousness.”29 This passage immediately takes us to the very heart of the new conception of phenomenological idealism as Husserl elaborates it in his new version of the fifth chapter of the Sixth Log- ical Investigation, entitled “Evidence and Truth.” In our preceding citations, we have already made use of this new sketch of the fifth chapter which follows on the fourth, which had treated “Possibility and the Consciousness of Possi- bility.” From the point of view of phenomenological legitimization, there is no empirical being real of objects or of the world without an intuitive, pure, and “empirical” consciousness that is intentionally related to this actual reality (or to which this reality is intuitively given). We know that a “pure” consciousness is a denaturalized consciousness, and this essentially means: purified of any empirical apperception. If the consciousness that serves as the phenomenological foundation of empirical reality has to be both “pure” and “empirical,” then it must be “empirical” in a sense that would not run counter to its purity. Hus- serl sets out on precisely this tack in claiming that consciousness of an empirical reality can be taken to be “empirical” (but not “real”) in exactly the same way as reality itself can, namely in that it has to be a “fact” (Faktum, Tatsache). To be assured of the actual existence of a thing, it is necessary that one actually (in the double sense of wirklich and aktuell) perceive it. —————— 28. Empirical truths require “eine empirische Beziehung . . . auf Bewußtseinszusam- menhänge, die nicht Ideen, sondern Fakta sind” (Hua XX/1, 265). 29. Hua XX/1, 264: “zu ihrem esse gehört die reale Möglichkeit eines percipi und damit die reale Möglichkeit von empirischen Ichsubjekten. . . . Dies aber ist undenkbar ohne wirkliches Bewußtsein mit seinem wirklichen reinen Ich. . . . Das phänomenologisch reduzierte reine Bewußtsein nicht als mögliches, sondern wirkliches, ist Träger der realen Welt.” HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 17

But what, more precisely, distinguishes such an actual perception from a solely possible perception if not its accomplishment hic et nunc? On the last page of his new fifth chapter, Husserl in fact writes: “The being of the actual transcendent reality is an Idea in the Kantian sense. . . . It is inconceivable that a thing would exist without its being determined by its relation to the hic et nunc (the centers of orientation) of the one who actually [jeweilig] determines it.”30 In other words, the pure consciousness that assures us of the actual reality of an empirical thing has to be situated at the center of an orientation that is by nature at once both spatial and temporal. To be in a position to verify the actual (wirklich and aktuell) reality of thing, the act of perception thus has to be accomplished here and now. “Here”? How could this pure perceptual consciousness have a “here” if it did not have a flesh (Leib)? If the hic et nunc of pure consciousness is required for a phenomenological verification of the actual existence of empirical reality, one must acknowledge that this pure consciousness, on which the actual reality of things and the world depends, is an embodied consciousness. In claiming that the existence of empirical reality depends on a consciousness that is both pure and factual, phenomenological idealism is compelled to admit that this pure consciousness has a flesh. It is true that in the text of the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation this consequence is not yet formulated expressis verbis. However, it necessarily follows from Husserl’s insistence on the hic et nunc of phenomenological consciousness. He recognizes this in the most explicit manner in another text dating from 1921, which he titled “Argument for Transcendental Idealism.”31 In a highly significant manner, that text insists not only on the embodied character of the perceptual consciousness of empirical reality but equally on its intersubjective character: “I can only represent another egological subject to myself to the extent that I possess a transcendent flesh and to the extent that I represent the other to myself as a psychophysical ego.”32 Husserl’s reasoning seems to be something like the following: there is no empathy (Einfühlung) without my being able to perceive the flesh of the other as an analogon of my own flesh. The phenomenological evidence of the existence of the other can therefore be given only to an embodied consciousness, an ego that has a flesh. If, in addition, the phenomenological constitution of the objective reality of nature cannot be realized by one sole and unique embodied consciousness, then it is not only necessary that I have, thanks to my flesh, an experience of —————— 30. Hua XX/1, 271: “Das transzendente wirkliche Sein ist eine Idee im Kant’schen Sinn. . . . Es gibt kein erdenkliches Ding, das bestimmbar wäre ohne Beziehung auf das hic et nunc (die Orientierungszentren) des jeweilig Bestimmenden. . . .” 31. “Argument für den transzendentalen Idealismus,” in Hua XXXVI, Text no. 9 and Beilagen, v–vi, 151–73. 32. “Ich kann ein anderes Ich-Subjekt nur vorstellen, wenn ich einen transzendenten Leib habe und den anderen als leiblich-seelisches Ich vorstelle” (Hua XXXVI, 171). And again: “Zwei Subjekte . . . sind nur kompossibel, möglicherweise zugleich seiend, wenn sie beide psychophysische Subjekte sind, bezogen auf dieselbe Natur” (ibid., 170). 18 RUDOLF BERNET the existence of another embodied subject. Rather, beyond that, it is also necessary that we together, inasmuch as we form an embodied community, establish the actual reality of nature. It follows that phenomenological idealism—far from leading to a sort of solipsism—not only implies intersubjectivity but an intersubjective community of embodied subjects. But let us return to the text of the revision of the Sixth Logical Investiga- tion, on which we have relied throughout the whole course of our reflections. In this text, practically contemporaneous with Ideas I, Husserl not only says that actual, pure, and perceptual consciousness, on which the phenomenological legitimization of all actual empirical reality depends, has to be embodied, but he also claims, without the least bit of ambiguity, that this phenomenological constitution of empirical reality is something only an intersubjective community can achieve: “The objectivity of a transcendent truth necessarily depends on an intersubjectivity, . . . belonging to its esse, there is the real possibility of a percipi and thus equally the real possibility of several empirical egological subjects. . . .”33 By light of what we have said above, this intersubjective community “of empirical egological subjects” requires that these subjects have a flesh. If the phenomenological meaning and validity of the existence of transcendent reality depends on the existence of an embodied consciousness and if the objective meaning that characterizes this transcendent reality necessitates the existence of an intersubjective community, then this community must be composed of embodied subjects communicating with each other through their bodies. Insofar as it sets about phenomenologically legitimizing our natural belief in the existence of a transcendent world, transcendental idealism can therefore come to a conclusion only about the dependence of this world vis-à-vis the actual existence of an intersubjective community of embodied subjects.

§ 4. Conclusion What is therefore the meaning of this new version of a phenomenological idealism proposed by the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation and in what ways does this new version go beyond the one given in Ideas I? In line with Husserl, it is useful to make a distinction between idealism in its broad and in its strict senses. Taken in a broad sense, phenomenological idealism boils down to saying that every possibility has to be phenomenologically established by an intuitive consciousness or, in what amounts to the same for Husserl, by an intuitive givenness of this possibility. We have seen that the intuitive consciousness of a possibility is, most often, an act of (positing and thus not neutralized) phantasy and that in any case it is never a perception. We perceive actual realities, not possibilities. Idealism in a broad sense, as entailed by —————— 33. Hua XX/1, 263–64: “Eine transzendente Wahrheit hat ihre Objektivität notwendig in der Intersubjektivität . . . , zu ihrem esse gehört die reale Möglichkeit eines percipi und damit die reale Möglichkeit von empirischen Ichsubjekten.” HUSSERL’S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM REVISITED 19 the phenomenological analysis of solely possible objects, goes no further than the thesis of a necessary intentional correlation between the possibility of objects and the possibility of an intuitive consciousness of such objects. Idealism in a strict sense concerns empirical realities and claims that the meaning of their being real and the validity of our belief in their actual existence depend, for phenomenology, on an actual perception. Better still, the being real of empirical realities and the validity of our belief in them depend on an infinite series of actual and harmonious perceptions of those realities. This means the phenomenological legitimization of the meaning of the being of reality is a matter of a perceptual and actual consciousness that is, as we have already seen, phenomenologically pure, embodied, and intersubjective. Thus, in its assertion of the dependence of objects vis-à-vis consciousness, idealism in a strict sense goes much further than idealism in a broad sense. It makes claims about the reality of transcendent objects or “things in themselves,” and it makes their actual existence depend on the actual existence of embodied subjects. In truth, saying that there are no thinkable things without a consciousness that thinks them (idealism in a broad sense) is not the same as saying that no transcendent empirical things can exist without there also existing embodied subjects that have an actual (wirklich and aktuell) experience of them (idealism in the strict sense). Regarding this idealism in a strict sense, in what ways could one be tempted to reproach it? Principally, for restricting the field of an empirical reality, the existence of which is phenomenologically justified, to the objects of an actual and present perception. But Husserl quickly refutes such a criticism, which comes down to confusing his phenomenological idealism with one or another form of phenomenalism: “On the other hand, an actual experience of a thing is not indispensable. For there exist things—or in any case, there could exist things— . . . that do not become the object of an actual experience.”34 Not everything that, for the phenomenologist, merits the name ‘real’ has to be actually and presently perceived—even though it remains true that, in the case where nothing would actually be perceived, nothing real would subsist. One can thus say that only a “hard core” of actual reality need be actually and presently perceived and that it is possible to infer the existence of a much vaster reality—in the form of a real possibility—on the basis of that core. This hard core of reality is of a variable geometry, according to the course and richness of the actual experience and according to the contribution of the different embodied subjects that take part in its constitution. However, even when reduced to a minimal datum, this core of actually perceived transcendent reality remains a reality whose existence retains, for the phenomenologist, a merely presumptive validity. —————— 34. Hua XX/1, 268: “Andererseits wirkliche Erfahrung von dem Ding ist nicht nötig. Denn es gibt doch bzw. es kann geben . . . Dinge, die nicht aktuell erfahren sind”; see also 264 and 266. 20 RUDOLF BERNET

Reduced to its simplest expression, Husserl’s program consists in investigating what type of consciousness corresponds to which mode of being of an object. Hence, it takes it for granted that all modes of being are characteristics of the object and that they are the intentional correlates of a stance taken by a subjective consciousness. However, the phenomenology of the revision of the Sixth Logical Investigation does not merely boil down to evincing a correlation between an ideal possibility and a (positing) phantasy act, or again, between empirical reality and perception. By claiming that the meaning of the being of the object depends on its intuitive givenness, which is a datum of the sole intentional consciousness, it promotes consciousness to the role of supreme judge of all issues concerning being. Even if, in the texts we have looked at, Husserl never lets himself go so far as to proclaim an independence of consciousness vis-à-vis its intentional objects, he undoubtedly set about bringing to light a dependence of the nature of objects and of their modes of being on the acts of intuitive consciousness. Phenomenological idealism is, for the most part, nothing other than the assertion of such a dependence. It is thus a logical and inevitable consequence of the program of a phenomenological theory of knowledge such as we have expounded upon it. One cannot depart from this idealism without departing from Husserl’s phenomenology—be it because one would leave behind phenomenology altogether or because one would contest the phenomenological well-foundedness of the presuppositions of the Husser- lian theory of knowledge. This also means every extrapolation of the meaning of Husserlian idealism beyond the limits of his phenomenology of knowledge is exposed to the worst sorts of misunderstandings. In Praise of Fire: Responsibility, Manifestation, Polemos, Circumspection

Ian Angus Simon Fraser University

Ethics may be investigated philosophically, as can any other subject matter, but it pervades philosophy in a deeper sense as the practical ethic immanent in philosophy that animates any particular investigation and orients the activity of the philosopher. The ethic immanent in philosophy, no more than that of any other activity, does not present itself with clarity in that immanence itself but must be thematized through philosophical investigation of the activity of philosophizing itself. Such reflexive clarification does not prescribe an ethic to philosophers but uncovers the ethical dimension of the task of philosophy as it is practiced. It also permeates all humanities education insofar as philosophy is key to such education. The present investigation of the ethic immanent in the task of philosophy takes the ethic of philosophy articulated by Husserl as the point of departure for a reflexion that is not primarily textual but philosophical. It traces a trajectory from Husserl’s self-responsibility, to Heidegger’s manifestation, through Heraclitus’s polemos, toward what I will call ‘circumspection,’ seeking to substantiate the claim that circumspection defines the ethic of the speech of the philosopher. Such circumspection cannot, however, deliver the philosopher from polemos. In this respect I will find the positions of Husserl, Heidegger and Heraclitus all wanting. The philosopher practices circumspection within polemos.

§ 1. Ethics of Rules versus Ethics of Responsibility Every society requires, enacts and enforces an ethical code which governs ordinary activity and defines certain activities as extraordinary, unacceptable, or illegal. Perhaps the word ‘code’ is too restrictive. While there is a certain coherence to the ethical rules existing in a given society, so that they do not produce flagrant contradictions, neither is it the case that the given set of rules is utterly consistent. There may be grey areas or overlapping jurisdictions with-

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 21–52 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 22 IAN ANGUS in a relatively coherent body of rules of conduct, some of which have the sanction of law while others do not. A large part of our childhood is given over to learning these rules and the sanctions pertinent to each one. It is by no means arbitrary to think that the subject-matter of ethics deals with rules for conduct. As our apprenticeship in following rules comes to maturity, we learn to take responsibility for the choice and application of rules themselves. One can ask what rules are appropriate, when they are appropriate, how they interact, which rules predominate over others, and so forth. It is a key part of adulthood that one approaches rules of conduct not merely as a follower but also as a formulator and legislator of rules. Thus, Kant’s conception of enlightenment consists in the capacity of all adults to become both legislator and follower and thereby escape the condition of “self-imposed tutelege.”1 To be an autonomous human not under the sway of another is to give oneself the rule. Rules are, on the whole, handed down from the past because they have worked well enough thus far. They are traditional—indeed, the main content of tradition. They are formulated in the third-person in the grammatical sense; they pertain not to me as a specific individual but to me insofar as I am any adult, any teacher, any member of the relevant class. When Hannah Arendt referred to the loss of the authority of tradition she did not mean the loss of such rules of conduct. Indeed, no organized society could exist without rules. It is rather that, as she says, “we can no longer fall back upon authentic and indisputable experiences common to all.”2 The rules that we have are not common—that is to say, they are not knitted together into a coherence but have fallen apart like threads of a torn sweater. They are not authentic—that is to say, we experience rules as impositions on our behaviour not as necessary guideposts in forming it correctly. They are not indisputable; nowadays as soon as someone says that a certain ethical experience is commanding or universal someone else will immediately reply with reference to some group that does not think so—what Mary Douglas called “bongo-bongoism.” This is the moral relativism which, however problematic as theory, is the fundamental background ethical experience of our time. In this situation, which corresponds to what in philosophy is called the ‘loss of foundations’ and the ‘end of metaphysics,’ the limitation of any rule-oriented ethics becomes both palpable and concrete. No rule can have written within it when it is a good moment to apply, or suspend, this rule. No rule can say when, in a case of conflict —————— 1. Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften VIII, ed. Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1912), 35–42, here 35; English translation: “What Is Enlightenment?” in On His- tory, ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 3–10, here 3. 2. Hannah Arendt, “What Is Authority?” in Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1993), 91–141, here 91. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 23 between two rules, which rule should preclude the other. Or, more exactly, when such a rule of preclusion is stated, the indeterminacy between stated rules will appear at a higher stage of abstraction. Since rules are prescribed universally and in the third person, they never contain the conditions for their own application to here-and-now situations. Consequently, in a post-traditional time the question of whether any of the rules validly apply here-and- now extends to a universal skepticism that rules—indeed ethics outright—are nothing more than projections of power: the problem of nihilism. In Nietz- sche’s words “that the highest values devalue themselves.”3 This situation necessarily arises and can be evaded only at the cost of a blindness to one’s situation ill befitting a philosopher. To a rule-oriented ethic can be contrasted an ethics of responsibility. An ethic of self-responsibility is formulated in the first person in the present tense. It is precisely concerned with the question “why should I in this here-and-now situation act in such-and-such a way?” Thus, it also must address the question “who am I?” Consequently, it cannot avoid the question of why should I be ethical at all: should I respond to my desires, my appetites, my fears, or should I focus in clarity upon the question “what should I do?” It must address the question of nihilism, not by proposing a rule, but by confronting my existence myself and giving a reason, an apology, for answering in the way that I do. An ethics of responsibility is not concerned with rules as such and, indeed, if pursued with some diligence cannot help but undermine an ethic of rules since it “is not a matter of formulae. It is a matter of maieutics.”4 When, in his last work, Edmund Husserl addressed the problem that he called both “the crisis of European sciences” and “the crisis of European humanity,”5 he began by recalling the Renaissance project of self-knowledge and its relation to philosophy that defines European modernity: According to the guiding ideal of the Renaissance, ancient man forms himself with insight through free reason. For this renewed “Platonism” —————— 3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1964), 10; English translation: The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1968), 9. Translation slightly altered. 4. José Huertas-Jourda, “‘You Should Have Known Better!’ A Phenomenological In- quiry into the Mechanics of Ethical Education,” in F. J. Smith, ed., Phenomenology in Per- spective (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970), 157–70, here 170. 5. The latter term comes from the title to the Vienna lecture, “Die Krisis des eu- ropäischen Menschentums und die Philosophie,” included in Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954), 314–48; English translation: “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity,” in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1970), 269–99. Henceforth cited as VL, whereas references to the main text will be cited as Crisis, with German and English page references, respectively. 24 IAN ANGUS

this means not only that man should be changed ethically [but that] the whole human surrounding world, the political and social existence of mankind, must be fashioned anew through free reason, through the insights of a universal philosophy. . . . In a bold, even extravagant, elevation of the meaning of universality, begun by Descartes, this new philosophy seeks nothing less than to encompass, in the unity of a theoretical system, all meaningful questions in a rigorous scientific manner, with an apodictically intelligible methodology, in an unending but rationally ordered progress of inquiry. . . . [Such that] The problem of God clearly contains the problem of “absolute” reason as the teleological source of all reason in the world—of the “meaning” of the world. (Crisis, 6–7/8–9) The modern project of a universal self-knowledge which began in the late Re- naissance was guided by an idea (in the Kantian sense) of a unified, rigorous, consistent and apodictically founded reason, that provided the ground for Husserl’s conception of responsibility, of the responsibility of humanity for itself, such that the “inner personal vocation” of the philosopher was as a “func- tionary of mankind” (15/17). Self-clarification consists in an actualization in which it is possible to decide whether the telos which was inborn in European humanity at the birth of Greek philosophy—that of humanity which seeks to exist, and is only possible, through philosophical reason, moving endlessly from latent to manifest reason and forever seeks its own norms through this, its truth and genuine human nature. (13/15) Such philosophical self-clarification allows a decision whether philosophy itself is a contingency of one civilization or an unfolding of what is essential to humanity as such. Humanity becomes itself through reason. Reason is no imposition but a movement from latency to manifestation. An endless process of self-clarification creates a parallelism that fuses the philosopher’s activity with humanity at large. In such a manner, the philosopher might rescue “the ‘meaning’ of the world” from the crisis into which it had entered. This parallelism between the investigations of the philosopher and humanity as such depends upon one of the basic methodological and substantive principles of science: that what is seen by one researcher at one place and time can be repeated by another who looks in a similar manner. Knowledge is not idiosyncratic to place, time or investigator, but repeatable in other places and times by the same researcher and others. In accord with the essence of science, then, its functionaries maintain the constant claim, the personal certainty, that everything they put into scientific assertions has been said “once and for all,” that it “stands fast,” forever identically repeatable with self-evidence and usable for further theoretical or practical ends—as indubitably reactivatable with the identity of its actual meaning.6 —————— 6. Edmund Husserl, “Beilage III” to Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954), 365-86, here 373; English trans- IN PRAISE OF FIRE 25

Such iteration is essential to the meaning of science as valid knowledge. Failure of such attempts require either rejection of the attempt as itself failed, or rejection of the knowledge claim as false—consigning it to either opinion or error. The reliance on philosophy to generate self-responsibility both for the individual philosopher and for European civilization itself depends upon the recognition of philosophy as an anti-traditional force. “If he is to be one who thinks for himself . . . he must have the insight that all the things he takes for granted are prejudices, that all prejudices are obscurities arising out of a sedi- mentation of tradition” (Crisis, 73/72). The task of philosophy is thus to uncover the assumptions inherent in practical activity and bring them to clarity. Its goal is thus the replacement of tradition with knowledge, the replacement of the domination of the past with an insight grounded in the present. This seeing-for-oneself Husserl called the ‘principle of all principles’ in which every originary presentative intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its “personal” actuality) offered to us in “intuition” is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there.7 Seeing-for-oneself what is manifested, letting the manifestation manifest itself as it is, according to the limits within which it is given: this is the ethos of the philosopher. It rests on a decision taken by the philosopher as a human individual not to simply swim within the current of practical activities, accepting their sedimented meanings as such, nor to simply accept the traditional legiti- mations of such sedimented meanings, but to accept only what presents itself, as it presents itself, within the limits within which it presents itself. “Self-reflection serves in arriving at a decision and here this naturally means immediately carrying on with the task that is truly ours . . . set for us all in the present” (Crisis, 72/73). Such a decision tears the philosopher away from both practical activities and tradition as sources of validity. Of course, the philosopher still lives within the world of practice, tradition and power but the decision that institutes the philosopher as philosopher deprives these of any claim to be sources of insight. They become merely factual components of the philosopher’s situation. The decision to become a philosopher occurs with the transcendental reduction whose “epoché creates a unique sort of philosophical solitude which is the fundamental methodical requirement for a tru- —————— lation: “The Origin of Geometry,” in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phe- nomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1970), 353–78, here 362. 7. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuh- mann, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book: General Intro- duction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982), 43–44. Emphases removed. 26 IAN ANGUS ly radical philosophy” such that the philosopher is saddled with both a transcendental and a concrete ego and the difficult problem of their difference and identity (188/184).

§ 2. Husserl’s Gnoseological Horizon For Husserl, the decision instituting a philosopher was exclusively a decision for knowledge as such. Knowledge, science, was the essence and ideal of philosophy. In his programmatic essay “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” (1911), which summed up the ethos of his earlier researches into the foundations of arithmetic and logic, Husserl criticized the temptation to slip into ideals from outside the theoretical sphere in response to demands from the social and historical situation of the philosopher. Already aware of the “lack of meaning” into which scientific civilization has fallen, he counselled patience in the face of pressing demands, insisting that “for the sake of time, we must not sacrifice eternity” and that “only science can definitively overcome the distress that comes from science.”8 The decision that turns the philosopher toward insight resting exclusively on a seeing-for-oneself initiated for Husserl an impersonal seeing, a seeing valid for anyone who looked without prejudice and was, in that sense, science. The rigours of science must prevail of the concerns of the moment. Indeed, the rigours of science were all that, in the end, could adequately address the concerns of the moment. This ethos developed and radicalized in Husserl’s work, but it was never abandoned. By the time of his last work on The Crisis of European Sciences, he was more concerned with the striving for knowledge than knowledge itself, more intensely aware of the waiting that the impersonal edifice of science demanded. He described his own “plight” of “existential contradiction” as a “faith in the possibility of philosophy as a task, that is, in the possibility of universal knowledge, [which] is something we cannot let go” (Crisis, 15/17). Uni- versal knowledge presupposes that the separate contributions made by individual researches can be summed-up, as it were, into a scientific architectonic in which every piece has its place. It is, as Husserl recognized, an infinite task, an idea (in the Kantian sense) to which modern science and philosophy contribute but which one will never see entire (VL, 320–21/275). But if only the striving for knowledge, not the completed edifice of knowledge itself, is presented as such to the philosopher, we are required to ask whether the wait is worth the while, especially since it will be an infinite wait. Postponing practi- —————— 8. Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” in Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921), ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana XXV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1987), 289–341, here 337; English translation: “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” trans. Marcus Brainard, New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy II (2000), 249–95, here 290. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 27 cal involvements for the certainty of science is only viable if the knowledge will one day arrive. Even so, one may well wonder whether it will arrive in time. Most important, we must also ask whether this wonder is necessarily un- philosophical. When the essence of knowledge has been recognized as the striving for knowledge, such that the actual edifice is never complete, to be asked to postpone infinitely concerns embedded in practical involvements can be maintained without contradiction, only at the price of severing philosophy from ever addressing practical concerns. It consists in an ethic in which only knowledge itself is of worth to philosophy, no longer knowledge that will eventual- ly also serve the needs of practical life. Such a striving for knowledge for its own sake, while not without its own grandeur, is cut off from self-responsibility, which requires that the striving for knowledge return to orient practical action. In the end, Husserl’s phenomenology thus tragically succumbs to the crisis of European humanity that it intended to diagnose and address—loss of the meaning of science for human life. Here phenomenology encounters again the basic problem of philosophy articulated by Socrates: how to act when one’s activity is structured by the desire for knowledge but without knowledge itself. This is the point at which Husserl’s encyclopediac conception of philosophy encounters its gnoseological horizon. The characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology as a “gnoseology” emerges as a critical circumscription of its orientation to the theory of knowledge. The term has been deployed by Emil Lask and Jan Patocka, for example, in order to distinguish the orientation toward a theory of knowledge, or judgment, from an aletheological orientation toward manifestation.9 However, it is not just the difference of these two orientations that is at issue. It is the dependence of a theory of judgment on the manifestation of the world and the things within it that is paramount. Thus Patocka argues that the foundation of manifesting itself, the foundation of the manifestable— that the world not only is but also shows itself—does not result from any activity, does not result from this activity of judgment. The action of judgment must tie into this primeval fact, to the primeval situation that the world shows itself.10 While my use of the term gnoseology draws from this characterization of its dependence on manifestation, usually drawn from Heidegger’s criticism of Husserl, it actually requires a more specific rendition. —————— 9. With respect to Lask, see Steven Galt Crowell’s analysis in his Husserl, Heidegger and the Space of Meaning (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 2001), 39 and 50. Jan Patocka uses the term ‘gnoseology’ to refer to “a theory of cognition” that does “not speak about manifestation as such” in Plato and Europe, trans. Peter Lom (Stanford: Stan- ford University, 2002), 38. 10. Patocka, Plato and Europe, 39. 28 IAN ANGUS

Husserl’s gnoseology can be illustrated by a passage from § 50 of Formal and Transcendental Logic where his concern is, as the title suggests, “the broadening of the concept of sense [Sinn] to cover the whole positional sphere.”11 Remarking that the entire sphere of doxic reflection is oriented toward a thematic sense, or meaning, of some sort—whether it be perceptual, valuational, or practical—he claims that identifying synthesis in the sphere of judgment has as its analogues identifying synthesis in the other positional spheres. . . . Thus, the formal logic of certainties can not only be enriched by taking in the form of [doxic] modalities, but can also absorb, in a certain manner, the modalities of emotion and volition. (FTL, 121) Husserl’s claim is that the various positionalities of the doxic sphere can be incorporated into a theory of judgment because “any extra-doxic sense can at any time become the theme of a doxic act and thus enter the doxic sphere—and, in particular, the apophantic sphere.” He compares this to modalized judgments of the sort of possibility, probability, etc. and claims that this is similar to the case of the beautiful or the good. In short, Husserl claims that aesthetic and moral positionings, as well as practical judgments, can be treated as modalities of judgments of certainty. This “opens up the possibility of broadening the idea of formal logic to include formal axiology and a formal theory of practice.” Husserl’s explicit concern in this passage is to extend the theory of judgment to include the entire sphere of doxic positings of whatever sort and thus to take the theory of judgment beyond straightforwardly logical concerns toward those traditionally designated as aesthetic, moral, and practical. I want to make two observations about this move, which is fundamental to his late, critical conception of phenomenology. One, the extension of the model of judgment, through an enlarged conception of modalization, to cover doxic consciousness as a whole is asserted to apply “in a certain sense.” Other modalities can be treated as if they were doxic positionings, but this qualification of “in a certain sense” is not clarified any further. It is not asked whether anything is lost, or transformed in a problematic manner, by this treatment. Second, a more subtle issue concealed by the focus on the enlarging of judgment is obscured. It is not asked whether these other “modalities” of doxic positioning which are manifested in phenomena of will, morality and beauty might contain different relations to the extra-doxic or pre-doxic spheres or whether such a relation might be constitutive of the fact that this enlargement pertains only “in a certain sense.” To put it polemically and thus one-sidedly: The broadening of —————— 11. Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), 120; English translation: Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969), 135. Henceforth cited as FTL with original pagination, which is included in the margins of both editions. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 29 the concept of judgment still begins from the concept of judgment and fails to ask whether its description of the doxic sphere in these terms does indeed render other phenomena to be like judgments in all relevant respects and thus miss other, perhaps more relevant, respects in which they differ. Husserl’s broadening of the concept of judgment thus serves (in the absence of any critique based on other cognate investigations of volition, morality, and practice) not only to disparage specific differences between these “modalities,” but also to render irrelevant the issue of their relations to extra- doxic or pre-doxic experience. The use of the term gnoseology by Lask and Pa- tocka pertains solely to the Heideggerian claim that Husserl’s phenomenology was restricted to the theory of cognition and obscured the dependence of judgment on manifestation. It amounts thus to a straightforward assertion of the superiority of the standpoint of Being and Time. In the present context of an exploration of the ethic of philosophy, even the dependence of a theory of judgment on manifestation does not comprehend fully the phenomenon that I designate as the ‘gnoseological horizon’ of Husserl’s phenomenology.12 My use of the term gnoseology is intended to capture more specifically the sense in which Husserl’s phenomenology can be said to be circumscribed with respect to the ethic of philosophical inquiry. I use it to refer to the function of a theory of knowledge that has come to substitute for a connection to action. This substitution occurs both through the “broadening” whereby specific characteristics of practice are left uninvestigated by the expanded theory of judgment and also through the absence of investigation of the doxic sphere, including these specific characteristics, to that of manifestation. My claim is not, like that of Lask and Patocka, the global one that judgment depends on manifestation. It is specific to the ethic of philosophy. Self-responsibility, when it is based on a striving for knowledge rather than its possession, cannot fail to thematize the relation between this striving and the requirements of practice. Without such clarification the expectation that the striving for knowledge leads to self-responsibility is groundless. This groundless belief is the gnoseological horizon of Husserl’s phenomenology. It is, of course, also deeply rooted in European philosophy prior to phenomenology. What is important here is that it is this gnoseological horizon that prevents Husserl’s phenomenology from resolving the crisis of the European sciences, a task which it set itself, and from which emerged its ethic of philosophical practice. Not that philosophy can ever be severed from the striving for knowledge. Gnoseology, in my usage, does not refer simply to the theory of cognition, but rather consists in putting off achieving a productive relationship between —————— 12. I have used this phrase before to designate a certain circumscription of Husserl’s phenomenology with respect to the issue of practice. In that context, it pertained to the contribution that Levinas made to such a circumscription. See my (Dis)figurations: Dis- course/Critique/Ethics (London/New York: Verso, 2000), 188–91. 30 IAN ANGUS the striving of knowledge and all other human pursuits until the striving is satisfied. But the arrival of complete and coherent knowledge is always delayed. Thus gnoseology consists in the denial and denigration of practical concerns within philosophy such that they can be addressed only unphilosophically as merely practical without any relation to the striving for knowledge. The task, therefore, is to think practical concerns in fundamental relationship with the striving for knowledge such that they can be addressed from within the striving itself without awaiting the arrival of completed knowledge. This is the So- cratic core of the ethic of philosophy.

§ 3. The Striving for Knowledge as Coming-into-Presence When, in the introduction to Being and Time, Martin Heidegger described the seeing-for-oneself of what is intuitively given that characterizes phenomenology, he initially put it in very similar terms to Husserl, as “to let what shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from itself,” but this description was limited to what he called “the formal meaning” of phenomenology.13 In further elucidating this “showing” in a deformalized way, he claimed that showing becomes the theme of phenomenology because originally something is concealed and that such concealment “essentially belongs to what initially and for the most part shows itself, indeed in such a way that it constitutes its meaning and ground” (BT, 35). Phenomenology thus becomes not only, in Husserl’s terms, cognition legitimated by presentative intuition, but also, and more fundamentally, the elucidation of manifestation as a revealing-concealing structure in which what is concealed is the Being of beings. This is the root of overcoming gnoseology in phenomenology: the point at which evidence is understood not only as intuition, or the presence of the present, but as coming- into-presence, unhidden-ness, or manifestation. It grasps the striving for knowledge at the precise point of the striving, not as a prior condition for arrival, though what Husserl calls in rather subjectivistic language “striving” is phrased in terms of the phenomenon itself as the coming-into-presence of the manifestation of entities. Such coming-into-presence is Being which is both revealed and concealed in manifestation. Accounts of the relation between Husserl and Heidegger usually attribute to Heidegger an abandonment of Husserlian phenomenology due to an insistence on the primacy of the question of Being in distinction from the focus on meaning in Husserl such that being can only have the meaning of being-as- meant relevant to either regional ontologies such as “physical thing,” “culture,” etc., or as a formally abstract and thus empty category applying to all entities —————— 13. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 6th ed., 1953), 34; Eng- lish translation: Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1996), 30. Henceforth cited as BT with original pagination, which is included in the margins of both editions. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 31 in general. According to what has been aptly called this “received view,”14 Hei- degger rejects the transcendental-phenomenological reduction to meaning and, correlatively, the subjectivism of Husserl’s phenomenology, its reflective orientation to the validity of judgments, and the primacy of intentionality, therefore replacing a descriptive, scientific methodology with an interpretive one. The received view claims that Heidegger abandons the transcendental reduction to meaning and thus introduces extra-phenomenological concerns when he raises the question of Being. This view thus asserts that the question of Being as posed by Heidegger is not a question of the meaning of Being (in a phenomenological sense) but of a naively assumed Being that would determine from the outside the phenomenological investigation of intentionality. Burt Hopkins diagnoses the (supposed) misunderstanding of Husserl by Heidegger in these terms as possible only if the “phenomena” of phenomenology lose their phenomenal status as the “exhibitive manifestation” of the matter or matters themselves, and are understood, thereby, to be structurally coincident with that which, prior to their phenomenal (reflective) exhibition, manifest themselves as having been “reflexionlos [without reflection].” This state of affairs can only be understood, from the Husserlian prerogative, in terms of the “ontologizing” of the transcendental Sinn of the essence of intentionality, which misunderstands Sinn to be equivalent with the pre-transcendental, factically determined ex- emplars that serve as the phenomenal field for the exhibitive manifestation of transcendental Sinn.15 However, this diagnosis simply assumes that the question of Being can be raised only as a factical question and not as a transcendental issue concerning manifestation itself in distinction from that which is manifested in manifestation. Further, it seems to be a related misunderstanding to suggest that hermeneutical insight into Being is grounded simpliciter in the “advance regard” toward being of Dasein in its everyday comportment.16 It is so grounded, though not simpliciter, but also in the decision that makes the human being a philosopher. It is this decision that enables the “advance regard” based in the everyday comportment of Dasein due to the estrangement from tradition that this decision entails.17 If, as I claimed above, the question of Being for Heidegger is the question of coming-into-presence, or the manifesting of manifestation in distinction to what is manifested, the assumption that the question of Being must be a mundane interruption of phenomenological reflection is shown to be un- —————— 14. This is Crowell’s characterization in Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, 131, 182, and 195. 15. Burt Hopkins, Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), 201. 16. Hopkins, Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger, 203. 17. While Hopkins does correctly realize that the decision to become a philosopher grounds this description of everyday comportment, this realization does not inform his use of the term simpliciter here. Hopkins, Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger, 207. 32 IAN ANGUS founded. This does leave one with the difficult issue of whether, or in what sense, manifestation as such can be disengaged from the manifestation of specific existents and the significant implications that this has for the concept of philosophy and its relation to religion. This is one aspect of the issue that I address below as “circumspection.” The received view of the relation of Being and Time to Husserlian phenomenology thus comes to grief on the related unfounded assumptions that any investigation of Being must be mundane and that such investigation is based simply on Dasein’s everydayness. I would thus agree with Reiner Schür- mann and Steven Galt Crowell who argue that the shift to manifestation is not a rejection of the Husserlian problematic of validity, nor the transcendental reduction that is its consequence, by Heidegger in Being and Time but rather a further step back into what originates appearing as such. Schürmann claims that the mutation of transcendentalism from Husserl to Heidegger thus has to do with the role of man: the condition of our knowing and experiencing is no longer sought purely in man, but in his relation to the being of entities in their totality. The origin is no longer sought in the formal structures of consciousness through which indubitable representations are obtained, but in the ontological structures through which the entity we are is said to belong to being as such.18 Similarly, Crowell refers to the “new, specifically transcendental-phenomenological ontology” which “attempts to define the sense of the reality of something real insofar as it manifests itself in consciousness.”19 Such a transcendental ontology cannot help but displace the centrality of validity as asserted by Husserl in favour of the essence of manifestation itself, but it is no rejection that disrupts the continuity and unity of transcendental reflection. However, the issue of whether the manifestation of Being refers to Being- as-meant or mundane being does not exhaust the difficulties of the relation between Heidegger and Husserl. The attempt to assert a continuity between Husserlian “evidence” and Heideggerian “manifestation,” as I have above, may be regarded as an issue solely of interpretations by Husserl and Heidegger and not of the things themselves. Thus, Crowell asserts that the real difference consists in Heidegger’s rejection of Husserl’s interpretation of the achievement of the transcendental reduction as giving an absolute ground of constituting consciousness which was based on Husserl’s exclusive concern with epistemological issues.20 This, however, does not root the difference deep enough. The project of achieving a ground for science was not a mere interpretation on —————— 18. Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, trans. Christine-Marie Gros (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987), 69. 19. Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, 194, 198. 20. Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, 201–2. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 33

Husserl’s part. It constituted the driving force of his specific investigations as well as the philosophical interpretation that he attributed to them and which was founded, though not unproblematically, on them. As Ludwig Landgrebe has demonstrated, it is the radicalization of the search for a grounding of science that propelled Husserl’s work from 1) a revision of the theory of knowledge and science that required the transcendental reduction (Ideas I, 1913), to 2) the motive for the passage from the natural attitude to the transcendental reduction (First Philosophy, 1923–24), toward 3) a justification of the striving for knowledge as such (Crisis, 1934–37).21 The teleology of Husserl’s questioning of the ground of science is thus an ethical question of the justification of the striving for knowledge by the philosopher and its role in European civilization as I have described it above through the concept of self-responsibility. The limitation of Husserl’s perspective with regard to the essence of manifestation is rooted in his gnoseology not merely in an interpretation and thus Schür- mann is right to point to the shift away from man toward manifestation even while the continuity of transcendental inquiry is maintained.

§ 4. Phenomenology as the Critique of Metaphysics The assertion of a continuity between Husserl’s gnoseological phenomenology and Heidegger’s ontological phenomenology does not suggest that the standpoint of Being and Time was a coherent or stable one.22 Schürmann indicates this in his account of a development in Heidegger’s thought “from the subject to Dasein (from Husserl to Being and Time); from there to the ‘destiny —————— 21. See Ludwig Landgrebe, “The Problem of the Beginning of Philosophy in Husserl’s Phenomenology,” in Lester E. Embree, ed., Life-World and Consciousness: Essays for Aron Gurwitsch (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1972), 33–53, esp. 42–44, “A Medita- tion on Husserl’s Statement: ‘History is the grand fact of absolute Being’,” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 5 (1974), 111–25, and “Husserl’s Departure from Cartesianism,” in Donn Welton, ed., The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1981), 66–121. I have discussed and perhaps clarified Landgrebe’s periodization in my (Dis)figurations, 196–98. 22. While Crowell clearly shows the basis of Heidegger’s concerns leading up to Be- ing and Time in Husserl’s phenomenology, and thus the continuity underpinning their work, it seems to want to justify pulling back Being and Time into a Husserlian problematic and severing it from the later development of Heidegger’s work. While each stage of Heidegger’s development, like Husserl’s in this respect, can of course been seen as raising basic problems in its own right, and should not be assumed to be an inevitable unfolding, nonetheless this should not be an excuse for simply substituting an abandonment-rejection chasm later in Heidegger’s work for one between Husserl and Heidegger. This interpretation is not entirely clear in Crowell’s interpretation due to the limitation of his consideration of Heidegger’s work to the early period of its intersection with Husserl, but is suggested by the remarks that Heidegger’s “later thought contains strong elements of post- phenomenological or postmodern suspicion regarding both the matter and the method of philosophical inquiry” and that “the demise of Being and Time, its end, was only the end of the inconsistency still infecting its concept of philosophical reason giving.” Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, 204 and 243. 34 IAN ANGUS of being’ which ascribes to any given collectivity or type its historical locus; and finally to the ‘event’,”23 similar to the way in which I will notice in the next section how Being and Time is succeeded by the thesis about Plato’s inauguration of metaphysics and the subsequent opening to Heraclitus’s polemos. The condition for understanding this later development correctly is the transcendental continuity and gnoseological discontinuity—both founded on the decision to become a philosopher—between Husserl and the Heidegger of Being and Time. It is this problematic of continuity and discontinuity that allows one to follow the phenomenological ethic of philosophy into Heideg- ger’s post-metaphysical encounter with polemos. Insofar as Husserl was oriented to the scientific, repeatable, description of judgments, including both the explicit judgments of established scientific domains and the implicit judgments embedded in practical activities, his concern remained with the entities manifested in the modes of their manifestation, not with the phenomenon of manifestation itself. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Husserl’s project was the extension of the enlightenment scientific ideal to the whole of experience in order to bring it under the sway of this ideal. The ethical significance of this extension was to expect that self-responsibility in the sense of giving a scientific account would adequately and sufficiently address the crisis of the European sciences as the loss of the meaning of science for human life. Hei- degger’s shift of attention within the phenomenological description of manifestation from that which is manifested to the phenomenon of manifestation itself, toward coming-into-presence as the Being concealed in the presence of entities, shows that self-responsibility must extend beyond self-knowledge toward the guardianship of manifestation itself, to the open-ness that grounds any showing as such. Such a shift of attention cannot but push to the foreground the entity whose character is such as to experience the open-ness which ground the unhidden—Dasein, that being whose character is at issue for itself. It is important to clarify exactly in what sense Dasein comes into the foreground, especially since it is exactly this issue that drives the unstable standpoint of Being and Time toward the subsequent critique of metaphysics. Crowell argues in a critical vein that Heidegger’s “metaphysical decade” after Being and Time was concerned to provide an “ontic ground” for ontology which did not merely refer to “Dasein, the inquirer, as the inescapable starting point for philosophy” but rather “stands poised to make a move that has since become familiar in philosophy, namely, to relativize such [ontological] knowledge to some aspect of the context in which it arises.”24 While such a move has indeed become familiar, I will claim in opposition to Crowell’s view that it has done so due to a misunderstanding of Heidegger’s work based in the received view that he abandoned phenomenology in Being and —————— 23. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, 76. 24. Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, 223. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 35

Time. This move itself cannot be attributed to Heidegger precisely because his concern with ontology was indeed a phenomenological concern with the essence of the manifestation of the beings present in intuition. In the introduction to Being and Time, § 3 on “The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being,” Heidegger defines the question of Being not only as referred to regional ontologies investigated by the sciences but more primor- dially as “the condition of the possibility of the ontologies which precede the ontic sciences and found them” (BT, 11). The next section on “The Ontic Pri- ority of the Question of Being” asserts that “fundamental ontology, from which alone all other ontologies can originate, must be sought in the existential analysis of Da-sein” (13). Not only does the ontological determination, which is defined in terms originating from the Husserlian enterprise, precede the ontic determination, but the ontic determination derives from the ontological one. The ontic-ontological priority of Da-sein consists in its ontological, not ontic, priority because “on the basis of its determination as existence Da- sein is in itself ‘ontological.’” While ontic priority pertains to the question of access, such priority is itself ontologically determined. In Being and Time, therefore, the ontic ground refers precisely to the starting point for philosophy in the inquirer and not, as Crowell asserts, to the relativization of ontological knowledge to its ontic origin. The instability of Being and Time, which led to the later unconcealing of manifestation as polemos must therefore be located differently than Crowell suggests. The problem in Being and Time that grounds its instability such that Hei- degger had to break with its formulation in order to proceed further into the “appearing of the appearing as event” or the “event of manifestation,” and which also grounds the attempts of commentators like Crowell to pull back the existential analytic into a Husserlian gnoseological framework, is indeed situated in the ontic-ontological relation of that text but certainly not in a priority of the ontic that could lead to a later problematic of relativization of ontology to its contextual origin. The problem consists precisely in the in principle separation of ontic and ontological domains such that they are combined only accidentally in the being of Dasein which repeats without significant variation Husserl’s in principle distinction between eidetic necessity and factical contingency. In short, there is an insufficient overcoming of gnoseology in Being and Time. This accidental combination of ontic and ontological domains grounds the priority of Dasein such that while Heidegger asserts that “Dasein has proven to be what, before all other beings, is ontologically the primary being to be interrogated” no such proof is actually ever offered. Only the existential analytic of Dasein as presented in the text of Being and Time in its entirety could fulfill this proof which is asserted at the outset. This is not a hermeneutic circle but the assertion of a systematic completion, such as that asserted at the beginning of the Hegelian phenomenology, which can only be 36 IAN ANGUS redeemed by a systematic explication terminating in the justification of the starting point and thus achieving a unified and self-enclosed totality. Being and Time not only does not culminate in such a systematic totality but could not in principle do so because it moves toward an ontological temporal analysis that contains no motive for a return to Dasein’s ontic existence. Put polemically, the problem is not that ontic access relativizes ontology but rather that ontic existence is relegated simply to access and is subsequently left behind so that ontology is entirely cut loose from its beginning point whose primacy is thus simply asserted and nowhere within the inquiry justified. From this point of view, it is not at all surprising that when, much later (1962), Heidegger takes up the question of time again in Time and Being, he derogates not the ontological question but the ontic one: The attempt to think Being without beings becomes necessary because otherwise, it seems to me, there is no longer any possibility of explicitly bringing into view the Being of what is today all over the earth, let alone of adequately determining the relations of man to what has been called ‘Being’ up to now.25 Both the received view, which locates Heidegger’s abandonment of phenomenology in Being and Time, and Crowell’s view, which locates the abandonment in the “metaphysical decade” after that text, claim that Heidegger abandoned the fidelity of Husserlian evidence to the things themselves and that this abandonment is the condition for the critique of metaphysics. To the contrary, I have argued that Being as understood by Heidegger is within the phenomenological horizon of “meaning,” that the discontinuity between Husserl and Heidegger is rooted in Husserl’s gnoseology whose overcoming was already precedented in Husserl’s development from an apodictic foundation for knowledge toward the striving for knowledge, and, thus, with Schürmann, that the attempt to overcome metaphysics is inherent in the continuity of phenomenology in Husserlian and Heideggerian versions. Most important, my interpretation claims that this continuity and discontinuity is only correctly apprehended if one understands them as founded on the decision to become a philosopher and the ethic that this decision institutes. Heidegger’s critique of Plato and re-reading of the pre-Socratics was central to this continuing phenomenological task. That there is a continuity between Heidegger’s turning of phenomenology from intuition to manifestation in Being and Time and his later critique of metaphysics suggests a phenomenological logic in this development that begins with Husserl and extends through Being and Time into overcoming metaphysics. I thus understand the question of the relation between ontic and ontological dimensions, between intuition and manifestation, —————— 25. Martin Heidegger, “Zeit und Sein,” in Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969), 1–20, here 2; English translation: “Time and Being,” in On Time and Be- ing, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 1–24, here 2. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 37 as an intra-phenomenological debate not one pertaining to the abandonment of phenomenology. This intra-phenomenological debate pertains most fundamentally to the ethic of philosophy as a decision owing fidelity to manifestation (as both the evidence of entities and the clearing of a world). 26

§ 5. Manifestation as Polemos When Heidegger subsequently took up the question of Being in Introduc- tion to Metaphysics, he was concerned to distinguish at the outset between an inquiry that “held itself within the purview of beings as such” from his own questioning which departs from Being and Time to ask about the “disclosedness of Being,”27 that by asking about the meaning of Being is not metaphysics as such but is the ground for uncovering the essence of metaphysics. The shift of attention within phenomenology grounds Heidegger’s subsequent (1931–32) argument that Western metaphysics began with Plato’s transformation of truth from unhidden-ness into “the correctness of apprehending and asserting.”28 De- spite qualifications concerning the necessity of Husserl’s phenomenology for his breakthrough, this judgment cannot fail to extend to Husserl’s gnoseological phenomenology as the most recent re-statement of this metaphysics. The conception of truth as unhidden-ness, aletheia, in early Greek philosophy was replaced by truth as idea by Plato. As idea, truth is a constant presence that is given over to subjective representation, determination and assertion as a way of thinking about being rather than as a mode of being itself. —————— 26. Crowell suggests without much discussion in conclusion that “Heidegger never got so far as to see that the ontic ground of ontology is exclusively ethical” but in that case everything of course depends of the term ‘ethical’, which is the meaning of the investigation that I carry out here. Thus Crowell interprets Heidegger’s political engagement with Na- tional Socialism as a falling away from “the ethical space of phenomenological reasoning” toward an ontic anchor thus opposing this engagement to the vocation of phenomenology. But how can one know that this is not an appropriate ontic engagement? How is it manifested as such? Surely this would require some substantiation unless one simply falls back on retrospective pieties rooted in the end on history’s victors. In contrast, my interpretation would not base itself on the ethics versus political action (even if National Socialist) opposition but rather reckon with Heidegger’s polemical stance in the moment. Crowells’ formulation gives aid and comfort to those ‘philosophers’ who take today’s liberal pieties for granted because it is easy to do so and disparage other engagements not because they take an opposite stance but because they are engagements at all. Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, 242. 27. Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1953), 14; English translation: Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University, 2000), 14. Henceforth cited as IM with original pagination, which is included in the margins of both editions. 28. Martin Heidegger, “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit,” in Wegmarken (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1967), 109–44, here 136; English translation: “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998), 155–82, here 177. Henceforth cited as PDT with German and English page references, respectively. 38 IAN ANGUS

Nevertheless, in a certain way Plato has to hold onto “truth” as still a characteristic of beings, because a being, as something present, has being precisely by appearing, and being brings unhiddenness with it. But at the same time, the inquiry into what is unhidden shifts in the direction of the appearing of the visible form, and consequently toward the act of seeing that is ordered to this visible form, and toward what is correct and toward the correctness of seeing. (PDT, 137/177) This is the ambiguity of a transition in which something unsaid structures what is said in such a manner as to leave a trace within what is said. Given his critique of metaphysics as a shift from coming-into-presence to full presence under the light of the idea, Heidegger proceeded to uncover the prior meaning of being in early Greek philosophy. In the Introduction to Meta- physics, which was given as lectures in 1935 though not published until 1953, this was his main task—though it was not an end in itself. Understanding the inception of Greek philosophy, and the end of this inception in Plato, was to be preparatory to a new inception rooted in the German language. From the many discussions of Greek philosophy and art in Introduction to Metaphysics,I want to single out only that of Heraclitus’s fragment 53—I will follow Diels’s numbering of the fragments throughout—which is translated in a common English edition by Kirk and Raven to read “War is the father of all and the king of all, and some it shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free.”29 The first word, translated as ‘war’ by Kirk and Raven, is the Greek word polemos that can also be translated as strife, conflict, confrontation or struggle. I will use the word ‘strife’ as the general term, because ‘war’ can be misleading. It is not that strife cannot be expressed at times as war, for it can. It is that strife is not always war, or, as Heidegger said, “the polemos named here is . . . not war in the human sense” but “allows what essentially unfolds to step apart in opposition” (IM, 47). The paradox of fragment 53 requires one to think together both “what essentially unfolds” and “opposition.” Strife is father and king, origin and ruler, that which holds all together in tension. This holding together creates division into relationships which are mutually defined and thus cannot exist separately. Two examples, perhaps more than examples, are given of such relationships: the division and relationship between gods and humans and the division and relationship between slaves and free humans. Division between divine and mortal beings, given first, and division between humans, given second, on the ground of that which makes them most human—freedom or its absence. The struggle for freedom was the greatest claim of the Greeks to distinguish themselves in their life in the polis from what we might anachronistically call ‘oriental despotism’, as they did in their defeat of the Persians. All humans are distinct from gods and are human in their —————— 29. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1966), 195. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 39 relation to the gods. Free humans are distinct from slaves and are free in their relation to slaves. Strife is the name for this distinction and relationship that stands at the origin and rules the course of our lives. When Heidegger interpreted Heraclitus in 1935, he began from physis understood as “the emergent self-upraising, the self-unfolding that abides in itself” in which “rest and movement are closed and opened up from an originary unity.” This originary unity, physis, names coming-to-presence, manifestation in its manifesting, or Being. He then translated fragment 53 in this way: Confrontation is indeed for all (that comes to presence) the sire (who lets emerge), but (also) for all the preserver that holds sway. For it lets some appear as gods, others as human beings, some it produces (sets forth) as slaves, but others as the free. Polemos is thus the unifying division-and-relation in coming-to-presence which “allows those that struggle to originate as such in the first place,” which “first projects and develops the un-heard, the hitherto un-said and un-thought” which is later “sustained by the creators, by the poets, thinkers and states- men” such that they “capture in this work the world that is thereby opened up” which becomes authentic history. Authentic history is the becoming of a world originally opened as strife. It is in and through strife that manifestation manifests. Later in the text, Heidegger returns to polemos to remind us that confrontation “sets the essential and the unessential, the high and the low, into their limits and makes them manifest” (IM, 87). The divergence from Husserl could not now be more complete. Instead of an encyclopediac, gnoseological accumulation of knowledge of manifested entities toward infinity, we have a manifesting that sets forth humans as humans, grounds the activity of creators, and opens up the authentic history of a world. We must understand that this interpretation is also a polemos, one designed to understand the first, Greek inception of philosophy toward the possibility of its second, German one. Does this fact explain the curious absence of any reference to fragment 53 in the post-war works?30 Gelassenheit surpasses not only certain engagements but engagement itself. This again is a failure of the ontic-ontological relation. What becomes of human action in the world that opens up into strife? Knowledge does not simply add up, but is drawn into the opposition between humans. Action is not simply human, but is drawn into this same opposition. Humanistic education, to the same extent, inhabits the world riven by ten- sions and cannot ascend above human conflict. Human activities become fac- tors in the oppositions that define our world, that stem from the strife —————— 30. See Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraklit (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1970); English translation: Heraclitus Seminar, trans. Charles H. Siebert (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1977) and Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, III (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954); English translation: Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi New York: Harper & Row, 1975). 40 IAN ANGUS presiding over its inception. Is this all? Not quite. Human activity and philosophy can attempt to sustain and address the strife itself, to speak of the origin and ruler that sets forth our world, thereby to address “what essentially unfolds.” If Being is manifested as polemos, what possibilities remain for philosophy? If being is manifested as strife, then it appears that the striving for knowledge in philosophy, and in all humanities education insofar as philosophy is crucial for the humanities, cannot be summed up into an acquisition for all, but will rather enter into the strife itself, and even perhaps be consumed in that strife. It is this question that I want finally to consider, by coming finally to the embodied ethic of philosophy as circumspection.

§ 6. End of Humanitas? Is philosophy drawn into the strife between opposites that is opened up in manifestation? Has it become, will it become, should it become, agonistic? Since the transformation of Greek paideia into Roman tradition under the reign of a commanding and shared origin, and continued into modernity as a faith in the accumulation of scientific knowledge, it has attempted to mute, even stand above, conflict regarding this origin, reducing strife to the best result that contributes to the continuing reappropriation of the origin. Of course, barbarians were dealt with otherwise. This Roman transformation was prepared for by Plato and Aristotle who represented the end of Greek philosophy not its culmination. Strife in Heraclitus’s sense was rotated, as it were, from a horizontal conflict within which all human reality takes place, to a vertical “divided line” in which appearance has a lesser reality than truth. Conflict can subsequently appear as a prelude to a passage upward in which conflict is in principle, teleologically, surpassed. This upward goal, the pure being contem- plated by the philosopher, is matched by the Roman origin that holds philosophical ascesis within tradition. Heidegger’s rediscovery of polemos in the manifestation of being destructures this articulation of philosophy, presence and tradition. It should lead us to ask why, and whether, we expect the humanities to lead us toward a reconciliation of conflict and the re-appropriation of tradition. It demands that we confront the ubiquity of human conflict in the world in which we teach and learn. While ‘humanism’ is a term that dates only from 1808, the root term humanitas goes back further.31 The connection of humanism to the end of polemos is made in Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”: Humanitas, explicitly so called, was first considered and striven for in the age of the Roman Republic. Homo humanus was opposed to homo barbarus. Homo humanus here means the Romans, who exalted and honoured Ro- man virtus through the “embodiment” of the paideia [education] taken over —————— 31. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (New York: Dover, 1982), 246. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 41

from the Greeks. These were the Greeks of the Hellenistic age, whose culture was acquired in the schools of philosophy. It was concerned with eru- ditio et institutio in bonas artes [scholarship and training in good conduct]. Paideia thus understood was translated as humanitas. The genuine romani- tas of homo romanus consisted in such humanitas. We encounter the first humanism in Rome: it therefore remains in essence a specifically Roman phenomenon which emerges from the encounter of Roman civilization with the culture of late Greek civilization.32 On this basis one could argue, as did Hannah Arendt, that the modern age is characterized by a loss of authority based in the tradition of humanism. She pointed out that the Roman concept of a sacred foundation, a beginning which all subsequent activity returned to and re-instated, distinguished their Empire from the Greek capacity to found new colonies with equal claim to self-government, to begin again.33 It would be a mistake to turn this into an argument for the restoration of tradition—forgetting, as do all conservatives, that a restoration cannot be a continuation since it assumes the loss of tradition that it vainly tries to re-establish. A restoration is a new beginning that attempts to hide its newness. Arendt argued for a renewal of republican humanism: “the humanist, because he is not a specialist, exerts a faculty of judgment and taste which is beyond the coercion which each specialty im- poses upon us.”34 The problem, which she well recognized, was that the only source of authority in the modern world was revolution but that modern rev- olutions failed because they could not adequately establish the authority of a new foundation for tradition.35 For this reason her conception of judgment, which was initially proposed as an account of the political thinking of actors, became in her late work the province of a historian’s retrospective judgment.36 Without tradition to function like, as it were, the walls of the city, within which action could be contained, human action achieved no solidity, could not cohere into a continuous accomplishment but rather unravelled into a plethora of false and competing starts—an ontic relativism. Arendt excepted the American revolution from this assessment, a judgment that I will not discuss any further than to point out that she did so because the act of foundation preceded the Declaration of Independence so that the Constitution “confirmed and legalized an already existing body politic rather than made it —————— 32. Martin Heidegger, “Brief über den ‘Humanismus’,” in Wegmarken, 145–94, here 151–52; English translation: “Letter on ‘Humanism’,” in Pathmarks, 239–76, here 244. 33. Arendt, “What Is Authority?” 120–23. 34. Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” in Between Past and Future, 197–226, here 225. 35. Arendt, “What Is Authority?” 139–41. 36. This shift is embedded in her association of thinking with the present, willing with the future and the implication (due to the unfinished nature of the work) that judging is associated with the past. See Ronald Beiner, “Interpretive Essay: Hannah Arendt on Judging,” in Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982), 89–156, here 128–31. 42 IAN ANGUS anew.”37 It succeeded, in other words, precisely to the extent that it was not a modern revolution at all but rather a confirmation of an existing state of affairs—which would drive us back to the rights of Englishmen rooted in tradition not to the modern universal rights of man. Thus, the problem remains: how can a post-humanist conception of judgment resist the dissolution of philosophy into a sheer plurality of polemical jousts without a conception of tradition to hold human activity within bounds? Is the only alternative the humanist evasion of polemos or a post-humanist general rhetoric?38 Must one reject the “end of metaphysics” in order to enact the ethic of philosophy?

§ 7. Thinking Polemos I will give two answers to this question. My first answer will be a simple “yes” to strife, or, perhaps more to the point, a “no” to the late Greek loss of polemos for presence, later transformed by the Roman commanding origin into tradition and humanitas.A negation: this traditional formation begun in late antiquity and persisting into modernity is an illusory escape from conflict that serves to hide the role that our institutions, including educational institutions, play in conflict. Every statement that one makes, including or even especially statements about the whole, enter into the strife of opposites which constitute the world. To expect otherwise is to dream of death with all the advantages of living. There is no escape from polemos and philosophy is wrongly understood if it is understood as such an escape, which is founded on a fixation with presence at the expense of coming-into-presence. Consider fragment 80, “One should know that polemos is universal and right is strife and everything comes about by strife and necessity.”39 Everything comes about by strife and is drawn into strife. Remember, Socrates was a warrior and referred in his Apology (28D) to the virtue of warriors as constitutive of philosophy. Right, legitimacy, justice come into being by strife and are drawn into strife. Learning, knowledge, the humanities come into being by strife and are drawn into strife. Thus, the future of philosophy and the humanities is to be drawn into the strife with which our world presents us and if there is to be another, subsequent, world it will come from strife. Genuine philosophical teaching, I conclude, does not teach one to stand above the strife but to enter into it with eyes wide open, to embrace it as —————— 37. Beiner, “Interpretive Essay: Hannah Arendt on Judging,” 140. Jacques Derrida missed this point in his attempt to portray the Declaration of Independence as self-instituting in “Declarations of Independence,” New Political Science 15, (1986) 7–15. J. Claude Evans has effectively criticized this mis-portrayal in “Deconstructing the Declaration: A Case Study in Pragrammatology,” Man and World 23 (1990), 175–89. 38. I have developed the term ‘general rhetoric’ to describe the contemporary background and reformulate the task of philosophy in my (Dis)figurations, esp. chap. 8. 39. I have consulted Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 195 and Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1966), 30 in this rendering. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 43 justice itself, to use one’s intelligence to determine what is the defining strife of one’s time. My second answer, which is different but neither retracts nor ameliorates the first, can perhaps be introduced through recalling fragment 67. “God is day-night, winter-summer, polemos-peace, satiety-hunger. He undergoes alteration in the way that fire, when it is mixed with spices, is named according to the scent of each of them.”40 The opposites which originate and hold sway over a world are God itself and even God is not simply self-same but changes in the way that fire changes with the admixture of spice, such that God is named according to this admixture, has different scents and a plurality of names. The second answer with respect to the strife of opposites, and the world brought forth by opposites, has to do with the fire that reigns in, and over, the strife. Frag- ment 66: “Fire, having come upon them, will judge and seize upon all things.”41 Fire, which is mentioned many times in the fragments that remain from Her- aclitus, is the clue to the logos which is said to be “common to all” (fragment 2) and so deep that “you could not in your going find the ends of the soul though you travelled the whole way” (fragment 45).42 God, fire, logos does not appear apart from polemos, as an escape from the universality and ubiquity of strife, but as the law of strife itself. We may hear an echo of this in the nineteenth century, as the metaphysics instituted by Plato began to be dismantled, when Karl Marx claimed that “labour is the living, form-giving fire . . . the transitoriness of things, as their formation by living time.”43 Fire is not normally form-giving, but form-destroying. To assert that it is form-giving is to discover form-giving in form-destroying and through form-destroying, which is to displace the primacy of form in favour of the strife from which form is made and into which it disappears. The second answer, in speaking of the universality and ubiquity of fire, in no way retracts the first answer that pulls philosophy, because it pulls all of human life, into strife. But it does add, and that which it adds, it adds in and through the human capacity to speak of the strife of opposites from within that strife, to speak of the fire even as we are consumed by it. In this re- sides the ecstacy of humans.

§ 8. A Necessary Self-Referentiality Here I will take issue even with Heraclitus. Fragment 130 asserts that “It is not proper to be so comic that you yourself appear comic.”44 Comedy, like —————— 40. In this case I have used Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 191, but have also consulted Freeman, Ancilla, 29. 41. Freeman, Ancilla, 29. 42. Freeman, Ancilla, 24, 27. 43. Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf) (Berlin: Dietz, 1953), 262; English translation: Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus (Middlesex: Penguin, 1973), 361. 44. Freeman, Ancilla, 34. 44 IAN ANGUS other effects, is not equally visible from all locations within the disposition of opposites, but, from the perspective of my writing-desk, the comedy of my present discourse is palpable and I cannot maintain what is proper. Is it but an accident that Aristophanes, who made fun of Socrates in The Clouds, nevertheless appears in Symposium, and in a not unflattering light? I will not digress into the “hey nonny nonny” whose profundity Shakespeare revealed in Much Ado About Nothing, but only point out that even Heraclitus, for whom everything was manifested in the strife between opposites, ruled out the reference of comedy to oneself, thus safeguarding the seriousness of the speech about polemos. But polemos might also be a joke and “the dark one” too surrounded by light to be properly seen. The danger of opposites is cancelling self-reference. It seems that this danger even Heraclitus was determined to expel. The scan- dal of the Greeks was the Cretan who said “all Cretans lie.” In this, Heraclitus anticipated by 2400 years Bertrand Russell’s attempted exorcism of self-referential paradox by his “theory of logical types” that would ban classes from being members of themselves. My second answer cannot postpone any longer some reflection on the reflexive paradox that would speak of fire as the law of strife from within the strife itself. Ecstacy, comedy, tragedy: all enter into philosophy as it seeks its speech of the whole. Philosophy cannot escape polemos but does speak of the fiery essence of manifestation. Notice that the opposites of Heraclitus, and also the other pre-Socratics, are substantive. They are opposites not contradictories. Thus, there is a pull in each direction upon the human riven space in between rather than a simple fullness at one side and a mere absence at the other. If substantive opposites are understood wrongly as contradictories, such that the riven space is stretched only between fullness and absence, then the metaphysics of presence is secret- ly re-instated. In contrast, substantive opposites speak of day and night, not day and not-day, not night and not-night, as a merely logical opposition would. Substantive opposites each exert a pull upon the human riven space, a pull dependent on its own specific content. The logical concept not-day has no content of its own to set in opposition to day. Night is not merely the absence of day; it is the substantive opposite of day and, as such, exerts an influence on day such that day is not merely day but coming-from-night and turning-into- night. Thus day is not just the presence of what is manifested but coming-into- presence and retreating-from-presence, not just what is manifested but the essence of manifestation. Substantive opposites, in their pull upon each other, open a space riven with tension such that one can speak of this tensional space itself as fire, as sacred. But this fire, and speech about fire, this speech touched by the sacred that is philosophy, is the riven space itself and promises no escape from strife. At the beginning of Hegel’s Logic, Being is confronted not with its substantive opposite but its contradictory Nothing. Indeed, it is so presented because Being itself has been purged of any substantive Being to be- IN PRAISE OF FIRE 45 come a merely empty concept of Being. “Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing; and neither more or less than nothing. . . . Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as pure being.”45 Empty Being and its contradictory Nothing are sublated, transcended and preserved, Aufgehoben, into Becoming such that no return to either Being or Nothing ever occurs. Contradictory opposites promise becoming, change, progress, with philosophy on the side of this progress without any pause for the un-progressive, the forgotten, lazy existence. Though conflict generates becoming, it is left behind as becoming becomes. Not so with substantive opposites. Their pull on each other can never be merged and harnessed. It is a tension without direction, a tension within which all directions appear and are pursued. And remember, opposites are themselves multiple: day–night, winter– summer, polemos–peace, hunger–satiety. Day–night might be inscribed within winter–summer, as winter is the night of the year, but not without remainder. Hunger–satiety could also be so inscribed: winter is the hunger of the year. The remainder is more apparent here. What I call the “remainder” refers to the het- erogeneity of the pairs of opposites. The whole world can be put on a contin- uum between wet and dry. Similarly, it can be characterized throughout by hot–cold. But wet–dry and hot-cold are heterogeneous. The manifold dimensions of the world emerge from the indefinite plurality of such pairs. But the pairs are neither merely external, incomparable to each other, nor fold into one grand encompassing opposition. They can speak of each other, but in becoming comparable, the substantive content determines a remainder—that which would have emerged if the comparability had been manifested in a different comparison. Opposites, being substantive, can say something substantive about other pairs of opposites if they are allowed to speak of them by addressing the whole. To address the whole from within opposites is to address it with opposites, or with a member of a pair. This is the problem of Husserl’s “transcendental subjectivity: which “is actually called ‘I’ only by equivocation—though it is an essential equivocation” (Crisis, 188/184). The concept of an “essential equivocation” has yet to influence the conception of philosophical language in phenomenology. It finds its place in necessary self-referentiality. The equivocal nature of the philosopher’s ‘I’ is that the philosopher speaks as this person immersed in these conflicts and allegiances here and now and simultaneously as philosophy itself apart from any particular philosopher. Fire speaks the whole, and the sacred- ness of the whole, but it cannot be insulated from its death by water. Thus emerges the conflict and the uncertainty: should one speak of the whole as fire, —————— 45. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann- Holzboog, 1965), 87–88; English translation: Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), 82. 46 IAN ANGUS or as water as Thales had it? Polemos intrudes upon the whole. The fire tribe and the water tribe, no longer simply tribes in conflict, but armed with the whole as their emblem, they fight not only as opposites but in the name of the tensional space itself. And this cannot be simply avoided, because there is no speech of the whole that does not draw from the language of opposites and use the substantive content of the opposites to give content to the manifestation of the whole. Note the example of “care” in Heidegger, which does not mean ‘you do, or should, care for others,’ since ‘care’ here applies equally ontologically to ignoring or hating. But still, I have yet to encounter a reader for whom these primary polemical meanings do not constitute a basic, even if introductory, level of appropriation of the text. Care and other features of Dasein are, in Heidegger’s terms, ontological, not ontic, but the ontological descriptions of the text could not work without an ontic appropriation that must necessarily be inadequate (BT, 191–200).I conclude, and this conclusion is part of my second answer: Any concept of philosophy that understands its language as the only correct or possible language for philosophy fails to incorporate the task of philosophy into the form in which this task is given expression. I cannot exempt Husserl’s technical, encyclopaedic language of philosophy from this judgment. Nor Heidegger’s attempted separation of terms between ontological and ontic. Nor Heraclitus’s expulsion of comedy. The language of philosophy can never escape an essential equivocation which is based upon its necessary self-reference.

§ 9. Manifestation of the Riven Space as Such Let me finally turn to the pair polemos–peace. Polemos speaks of the nature of the tensional space itself, of the relation between the opposites that fill it and give it substantive content. It thus bears a close relation to fire, which speaks of the scent of the whole itself, though it is not the whole but the strife between opposites through which, and in which, the whole is manifested. Can the strife, polemos, between opposites of fragment 53 also be called a ‘peace,’ according to the pair polemos–peace in fragment 67? Or, we may even ask, can the right or justice of polemos mentioned in fragment 80 be also spoken as injustice, as it appears in the one surviving fragment of Anaximander, since even justice, as every other appellation, takes its meaning from its opposite (fragment 23)? With what circumspection is a word that itself is a member of an oppositional pair taken to refer to the relation between oppositional pairs itself? Is this circumspection the ethic of philosophy itself? Is this why metaphysics is an inevitable residue of philosophy that comes to degrade it from within? That the riven space within which opposites appear can only be described in terms calling upon one of these opposites and will thus seem (to those who do not follow the thought itself) to be only polemical. My second answer concerning the relation between philosophy and polemos is this: in speaking of the whole with a language formed within the strife IN PRAISE OF FIRE 47 of opposites, philosophy addresses the essence of manifestation and as such touches the sacred, though this touch cannot be expressed without profaning that very sacred. It is within the limitation of such necessary profanity that philosophy operates. When being is manifested as strife, the striving for knowledge in philosophy cannot be summed up into an acquisition for all, but will rather enter into the strife, but is not consumed in that strife insofar as it speaks of the strife itself with responsible circumspection. Philosophy is the circumspection to address the whole through that within the opposites that most needs to be said. It is the work of such circumspection when Heidegger, who had spoken of the pair unconcealedness-concealedness with which Being is manifested as a polemos, Auseinandersetzung, confrontation, strife—after the confrontation with Nietzsche that registers his distance from National Social- ism, a distance that indicates a remaining too great proximity—begins to speak of manifestation as Gelassenheit, releasement. In order to discuss this circumspection, we have to speak of its style or manner, and the pairs within which its speech of the whole is manifested.46 For this reason, I would venture in our time to speak of the tensional space as peace, of a setting-free of opposites to be substantively opposite and of pairs to be heterogeneous, of a necessary maintaining of the world through such peace, in a world where strife has come to mean a war of elimination, an elimination that would eliminate the ground of strife itself. This is the warning bequeathed to us by Jan Patocka who noted that the twentieth century is an epoch of the night, of war, and of death [in which] humans glimpse . . . something like the end of all of the values of the day. . . . No sooner do humans confront the shaken world than they are . . . mobilized for a new bat- tle. . . . The war against war . . . uses in the service of the day what belonged to the night and to eternity.47 Patocka grasped the mobilization that metaphysics in the form of technology imposed on polemos such that the striving for peace engenders the war machine and the war machine operates in the name of peace. This demonic mobilization depends upon metaphysics for the separation of day from night as opposed to their mutual opposition and intermingling in manifes- —————— 46. Compare Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1982), 237; English translation: Parmenides, trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Bloom- ington: Indiana University, 1982), 159–60, where he speaks of “the essential domain of the strife between unconcealedness and concealedness,” with Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), 57 (English translation: Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund [New York: Harper & Row, 1966], here 79), which asks that one “wait in a releasement through which we belong to that-which-regions, which still conceals its own nature.” Parmenides is henceforth cited by title with German and English page references, respectively. 47. Jan Patocka, Heretical Essays on the Philosophy of History, trans. Erazim Kohák (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), 120, 126, and 127. 48 IAN ANGUS tation. If day is only day, it can be mobilized against night. If night is only night, one can dream of expelling it from human affairs. To step out of this cruel intermingling, in which philosophical dialectics is not innocent, one must allow again a releasement into substantive opposites as opposites such that they may clear a world. The first step, my first answer, is an abandonment of the attempt at redemption from the world. Such redemption, in philosophy, is called metaphysics. This clearing of a world through releasing substantive opposites may be the “hidden harmony” of which Heraclitus speaks in fragment 54.48 To understand the relation between opposites as a peace, one would have to part company with the view of peace in Kant which defines war as the natural state and peace simply negatively as the absence of war, as “the end of all hos- tilities.”49 Of all modern philosophers, only Spinoza had a positive concept of peace as grounded in freedom and as “guided more by hope than fear.”50 Peace would have to be understood as the beginning of a harmony that sets opposites into the tensional field such that they can manifest the human world as riven by such opposites and the manifestation of Being through these opposites. Such peace requires the acceptance of polemos, even of conflict, as a condition of human existence. Philosophy speaks of the opening of a world as polemos so that those within the world address its conflicts without the possibility of escape from the risk that is politics. The second step, the second answer, is addressed to those who follow the path of thinking without reservation, who seek to speak the logos while consumed by its fire. They experience truth as coming-into-presence and Being as the tensional space of opposites where one cannot ascend to one’s “true home” but remains on an interminable path.51 They speak of fire as they are consumed by fire. This is their ecstasy. The path of thinking must continually be won and protected against those who would subsume it into tradition. Self-responsibility, manifestation, polemos, circumspection: circumspection incorporates and completes this trajectory. Circumspection must judge how to speak the whole from within the strife of opposites without denying the strife of opposites. Cir- cumspection in the speech of the whole is on the interminable path that is the responsibility of the philosopher to thought. It is brought forth by the split —————— 48. Freeman, Ancilla, 28. Kirk and Raven inappropriately call it an “unapparent connexion” in The Presocratic Philosophers, 193. 49. Immanuel Kant, “Zum ewigen Frieden,” in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften VIII, 343–79, here 343, see 348–49; English translation: “Perpetual Peace,” On History, 85–135, here 85, see 92. 50. Benedict Spinoza, Tractatus Politici, in Opera Quotquot Reperta Sunt II (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1914), 24; English translation: A Political Treatise, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1951), 314. 51. See my “Place and Locality in Heidegger’s Late Thought,” Symposium 5 (2001), 5–23, here 17–20. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 49 within the self that is co-extensive with the decision that institutes a philosopher, a decision which is not one and for all but continually renewed, so that, in Husserl’s words, “true being is not something he always already has, with the self-evidence of the ‘I am,’ but something he only has and can have in the form of the struggle for his truth, the struggle to make himself true” (Crisis, 11/13). But after gnoseology, the struggle will require a continually renewed encounter with the foundation of the essential equivocation: the struggle with, through and in clarification of ‘what is mine as mine’ to discover ‘what is true as such’. The split in the philosopher’s ‘I’ instituted by the decision that institutes a philosopher renders the struggle for truth a struggle for oneself—oneself speaking for oneself and oneself as speaking the truth—that is the way the unity of opposites comes to form the philosopher. Transcendental and concrete ego, ontological and ontic description, comedy and polemos, cannot be simply divided once and for all without a fall into gnoseology, humanitas, metaphysics—some form in which the struggle is set aside for certainty and securi- ty. Here we face the paradox from which the philosophical ethic emerges: philosophy demands decision and action precisely so that that which is subject to neither decision nor action may become manifest, and simultaneously, philosophy gives voice to that which is not subject to decision and action precisely to free decision and action for politics. The struggle to negotiate this paradox, understood this way, I call circumspection. It encompasses the ethic of responsibility to the appearing of that which appears that inheres in the unity of phenomenological manifestation and points to the divided voice that speaks both within and of the polemos. This divided voice divides the identity of the philosopher with a constitutive paradox.52 Despite the manifestation of Being as polemos that is uncovered in Hei- degger’s work, there is a systemic misunderstanding of its significance for philosophy. My first and second answers to the question of the meaning of polemos for philosophy attempt to separate, in a manner whose expression will always be necessarily equivocal, the political acceptance of conflict within the riven space from the philosophical orientation toward the manifestation of the riven space itself. Without this separation, philosophy would simply become polemical and surrender its speech of the whole, that is to say, philosophy would come to an end. This tendency, the submergence of philosophy into rhetoric, politics, must be counted one of the major tendencies of our time—a tendency which reveals what our time itself is. Heidegger succumbs to this tendency and thus fails to capture the task of philosophy in our time when he understands philosophy itself as conflict, Auseinandersetzung. Philosophical interpretation, as my second answer suggests, orients itself to the manifestation of Being in the substantive opposites that characterize the —————— 52. On constitutive paradox, see my (Dis)figurations, 36–49, 51–52, and 161–62. 50 IAN ANGUS riven space, that give it the specific form and remainder which constitute a world. Heidegger suggests, however, that philosophical interpretation is polemos itself, not the speech of the world within which polemos appears. In seminar notes on Schelling from 1941–43, refers to “interpretation as dis-cussion (Aus-einandersetzung)”53 Similarly, in his book on Parmenides he refers to “the essential domain of the strife between concealedness and unconcealedness.”54 Already in Introduction to Metaphysics, he characterized his relation to Greek philosophy as a confrontation (IM, 54). But there is no such strife. Strife occurs between the two faces of that which emerges into unconcealedness. Heideg- ger’s view of philosophical interpretation confuses polemos and the manifestation of Being as polemos and thus inserts polemos into the manifestation of Being. But philosophical interpretation must hold to the manifestation of Be- ing in the words and actions of philosophers. Dialogue between philosophers as philosophers is thus not a confrontation. When confrontation appears it is because philosophers are not only philosophers, but are necessarily and in- escapably also beings within polemos. While philosophy does not rise above the polemos, neither is it confined to it insofar as it speaks of the polemical space itself. It is Heidegger’s circumspection in this regard—or, as I may now say, his failure of circumspection—that grounds the shift from unconcealedness-concealedness understood as strife to its understanding as Gelassenheit, releasement. The “too great proximity” to National Socialism, apparent even in this shift away from it, consists in the confusion of philosophical interpretation with polemos—a confusion which is still negatively evident in his turn to releasement. The style or manner of this shift is such as to obscure the intertwining of polemos and manifestation, politics and philosophy, and to substitute an either/or in which one or the other must prevail. They are degraded from substantive opposites to mere contradictories. The double pull is reduced to a choice. The riven space is in either case evacuated. The two answers with which one must respond to the question posed by the demise of metaphysics express more fundamentally the divided voice of circumspection which holds more faithfully to the ethic of philosophy.

§ 10. Coda The way was paved for a recovery of Being as strife by Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato as the institution of metaphysics whereby the inquiry into what is unhidden shifts in the direction of the appearing of the visible form, and consequently toward the act of seeing that is or- —————— 53. Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Frei- heit (1809), ed. Hildegard Feick (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971), 230; English translation: Schelling’s Treatise on the Nature of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens: Ohio University, 1985), 189. 54. Heidegger, Parmenides, 237/159–60. IN PRAISE OF FIRE 51

dered to this visible form, and toward what is correct and toward the correctness of seeing. (PDT, 137/177) Manifestation becomes correctness of representation with Plato such that the new German inception must reach behind Plato to confront the early Greek manifestation of Being as polemos. In “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” published in 1969, Heidegger retracted this reading of Plato as the institution of metaphysics, saying that “[i]t is often and justifiably pointed out that the word alethes is already used by Homer only in the verba dicendi, in statement and thus in the sense of correctness and reliability, not in the sense of unconcealment,” and admitting that “the assertion about the essential transformation of truth, that is, from unconcealment to correctness is also untenable.”55 Does this retraction undermine the recovery of Being as strife? Does it make the interpretation of Plato only a step on Heidegger’s way to releasement and not a milestone in the phenomenological release from metaphysics? To say that truth is experienced equiprimordially as unconcealment and as presence does not require abandonment of the thesis that metaphysics consists in the transformation of unconcealment into presence. It requires only that one abandon the thesis that this transformation occurred at a deter- minable point within the history of philosophy and thus the thesis that the institution of metaphysics occurs originally in Plato. One may still maintain that the institution of metaphysics occurs in Plato, though not originally, and that the institution of metaphysics co-exists with unconcealment at the origin. Plato’s transformation of truth becomes thus an instance of a primordial transformation of truth co-extensive with philosophy itself. I said above in com- menting on Plato’s institution of metaphysics that strife in Heraclitus’s sense was rotated, as it were, from a horizontal conflict within which all human reality takes place, to a vertical “divided line” in which appearance has a lesser reality than truth, such that conflict can subsequently appear as a prelude to a passage upward in which conflict is in principle, teleologically, surpassed. A hierarchy of Being as presence displaces the tensional space of the strife between opposites. Recall that this late Greek transformation was the condition for the transformation of Greek paideia into Roman tradition and humanitas. We must now say that this transformation, though it came to predominate with Roman dominance, is a primordial possibility of philosophy. Indeed, the notion that a ‘fall’ could occur at a determinate point within philosophy, pre- figuring a ‘redemption’ from such a fall, is at bottom incoherent. The danger of metaphysics is co-extensive with philosophy. Philosophy is rent at its origin by these two possibilities which exclude each other: a tensional space ver- —————— 55. Martin Heidegger, “Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens,” in Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969), 65–81, here 77–78; English translation: “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 55–73, here 70. 52 IAN ANGUS sus a hierarchical ladder. One attempts to escape the essential equivocation that derives from the necessary self-referentiality of philosophy through the establishment of the quasi-religious discourse of metaphysics. The other em- braces the necessary profanity of philosophy in order to preserve intact its contact with the sacred. That this is a conflict does not present any problem for the philosophical life which I have attempted to articulate, though it would for an adherent to the hierarchy of Being. Circumspection does not evacuate the riven space of concrete–transcendental, ontic–ontological, comedy–seriousness, day–night, male–female as it speaks of the manifestation of their unity that opens the space itself. This is the philosopher’s ecstasy.

The Transition of the Principle of Excluded Middle from a Principle of Logic to an Axiom: Husserl’s Hesitant Revisionism in Logic1

Dieter Lohmar University of Cologne

This article addresses the following three basic and closely connected questions from the point of view of Husserlian phenomenology: Should philosophy interfere with the specialized formal sciences? Does Husserl doubt the validity of the principle of excluded middle? Are logical principles the subject of free choice? Having addressed these questions, two methods of philosophical critique will then be examined which are of help for a critical investigation of mathematical methods and concepts: 1) a critique of semantic function and 2) a critique based on an analysis of the process of constitution. Finally, in the concluding section of this paper Edmund Husserl’s “critique of idealization” will be presented as a third method of phenomenological critique, which is applied specifically to the principle of excluded middle. The first question concerns the fundamental relation of philosophy to the specialized sciences of mathematics. Should philosophy make suggestions or even give advice to the formal sciences regarding the use of concepts, logical principles and methods of proof? This question concerns phenomenology in general. It is first necessary to determine Husserl’s stance on this issue. J. N. Mohanty locates himself and —————— 1. This paper was first presented at the 2002 Society for Existential and Phenomeno- logical Philosophy (SPEP) meeting in Chicago in a “Scholar’s Session” on J. N. Mohanty, who has devoted a large part of his research to topics related to the formal sciences. I would like to thank Prof. Mohanty for his inspiring reply and Nicolas de Warren as well as Burt Hopkins for their kind help with the English text. I also want to thank Mark van Atten for his valuable critique of an earlier version of this paper. Indeed, my paper should be regarded in part as a reply to his “Why Husserl Should Have Been a Strong Revisionist in Mathe- matics,” Husserl Studies 18 (2002), 1–18. An intermediate version of my text was also discussed during a symposium dedicated to the foundations of logic and mathematics at Keio University in December 2003, which was organized by Mitsu Okada, whom I likewise wish to thank for valuable comments.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 53–68 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 54 DIETER LOHMAR

Husserl clearly on the side of what I will call a “conservative” stance: “It is not one of the tasks of philosophers to recommend to the scientists anything af- fecting their method or subject matter.”2 According to Mohanty’s reading of Formal and Transcendental Logic,3 Husserl only wants to suggest, for example, that “a proper philosophical understanding of the sciences should take into consideration the close and inseparable connection which they have with experience.”4 The young Husserl evidently tends towards conservatism when he writes in the Prolegomena regarding the task of philosophy: “Philosophy does not want to interfere in the hand-work of the specialist, but rather to attain insight into the sense and essence of his accomplishment in relation to method and the things themselves.”5 In contrast to this conservative stance, mathematical intuitionism demands the rejection of the principle of excluded middle and the use of only constructive methods in proofs. I term this more ambitious stance ‘revisionism’.6 Concerning the principle of excluded middle, or tertium non datur, Mo- hanty views Husserl as a conservative through and through. Husserl “was seeking such a position which . . . does not involve [the] rejection of the principle of excluded middle.”7 Mohanty’s argument is based on his view that in FTL Husserl did not make any attempt to question the principle of excluded middle.8 In the present paper, I would like to discuss both theses and show that Husserl was not a thoroughgoing conservative. He was forced to deviate from —————— 2. See J. N. Mohanty, Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), 138. 3. Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974); English translation: Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969). Henceforth referred to and cited as FTL with the original German pagination, which is included in margins of both editions. 4. See Mohanty, Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning, 139. 5. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein, Husserliana XVIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), 255–56; English translation: Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay, 2 vols. (New York: Hu- manities Press, 1970), I: 41–247, here 245. Henceforth cited as Prolegomena with German and English page references, respectively. 6. I follow a suggestion from van Atten in adopting the term ‘revisionism’ from Crispin Wright (Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics [Cambridge, Mass.: Har- vard University, 1980], 117) for a “philosophical ‘standpoint which reserves the potential right to sanction or modify pure mathematical practice.” 7. See J. N. Mohanty, “Review of R. S. Tragesser, Husserl and Realism in Logic and Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984),” History and Philosophy of Logic 6 (1985), 230–34, here 232. Roger Schmit offers the view, “Husserl stellt die allgemeine Gültigkeit dieses Prinzips nie in Frage” (Husserl never questions the universal validity of this principle), in Husserls Philosophie der Mathematik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1981), 61. 8. In his review of Tragesser (232), Mohanty writes: “There is, as a matter of fact, no evidence that in Formal and Transcendental Logic he was even aiming at making that principle suspect.” HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 55 his conservatism by his analysis of the evidence of logical principles in FTL, and the exact point of deviation is the status of the principle of excluded middle. In general, we should be careful not to underestimate the relevance of philosophical insight for logic and mathematics. Thus the second question: Did Husserl himself not already show us in FTL that it is allowed (and indeed imperative) to interfere in conflicts in the specialized sciences, for example in the issue of admissible methods of proof and the use of concepts? This question is centered on certain analyses in FTL which point up the dubious (or at least the very different) character of evidence for the principle of excluded middle in comparison with other logical principles. Mohanty maintains that Husserl never doubted the validity of the principle of excluded middle and that he never proposed arguments that might cast any doubt on this principle.9 Regarding the second point, I disagree with Mohanty. In FTL Husserl claims neither that the principle of excluded middle is universally valid nor that it is not valid. In his discussion of the problematic concept of definiteness in § 31 of FTL, Husserl does not simply say that the principle of excluded middle is valid for mathematics. He clearly points out that this principle must be proven.10 In the framework of his critique of idealization in § 77, Husserl examines very carefully the issue of the principle of excluded middle. He does not voice any general doubts regarding its validity, but neither does he ascribe to this principle the status of the decisive quality of logical principles, that is, the quality to correspond to an eidetic “subjective law of evidence” (subjektives Evi- denzgesetz). In contrast, the principle of non-contradiction corresponds to such an eidetic subjective law of evidence. This means that Husserl doubts that the respective claims of the two propositions to be logical principles are equally valid. To be precise: Husserl neither expresses general doubts about the validity of the principle of excluded middle nor does he simply accept it as valid; rather, he clearly says that the principle of non-contradiction has evidence of higher rank since it possesses the decisive property of true logical principles. I shall return to the reasons for this distinction between two ranks of evidence in my discussion of Husserl’s project of a critique of idealization. The third question concerns the consequences of Husserl’s investigations into the evidence of logical principles for mathematics and logic. Many mathematicians believe that the way in which axioms are placed together in an ax- —————— 9. See J. N. Mohanty: “Husserls Thought on the Foundations of Logic,” in Logic, Truth and the Modalities: From a Phenomenological Perspective (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1999), 32–43, here 40, and Mohanty’s Review of Tragesser, 232. 10. See FTL, 84, 90, 126, and my commentary, Edmund Husserls ‘Formale und transzendentale Logik’ (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 87. But one should bear in mind that in all three versions definiteness is only used as a predicate that may possibly apply to mathematics or part of it, see ibid., 80–87. 56 DIETER LOHMAR iomatic system is a matter of free choice. Many researchers also believe that the issue of which methods of proof and logical principles are to be preferred and admitted by a mathematician is largely a matter of free choice. I shall speak of this widely shared methodological conviction as the ‘general theory of free choice’. This theory seems for many scientists to be the only appropriate conclusion from the development of mathematics in the last two centuries. Thus the third question: Are we condemned to share the general theory of free choice? I shall approach this third question by delineating the argument that has led many mathematicians to the theory of free choice concerning axioms, an argument that is based on the assumption that the choice of methods of proof and logical principles is guided only by pragmatic concerns. For many scientists today this position appears to be the consequence of the recent history of logic and mathematics, and consequently it has assumed the status of a kind of standard view. In axiomatic mathematics the consequences of a system of axioms assumed to be valid is derived with the help of logical conclusions. Regarding the set of axioms, we are free to choose them from within a framework of pragmatic concerns. When one adds another axiom to a set of axioms, the realm of possible consequences is usually extended. Typically, one even has the alternative option of adding a special axiom or a contrary proposition, as it is the case, for example, with the parallel axiom in Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries. As long as it is not possible to derive a contradiction, we are free to choose new axioms. Thus the “special theory of free choice” concerning axioms in formal mathematics is the result of the development of mathematics in the nineteenth century, a theory that is developed further in the twentieth century. At the beginning of the previous century, however, it was not clear whether the methods of proof and logical principles could be decided by “free choice.” At least at that time, it was generally agreed that logical principles cannot be chosen arbitrarily like axioms. It also seemed that on epistemological grounds logical principles have a validity of a higher rank. Not only in the ra- tionalistic tradition of Descartes and Leibniz but also in Hume and other em- piricists we find the view that logical principles are distinguished by the fact that one can grasp their validity only through thought. It was a common view that one cannot conceive of the contrary of logical principles without contradiction. L. E. J. Brouwer’s and Hermann Weyl’s mathematical intuitionism rejected the use of the principle of excluded middle, and they demand that mathematical proofs should be carried out only with the help of effective constructive methods. This rejection has far reaching consequences for intuitionistic mathematics. Certain theorems of analysis could not be proven and even disciplines that belonged to the canon of mathematics could no longer be HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 57 regarded as admissible parts of mathematics, for example, Georg Cantor’s transfinite theory of sets. Brouwer’s construction of an intuitionistic mathematics is quite an impressive achievement. On the basis of his theory of choice sequences, he could provide an alternative to the classical theory of real numbers that enable him to prove most of the classical results in mathematics, even if these proofs become more complicated and less elegant than those standard in classical theory. Brouwer’s arguments for rejecting the principle of excluded middle were philosophical, but his philosophy was very original. The starting point for his theory of mathematical construction is the intuition of immediate Two-One- ness (Brouwer: Zwei-Einigkeit); this provides him with the ground of all further constructions in time.11 While Brouwer’s qualities as a mathematician were beyond any doubt due to his work in topology (David Hilbert even invited him to take a professorship in Göttingen), only a few disciples were convinced by his philosophy.12 In contrast, Brouwer’s objections to the unlimited use of the principle of excluded middle was shared by many logicians and mathematicians. This was more on account of the paradoxes in set theory that led to the Grundlagenkrise in mathematics at the outset of the twentieth century. These doubts were based largely on the fact that the paradoxes had created an atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt concerning questionable methods and concepts. But there were also many mathematicians who disliked the idea of the drastic restriction of classical mathematics that followed from the rejection of the principle of excluded middle. For this reason it may appear to us that Brouwer’s intuitionist rebellion failed in the long run. But intuitionism is still a lively movement today even if most contemporary mathematicians understand themselves as formalists. Hilbert had already expressed the main motivation for retaining the use of the principle of excluded middle: “No one should ever expel us from the paradise created by Cantor.”13 Thus pragmatic reasons led to the rejection of intuitionism in mathematics, since proofs became more complicated and valuable parts of mathematics derived no benefit from intuitionism. —————— 11. See L. E. J. Brouwer, “Intuitionism and Formalism,” in Paul Benancerraf and Hi- lary Putnam, eds., Philosophy of Mathematics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Blackwell, 1964), 67–89 and Over de grondslagen der wiskunde (On the Foundations of Mathematics), in Collected Works I, ed. Arend Heyting (1907; Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1975), 1–101, here 53, 70, 97, also Arend Heyting, Mathematische Grundlagenforschung, Intuitionismus, Beweistheorie (Berlin: Springer, 1934) and Intuitionism (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1956). 12. On the history of the changing relations of Brouwer and Hilbert, see John D. Bar- rows, Pi in the Sky (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992) and Dirk van Dalen, “The War of the Frog and the Mice, or the Crisis of the Mathematische Annalen,” Mathematical Intelligencer 12 (1990), 17–31. 13. “Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor geschaffen hat, soll uns niemand mehr vertreiben!” David Hilbert, “Über das Unendliche,” Mathematische Annalen 95 (1925), 161–90, here 170. 58 DIETER LOHMAR

One of the de facto results of the intuitionist rebellion was that the permissible methods of proof and logical principles seem to have been shifted into the realm of presuppositions, and presuppositions can be chosen freely. In this manner, we arrive at the general theory of free choice. The struggle between formalistic mathematics and intuitionism was conceived as posing the following alternative: axiomatic mathematics with or without the principle of excluded middle. The decision for a definite set of logical principles (and permitted methods of proof) seems to be a matter of free choice, as is the choice of a definite set of axioms. Thus it is a decision that is internal to mathematics and is based mainly on the pragmatic criteria of the different extensions of the respective disciplines. Hence the choice of which axioms to start from is generally dependant only on pragmatic criteria. An expression of this stance is to be found in Stephen Kleene’s Introduction to Metamathematics, which only marks the theorems and methods of proof (with an asterisk, later called a Kleene star) that are not accepted by intuitionism.14 We might consider it a final consequence of mathematical intuitionism that we now regard logical principles and permissible methods of proof as a matter of free choice. We decide in favor of or against the principle of non- contradiction or the principle of excluded middle only for pragmatic reasons. But it is obvious that in the case of the principle of non-contradiction nearly every mathematician is of the same opinion. If it is not accepted, every proposition can be derived from any presupposition. The same holds for the principle of identity. Today it appears as if W. V. O. Quine expresses exactly this insight on a very general level in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”: the acceptance of logical principles is dependent on pragmatic reasons.15 This attitude seems to be the only reasonable consequence of the development of mathematics in the nineteenth century (arbitrariness of axioms) and the quarrel between intuitionism and formalist mathematics (arbitrariness of logical principles and methods of proof). It seems that we choose logical principles and axioms only for pragmatic reasons. In the context of philosophical justification, we cannot accept this restriction to pragmatic criteria as long as it is not obvious or has not been proven that there are no other arguments of suitable justification. In Husserl’s phenomenology we find a position that strives to make clear the evidential —————— 14. Stephen C. Kleene, Introduction to Metamathematics (Amsterdam: North-Hol- land, 1952). 15. See W. V. O. Quine: “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 20–46. In this context I will not discuss Quine’s arguments concerning the difficulty of finding a criteria for differentiating analytic from synthetic judgments and his discussion of synonymity which is meant to justify his conclusions. See also Mohanty’s discussion of the concept of analyticity in Husserl and Quine in Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning, 120–22. HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 59 grounds for every knowledge claim, even for claims that seem impossible to make evident on the basis of experience, as in the case of logical principles. Husserl may also give the impression that he understood himself as a “free choice” theoretician concerning the methods of proof and principles of logic. In a manuscript from 1932 he asks: In judging mathematics, the complete significance of which depends entirely on these concepts, should one follow a Hilbert or a Brouwer, or someone else? Is it so certain, despite today’s communio opinio, that classical mathematics and likewise physics were not bettered advised?16 From this passage it may sound as if it is Husserl’s view that it is a matter of indifference whether we accept the classical set of logical principles, including the principle of excluded middle or its restriction in intuitionism. So it may seem; that is, it may seem that in his later genetic phenomenology Husserl has become a theoretician of free choice concerning logical principles. At least, there are hints that support this suspicion, though the citation above presents weak evidence. Even Husserl’s conception of formal sciences as a theory of possible theory forms in FTL would be in harmony with the stance of the theory of free choice. With regard to classical analysis and analysis in intuitionism, the fact that the latter can be interpreted as part of the former might be interpreted as an example of the complex interrelation (perhaps even hierarchy) of theories that result from the different extensions of axiomatic systems within the theory of possible theory forms. However, Husserl is not a supporter of the general theory of free choice. Differences in evidence are a fundamental theme of phenomenology, and Husserl’s critique of idealization seeks to distinguish among justified propositions that claim to be logical principles—for example, propositions such as the principle of identity, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of excluded middle, modus ponens. Husserl’s method of in- —————— 16. Edmund Husserl, Ms. D 15/20a–21a: “Soll man sich etwa in der Beurteilung der Mathematik, deren Gesamtsinn ganz und gar von diesen Begriffen abhängt, an einen Hilbert halten oder an einen Brouwer, oder an wen sonst? Ist es so sicher, trotzdem gerade das heutzutage communio opinio ist, daß nicht die klassische Mathematik und ebenso Physik besser beraten war?” The citation continues: “Aber da werden wir nicht besser fahren. Sie war nie ein Fertiges sondern selbst im Werden, und so wiederholt sich die Schwierigkeit, die Unmöglichkeit einer eindeutigen Auswahl, die uns normbestimmend leiten könnte. In- dessen es zeigt sich bald, daß es in der Tat auf eine solche Auswahl durch Entscheidung für irgend eine Partei oder irgend einen maßgebenden Forscher wenig ankommt. Jeder der Mathematik studiert hat, besitzt das allgemeine Phänomen, das da heißt Mathematik . . .” (“But here we will fair no better. Mathematics was never something finished, but is rather always becoming; and thus the difficulty, the impossibility of decisive selection, which could lead us in a normative manner, is repeated. Nevertheless, it is quickly revealed that in fact nothing must follow from making a selection on the basis of a decision in favor of either one party or an authoritative researcher. Every person who has studied mathematics possesses the general phenomenon called mathematics . . .”). 60 DIETER LOHMAR vestigation is an eidetic analysis of the foundations of idealized propositions which goes back to the experiential ground of concrete, individual objects. Thus it may happen that the decision is against the claim that the principle of excluded middle is a genuine logical principle. But even this would not imply a rejection of any use of the principle of excluded middle in mathematics, since this principle may now be interpreted “only” as an axiom, not as a logical principle. An axiom may be used as long as it does not lead to contradictions, even though we know that we have the same right to use variants of any axiom and even its opposite (for example, in the case of the axiom about parallels). Thus it may turn out that Husserl maintains a radical difference between unavoid- able logical principles (which we are not free to choose) and axioms that we are free to choose. If this is true, then Husserl cannot be accused of advocating the general theory of free choice concerning logical principles and methods of proof. Furthermore, it would turn out that Husserl was not a thoroughgoing conservative when it comes to “revisionism,” but that he has quietly become what I would like to call a ‘hesitant revisionist’—‘hesitant’ because in Husserl’s view one could leave the decision about whether or not to use the principle of excluded middle (as an axiom) to the discretion of mathematicians. Husserl’s later reflections on idealities in logic and mathematics show that we are not constrained to accept the general theory of free choice. He points out that beside the pragmatic criteria for accepting axioms there are eidetic criteria of evidence for logical principles.17 To sum up Husserl’s results: the principle of identity, the principle of non-contradiction, and some other principles (such as modus ponens) are genuine logical principles. However, his critique of idealization shows that the principle of excluded middle is a proposition for which there cannot be a subjective law of evidence. Thus this principle is not a genuine logical principle. Yet this does not imply the rejection of the ability to use the principle of excluded middle as a method of proof. It may be used like an axiom as long as it does not lead to contradictions. However, we may also decide not to use this axiom (as in mathematical intuitionism). We have now reached a point where we have to discuss Husserl’s critique of idealization in detail. This critique rests on a point of view informed by the experience of concrete, individual objects and has as its goal a critical decision regarding the status of propositions as logical principles. Before beginning our discussion of Husserl’s critique of idealization, let us briefly point to two other methods of philosophical critique that are of help for a critical examination of mathematical methods and concepts: the —————— 17. See my “Elements of a Phenomenological Justification of Logical Principles, including an Appendix with Mathematical Doubts concerning some Proofs of Cantor on the Transfiniteness of the Set of Real Numbers,” Philosophia Mathematica 10 (2002), 227–50, here 231. Hereinafter cited as “Elements.” HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 61 critical analysis of semantic functioning and a critique based on the analysis of those processes proper to constitution. The paradoxes in set theory have shown that it makes sense to limit the freedom of concept-formation in mathematics. Moreover, recent approaches show that the idea of a philosophical critique of problematic mathematical concepts still makes sense. I am thinking of Mark van Atten’s interpretation in “Why Husserl Should Have Been a Strong Revisionist in Mathematics,” which tries to show that Husserl has good reasons to intervene more ambitiously in mathematics than he did. There are at least three methods for the critical investigation of mathematical concepts. A recent article by Albert Johnstone on the liar’s paradox and variants of this paradox, as well as a key concept in Kurt Gödel’s well-known theorem on incompleteness, demonstrates the critical potential of the analyses of semantic functioning when applied to self-referential concepts that turn out to be semantically defective.18 The phenomenological theory of constitution also provides a basis for a critical investigation of self-referential concepts insofar as it is able to show that they are defective from this phenomenological point of view. We shall briefly characterize these two methods of critical investigation before turning to Husserl’s critique of idealization. The critical potential of semantic critique is well presented in Johnstone’s recent discussion of the liar’s paradox and other related paradoxes. Moreover, this kind of critique can be extended to all concepts that Bertrand Russell called ‘non-predicative concepts’. Johnstone discusses the classical paradox of the liar in the form ‘“this sentence” is false’. He shows that the interpretation of the meaning of this proposition reveals as semantic defect. In his formulation the complete sentence refers to ‘this sentence’, the meaning of which can only be determined with the complete sentence.19 A further critical point is an absurd semantic equivalence that consists in the fact that part of this proposition ‘this sentence’, has the same meaning and the same truth-value as the complete sentence (‘this statement is false’). But a proposition cannot be semantically equivalent to a judgment that proposes its truth or falseness. From the point of view of a phenomenological theory of meaning, the judgment concerning the truth- value is a higher-order proposition and requires the completion of the consti- —————— 18. Albert Johnstone, “Self-Reference and Gödel’s Theorem: A Husserlian Analy- sis,” Husserl Studies 19 (2003), 131–51. In an appendix to a recent paper, “Elements of a Phenomenological Justification of Logical Principles,” I have discussed some mathematical arguments concerning the correctness of Cantor’s problematic proofs of the transfiniteness of real numbers which also affects Gödel’s proof, for he uses a variant of Cantor’s diagonal method. 19. Johnstone says that “this statement is at least in part a vacuous statement” (“Self- Reference and Gödel’s Theorem,” 133); this is due to its circular definition because “the expression to be defined is defined in terms of itself, and consequently left undefined.” Thus Johnstone concludes: “Properly speaking it is not a statement at all” (ibid., 134). 62 DIETER LOHMAR tution of the meaning of the proposition judged.20 But we might view this detailed critique of the liar’s paradox as unimportant because the inconsistency of the liar’s paradox is so obvious: If the sentence as a whole is true, then it proposes its own falseness; if it is false, then it speaks the truth. But Johnstone points out that his critique also has further consequences when his criterion of “correct semantic functioning” is extended to further variants of the liar’s paradox and also to Grelling’s paradox. But the actual relevance of his critique emerges when he applies his criteria to a key concept in Gödel’s theorem on the incompleteness of all systems of arithmetic that entails the axioms of Giuseppe Peano. As it turns out, one of Gödel’s key concepts does not function in a semantically correct manner.21 The critique based on constitution theory can best be illustrated by the concept of the ‘set of all sets’. This concept is also the source of the well-known contradictions in set theory discovered by Ernst Zermelo and Bertrand Russell. It also has a non-predicative (“impredicative”) structure because its definition is self-referential. For our purposes here, we shall consider only the aspect of being a non-predicative concept, which means: such a concept intends a set that is member of itself.22 Because of its self-referential definition, the concept of the ‘set of all sets’ is susceptible to a semantic critique. But this concept also has a weak point from the perspective of constitution theory, for it claims implicitly that the defined synthetic connection is really performable, so that there can be a categorial intuition of this concept.23 The implicit claim is that the concept is not empty because the synthetic performance intended is really practicable. But exactly this does not hold in the case of the ‘set of all sets’ because one conceives of it as a collection. As is well-known, for Husserl a collection is the syn- —————— 20. Johnstone formulates a further defect of the liar’s paradox: If I replace in a proposition ‘false’ by ‘true’, then the usual result should be that the proposition gets the opposite truth-value. In contrast to this, however, in the liar’s paradox the object of the judgment changes because ‘this sentence’ no longer means ‘this sentence is false’ but now ‘this sentence is true’ (“Self-Reference and Gödel’s Theorem,” 135). 21. See Johnstone, “Self-Reference and Gödel’s Theorem,” 145–49. I would not go so far as to reject Gödel’s results simply on the basis of this consideration of semantic functioning, but it is a reasonable argument to consider critically the use of self-referential concepts in logic and mathematics. The importance of the analysis of semantic functioning is also indicated in some of Husserl’s analyses in Formal and Transcendental Logic; see the second part of my “Transcendental Logic and Transcendental Reduction,” in Gary Banham, ed., Husserl and the Logic of Experience (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). 22. If we regard the ‘set of all sets’ as including infinite sets, then the intuitionists argument is slightly modified. If we view the ‘set of all sets’ in its full sense, i.e. as also entailing infinite sets, then from the point of view of constitution it must be treated as an idealization, which is subject to Husserl’s critique of idealizations (see below). 23. For the concept of categorial intuition see my “Husserl’s Concept of Categori- al Intuition,” in Dan Zahavi, ed., One Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Husserl’s ‘Logical Investigations’ Revisited (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 125–45. HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 63 thetic combination of different elements into a new unity. From the analysis of collection, viewed as a kind of categorical intuition, we know that we must run through all intended elements in order to have an evident intuition of the set. From this it follows that, because the intuition of the set itself is only the result of the constitution process, it is not possible to use this result for further conceptualization before the process is finished. Thus we cannot have an evident intuition of a set that contains itself. It would be a mistake to suspect that this is the same argument as is advanced in mathematical intuitionism, which demands of mathematical objects that they be the result of a finite process of construction. This does not work for the ‘set of all sets’. I cannot “add” to a set, as its element, the completed set itself. As long as the completed set is in the mundane process of its formation, it cannot be treated as a “finished” and completed entity in the world that might be added to a set. As a collection of separate entities that yields a new entity, a set is “finished” only if all collected elements are really contained in it. But this is not possible in the case of the set containing itself as an element because the set itself is an entity that is not already constructed. The argument of intuitionism, for example, in Arend Heyting, entails a reference to the real existing world and real actions in this world (and in objective time). This “mundanization” of mathematics in intuitionism sometimes goes so far as to propose that a mathematical theorem is only valid after its proof has been found.24 Some branches of intuitionism consequently deny the idea of a supra- temporality or the eternal validity of mathematical objects, a validity that can be achieved, however, on the basis of a phenomenological theory of constitution.25 The constitution theory in transcendental phenomenology does not make use of the mundane concept of finishing in objective time. These considerations allow us to see that the constitution theory at issue is only roughly conceptualized in intuitionism, since it presupposes a kind of mundane ontology of things, “underway” (or “not underway”), so to speak, in objective time. That said, this rough “not ready”-argument of intuitionism can not be justified and regulated on the basis of the transcendental phenomenological analysis of constitution, as noted above. If we look back to the discussion of the paradoxes at the beginning of the last century, Russell’s “theory of types” matches well with the insights of constitution theory. He tries to avoid the situation in which a set is simultaneously an element of itself by ordering them in a hierarchy. Thus, in light of a —————— 24. We can find this argument in Heyting, Mathematische Grundlagenforschung, In- tuitionismus, Beweistheorie, 14. 25. On Husserl’s analysis of the time-character of mathematical objects, see my “On the Relation of Mathematical Objects to Time: Are Mathematical Objects Timeless, Overtemporal or Ommnitemporal,” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 10 (1993), 73–87. 64 DIETER LOHMAR phenomenological theory of constitution, Russell’s theory of types ceases to appear to be a hasty ad hoc attempt to avoid only a special kind of paradox. While the similarity between the phenomenological argumentation in the case of the concept of the set of all sets and the argument of intuitionism is undeniable, it nevertheless seems unjustified to declare Husserl an intuitionist on its basis.26 We should not forget that, philosophically, Husserlian phenomenology is a much more profound approach, it tries to clarify the transcendental sense of existence, reality, time, etc. As Mohanty has pointed out, in spite of the use of elements of intuitionism—especially in relation to material mathematics, like geometry and elementary number theory—Husserl’s FTL is more likely guided by the goal of providing a philosophy of formalism in mathematics and logic.27 I agree with this and in my own view, the most important outcome of Husserl’s investigations into mathematical evidence is that in both regions of mathematics, thus in material and purely formal mathematics, there is evidence that fulfills the claim of knowledge. This result of Husserl’s investigations seems more important and a more original contribution regarding deductions in formal contexts than regarding material mathematics. For instance, in material mathematics Kant already addressed the constructive method as an original kind of knowledge. Now let us turn to the third method of phenomenological critique: Husserl’s critique of idealization as applied to the principle of excluded middle. In contrast to Husserl’s early conservatism, we find in FTL that phenomenology resists the ex post facto justification for theories and methodological decisions. Phenomenology does not want to be a “nachkommende” Wis- —————— 26. This remark does not reject the use of phenomenological arguments to justify the intuitionistic position, like Mark van Atten has shown in his Phenomenology of Choice Se- quences (Utrecht: Zeno, 2000) and in his article “Why Husserl Should Have Been a Strong Revisionist in Mathematics.” Richard Tieszen has investigated the relations between the phenomenological approach and intuitionism in his Mathematical Intuition, Phenomenolo- gy, and Mathematical Knowledge (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), as well as in: “Phenomenolo- gy and Mathematical Knowledge,” Synthese 75 (1988), 373–403, “What is the Philosophical Basis of Intuitionistic Mathematics?” Logic, Dag Prawitz, Brian Skyrms, and Dag Wester- stahl, eds., Methodology and Philosophy of Science IX (Amsterdam: North-Holland 1994), 579–94, “The Philosophical Background of Weyl’s Mathematical Constructivism,” Philosophia Mathematica 3 (2000), 274–301, and “Intuitionism, Meaning Theory, and Cog- nition,” History and Philosophy of Logic 21 (2001), 179–94. 27. Mohanty has pointed out that Husserl adopts intutitionsitic viewpoints in his treatment of material mathematics, such as geometry and number theory. Regarding the formal-axiomatic disciplines he is more a formalist. See J. N. Mohanty: “Husserl’s Thoughts on the Foundations of Logic,” in Logic, Truth, and the Modalities (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 32–43, here 39 (“Husserls Formalism”). In the first part of FTL Husserl works out how one can gain evidence in formal axiomatic systems. See my Phänomenolo- gie der Mathematik (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), as well as my Edmund Husserls ‘Formale und transzendentale Logik’, 144. HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 65 senschaftstheorie (see FTL, 12, 153, 161). In other words, from the start it will not consider certain elements as “above all critique.” In this sense Husserl’s theory of science is prepared to be troublesome for every methodological trend. His transcendental logic seeks to problematize anew the justification of accepted positions, and it must also be prepared to demand methodological changes from the concrete sciences. This also implies the possibility of rejecting non-predicative concepts. Beside this it allows us to make apparent differences between parts of mathematics that can be proved without or only with the help of the principle of excluded middle. Thus we arrive at a third method of critique: Husserl’s critique of idealization does not simply deny the validity of concepts and propositions containing idealizations. First of all, he forcefully points out that up to now we have never seriously questioned the kinds of evidence required for such idealizations. One main aim of his transcendental logic is to investigate the naively performed method of providing evidence for the basic concepts of logic and logical principles. He wants to examine the scope and limits of the legitimacy of propositions that have the status of putative logical principles. But we should not expect a justification for every alleged logical principle as a genuine logical principle—it might turn out that some traditionally apparent principles are in fact not at all genuine logical principles. Husserl’s critique of idealization is carried out in the second half of FTL. It is connected with his far-reaching hope for a mathematics without contradictions.28 Surely, we may doubt whether this optimistic hope is really justified. Contradictions turn up in the use of axiomatic systems; it must be proved that such systems are free of contradictions. Gödel’s research in provability suggests that such a proof is possible only for very elementary systems of axioms.29 But, as we have seen above, the famous result of Gödel’s argument is also subject to lasting doubts. Phenomenology cannot offer a proof for non-contradiction. It can only show which subjective performances of the cognizing subject must be achieved in order to justify the use of mathematical concepts such as set, number, operation, and inference, including their iterations and combinations. Only in this way can we draw the “lines of justified sense” that limit the realm of concepts, which can possibly be given in a fulfilled manner. If a concept vi- olates the eidetic laws of constitution, then the object meant cannot be given intuitively and thus cannot exist. This phenomenological criterion of justified sense limits the freedom of conceptualization in mathematics. —————— 28. Husserl mentions the idea of a mathematics “für die es keine Paradoxien geben kann [that can have no paradoxes]” (FTL, 161, 169). 29. Already in systems of axioms entailing Peano’s axioms we cannot prove that there will be no contradiction only by using the means of this system. See Kurt Gödel, “Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I,” Monats- hefte für Mathematik und Physik 38 (1931), 173–98. 66 DIETER LOHMAR

The critique of idealization in logic and mathematics is based on Husserl’s method of eidetic variation. It is eidetic variation that provides an intuition for logical laws. With the help of this method we are able to find subjective laws of evidence that correspond to objective logical principles. The principle of non- contradiction means—formulated objectively—that the validity of a contradictory judgment ‘not A’ is excluded by the judgment ‘A’ itself. From the point of view of gaining evidence, the principle may be formulated subjectively as an essential law of evidence: No one is able to perform the judgments ‘A’ and ‘not A’ together with the evidence of distinctness.30 What I become aware of in eidetic variation is this special inability, which is not to be interpreted as an empirical fact or psychological incompetence but as an essential a priori law.31 Viewed from the objectivist perspective of professional formal sciences, the law of non-contradiction is not a law about evidence or about the possibility of judgmental performances in the evidence of distinctness. Objectively, it determines a possible sense of mathematical existence.32 We might conceive of the sense of mathematical existence as the possibility of conjoined judgments (e.g. axioms and conclusions thereof) with the evidence of distinctness. We can best understand the sense of the principle of excluded middle if we contrast it with the law of non-contradiction. This law can be formulated as a proposition about the compossibility of judgments with the evidence of distinctness. It claims that it is impossible to perform contradictory judgments with the evidence of distinctness. The law of non-contradiction thus also states a subjective law of evidence for the evidence of distinctness in the form of an if–then proposition: If a judgment A is to be brought to the positive evidence of distinctness, then eidetically the judgment A and its contradictory judgment cannot be brought to this evidence together. But the law of non-contradiction does not claim that every judgment can be brought to clear self-evidence. Husserl points out that it is just this latter claim that is to be found in the law of excluded middle. It implicitly claims that every judgment can be brought to clear self-givenness (clarity of the things themselves). To see this we must understand its character as a “double principle” (FTL, 172). On the one hand, this logical principle entails an if–then proposition: If a judgment is to be brought to adequate evidence then it is to be brought to either a positive or a negative “adequation.” But the principle of excluded middle also entails the second pre- —————— 30. See FTL, 147. It may be added that the aforementioned judgment should be predicated of the same object in the same respect. In addition, the hint about the evidence of distinctness is important. In Part I of FTL Husserl investigates the forms of evidence that are at work in formal sciences. Distinctness demands an explicit performance of the intention of a proposition. See FTL, §§ 12–22. 31. Husserl goes back to the idea of Leibniz (truths of reason) and Hume (relations of ideas) that the truth of logical principles is recognized in the impossibility to think of the contrary proposition without contradiction. 32. See FTL, 124–25, 169 and my Phänomenologie der Mathematik, 206–13. HUSSERL’S HESITANT REVISIONISM IN LOGIC 67 supposition, that every judgment is to be brought to “adequation,” otherwise it has no sense to claim that every judgment A is true or false “as such.” The sense of this claim is that we will always be able to find a method that allows us to decide the truth of the judgment A. The claim that judgments are true or false “as such” makes sense only under the implicit presupposition that every judgment can be brought to the evidence of self-givenness.33 These considerations prepare the way for the following important decision. Husserl notes that for the principle of contradiction there is a subjective law of evidence that justifies this logical principle. In the case of the law of excluded middle, Husserl does not formulate such a subjective law of evidence. This is no mistaken omission but an essential thesis of FTL. The reason for this is that it is impossible to demonstrate the second presupposition of this law, that every judgment can be brought to positive or negative evidence. In the everyday stance we take towards concrete objects, only some judgments can be intuitively fulfilled, no matter how hard we try.34 Moreover, there are good reasons why there cannot be a corresponding subjective law of evidence for the principle of excluded middle: truth and falsehood are not “constitutive characteristics” of judgments, that is, from the knowledge of judgments alone we cannot judge whether they are true or false.35 Thus our experience argues against the supposition that every judgment is decided “as such”: “For us many judgments remain without decision and for us most of the possible judgments are factually not decidable” (FTL, 175). Husserl often says that this kind of presupposition is “strange” and “astonishing.” He wants to bring out this philosophical astonishment, but he does not want to already decide whether this presupposition can be justified. In the case of the idealized determination of all judgments “as such,” he speaks in very plain terms: this would be an “astonishing a priori for every judging subject, . . . astonishing, because how could we know a priori that there are certain ways of gaining —————— 33. Here Husserl deviates from his essentialist conception of “truth as such” in the first volume of the Logical Investigations, which goes back to Bernard Bolzano (Vorstellung an sich, Satz an sich) and Hermann Lotze (Geltung an sich). The discussion of the law of excluded middle might be supplemented with a critique of the law of double negation. See my “Beiträge zu einer phänomenologischen Theorie des negativen Urteils,” Husserl Studies 8 (1992), 173–204, as well as the “Erratum,” ibid., 250. 34. See FTL, 172. A similar negative consideration is directed towards the conversion of modus ponens into a law of the “logic of truth” because in this conversion there is also implied the anticipation of conceiving judgments as intuitively fulfillable I do not even know. In this case we have a kind of “propositions of evidence” (Evidenzsätze) that are not justified by “essential laws of evidence” (Evidenzgesetze); see FTL, 173. Evidenzsätze can only claim to formulate Evidenzgesetze according to convictions of the practicing logicians, while the latter incorporate valid laws of evidence. 35. On the principles of truth-logic, see FTL, 174: “Truth and falsity refers to predicates contained in judgments, but not essentially belonging to them, that is, in the traditional speak not ‘constituting characteristics’ of judgments. One can not ‘see’ the truth or falsity of a judgment” in terms of the judgment itself. 68 DIETER LOHMAR knowledge [Denkwege] with certain determined outcomes ‘as such’ that are in principle to be entered into but that are never really entered into” (FTL, 175). Our everyday experience tells us that judgments are often very difficult to decide because what makes judgments true is not already at hand with the constitution of the sense of a judgment. A judgment is at first only a categorial belief and not already given in a fulfilled way. More generally, what is problematic in idealizations is that they are sometimes motivated in a certain part of our experience, yet it might also be the case that an alternative or even the contrary proposition is also well motivated in another part of our experience. The case of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries is instructive here. They differ only in the axiom concerning parallels: While Euclidean geometry assumes that parallel lines never intersect, non- Euclidean geometry supposes that parallels intersect at an infinite distance. Both idealizing propositions are based on part of our experience. The Euclid- ean version of the axiom may be regarded as resting on the experience of our tactual perception that with each further step the distance of parallel tracks remains the same. By contrast, our visual perception suggests that parallels come together at an infinite distance, like in the case of railroad tracks. With the same kind of reflection we might argue that the principle of excluded middle is motivated in part of our everyday experience, as is its opposite, the conviction that there are propositions that are neither true nor false. The principle of excluded middle is motivated by the experience that most well- formed and meaningful questions can be answered positively or negatively. We might generalize this in the theorem that every proposition is true or false or at least, following Hilbert, that in mathematics there can be no problem that we cannot solve.36 But there are also judgments that in the everyday stance are difficult or nearly impossible to answer. We have this experience in ethical conflicts, with the question of whether a tenth planet exists, or whether this person loves this other person. If we generalize from these experiences, it appears that the most significant aspect of meaningful judgments cannot be decided. In conclusion, with Husserl’s critique of idealization the status of the principle of excluded middle has radically changed. It turns out to be not a genuine logical principle, though it is still usable as an axiom. It is not valid as such, is not false as such; it can only be accepted within the framework of a system of axioms. This does not mean that there are no logical principles at all. The principle of identity, the principle of non-contradiction, modus ponens, and some others are still genuine logical principles and therefore not subject to our free choice. —————— 36. See Hilbert’s famous lecture, “Mathematische Probleme” (1900), where he claims: “In der Mathematik gibt es kein Ignorabimus” (In mathematics there cannot be a “We will not know”). David Hilbert, “Mathematische Probleme,” in Gesammelte Abhandlungen 3 (Berlin: Springer, 1935), 290–329, here 298.

A Reconstruction of Phenomenological Method for Metaethics1

Torsten Pietrek University of Munich

§ 1. Introduction Husserl’s phenomenological method is open to various interpretations. These alternative understandings will not be considered here, but rather an attempt will be made to reconstruct his method with a view to its applicability in the field of metaethical problems. To this end we shall use Husserl’s own metaethical investigations as a springboard. We begin by placing these investigations in the context of his development of phenomenological method and then engage in a critical discussion of the static nature of Husserl’s investigations in his lectures on ethics. The failure of these lectures to answer pivotal questions of ethical theory will be shown to play a central role in Husserl’s ultimate transformation of phenomenology from a static to a genetic investigation. This approach affords us the opportunity to place the problems that Husserl was unable to solve into one comprehensive perspective, and—to the extent that this is possible—to describe them as a unified set of problems. Then we shall propose how these issues can be solved in a single, comprehensive approach within the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. This permits us to suggest in turn a fundamental clarification of the relevant methodological issues. And, in conclusion, suggestions will be made so as to show the fruitfulness of the solution proposed here. The principal goal here is to clarify these problems and the methodology appropriate for solving them to such an extent that concrete phenomenological work on metaethical issues can be carried out.2 —————— 1. I would like to express my gratitude to Thomas M. Seebohm for his advice during my research on the issues dealt with in this essay and for his teaching in general. Many thanks also go to James J. Fehr, Olav K. Wiegand, the editors and an anonymous referee for their help and advice on this essay. Last but not least I would like to thank all those who have discussed different thoughts expressed here with me. 2. It should be mentioned that I have already completed some of this work on the basis of the approach introduced here. See my Phänomenologische Metaethik (Mainz: Uni- versität Mainz, 2001).

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 69–108 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 70 TORSTEN PIETREK

The general orientation of the following discussion is systematic. The kind of elaborate philological research that would be needed for a complete reconstruction of the original texts has been left aside so that we can first direct our attention to the systematic goal of delineating the method that must be employed in order to apply phenomenology to metaethical questions.

§ 2. Husserl’s Metaethical Investigations § 2.1. The Textual Situation Husserl’s publications and the published parts of his Nachlass contain numerous, sporadic remarks on ethical issues, but for the most part only vague suggestions as to how to resolve them. The only texts that address metaethics systematically are the lecture manuscripts from 1908 to 1914 on ethics and values published in the Husserliana XXVIII.3 Further texts deal chiefly with normative ethical questions. For this reason, we begin with a reconstruction of the early lectures; later texts will be approached subsequently. Ullrich Melle edited these early texts on the assumption that the chrono- logically latest manuscript in each case ought to be favored. Melle distinguishes between pre- and post-war Husserlian ethics, where the pre-war ethics are investigations into formal features of value judgments, whereas the postwar ethics focus on persons.4 Based on the texts presently available, it is not possible to confirm or deny that there is indeed a turn from consequentialist to deonto- logical ethics in Husserl’s work after 1914.5 However, a stronger normative orientation can be identified in the Kaizo articles and in a research manuscript that was first published in 1996.6 These normative studies are always based on genetic investigations that lack systematic development. As a preliminary characterization of the early lectures, we could call them metaethical investigations tending towards an ideal utilitarianism.

—————— 3. Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana XXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988); henceforth cited as VEW with page reference. This collection of early lectures on ethics and values will be referred to as ‘Lectures on Ethics’ or simply ‘Lectures’. 4. See Ullrich Melle, “The Development of Husserl’s Ethics,” Études Phénoméno- logiques 13–14 (1991), 115–35. 5. See Melle “The Development of Husserl’s Ethics” and Robert W. Jordan, “Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914,” Husserl Studies 8 (1991), 221–32. In July 2004 Husserl’s postwar lectures on ethics have been published as Huserliana XXXVII; so it may now have become possible to form a judgement on this issue based on published texts. However, it is not our main concern in this essay. 6. See Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922–1937, ed. Thomas Nenon, Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana XXVII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989) and Edmund Husserl, “Wert des Lebens. Wert der Welt. Sittlichkeit (Tugend) und Glückseligkeit 〈Februar 1923〉,” ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserl Studies 13 (1996), 201–35. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 71

§ 2.2. The Analogical Approach in Husserl’s Lectures on Ethics from 1908–1914 Among the various published elements of the “Lectures on Ethics,” the main section of the “Lectures of 1914”7 deals most directly with metaethics. Here a formal axiology, a formal theory of practice, and a phenomenology of the will are developed. The formal ethical disciplines8 are introduced by analogy to formal logic. In formal logic, rules of inference are established by ab- stracting from the objects about which one infers. Husserl envisages an analogical development for a new formal ethical discipline in which rules of inference are to be formulated for values or actions independent of their nature. The analogy is applied not only to their formulations but also to the inner structure of the disciplines—thus, for example, the distinction between syntax and semantics. Husserl did not regard this proposal, which he adopted from Franz Brentano,9 as obvious, since it was not clear in advance how far the analogy ought to be carried. The proposal was preliminary and needed further phenomenological clarification, but due to a lack of time this clarification was not developed in 1914. There is a conceptual problem regarding the analogy of formal logic and formal axiology. It is the same problem in the lectures of 1908–190910 and 1914. In the lecture of 1914 Husserl postpones the problem to a later part of the lecture, yet this part was not formulated for lack of time. In 1914 he elaborates a formal axiology as if the relation to formal logic were already clarified. This lecture therefore contains the most developed material by Husserl on formal axiology as a formal science (developed by means of the analogy), but no phenomenological investigation concerning the evidence of this material. The most developed phenomenological investigations within the context of the lectures concerning the analogy are to be found in the lectures of 1908–1909. But these investigations are—by Husserl’s own account—completely insufficient. The approach taken here is to analyze why Husserl did not come to terms with the phenomenological investigation of the analogy and to use the results to reconstruct his method for the purpose of doing metaethics. For this reason we shall also introduce the correlative remarks of the published “Lectures of 1908–1909.” At the same time, however, we are faced with —————— 7. I will refer to “Teil A: Vorlesungen über Grundfragen zur Ethik und Wertlehre 1914” (Part A: Lectures on Fundamental Issues of Ethics and Value Theory of 1914) of VEW (3–159) as ‘Lectures of 1914’. 8. Husserl uses this concept as the overarching concept for formal axiology and formal praxis. 9. Concerning the relationship between Husserl’s and Brentano’s ethics, see Ullrich Melle, “Zu Husserls und Brentanos Ethikansatz. Die Analogien zwischen den Vernunft- arten,” Brentano Studien 1 (1988), 109–20. 10. I will refer to “C. Zweiter Teil der Vorlesung über Grundprobleme der Ethik 1908/09” (Part C: Second Part of the Lectures on Fundamental Problems of Ethics, 1908– 1909) in VEW (237–378) as ‘Lectures of 1908–1909’. 72 TORSTEN PIETREK the problem that these lectures belong to a period of intensive revision in Husserl’s thinking, a period in which the transition from descriptive psychology of the Logical Investigations (1900–1901)11 to the transcendental philosophy of Ideas I (1913)12 took place. The analogy between logic and value theory depends crucially on the developments in Ideas I. However, the manner in which the issue of an analogy between logic and ethics is handled there is incomplete when viewed against the backdrop of the issues raised in the “Lec- tures of 1908–1909.” Consequently, simply proceeding on the basis of Ideas I is not feasible. On account of the jumbled textual and interpretive situation, any attempt to set out the chronological development of Husserl’s thought on ethics would only be possible at the cost of losing its orderly content and depth. Therefore, since the relationship between theoretical, axiological, and practical reason in Ideas I remains a problem for Husserl, we are obliged to address these difficulties here, especially in view of our intention to reconstruct his method for the field of ethics. Thus the preliminary motivation behind the analogical approach in the “Lectures of 1914” is presented first in order to clarify the issues at hand. Then, using the “Lectures of 1908–1909,” the problems attending this approach will be addressed. Special attention will be given to the chief obstacle (namely, the relation between objectifying and non-objectifying acts, and the question of whether valuing and willing belong to these classes), which will be interpreted in the context of Husserl’s development from the LI to Ideas I.

§ 2.2.1. The Preliminary Approach of 1914 The resemblance between acts of judging and practical reason, which Hus- serl stressed in 191413 without wanting to make a generalized claim, offers the —————— 11. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein, Husserliana. XVIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975)/English translation of the B-edition: Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), vol. I, 1–247 (henceforth referred to as Prolegomena with German and English page references, respectively), and Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster und Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/1–2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984)/English translation of the B-edition: Log- ical Investigations, trans. Findlay, vol. I, 248–432 and vol. II, 435–659 and 661–851 (henceforth cited as LI with German and English page references, respectively). Wherever it has been deemed necessary, the translation has been changed without notice. 12. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuh- mann, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Intro- duction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983). Henceforth cited as Ideas I with original pagination, which is included in the margins of both editions. 13. The following discussion is based on “Section I: Parallels between Logic and Ethics” (Abschnitt I. Der Parallelismus zwischen Logik und Ethik) of the Lectures of 1914 (VEW, 3–69). PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 73 possibility of developing the disciplines of “formal theory of practice” and “formal axiology” in parallel to formal logic. For the precise definition of formal logic Husserl refers to the LI and Ideas I. Among these doctrines, emphasis should be placed on the following characterization: Formal logic is an artificial construct gained by eliminating all practical goals. Therefore, it is also the theoretical basis of methodological and psychological logic as the art of correct judgment. Furthermore, it is important to note that, because of the intertwining of the formal category of meaning and the objective category, each apophantic-logical proposition corresponds to a formal-ontological proposition, so that on account of the correlation between judging and judgment each apophantic-logical proposition also corresponds to a formal-noetic proposition. It follows that formal axiology refers to all laws of values, that is, laws that are valid independently of the material content of valuing, although here as well the distinctions and relationships between apophantics, ontology, and noetics need to be taken into consideration. The necessity of developing a formal axiology and theory of practice in parallel to formal logic is demonstrated by Husserl in his critique of Kant and Hume. We refer to this criticism in order to highlight their differences with Husserl’s approach—and not to examine the validity of his claims. Husserl views Hume as a classical representative of an empirical morals of emotions (Gemütsmoral). In his critical response, Husserl brackets out the question of whether ethical concepts originate in our understanding or emotions, and addresses the theory of pure empiricism in ethics, which expresses itself in psychological or biological terms. Here ethics is nothing more than technology: ‘Ethical norms are valid’ means that a psychological-causal compulsion brings us to behave as we do in order to avoid psychologically un- avoidable feelings of distress. On this view, ethics is relative to the empirical determinations acting on a person. Just as in logic, a consistent empiricism in ethics leads to skepticism. Where ethical absolutists strive for the good because they are conscious of an absolute norm, the skeptic knows neither good nor evil, but is anti-ethical because all norms are treated as relative to a given culture, time period, etc. With this characterization Husserl sought an ethical analogy for the skeptical absurdity in logic that he discussed in the Prolegome- na. At a theoretical level, he claims, there is no such absurdity in ethics. So, for example, there is no logical absurdity in claiming that “there are no duties.” However, Husserl does see a “practical absurdity” in specific, universally intended “ought”-propositions. In contrast with a mere command, a sentence such as ‘Acknowledge this rule’ has imbedded within it the demand that we recognize that the rule is rationally binding. If the skeptic says something like ‘Acknowledge no practical rules’, following this rule would contradict the content of the rule (it is not the case that the content of the rule contradicts itself). This is a case of practical absurdity that is both analogous to, and yet dis- 74 TORSTEN PIETREK tinguishable from, logical absurdity. Husserl does not consider the possibility that a practical rule can be rejected purely on logical grounds. Similarly, we can add a few remarks that explicate the importance of an universal critique of reason: A) The structure of practical absurdity is analogous to the proposition ‘This sentence is false’. From a modern perspective, we should therefore treat Husserl’s absurdity more as a problematic claim than as a decisive argument. B) Judgments also have a certain “demanding” quality: they demand that we accept their legitimacy. Judicative reason is also always practical.14 When we examine the paradox of ‘This sentence is false’ from a practical perspective, we can see the problem in another light, one in which the process of making-evident plays a central role. The sentence demands that we perceive its evident content, that is, establish the synthesis of correlation between its meaning and the fact to which it refers. But in this case that is impossible since meaning and fact are identical and yet also contradictory. That is, the proposition demands of us something that cannot be performed. (This remark is only prefatory and yet it shows how helpful, even necessary, it can be to take the practical nature of acts of judgment into account in the analysis of logical problems.) Husserl’s real problem, though, is not radical skepticism so much as the “common” sort of ethical empiricism that does not regard itself as skeptical. Refuting this brand of ethical empiricism is essential for establishing his idea of philosophy, but it is much more difficult since he does not have a formal ethical theory to which he can recur for its specific a priori meaning (as in the case of logic). Hence, Husserl’s attempt to develop a formal ethical theory is one of the fundamental objectives of his clash with ethical empiricism. He sees the central issue in the fact that traditional ethical principles are not formal in his sense of the term. Whereas formal logic does not establish for any substantial subject matter what counts as true but only what can be true, ethics concerns itself with the substance of the question ‘What is good?’ Even Kant’s categorical imperative is not formal in the sense of logical formality, since it is intended to be a sufficient criterion. According to Kant, individual cases are judged by subsuming them under the categorical imperative. Husserl is convinced that a more radical approach is necessary. Husserl sees the situation as follows: Hume fails to recognize the existence of cases of a priori regularities in the field of emotions and tends towards ethical skepticism. Kant, on the other hand, fails to recognize differences in emotions and sentiment and feels obliged to rely on the pure intellect, and for that reason cannot achieve formal laws of valuing, willing, and action. Husserl —————— 14. See Gisela Müller, Wahrnehmung, Urteil und Erkenntniswille. Untersuchungen zu Husserls Phänomenologie der vorprädikativen Erfahrung (Bonn: Bouvier, 1999). PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 75 strives to avoid both mistakes by applying the phenomenological method that he had first developed for logic to the sphere of values and volition. His “middle way” in ethics is a special case, applying his general approach to the critique of English empiricism and Kantian transcendental philosophy. To avoid the er- rors made by Kant and Hume, phenomenology must employ the principle of all principles: that each originally given intuition [Anschauung] is a legitimate source of knowledge, that everything that is offered to us originally in our ‘intuition,’ offered, so to speak, in its bodily reality, is to be simply accepted as that which it is, but as nothing more than that which is given within these strictures. (Ideas I, 43–44) With regard to metaethics it is extremely important to take the term ‘intuition’ literally as ‘looking-on’, signifying first-hand and mostly sensual experience. The principle of all principles does not entail the brand of ethical theory that is called ‘intuitionism’. Since differences in emotive expression are experienced as originary, they also cannot be denied in the manner of Kant, but need to be investigated in order to discover their general structure. The discovery of various kinds of valid structures for each sort of matter in the how of its givenness differentiates phenomenology from empiricism, which denies the existence of such an Apri- ori. For this reason one might also call Husserl’s approach ‘transcendental positivism’: “If ‘positivism’ means the absolutely unprejudiced grounding of all sciences on the ‘positive,’ that is, on that which can be originally grasped, then we are the true positivists” (Ideas I, 38). As an entrance to this middle way Husserl uses the analogy of logic, not because ethics might be deduced from logic but because logic has advanced farther. Indeed, the relationship between logical and practical reason is itself problematic. On the one hand, there is the universal rule of logical reason which is always present when we formulate propositions; on the other hand, there are various species of reason related to the different kinds of acts, and these possess their own intrinsic legitimacy. Whereas logical rules are also valid for judgments of value, practical reason also has a certain legitimacy. Husserl’s merely preliminary clarification at the beginning of the “Lectures of 1914” suggests that valuing is a specific kind of intending (Vermeinen) that takes place prior to all subsequent judgment. There is a certain, though not perfect, analogy between belief and valuing with respect to the acts of intending that both exercise. Because of the correlation between intending and evidence, the idea of correctness and incorrectness is also associated with valuing. Husserl’s clarification succeeds in establishing that valuings are correlated to something and that such relations can be true or false. One of the chief tasks of phenomenological metaethics is to determine what this “something” is to which our valuings correlate, and how it differs from the “something” to which we relate in other acts. 76 TORSTEN PIETREK

§ 2.2.2. The Attempt at Clarification in the Lectures of 1908–1909 We have seen how Husserl approaches ethical theory in analogy to the field of logic. In 1914 Husserl had no time left to deal with the phenomenological critique of this approach. We must therefore look at the corresponding parts of the “Lectures of 1908–1909” and also take into account what Husserl himself said on these parts when critically reviewing them in 1909 (VEW, 358–76). His “analysis of the thought process” of “Lectures of 1908–1909” can be divided into three sections: a problematizing section (§§ 2–5), a problematic section (§§ 6–11b), and an attempt to provide a solution to the issues raised (§§ 11c–12). Concerning his own effort at solving the relevant issues, Husserl comments merely that the investigations are of great importance. But we should give more attention to the significant additions and elucidations he makes for the analysis of the thought process in the problematizing section. On the other hand, the problematic section (§§ 6–11b), in which the issue at hand is not directly discussed, is entirely rejected in Husserl’s commentary. For this reason we shall not deal with this section in the following discussion. And regarding the last section: the solution offered here cannot be understood on its own, but must be seen against the backdrop of the LI, especially as a transition to Ideas I. We shall discuss this somewhat confused section briefly, however, in order to arrive at a short, accessible summary for the subsequent analysis.

§ 2.2.2.1. A Presentation of the Argument The Problematizing Section: Husserl is of the opinion that formal and material ethics, just like formal and material logic, do not really belong to philosophy per se. Philosophy per se is the theory of knowledge as a “science of the possibility of knowledge” (VEW, 248). It investigates the act–object correlation or the connection between the subjectivity and objectivity of knowledge, for which a phenomenological reduction or epoché is necessary. This technique, according to Husserl, has already yielded progress in the field of epistemology. Now this approach needs to be applied to the sphere of values. The initial question is: “How can a value come to consciousness in an affective act, and how could one ever make and defend the claim to be aware of a true value?” (250). The chief difficulty here is in the intertwining of theoretical and axiological reason. Husserl emphasizes this difficulty by noting that whereas acts of the understanding are thinkable without the participation of the emotions, affective acts seem to be founded on, presuppose, and build upon acts of the intellect (see 252). For example, without making any value judgment, I can observe the manner in which a stone rolls down an incline, assessing its speed and size. I can also be alarmed on account of its speed and size and hence make a certain kind of valuation. However, I cannot be alarmed by the rolling stone without first knowing something about it. On the other hand, one might ask PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 77 whether I would also be able to make a value-free observation of the stone if it were rolling directly towards me. This is how the problem of the involvement of emotion and reason in the objectivation of values arises. Husserl would make several efforts towards resolving this difficulty. Ultimately, he would fail in his attempt, as he confesses at the end of the Lectures: “unfortunately, I could not resolve the matter of affective acts and their foundation or their relationship to objectivizing acts” (337). Nevertheless, despite this failure, his efforts do help to elucidate the difficulties involved: The problem of the participation of reason and the sentiments has two sides: a) How are sentiments related to an object? And b) how does one move from sentiments to an objective predicate? From the perspective of objectivities, one can draw the following distinction: value-predicates are either value-predicates in the original sense (e.g. ‘good’ or ‘beautiful’) or else predicates that “ground” these original predicates (such as ‘red’ in ‘a beautiful red flower’). The original value-predicates refer to either states of affairs or objects, whereby the value-predicates referring to states of affairs are founded in the predicates of the objects that constitute them (ultimately in the relations between objects). In each case, according to Husserl, the object that is to be given a value-predication must first come to consciousness. Thus axiological predicates presuppose logical predicates and are therefore founded. At this point, we might note that Husserl’s remark on the foundation of axiological predicates remains unclear in one important respect, namely in its ignoring the role of time. This ambiguity, as we will see, is the ultimate reason for Husserl’s failure to apply his phenomenological method to the field of ethics. His analysis goes in another direction: examining an ambiguity in the concept of logical predicates. Logical predicates are either all-inclusive (they include axiological predicates) or else a contrast to axiological predicates (meaning that which remains when all predicates of value are separated out). Husserl distinguishes here between three meanings of ‘theoretical’ in order to express this distinction more clearly (see 368–69): 1) in the most general sense ‘theoretical’ is that which examines “all scientific disciplines . . . insofar as they consist of judgments that can be rationally grounded”; 2) the term ‘theoretical’ can be employed in contrast to ‘axiological and practical’, where the latter is in general understood as meaning ‘non-theoretical’; or, finally, 3) ‘theoretical’ can serve as a contrast to ‘technical’ or ‘normative’. Theoretical reason in the first sense has its correlate in the mathesis universalis; one might term it ‘universal reason’ and give it the attribute ‘logical’. This designation would free up the term ‘theoretical reason’ for the second sense; the third definition plays no significant role at this point. This terminological distinction would then permit of two sub-categories of logical predicates: theoretical and axiological (the category ‘practical’ is left out). Husserl’s problem now is to find out how the two 78 TORSTEN PIETREK classes ought to be distinguished from one another: “Which of these are the basic classes of objectivities? Which classes are by their nature prior to the axiological class?” (259).15 One special difficulty is the multitude of objects that value-predicates can have (e.g. ideal or imaginary objects); it is therefore impossible to set out the limits of the theoretical as a region of objectivities of nature. We can set definitive limits to the field of the theoretical, however, by eliminating value-predicates. In this way theory itself would never lead to values, but the theoretical sciences would then have an independent status. Value-predicates are simply in another “dimension,” as Husserl says. Of course, values themselves can also be objects of theoretical research, but the results could never be framed in terms of value-predicates. Consequently, these fields are characterized as distinct, though their exact relationship to one another is left undetermined. If we now continue to discuss and scrutinize Husserl’s work on this theme, it would be worthwhile to recall that he does not finish the analysis of whether one might possibly eliminate value-predicates. Elimination suggests an act of abstraction leading to the field of the purely theoretical. The question as to what exactly the emotions or axiological reason can objectify is left unanswered. Husserl makes another attempt to solve the issue from the perspective of the correlation problem. Here there are two chief obstacles: a) a clarification of the separation of object and constituting kinds of acts for theoretical and axiological reason, and b) a discussion of certain difficulties that arise when axiological reason is involved in the critique of knowledge. With regard to the former obstacle, Husserl notes the difficulties involved especially in deciding how valuings can be correct (see 364–67). Judgments refer ultimately to intuitions (Anschauungen in the sense of perceptions, not of spontaneous insights) for their legitimation. Is valuing a kind of intuition? Where, then, are the parallels between the perception of things and values? The value-judgment ought to be able to “look inside” the act of valuing and choose the values as such that are in them. But how can thinking access the “objectiveness” (Objektität) that is constituted in acts of valuing? With regard to the latter obstacle, he notes that generally object-regions can be distinguished by means of their constitution. This results in the most universal critique of reason in its relationship to its correlate “object.” Below this level there are other, special disciplines of the theory of reason that are equal or subordinate to one another. Concerning values, Husserl claims that “values are objects, indeed objects of a most peculiar region” (383). They are divided from other object-regions, such as that of natural objects: “The development of research in the natural sciences never leads from the field of realities of experience to the world of values” (284). The result is a separate critique of axiological reason as a discipline that needs to be examined. And yet Husserl —————— 15. Again, the temporal aspect of this question remains unclear here. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 79 remains unable to resolve the conundrum of how to draw a boundary between theoretical and axiological acts. There is obviously a difference between these two kinds of acts, but how this difference is to be understood remains unclear. The issue has a parallel in the fact–value distinction in contemporary metaethics: point a) above corresponds to the ontological and b) to the epistemological explanation of the problem. The Solution Proffered: Husserl begins the concluding section by setting the acts of valuing in relation to the region of non-objectifying acts, as in the LI. But then he sees himself forced to drop this classification on account of the objectivity of valuing: “Thus the term ‘objectifying act’ consumes everything, and it becomes difficult to see how the concept of a non-objectifying act ought to be maintained” (333).16 Husserl’s classification of objectifying and non-objectifying acts corresponds to the classical cognitivism/non-cognitivism dichotomy in metaethics. And his surmounting of this deceptive distinction in the field of values shows parallels to the resolution of the metaethical dichotomy: By uncovering a specifically moral cognition (for example, in the work of Richard M. Hare), the distinction is shown to be delusive. In its place we can use the more precise and fundamentally divergent distinction between prescriptivism and descriptivism. However, in the “Lectures of 1908–1909” Husserl does not yet abandon the distinction between objectifying and non-objectifying acts. Instead, he attempts another, rather confusing characterization of acts of valuing, according to which a judicative experience as such has no relationship to a state of affairs. Taken as a whole, Husserl’s attempt at a resolution must be judged unsatis- factory, an assessment that Husserl himself shared with regard to the acts of valuing, as was noted at the outset. In the next section we shall analyze the reasons for this failure, as well as the benefits it may entail. In conclusion we can agree with Husserl on the following. The central analogy between objectifying act and act of valuing lies in the claim that the sphere of values is also directed towards evidence. This is made clear by means of the distinction between the fulfillment of desire in the sense of satisfying a desire and the correctness of a desire. If it is my desire to devour a cake, then eating the cake fulfills my desire. If I then become ill, my initial desire remains fulfilled, but the desire turns out to have been incorrect. A wish can be false independently of its having been fulfilled. This distinction is clearly directed against utterances in the LI (we shall return to this matter later). Husserl speaks here of “the greatest of tasks” in the investigation of the problem of the correctness in the sphere of values: “Only when they have been solved can we say that we have attained a true critique of axiological reason” (344). —————— 16. In a later annotation, Husserl remarked, “Yes, exactly!” 80 TORSTEN PIETREK

§ 2.2.2.2. Analysis Considered within the time-frame of the development of phenomenological method, the “Lectures of 1908–1909” belong to the transitional phase between the descriptive psychology of the LI and the transcendental phenomenology of Ideas I.17 This was the period in which Husserl began to clarify the methodology of his reflections on acts of consciousness in the LI: We can summarize by saying that the real accomplishment of the phenomenological reduction achieved by Husserl as early as 1905 consisted in taking the domain of research involved in phenomenological analysis, as set out in the LI, delineating its borders in a purely methodical manner and assuring its pure, uncontaminated givenness.18 But by bracketing everything belonging to transcendent consciousness by means of the phenomenological reduction, he also uncovered a phenomenological approach toward the object-side of acts that makes them purely accessible in the manner in which they present themselves. The noema then becomes an object of phenomenological investigation. In 1907 Husserl set about to analyze the correlation between acts of consciousness and objectuality (Hua II, 12–14). This preliminary research then becomes a full-fledged program in Ideas I (1913). In the “Lectures of 1908–1909,” this transition is repeated and partially completed, albeit with some confusions. In spite of this disorder, the chief problem for determining the relationship between theoretical and axiological reason is stated as the relationship between objectifying and non-objectifying acts, as well as the status of acts of valuing within this distinction. The following analysis of Husserl’s clarification of the relation between axiological and theoretical reason can be summarized by means of the following interrelated questions: I. How did Husserl’s approach change in the transition from the LI to the “Lectures of 1908–1909” to Ideas I? II. How did Husserl achieve the specific results of Ideas I? III. What is the specific difference between the analyses in Ideas I and those in the LI? IV. How are the divergences between the respective analyses in the LI and Ideas I related to the issue under examination in the Lectures?

—————— 17. See Theodore de Boer, The Development of Husserl’s Thought (The Hague: Nij- hoff, 1978), esp. the “Intermezzo” and Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern, and Eduard Marbach, Ed- mund Husserl. Darstellung seines Denkens (Hamburg: Meiner, 1989), esp. chap. 2. 18. Bernet, Kern, Marbach, Edmund Husserl, 57. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 81

I. How did Husserl’s approach change in the transition from the LI to the “Lectures of 1908–1909” to Ideas I? In the LI Husserl arrives at the distinction between objectifying and non- objectifying acts by means of his discussion of the problem of distinguishing between the quality and the material of an act. The Fifth and Sixth Logical In- vestigations are of central importance here. Husserl defines an act as an intentional experience (§ 15, Fifth Logical Investigation). Not all experiences are intentional—thus, for example, the experience of a (non-thematic) section of a visual field. Acts include experiences of wishes, values, and the will. With regard to the field of emotions, there is also a distinction between acts and sensations (§ 15b).19 But considered in light of the “Lectures on Ethics,” we note that affective acts are acknowledged in the LI. Acts of any kind can be founded on other acts, and that means necessarily presupposing them. Husserl’s example here is joy: The joy is not a concrete act in its own right, and the judgment, an act set up beside it: rather, the judgment underlies the joy, fixes its content, realizes its abstract possibility, for without some such foundation there could be no joy at all. (LI, 418/581) In this manner the LI characterizes all affective acts as founded. They must obtain their material through other acts, namely from objectifying acts. Affective acts are non-objectifying acts, since they only make a qualitative modification of the material given through founding, objectifying acts.20 According to the LI, every complex act is analyzable in the following manner: a synthetic act is referred back to its thetic, singular members, which can also be nominalized again, hence traced back to the simplest acts. These simple acts are always objectifying. Thus: Each intentional experience is either an objectifying act or has such an act as its ‘basis,’ that is, in the latter case an objectifying act is a necessary element of it, and the entire material of the former will be identical to the entire material of the latter. (LI, 514/648) Furthermore, complex acts cannot usually be disjointed in such a manner that only independent, concrete, complete acts remain (the example of joy makes this clear). And yet a full, objectifying act can always be isolated. Thus the idea of eliminating value-predicates as a criterion for the foundation of acts of valuing in the “Lectures of 1908–1909” is also latent in the LI:

—————— 19. In the LI Husserl treats sensations as unformed material that is given a form through intentionality. For a more detailed discussion see § 2.3 below. 20. For a more detailed presentation of these relationships on a similar basis, see Ull- rich Melle, “Objektivierende und nicht-objektivierende Akte,” in Samuel Ijsseling, ed., Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), 35–49, here 39–44. 82 TORSTEN PIETREK

Conversely, it is plain that in each complex act involving non-objectifying act-qualities, which rest either on the total matter or its parts, these latter act-qualities can all be eliminated, as it were. A complete objectifying act is then left, containing the total matter of the original act. (LI, 517–18/650) This claim is doubtful when considered against the backdrop of the “Lec- tures of 1908–1909.” Considered alone within the terms of the Fifth Logical In- vestigation, though, the issues seem clearer: a material becomes present in an objectifying act (for example, in an act of fantasy), and then subsequently21 becomes (qualitatively modified) intended—for example, in the manner of a wish. On this basis, a nominalization can also follow, as when the judgment is made ‘I would like some ice cream’. However, in this case the act of wishing remains entirely unanalyzed. The main discussion of the analysis of acts themselves is given in the Sixth Logical Investigation, the “Elucidation of a Phenomenological En- lightenment of Knowledge.” Here objectifying acts are distinguished from all other fields of acts in which fulfillment and disappointment occur: A class of acts—those known as ‘objectifying’—are in fact marked off from all others, in that the fulfillment-syntheses appropriate to their sphere have the character of knowings, of identifications, of a ‘putting-together’ of things congruent, while their syntheses of frustration, similarly, have the correlative character of a setting apart of things conflicting. (LI, 539/668–69) In § 13 of the Sixth Logical Investigation, this division is further clarified. All intentions correspond to experiences of transition to fulfillment or disappointment, but they have different characteristics. A wish-intention, for example: “A wishful intention can only find its fulfilling satisfaction insofar as the underlying mere presentation of the thing wished for is transformed into the corresponding percept” (583/708). By contrast, the “Lectures of 1908–1909” state: It is especially important . . . to avoid false analogies. Hence, fulfillment, which comes forth in all kinds of acts [and thus also in wishes] as a teleological approximation to the goal of correctness and grounds analogous relations, ought not to be confused with that which we call fulfillment in cases of wishes and willings [Wollungen]. In this point, I made an error in my Logical Investigations.(VEW, 343) In the LI Husserl had considered it necessary “to distinguish sharply” between objectifying acts and acts of wishing and willing. Objectifying acts are so defined that they have the character of units of identification, that is, “the character of an act corresponding to an objective identity as intentional correlate” (LI, 584/709). This determination of objectifying acts is retained, but with the addition that affective acts can also have an object-identity as intentional correlate. The distinction is not given up, but by abandoning the mundane attitude —————— 21. The issue of time still remains unclear here. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 83 of the LI and its associated fixation on things, Husserl acknowledges in Ideas I that the sphere of objectifying acts extends farther than he had originally thought, so that “all acts in general—even affective and volitional acts—are “objectifying,” objects are originally “constituting,” necessary sources of various regions of being and thus also of their respective ontologies” (Ideas I, 244). In this way he introduces an extended concept of an object, freed from the paradigm of a physical thing, and in the abstract sets re-identifiability as the only criterion for objectivity. By taking an original approach toward evidence in the sphere of ethics at the end of the “Lectures of 1908–1909,” Husserl is already moving toward Ideas I. In that context he emphasizes that there are problems running parallel to the clarification of formal logic in the disciplines of formal axiology and formal theory of practice. Here as well “there are conditions of the possibility of axiological and practical “truth” lying truly in the pure, synthetic forms of these spheres (as, for example, in the connection between means and ends)” (305).

II. How did Husserl achieve the specific results of Ideas I? In the phenomenological attitude the noema becomes a theme. That which appears as such is described (§ 88).22 In this way, Husserl succeeds in applying the principle of all principles to emotional experiences. Each intentional experience has its own intentional object, its objective sense, so that, for example, valuing has its values. In the full noema there are various layers, “which are grouped around a central ‘core,’ a pure ‘objectual sense’” (189). Val- ues can also be treated as such a core (see above and Ideas I, § 116). In the field of judgment the following differentiations need to be made in relation to the general distinction between noesis and noema (§ 94). First of all, the judgment as noema is to be distinguished from judging as a noesis. The judgment as noema is an object of pure logic, though, because logic has a more circumscribed set of interests, distinctions among such phenomena as memories and expectations play no role. Judging as a noesis is an object of normative logic, which also has a restricted interest. The same distinction between noema and noesis occurs in the sphere of emotion and willing (§ 95). The valuing of individuals distinguishes the mere thing from the “value-objectiveness”23 (Wertobjektität), that is, from the concrete value itself. Correspondingly, with regard to the valuings of multiples one ought to distinguish between a predicatively-formed situation-complex or situation and a predicatively-formed value complex or value-situation. Value-objectiveness and the predicatively-formed value com- —————— 22. The following paragraph references are in reference to Ideas I. 23. This odd term is presumably constructed in order to emphasize the parallelism between things and values (consider Wahrnehmen und Wertnehmen). It plays no significant role in later investigations. 84 TORSTEN PIETREK plex introduce a new objective layer, namely “value quality” (Wertheit). Here too a phenomenological difference between objectuality and noema is noted. By contrast to the LI, it is no longer claimed that by presenting the new objectual layer of value-quality one can retain all the material when the value- predicates are eliminated. The case is similar for willing in Ideas I. The noematic core of simple acts can have various characters. That is, objective sense can be given in different ways, for example, as remembered, as fan- tasized. In the case of higher levels of acts (e.g. valuings and willing), that is, acts founded on simple acts, new characters also result (e.g. ‘valuable’, ‘beautiful’).— For the sake of brevity, we leave aside Husserl’s “detour” through the modifications of neutrality (see Ideas I, 241).—In general, we can say that characters can be doxically grasped again in a “second viewing position” (§ 105), as when that which is grasped as possible is treated as a possibility. Noematic characters are not determinations of reflection. This means that characters are grasped without looking back at the act. With regard to acts of valuing and willing, the objectifying/non-objectifying distinction of the LI is replaced in Ideas I by founding/founded. Positings of valuing and willing are founded in “representations.” (Husserl expands the concept of positing or thesis to all intentional acts.) The higher-level sense-cores and their new thetic characters belong to another dimension. But they can also be modalized with respect to their character as belief (e.g. ‘presumably valuable’). Analogies between logic, ethics, and the theory of practice can be posited because of the generic community of essence of all positional characters (thetic characters). The general possibility of modalizing even these new, thetic characters demonstrates that each thesis “can be transformed into present, doxic positings on account of the doxic characterizations belonging inextrica- bly to their nature” (Ideas I, 243). What is true of the doxic transformation of modalities of belief (see above) is also generally true for all thetic characters. Therefore, one can state: In all thetic characters doxic modalities are buried and if the mode is that of certainty, doxic primal theses that are the same as the thetic characters, in accordance with noematic sense. But since this is also true for doxic alter- ations, there are also doxic primal theses in each act (no longer in noematic accordance). We might also say: each act or act-correlate contains within it something “logical,” explicitly or implicitly. . . . The result of all this is that all acts in general—even affective and volitional acts—are “objectifying,” objects originally “constituting,” necessary sources of various regions of being and thus also of their respective ontologies. . . . Each non-doxically completed act of consciousness is . . . potentially objectifying; the doxic cogito alone completes the objectifying. (Ideas I, 244) It follows from this situation that logic has universal sovereignty, in spite of the intrinsic legitimacy of axiological reason. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 85

III. What is the specific difference between the analyses in Ideas I and the LI? In Ideas I the problem of founding values in “representations,” which is of central importance to the LI, is bracketed out. Husserl ascertains merely the fact of this founding. Instead, he concentrates on the question as to how value judgments are founded in acts of valuing, and arrives at the answer that those specific objects that are constituted in acts of valuing are also grasped in certain modalities of belief. Indeed, the reason that logic has universal sovereignty is that wherever objective things come to consciousness, they have a certain doxic character.

IV. How are the divergences between the respective analyses in the LI and Ideas I related to the issue under examination in the Lectures? The consequence of this discussion for the “Lectures on Ethics” is that the problem of the relationship between axiological and theoretical reason varies, depending on the layer that is examined. Does the investigation address the manner in which acts of valuing are founded in “representations” or how judgments about states of values are founded in acts of valuing? The problematizing section of the “Lectures of 1908–1909” addresses the first question; the attempt at a solution, however, is instead directed toward the latter. The confusion in Husserl’s discussion is caused by merging these distinct problems. Be- cause of the multiple layering of foundations, Husserl was confronted with the dilemma of the intrinsic legitimacy of axiological reason in the face of the universal sovereignty of logical reason. Indeed, multiple layers cannot be mastered with the static approach to phenomenology offered in the LI, the “Lectures on Ethics,” and Ideas I. From the perspective of his later genetic investigations we must conclude that the earlier static method has a restricted scope. The insolu- bility of the difficulties mentioned is a direct product of these restrictions. We shall attempt to clarify this state of affairs with the following explanation.

§ 2.3. First Attempt at a Transition to a Genetic Phenomenology Ullrich Melle’s assessment of this problem horizon arrives at the conclusion that “two analogies that ought to harmonize with one another compete against each other in Husserl’s descriptions of intentionality of emotion and will: the analogy with perception and with judgment-positing.”24 From the standpoint of genetic phenomenology these analogies can and should be seen as potential fields of investigation that ought to be approached not only from the perspective of valuing but also from all cores of judging. Genetic phenomenology begins with the general problem-field of the relationship between form and

—————— 24. Melle, “Objektivierende und nicht-objektivierende Akte,” 37. 86 TORSTEN PIETREK content, or material.25 In the LI and Ideas I Husserl assesses this relationship such that unformed, hyletic data are given a categorial form through the intentional act (LI, § 58; Ideas I, § 85). This view cannot be held to be universally true. This is suggested in Ideas I, where Husserl makes the following restriction in § 85: At the level of observation, to which we will restrict ourselves for the time being, a level that disregards looking into the dark depths of the final consciousness that constitutes all temporal experience and accepts experiences as they present themselves as united temporal processes in imminent reflection, we must distinguish between [primary contents and intentional experiences]. (Ideas I, 171)26 In his Formal and Transcendental Logic27 Husserl says that this earlier opinion about hyletic data needs to be restricted in use, if not entirely abandoned: As ego, one can focus on immanent objects . . . as objects in immanent time, and obviously that is the first thing that the beginner in phenomenology should do. In my Ideas, accordingly, I consciously and expressly excluded problems concerning . . . the constitution of these objects belonging to egological temporality. . . . In this sphere there then emerges necessarily, as a radical difference, the difference between hyletic data and intentional functionings. But even in the immanent “internality” of the ego there are no objects beforehand and no evidences that merely take in what already exists beforehand. (FTL, 252–53) The claim that we do not have objects “beforehand” means in this case that all objects have become objects for us. What we expect of objects is determined by our previous experiences with objects of the same kind. Hence Husserl’s earlier assertion about formation of hyletic data turns out to be untenable on account of the discovery that, wherever complete objects are intended (e.g. objective values), they are not constituted only in a present act but are passively pre-given with a series of properties that determine the grasping of new properties in the present act. This kind of pre-given object in “secondary passivity” points back to a constitution given earlier in immanent time, in which the pertinent evidence taking place in the moment is founded. One could say that objects have a “sense-history”—and we will have to investigate this history in order to resolve the problem of the constitution of objective valuings and of the intertwining of different kinds of reason. —————— 25. See Robert Sokolowski,The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), esp. section V, and Donn Welton, The Origins of Meaning (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983), esp. Part II. 26. See Sokolowski, Husserl’s Concept of Constitution 140, 177. 27. Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974); English translation: Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969). Henceforth cited as FTL with the original pagination, which is included in the margins of both editions. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 87

In the present analysis the analogy with perception (that is, the problem of apperception of value and its putative foundedness) corresponds to a descent to the deeper and temporally earlier layer, whereas the analogy with judgment-positing (that is, the problem of objectivizing of intended “values” in acts of valuing) is comparable to the higher layers. Thus we can agree with Melle’s claim in our assessment of the difficulties facing Husserl. However, our analysis goes further by showing that the difficulties originate in the static method and by suggesting that the “inward connection” hinted at by Melle can be realized by means of a genetic phenomenological approach.

§ 3. Transition to a Genetic phenomenology as a Solution to the Unresolved Problems in Husserl’s “Lectures on Ethics” In the “Lectures of 1914” Husserl made a new attempt to formulate the fundamental elements of a formal axiology. It was to serve as the basis from which an objective determination of values in specific situations could be attained. However, from the perspective of Husserl’s philosophy a formal axiology alone cannot supply the basis for such an achievement. The laws of formal axiology themselves must also be submitted to phenomenological critique. The incompleteness of Husserl’s critique has been sufficiently demonstrated in the foregoing. Now we need to attempt to resolve these difficulties satisfactorily within a phenomenological framework. Our first thesis is that a resolution of the metaethical issues discussed is possible if we employ Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology; the second is that the material basis of the formal laws that would be needed for this approach can and must be identified. The discussion in the following section will attempt to make these theses plau- sible. Before presenting this attempt at a solution, however, we give a short summary of the remaining problems in Husserl’s ethics lectures.

§ 3.1. Husserl’s Remaining Obstacles: “Evidence in the Practical Sphere” and “The Intertwining of Various Kinds of Reason” Husserl’s argument in the “Lectures of 1914” can be summarized as follows. There are objective (valid for every subject), formal (valid for all values) laws of valuing—for example, that comparisons of values are transitive. In a first stage he establishes laws of consequence that determine how valuing is to proceed if a certain value-standard and a certain situation are predetermined. Value-premises determine value-deductions (Wertfolgen). The premises, like all values, are subject to the laws of non-contradiction and the “excluded fourth” (by which is meant that premises must be value-free, valuable, or valueless). Then follows the second stage, according to which the value-standard laid down by the premises is objectively determined as value-free, valuable, or valueless. The term ‘objective’ means here that the case is the same for each subject in the same situation. Both stages determine the entire value-standard 88 TORSTEN PIETREK as unambiguous for each subject at each point in time. Husserl concludes that ethical skepticism with respect to valuing has been refuted. According to Husserl there are also formal-objective laws for value comparisons. The so-called absorption law for strictly disjunctive choice in the practical sphere states roughly that “the better is the enemy of the good.” For- mulated as a formal-objective imperative it asserts: “Choose the best of the various choices open to you.” From these formal laws one can conclude that the “best choice” is always determined to be objective in the sense stated above. Thus for Husserl ethical skepticism with respect to willing has also been refuted. If we turn to Husserl’s postulate of the material value of insight, we note that it has the special quality that its value can be added to any practical value in a choice and thereby raises its value. The consequence is Husserl’s (non-ab- sorbable) categorical imperative: “Willingly perform the best of the various choices available to you.” However, the material basis of the knowledge of what is best is left entirely unclear. After achieving this formal result, there remains the serious difficulty of a clarification of the possible relations between valuings. This difficulty can be divided into two distinct problems concerning laws of consequence and of comparison. The former consists primarily of a phenomenological clarification of the relations of inference and their connection to founding-relations between regions of values. At first Husserl restricts his discussion of this issue to values of one region. But because it is possible that in some choices values of various regions might be available (e.g. material or religious ones), this restriction must be lifted. With regard to laws of comparison, a clarification is already required within a region in order to show how a “greater” or “lesser” valuing is constituted. Here too one must pay special attention to comparisons between regions and investigate the question as to whether there may be general hierarchies between different value regions. Husserl had already noted that the value relations of founding regions are transferred to the founded regions. Problems occur, however, if we take into consideration the appearance of value production at the higher level.28 With these remaining difficulties regarding possible indeterminacies of values in mind, it seems doubtful whether Husserl’s refutation of skepticism is conclusive. —————— 28. In the sphere of values there are two chief relationships between part and whole (see VEW, 95–97): a) The whole is a mere aggregate of parts, that is, the sum is the sum of all parts. In this case, we have sums of values. b) The whole is a composition of parts (as in music or in images), that is, something new is attained through the unity of the whole. In this case we have the production of value, whereby for the goods G and evils E, G + E > G instead of the normal case

Before these problems can be resolved, we need to clarify the intertwining of different kinds of reason, an issue that—at least in the ethical context—needs to be treated in connection with the question of the constitution of objective valuing. This is also connected with the distinction between theoretical and axiological reason drawn by means of analysis and by marking the difference between the kinds of acts that constitute their objects. Husserl sees the matter of specific evidence in the sphere of value as the central problem here. With regard to Husserl’s later philosophy, we should note once again the distinction between problems lying at the primordial and intersubjective levels. At the primordial level the problem of evidence is that of original givenness for the ego. At the intersubjective level it is the problem of the constitution of values “in themselves” in analogy to objects “in themselves.” Especially problematic for the matter of evidence in the sphere of values is the relationship between valuing and its objective sub-layers. This problem lying at the level of the noetic theory of forms is inseparable from the matter of layering of judgings, valuings, and willings mentioned above. The following discussion will make it clear that these issues can only be unraveled by reverting to a genetic analysis of the primally constitutive phenomena. This involves the problem of value-apperception and its analogy to perception of things. For the question of valuing the distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ with regard to one’s body will play a significant role. We can summarize these various issues and difficulties under two related problem-fields: the intertwining of different kinds of reason and evidence in the practical sphere.29 A reconstruction of phenomenological method for metaethics needs to address both of these themes.

§ 3.2. A Proposed Solution: Transition to a Genetic Analysis of Constitution A Husserlian approach toward a solution of these problems should orient itself toward Ideas I and the FTL. The theme of the “intertwining of various kinds of reason” is addressed in a general fashion in the second chapter of Part IV of Ideas I, “Phenomenology of Reason” (esp. § 139). It is treated as a problem of constitution and its essential layering. In the posthumously published second volume of Ideas, namely Phenomenological Investigations Concerning Constitu- tion,30 this issue is not treated as a problem but is discussed in detail. From the —————— 29. The claim that the problems of evidence and intertwining belong together has been shown by Gisela Müller in her discussion of Husserl’s genetic investigations of logic. See Müller, Wahrnehmung. 30. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, ed. Marly Biemel, Husserliana IV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989). Henceforth cited as Ideas II with page references to the German and Eng- lish editions, respectively. 90 TORSTEN PIETREK viewpoint of the “Lectures on Ethics” one could say that Ideas II forms the missing link in the phenomenological investigations of the “Lectures of 1914.” The second theme, evidence in the practical sphere, addresses the subjective side of the formal-objective principles of axiology and theory of practice. In FTL Husserl completes the transition from formal to transcendental logic. The elaboration of this theme, which occurs in Experience and Judgment,31 is directly related to the issues involved in formal ethical disciplines. Thus it is possible to draw an analogy between the phenomenology of logic and the phenomenology of ethics. If this approach succeeds, one could also imagine tracing Husserl’s later treatment of logic and science (intersubjectivity, the life- world) and applying it to a further development of phenomenological ethics.

§ 3.2.3. “Intertwining” in Ideas II In Ideas II Husserl distinguishes the theoretical from the axiological and practical spheres by reference to the attitude of the ego. In the theoretical attitude the ego “lives” in doxic acts. There may well be valuing and willing acts in this state, but they remain in the background. Similarly for the axiological and practical attitudes: the objectivities of the theoretical acts are pre-given through other intentional experiences. Thus theoretical acts themselves occur at a higher level. Theoretical interest (the theoretically living intention) must orient itself by the pre-constituted objectivities in order to make them into theoretical objects. The same is true of theoretical objects that are retentional- ly submerged. But at the lowest level there must always be non-theoretical objectivities: “Thus we arrive in each case at pre-given objectivities that do not spring from theoretical acts, but are constituted in intentional lived experiences imparting to them nothing of logico-categorial formations” (Ideas II, 7/9). The axiological and practical attitudes have an analogous position according to Ideas II. In contrast to the “Lectures of 1908–1909,” where Husserl amalgamated theoretical and material giving acts, the various attitudes are now treated as coordinate (see Ideas II, 8–9/10). Ideas II notes a parallel between perceptions of things and “perceptions” of value (Wahrnehmen und Wertnehmen) that supports his treatment of the relevant acts as coordinate, a thought that is based on a comment (after 1925) referring explicitly back to the “Lectures on Ethics.” Husserl seems to become more and more skeptical about the characterization of acts of valuing as founded in “objectifying acts.” But the most important addition to Ideas I made in Ideas II is the distinction acknowledged between “having intentional experiences” and “being directed toward their objects (living in acts)” (§ 5),32 an idea that he had not reckoned with in the —————— 31. Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Hamburg: Meiner, 6th ed., 1985); English translation: Experience and Judgement, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1973). 32. The following paragraph references are to Ideas II. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 91

“Lectures of 1908–1909.” The new position acknowledges the universal structure of foreground and background in acts, which is described in Ideas II as the varying “dignity” of acts. Our first assessment must then read: When the attitude changes, the kind of act standing in the foreground or background also changes. The result of these changes is an intertwining, in which new objects are continually being constituted. The intertwining of various kinds of reason at a higher level comes about through the changing of attitudes. Right from the beginning of Ideas II the relations on the lowest level are seen in a way that points toward the theoretical, valuing, and willing acts’ being coordinate. This matter is dealt with in greater detail in the third chapter of the second part of Ideas II, “The Psychic Constitution of the Body.” The body constitutes itself as the bearer of localized sensations, for which Husserl employs the technical term ‘sensings’ (Empfindnisse). This can occur in a double manner, both from within and without, as when a person’s hands touch each other or—in the case of touching an object—when one’s attention can be directed to the properties of the object or one’s own sensings. Husserl provides detailed descriptions here (§§ 36–37), including descriptions of the relationships between the various senses. This discussion is of relevance for phenomenological metaethics in that values are founded at the lowest level in sensings of feeling (Gefühls- empfindnisse), whereas willing is founded at the lowest level in sensings of motion (Bewegungsempfindnisse): Not only the sensations which exercise a constitutive function as regards the constitution of sense-things, appearing spatial Objects, not only these sensations have a localization given in immediate intuition [sensuous experience] along with the relation to a Body33 grounded therein, but that is also true of sensations belonging to totally different groups, e.g. the “sensuous” feelings, the sensations of pleasure and pain, the sense of well-being that permeates and fills the whole Body, the general malaise of “corporeal indisposition,” etc. Thus here belong groups of sensations which, for the acts of valuing, i.e., for intentional lived experiences in the sphere of feeling, or for the constitution of values as their intentional correlates, play a role, as matter, analogous to that played by the primary sensations for what is intentionally lived in the sphere of experience, or for the constitution of Objects as spatial things. Moreover, all kinds of sensations, difficult to analyze and discuss, belong here as well, ones that form the material substrate for the life of desire and will, sensations of energetic tension and relaxation, sensations of internal re- straint, paralysis, liberation, etc. All these groups of sensations, as sensings, have an immediate Bodily localization. Thus, for every human being, they belong, in a way that is immediately intuitable, to the Body as to his particular Body, i.e. as a subjective objectivity distinguished from the Body as a mere material thing by means of this whole stratum of localized sensations. (Ideas II, 152–53/160) —————— 33. ‘Body’ with a capital ‘B’ is used by the translators of Ideas II to translate Leib (living body as experienced from “inside”) in opposition to Körper (dead body or living body as experienced from “outside”). 92 TORSTEN PIETREK

It is at this point that Husserl identifies the material basis of valuings that we sought in vain in the “Lectures on Ethics”: it is the sensings. Our bodily experiences or bodily feelings (like pain, comfort, appetite, or thirst) determine what we consider to be subjectively valuable. Husserl is now on the way toward a genetic analysis, but he has not yet arrived there because he still treats the “material” as unstructured: “the material is given a mental forming” through intentional functions (this is a continuation of the last citation). For genetic phenomenology, on the other hand, decisive is the observation that the material pre-given in primary passivity has a structure on account of primal associations that the ego cannot influence. Nevertheless, Husserl has now shown where a genetic phenomenology of valuing and willing must begin. The “sensual,” “emotional,” and “motive” sensings are at the most basic layer coordinate—they all serve as material for the constitution of objects. A more complete genetic analysis of constitution would investigate the manner in which the regions of matter (thing), value, and will are built up from these sensings.34

§ 3.2.4. Transition to a Critique of Evidence in the Sphere of Value35 Husserl’s critique of formal logic in FTL consists in the reflexive thematization of the evidence on which its laws are based. This evidence needs to be clarified “in constitutive research into origins” or, to put it another way, the subjective manner in which its fundamental concepts are formed needs to be “unveiled.” According to FTL, the constitutive clarification of origins can be described as follows. The laws of formal logic set out the idealizing precondi- tions that occur when they are subjectively turned (§ 75). For instance, the law of non-contradiction can be stated objectively as: “Each contradictory judgment is ‘excluded’ by the judgment that it contradicts,” and subjectively as: “Of two judgments that (immediately or mediately) contradict one an- —————— 34. Lester Embree arrives at similar results in his analysis of the improvements that Ideas II bring to Ideas I with regard to the issues of values and action. See Lester Embree, “Ad- vances Regarding Evaluation and Action in Husserl’s Ideas II,” in Tom Nenon and Lester Embree, eds., Issues in Husserl’s “Ideas II” (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), 173–98. I agree with much of what he says on these points; however, his discussion of the layering of acts is more problematic. If we look at the matter of the intertwining of different kinds of reason as these are discussed in the “Lectures of 1908–1909,” as well as the solutions proposed there, we observe that Ideas II offer a much clearer step in the direction of the parity (Gleichord- nung) of acts. Of central importance here is the fact that the layering that takes place in the constitution of objects is ordered not in accordance with kinds of reason so much as in accordance with the relative activity and passivity of the judgings, valuings, and willings— whereby the ego actively orients itself in each kind of act to something that is previously given passively through some kind of act. This interpretation is supported by the results of our analysis of examples in § 4.2 below. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 93 other, only one can be accepted by any judger whatsoever in a proper or distinct unitary judging.” The idealization so achieved is based on the fact that the law of non-contradiction presupposes that each judgment can be made distinctly evident. Turnings toward the subjective indicate laws of evidence. That is, the critique of logical laws is concerned with the critique of evidence. Husserl had established this point for the sphere of values at the end of his “Lectures of 1908–1909” (see § 2.2.2.1 above). The further development of this idea in FTL concerns “tracing the critique of evidence of logical principles back to the critique of evidence of experience” (FTL, chap. 4), which can be described in the following manner. In accordance with the analysis of judgment in the LI (see § 2.2.2.2 above), all judgments can be traced back to ultimate cores (individuals), that is, cores that are no longer nominalized. In the context of logical analysis, nothing more can be said about individuals (cf. the atomic statements of propositional logic). Here one needs factual evidence (cf. the material basis of value judgments in sensings). Like judgments, truths relate back to a world of individuals. In the last analysis, each judgment has a relation to individual objects and hence to a real universe for which it is valid (§ 83). This capacity for relating back to the objects is the reason why logic has an application. In FTL this problem is addressed to all cores in general and hence can also be applied to cores in the field of formal axiology. According to Husserl, the fact that judging refers back to individuals shows that primary evidence is individual. But individuals are given in experience. Therefore, Husserl concludes that the very first task must be a critique of evidence of experience. In the context of formal logic this means that we must first establish the most general structures of experience, and correspondingly, in the sphere of values it means that we con- centrate first on the experience of value, which takes place within the framework of the most general structures. For his general analyses Husserl concentrated mostly on examples of perception.36 This seems to make sense when dealing with logic in its traditional predilection for applications to physical things. But in principle we can also take feelings or urges as examples be- —————— 35. This in analogy to the transition from formal to transcendental logic in Husserl’s FTL. 36. See Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, ed. Margot Fleischer, Husserliana XI (The Hague: Nij- hoff, 1966), 340; henceforth cited as APS with page reference. All translations of APS are mine. For a translation of the full text see Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), which includes the Husserliana pagination in the margins. See also Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1893–1917), ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana X (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969); English translation: On the Phe- nomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), trans. John B. Brough (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964). 94 TORSTEN PIETREK cause they also lie at a similarly basic level (see § 3.2.1 above). But returning to FTL: with his considerations about reduction, Husserl shows that hidden intentional implications are contained in the act of judging, and it is the genesis of this judging that he wishes to investigate: “With regard to the subjective, that signifies that the predelineated order of judicative forms involves a predelineated order in the process of making materially evident and in the different levels of true materialities themselves” (FTL, 184). The same can be said of values treated as sense formations since they are in themselves not simple. Unsolved problems concerning the foundedness of acts of valuing belong to this complex. In just the manner in which the type ‘thing’ is brought about, so also the type ‘value’ has been produced, and this kind of formation needs to be understood if we are to clarify the fundamental concepts of ethics. According to FTL, the field of pre-predicative evidence (“that which is called experience”) is the first such field in the critique of evidence. The first efforts at clarifying the sphere of sensings in Ideas II show the kind of evidence that needs to be examined in the sphere of values. (We shall deal with this matter more fully in § 4.2 below.) But if we consider the distinction between the formal and the material Apriori in FTL, then the most important aspect for the sphere of values is the material Apriori: Every Apriori with a material content . . . demands a return to the intuition [Anschauung, looking-upon] of individual examples—that is, to “possible” experience—in order to establish the true evidence critically. . . . The evidence of laws pertaining to the analytic Apriori needs no such intuitions of determinate individuals, but only some examples or other of categorialia. (FTL, 221/213) This has an implication for the starting point of sensings: whereas formal logic begins with some sensing (Empfindnis) or other, in the field of values feelings (in the full sense of the word) play an exemplary role. Husserl sets another condition, though, by noting that even in the case of the formal Apriori the cores “are not entirely irrelevant.” This is important for the relative formality of formal axiology, since it is concerned with valuing in general. Why does he consider the cores to be relevant? The analytic law of non-contradiction that helps us to avoid nonsense contains the implicit presupposition that every judgment can be made distinctly evident. Note the distinction between grammatical sensefulness (which is not lacking in ‘every number is blue’ but is in ‘this house or is’) and sensefulness as the possible unity of the judicative content (which is also lacking in the example ‘every number is blue’). This second kind of sensefulness is a precondition for completing any judgment. And this explains why according to FTL the possibility of completing a judgment is to be found in the syntactic materials (cores): But how is one to understand the function of the syntactical stuffs or cores in making possible the existence of the judgment—that is: the proper PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 95

effectibility of the indicated judgment? Here the clarification is to be found in the intentional genesis. (FTL, 194) This is especially clear in the case of valuing since here the cores are not dis- guised by means of algebra. The first problem is the matter of deciding in which judgings values can meaningfully appear as cores. Would it be meaningless to speak of greater and lesser valuings in the sense that it is meaningless to say “red smaller blue”? Nevertheless, one could imagine a consciousness that has developed a sort of habit in which this sentence might make genuine sense. The speaker might well be a physicist who orders colors according to their fre- quencies or wavelengths, and in this case one could make a definite judgment as to the truth-value of the sentence. The only thing that would then count as genetically essential would be the possibility of habitually setting aside the sensible fullness and its quantification. The cores ‘red’ and ‘blue’ refer back to an apperception at a higher level, which, once it is formed, leads the perception and determines its meaning. In general Husserl’s FTL is concerned with a transition to genetic analysis of constitution that can also be applied to the sphere of values. Such an analysis promises to be suitable for doing metaethics; we should therefore focus on the methodological difference between the not very successful static method and the genetic method. The splitting of reason into the theoretical, axiological, and practical kinds needs to be clarified genetically. We note here merely that the starting point for this originary clarification must be the constitution of the internal and the external in relation to the body and the emphasis on the fact that the body belongs to both the external and the internal. But before addressing these issues, we need to devote the next section to establishing greater methodological clarity.

§ 4. Methodology § 4.1. A Method for Metaethical Analysis The later development of Husserl’s thinking in FTL and Ideas II indicates the direction in which a solution to the problems raised in his “Lectures on Ethics” must go. From a methodological perspective, however, the requirement that this new direction involve a genetic analysis is left somewhat vague. We still need to clarify the relationship and specific difference between static and genetic analysis, as well as the matter of placing investigations of sensings- analysis within this context. Unfortunately, Husserl did not develop a complete theory of genetic phenomenology, and so the relations between static and genetic phenomenology has remained problematic.37 But our investiga- —————— 37. This widely accepted “philological” judgment (see, e.g., Bernet, Kern, Marbach, Edmund Husserl, 182) is supported by the following textual passages: Edmund Husserl, Zur 96 TORSTEN PIETREK tions demand a resolution of this issue, so that we can give the transition to genetic phenomenology, which is necessary for the sphere of values, a precise meaning. There are two basic possibilities for such a clarification: 1) A reconstruction of the relations and differences between both methods by reference to the development in Husserl’s thinking, or else 2) the working out of a systematic interpretation of both approaches by reference to a constant feature of Husserl’s logic: namely, the theory of parts and wholes in the Third Logical Investigation. The two approaches differ not only in method but also in content since the systematic order reverses the temporal order of discovery. The logical precondition of the system is that which only subsequently comes to view. This will become clearer in the process of setting out our method. From the standpoint of a scientific philosophy the second option described above would be the proper procedure, whereas the first is merely of historical-philological or di- dactic significance. And yet (1) also contains important remarks and suggestions that can ease the way to (2). To my knowledge, there is no secondary literature on Husserl that addresses the systematic approach being indicated here, although there are some studies (that occasionally contradict one another) dealing with a reconstruction in the sense of (1) above.38 I will present a short summary of in-depth philological analyses of the relevant texts regarding (1).39 Husserl’s development of an awareness of this problem and efforts toward conceiving a method were addressed in the previous section. Our efforts at elabo- rating a systematic method will benefit by first looking at Husserl’s own general efforts in this direction (§ 4.1.1). From there we move toward a true systematic approach (§ 4.1.2).

§ 4.1.5. Husserl’s Own Efforts at Systematization Husserl’s most notable efforts toward a systematization are to be found in three of his texts: the essay “Static and Genetic Phenomenological Method” in APS, Appendix II of FTL, and at the beginning of the Fourth Cartesian —————— Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil: 1905–1920, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), Beilage XLV; Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XIV (Dordrecht, 1973), Beilage I; APS, 336–45.; FTL, §§ 85–90, Beilage II (314–26); Carte- sianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Husserliana I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), §§ 37–41/English translation: Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nij- hoff, 1973), henceforth cited as CM with page references to the Husserliana edition, which are included in the margins of the translation. 38. See Sokolowski, Husserl’s Concept of Constitution; Welton, The Origins of Meaning and Donn Welton “Genetic Phenomenology,” in John Drummond, ed., Encyclopaedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 266–70; Nam-In Lee, Phänomenologie der In- stinkte (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993). 39. See n. 37 above. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 97

Meditation. The first two texts can be discussed in common, since they have the same problem-horizon. But the unfolding of phenomenological method in the Fourth Cartesian Meditation is different, because of its use of the egological perspective. These various efforts do not yield a unified picture. But the initial exertions of APS and FTL, which still require further clarification, benefit by adding the divergent perspective of the CM, and this latter approach provides us some decisive suggestions for developing our own systematic method.

§ 4.1.5.1. “Static and Genetic Phenomenological Method” and the FTL Appendix In 1921 Husserl worked on a systematization of methods. In a footnote to APS he offers the following systematic division of phenomenology’s different fields with additional comments:40 Phenomenology: 1) Universal phenomenology of general structures of consciousness: In this investigation we are concerned with apperceptive forms, with kinds of consciousness, which are thought so generally (and left so undetermined) that they must belong to the composition of every monad (perception, memory, etc.). (APS, 340–41) 2) Constitutive phenomenology: Here we have a unique form of analysis that we perform in order to clarify the intentionality of an apperception and to describe in accordance with noetic and noematic structures the possible types of fulfillment and the systems of fulfillment that are generalized in all directions and that are being continually and entirely consummated. These constitutive descriptions do not concern themselves with explanatory genesis. (APS, 339–40) 3) Phenomenology of genesis: Other investigations [in contrast to (1)] have a different kind of generality and necessity. If we begin with “the natural concept of the world” and the human ego as the subject of knowledge, then the eidetic grasp yields a monad that is related to a “world” based on this kind of concept. And so we have a range of monads in whose stream of consciousness the corresponding types of apperception (spatiotemporal causally affected thing, animalistic being, human being) appear “necessarily,” although they perhaps do not belong necessarily to the idea of a monad in general, which in any case is not known in advance to be a priori certain. (APS, 340–41) The distinction between 1) universal phenomenology and 3) phenomenology of genesis is clearly defined here. In the so-called phenomenology of genesis the monad as a whole is taken in its complete concreteness. Here the typical, phenomenological “if–then” structure is present: “If the apperceptive type ‘thing’ is constituted in the stream of consciousness, then it must have occurred —————— 40. In the following quotation the division made in the footnote is put together with the passages of the main text to which each item of the division refers. 98 TORSTEN PIETREK in this particular manner. . . .” The necessity of its appearance is not itself a priori given but is relative to a certain kind of world. So-called universal phenomenology, on the other hand, does not consider the full monad but only its abstract structure—so abstracted that no material particularity is taken into consideration. An example of this would be the structure of inner time-consciousness. In contrast to 1) and 3), the independent role of 2) ‘constitutive phenomenology’ is questionable: Husserl sees two kinds of constitutive phenomenology: A constitutive phenomenology can examine the connections of apperceptions in which the same object is constituted eidetically [hence: static phenomenology of complete apperceptions]. . . . It is a different “constitutive” phenomenology that pursues genesis . . . the necessary history of this objectifying and thus [the necessary history] of the object itself as object of a possible knowledge. (APS, 345; my emphasis) The decisive point is the interpretation of the conclusion: I need to go through the Ideas now in order to understand more clearly what is still separating consciousness-structures from constitutive considerations if I consider everything that is immanent as “constitutive.” Husserl’s use of quotation marks in this last remark is essential. If we understand the first instance of the term as static (in terms of the previous citation), but the latter instance in quotation marks as genetic, then we can summarize Husserl’s concluding remark with the question: What distinguishes static analysis in the sense of 2) constitutive phenomenology from the phenomenology of universal structures of consciousness in the sense of 1) universal phenomenology if one takes into consideration that everything immanent is subject to a genesis? In other words: Can constitution be the object of pure static analysis at all? The only consistent answer that we can offer must be “No,” as I aim to show in § 4.1.2.

§ 4.1.5.2. The Fourth Cartesian Meditation According to CM, the abstract monad is the object of the complete phenomenological method (see CM, 102–3). By means of eidetic variation Husserl moves from his own individual, “transcendental-empirical” monad to a consciousness of a monad considered in absolute generality. In this way each type with its horizons becomes a pure possibility for a possible ego; each concrete experience becomes an example (§ 34; see CM, 106). This idea corresponds to the universal phenomenology of universal structures of consciousness in “Static and Genetic Phenomenological Method.” In CM this is said to be the precondition for a scientific “unveiling” of the factual ego, which is the true subject of Husserl’s interest (see 106). If we are to emphasize interest, then that implies that a phenomenologist who is not explicitly interested in the clarification of the factual would remain PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 99 at the level of the apodictic; it is the interest in the “world” that requires a transition to genetic considerations. According to CM, one needs to consider the concretion (see 108). This means that since the genesis takes place in the universal form of time (§ 37), there must be motivational laws for the “if–then” to which the genesis of the concrete ego is subject. They are laws for possible experiences—whether the experiences actually occur is according to CM irrelevant. From these theses we can draw the following conclusions, which go beyond the discussions in APS and FTL and which need to be taken into consideration in our development of a systematic method: 1) The systematic starting point for methodical reflection must be the concrete ego. 2) The comprehensiveness of the results must be achieved by fantasy variations on factual experiences. 3) Cognitive interest (Erkenntnisinteresse) plays a role in the development of a method. The discussion of the various Husserlian texts yields the result that a division of the object of phenomenology into universal structures of consciousness and if–then laws is essential for our methodology.

§ 4.1.6. Systematic Exposition of the Complete Phenomenological Method on the Basis of Part–Whole Theory Thomas M. Seebohm points out in a discussion of the methodological justification of phenomenological archaeology that the decisive issue for an assessment of an autonomous method is whether its object of investigation is an (independent) whole.41 When a method isolates a part from a whole, the part must be independent or isolable: Isolability means only that we can keep some content constant in idea despite boundless variation—variation that is free, though not excluded by a law rooted in the content’s essence—of the contents associated with it and in general given with it. This means that it is unaffected by the elimination of any given arrangement of compresent contents whatever. (LI, 238–39/443) As already noted, we must begin by applying the criteria just noted to the concrete monads in order to discover which parts of them are capable of independent investigation. Nearly all originary experiences that are part of a concrete monad refer explicitly or implicitly beyond the monad to a world that exists “independently” of the monad itself, that is, toward a foreign whole of consciousness (Bewußtseinsganze). Hence the word ‘monad’ can be easily misunderstood and ought to be replaced by a phrase such as ‘the whole of con- —————— 41. Thomas M. Seebohm, “The Preconscious, the Unconscious and the Subconscious: A Phenomenological Critique of the Hermeneutics of the Latent,” Aquinas. Revista Inter- nazionale di Filosofia 35 (1992), 247–71, here 260. 100 TORSTEN PIETREK sciousness’ or ‘the entirety of the experiences of a consciousness’. Because of this constant reference, intersubjectivity is also a theme of phenomenological investigation. Setting aside the role of foreign consciousness can only be tem- porarily introduced as a methodological abstraction for some special purpose. For methodology itself, as opposed to methodical investigation, it suffices that we give consideration to the various possible manners of investigating a concrete whole of consciousness. This is because world and foreign consciousness always become themes of phenomenological investigation as entities indicated by experiences that are part of a whole of consciousness and not as entities “in themselves,” independent of the consciousness that grasps them.42 The only whole of consciousness that is originarily available to us as phe- nomenologists is the entirety of our experiences. This is the point at which one must begin. From here one can describe two (methodologically unproblematic) extremes that can direct the further direction of research: a) A description of one’s experiences in full concretion—a kind of autobiography of immanence, or b) a description of the universal structure that is common to all experiences, including, for example, the structure of inner time-consciousness. The former is unproblematic since here no parts are isolated (if one takes this option as an extreme position). And the latter is also unproblematic because the universal structure is per definitionem not founded. Of course, one must disregard the real conditions of its recognizability, which belongs to another level. One of the most fundamental results of phenomenology in general is that there is such a structure at all. Yet (a) and (b) are nevertheless problematic in another sense: They do not satisfy our cognitive interest. The former option may be of personal interest to each individual phenomenologist, but this is not a scientific matter since there is no kind of generality attainable by means of it. On the other hand, the latter option is of great scientific interest since it is, of course, a matter of unconditioned generality, and yet the cognitional interest is also aimed at a conditioned, not an unconditioned universal that cannot be entirely attained by means of (b) alone. We should like to know, for example, how grasping things happens or takes place. How indeed are we to gain access to such a conditioned universal? —————— 42. In order to avoid misunderstandings in the current discussion, the following general points relevant to methodology and intersubjectivity should be taken into consideration: Investigations concerning intersubjectivity belong to every methodical, phenomenological investigation of a field of objects. The object of methodology is the phenomenological method itself and not objects that this method studies. The only role that intersubjectivity plays in methodology is in the question of whether the results of a phenomenological investigation can be intersubjectively verified. Transcendental phenomenology attempts to establish the objectivity of phenomenological investigations theoretically. Mundane phenomenology satisfies itself with results, which then need to be verified by others. We shall remain within the bounds of mundane phenomenology. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 101

The former option (a) can be generalized by modifications in fantasy, for example, in such cases as: “If I hadn’t had that particular experience, then I would probably react differently now.” In this manner the modification of our actual experiences yields other possible experiences. These other possibilities remain within the universal structure described under the second option (b) and allow therefore general “if–then” laws: if I experience such and such (expectations, excitations, kinaesthetic motions), then this experiencing is motivated by the universal structure of my consciousness of this and other previous experiences. The purely formal structure of these laws remains unaltered. In this context, Husserl repeatedly emphasizes that this is not a form of natural (physical) causation. The inference in our knowledge of motivational laws moves from the conditioned to that which sets the condition (das Bedingende) and allows no predictive inference from the condition to the conditioned. In these kinds of investigations the exemplary complexes of experience are treated as independent wholes. This view is only partially justified since in general by no means all given contents can be freely varied without disturbing the complex itself. In other words, the examples are in general temporally founded.43 But that implies that more must be retained than is already contained in the example. The entire temporal founding-connection between types that have formerly developed and are essential to the example must be retained. If this connection is unknown, then the retainment can only be achieved “intuitively,” and that means that the essential, scientific clarity will be missing. This is the state that Husserl’s work attained before the development of genetic phenomenology, a state that we term ‘uncritical static phenomenology’. By contrast, a critical static phenomenology retains the temporal founding-connection in knowledge that is as complete as possible, or else if the connection is unknown, it transforms into genetic investigation. The investigation of the temporal founding- connection is in fact the actual object of genetic phenomenology. Using universal “if–then” laws, it establishes how higher levels develop from acts and correlative objects at lower levels. This is why Husserl also calls it “explanatory phenomenology” (see APS, 340). We have already shown that these kinds of investigations have the status of relative generality, since they are concerned with the appearance of certain materially determined experiences on the ‘if’ side.44 We —————— 43. Temporal foundation is not specifically treated in Husserl’s Third Logical Inves- tigation. But it is fairly straightforward to achieve an operational definition that specifies his general definition of foundation: A part A is temporally founded in another part B of a whole G if and only if A cannot be varied freely without also varying B (implicitly). A good source of examples are abilities that presuppose other abilities. You cannot, e.g., vary the present part of a child’s stream of consciousness such that it is reading without implicitly presuming it also has acquired the ability to reidentify objects, i.e. had experiences of a certain kind in another part of that stream. 44. Viewed from this perspective, Husserl’s idea of the construction of possible worlds and correlative monads, as it is raised in the “Lectures of 1911” and hinted at in CM, § 37, must be sharply criticized. 102 TORSTEN PIETREK can draw a correspondence between the generality that we assume for our experiences and the generality of the experiences founded in them. By the same token, the generality is reduced as one approaches higher levels. So the apperception of specific cultural objects is hardly general at all; appetite and thirst, on the other hand, like all apperceptions that are directly related to the body, are of great generality.45 By means of “archaeological diggings” in the founding-levels one can finally arrive at material structures that are no longer founded and that can be termed ‘universal material structures’ (much as we also have ‘universal formal structures’).46 If we abstract from everything that has come about genetically, it is possible to isolate a universal structure that precedes and to a large measure determines all egoic activity.47 Analyses of sensings belong to this field; they designate the starting point of originary research. If we attempt to give a complete overview of a fully developed phenomenological method, we arrive at the following idealized sketch: 1) Universal phenomenology: describes atemporal universal structures of consciousness, that is, structures that are as they are regardless of specific kinds of content. 2) Genetic phenomenology: offers “explanatory” descriptions of the origin of founded experiences in their founding experiences on the basis of temporal “if–then” connections, on the basis of (1). The structures depend on the occurrence of specific kinds of experiences and are therefore at most hypo- thetically necessary the way they are. 3) Static phenomenology: describes the connections between moments of experience at a determinate, temporal founding-level, taking into consideration the known temporal founding-connections from (2) and the structures from (1). If we take the term ‘constitution’ in a very broad sense, we might term (2) and (3) together ‘constitutive phenomenology’.48 But for a proper characterization, we must distinguish clearly between 1) and 3), since the former is apodictic and the latter not. So in spite of the fact that they both have a static quality, they cannot be given a common designation. Such confusion would be more than unfortunate, because then genetic analysis would logically presuppose static analysis, although it is the logical precondition for static analysis. —————— 45. See CM, 111–12: “We cannot treat the higher-level Gestalts merely as belonging to each concrete ego. . . . But at the lowest level, in the case of experiential grasping . . . , this needs to be handled differently.” 46. The material ones are essentially connected to the concept of “normality.” 47. Seebohm “The Preconscious,” 261. See also Aaron L. Mishara, Phenomenology and the Unconscious (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991), esp. chap. 2. 48. See Fred Kersten, “Constitutive Phenomenology,” in John Drummond, ed., En- cyclopaedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 110–14. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 103

§ 4.2. Analysis of Some Examples: A Rudimentary Genetic Phenomenology of Valuing Let us now examine several phenomena that can be classified in the sphere of valuing and willing, beginning from the lowest level of the momentary present. Then follows an attempt to provide a general clarification of the intertwining and evidence problems. This is not to deny that a thorough analysis of the fields of willing and valuing demand a much more exhaustive treatment. But our exemplary analyses will serve an illustrative function. A more complete phenomenology of value-consciousness can be divided into various investigations that build on one another as follows:49 the differences between the internal and the external in relation to the body, the structure of emotional experience, the differences in the intersubjectivity of emotions and external perception, the objectifying of facts and values in the life-world and of the levels of understanding of foreign valuings, ethical deliberation and the limits of rational decision-making. At the same time, ontological, epistemological, and logical thematizing activities are constantly intertwined with each other. To describe these structures, the concepts of ecological ontology and ecological psychology can be employed. A model of ethical norm-development based on the structures of evolu- tionary optimization would permit us to show how objectivity in the field of ethics is possible. It results in a pluralism that is universally bounded. Its restriction in the context of individual decision-making lies in a thesis concerning trans-culturally morally false actions that can function as a criterion of selection for ethical norm-development. Viewed from the perspective of general cultural development, the restriction concerns the question of whether processes of evaluation and formation of norms that take place in a given culture can withstand the phenomenological criticism of value-evidence. Such issues as self-determination and justice are able to withstand such critique. Within the limits of this article only some rudimentary examples of the reconstructed method at work will be presented: The constitution of the body is accompanied by a related constitution of an internal and external without a fuzzy border between them, along which tactile sensations are localized. Internal sensations are always localized, hence they are sensings; they tend to be extended and possess boundaries. External sensations, however, are not primarily localized sensations: Their localization comes about through a link with internally sensed motions (Kinesen) that are part of a system of kinesthetic motions. Without the connection between self- motion and external perception, the various sense-fields (hearing, seeing, etc.) would not be coordinated into a unity; our subjective space is oriented around the Body. We need to understand this point in the proper sequence: first we —————— 49. See my Phänomenologische Metaethik. 104 TORSTEN PIETREK have a distinction between primary and secondary localized sensations and then the constitution of an internal and external—not the other way around. External sensation is typically classed with the field of the objective and of judgment because the external is in principle originarily available to all egos, whereas the internal is only present in originary givenness for the ego that has this particular body. Consequently, only one external, but many internals are constituted intersubjectively. Internal sensations, on the other hand, are usually classed with the field of the subjective, and the field of valuing is typically treated as a part of this field. Values are constituted out of these internal sensations—that is, the common attribute of all values is their ultimate founding in internal sensations. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole problem, namely the question of the extent and manner in which internal sensations are intersubjectively available and objectifiable, must be left aside here. Internal sensations appear together regularly with certain external sensations. By this means unities are instituted by joining internal and external sensations associatively. So when a certain external sensation appears, a horizon of expectation of certain internal sensations accompanies it (although it can also be disappointed). If these internal sensations are, so to speak, unpleasant, this meaning is transferred from the horizon to the object that invoked it, which is then treated as negatively valuable. Valuings of things are always constituted through the horizon of internal sensations. This explains why valuing and willing are directed to the future. The internal sensations that are contained in the horizon are generally connected to kinesthetic motions. So, for example, when I approach a bonfire, it warms my hands, but if I get too close, it becomes un- comfortable. The horizon is in general connected by means of kinesthetic motions to numerous pleasant and unpleasant internal sensations. Hence we observe that in this manner judging, valuing, and willing are already bound up with one another at a passive level in that the sensations and sensings of those fields typically oriented toward them (e.g. internal, external, motion—the latter as a special kind of middle value between the first two) are intertwined in the act of constituting an object. As a consequence the division between theoretical, axiological, and practical reason is a high-level division that presupposes a special, regionally structured world. Thus the regionalization of the world determines the sequence of level-partitions, though, as already remarked, there is no a priori, objective reason for adopting just this sequence of levels. This is the way in which the dispute arises about whether the intellectual or the emotional has precedence. However, this fact does not contradict the claim that regionalization as such, regionalization as an activity that yields regions at equal levels, has its ground in differences of sensings that come into being in the process of constitution. The different kinds of reason are coordinate regions within the one and only (logical) reason. The analogy between different kinds of reason can be ex- PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 105 plained genetically from the extensive unity of sensings at the lowest genetic level. The universal sovereignty of logical reason (now demarcated clearly from theoretical reason) rests on the shared character of sensings as sensings. So we can only speak of the universal sovereignty of logical reason when we mean the logic of “something in general.” This “something in general” sets aside all regionalization and refers exclusively to the lowest genetic level, where the sensings have not yet differentiated themselves. This is the source of logical reason’s hypothetical character and its claim to universal validity. It seems a paradox that the regionalization of the world first becomes visible as a problem against the background of the higher-level accomplishments of formal logic. Yet that is not a paradox but rather, as we have shown, a genetically necessary feature of its being. A static investigation of these complete systems of correlation cannot discover the interplay of originary unity, differentiation at a higher-level, and finally “return” to unity through abstraction, and this is because of the regionalization. It is only by means of genetic analysis, understanding the regions as a result of originary passivity, that it is possible to reveal the hidden, lowest layers. Despite the incompleteness of these investigations, they have shown how it is possible to attain a systematic clarification of the problems of intertwining and evidence.

§ 5. Toward a Reformulation of the Metaethical Question The methodological characteristic that most clearly distinguishes phenomenological metaethics from other approaches is the bracketing of states of existence in the natural attitude. Besides this bracketing, the correlative mode of observation is an important characteristic of phenomenological method. It is an essential aspect of the fundamental structure of intentionality, according to which consciousness is always a consciousness of something, that the abstract moments of ego-pole and object-pole belong to every experience of consciousness. In accordance with this fundamental structure, the task of description is to offer a descriptive correlation of both the ‘subject’- and ‘object’-sides, instead of merely addressing one of these two sides. Both bracketing and the correlative mode of observation were developed in Husserl’s phenomenology as an explicit rejection of naturalism. They form a fundamentally opposite position to the naturalistic tendencies of recent approaches to a “New Metaethics” (since about 1980).50 Theories of values as —————— 50. See Jocelyn Couture and Kai Nielsen, “Introduction: The Ages of Metaethics,” in On the Relevance of Metaethics New Essays on Metaethics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, suppl. vol. 21 (Calgary: University of Calgary, 1996) 1–30, and Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, “Toward Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends,” The Philosophical Review 101 (1992), 115–89 for an overview. 106 TORSTEN PIETREK dispositions51 take a step toward a correlative mode of observation. Here, however, no bracketing takes place, and so in the last analysis these new theories remain within the bounds of the old approaches that restrict themselves to the object-side—a fact that shows itself, for example, in John McDowell’s adoption of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. But if we undertake a phenomenological investigation of these correlations as such, we arrive at the paradox of human subjectivity,52 and clarifying this paradox is what motivates the transcendental reduction in the first place. We can leave this problem area out for the sake of phenomenological metaethics: we then remain within the field of mundane phenomenology without making a claim to have established an ultimate foundation—a fact that casts no bad light on the descriptions we make. The correlative mode of observation presupposes radical descriptivity; any recourse to causal connections implies beginning from the object side and surrendering bracketing. As noted earlier, not only static structural connections but also temporal, “if A now, then B previously”-connections must be clearly distinguished from causal connections. The developmental perspective of genetic phenomenology must be understood in this way. Its “explanations” are something quite different from the causal explanations advanced by such theorists as the reductionists. A structural, static “explanation” would be something like Simon Blackburn’s projection- ism, according to which valuing is a projection of our attitudes onto the natural, value-free world. Hence the definitive aspects of phenomenological method in metaethics, as opposed to other contemporary developments, include: bracketing, descriptivity, the correlative mode of observation, and a non-causal developmental perspective. From the perspective of phenomenological method, the metaethical disciplines of ontology, epistemology, and logic form a unity. Taken as a whole, the act, the intention of the act, and the accomplishment of the act are bound up together in the Apriori of correlation; the same can be said of valuing, the val- ued object, and the value itself, although here the correlations are (still) un- —————— 51. For exemplary theories of this kind see Simon Blackburn, “Securing the Nots: Moral Epistemology for the Quasi-Realist,” in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Tim- mons, eds., Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity, 1996), 82–100; Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); and John McDowell, “Values and Secondary Qualities,” in Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1988), 166–80. 52. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die Phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 2d ed., 1976), § 53; English translation: The Crisis of Eu- ropean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: North- western University Press, 1970), § 53. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD FOR METAETHICS 107 clear. This unity of the problem-fields determines the fundamental methodological question concerning the “how of givenness” of objects. The ontological question as to what exists is decided by seeking to determine the way in which something can become an object for consciousness (hence, epistemologically: “How is this something given?”) and what structural differences can be discerned that correspond ontologically to divisions between object-regions. The question of what exists is answered first of all by means of a partitioning. During the bracketing, the existence of objects is partitioned according to the “how of givenness” and treated in the context of intersubjectivity. The central question of the metaethical debate concerns the relationship between fact and value.53 This is because the answer given determines the answer to many other metaethical questions as well. Thus the question of the objectivity of our value-judgments is closely related to the fact–value problem since the only prima facie, knowable difference between the two lies in the field of objectivity. Another problem of greater relevance to our daily lives, the matter of how we can justify our actions ethically, can only be dealt with on the basis of a (philosophical) answer to these first two metaethical questions. We conclude by noting that the results of phenomenological metaethics can be applied to the individual issues arising from the metaethical debate, ideally in the following manner. First, the problem at issue is solved; thereafter an explanation for the previous dispute is offered by a clarification of the shifts that have taken place in the phase of theory-building. We can offer a hypothetical example to illustrate the latter point. Let us assume that it has been shown that matters or things as objects of daily life are pre-given in originary passivity. We could then explain the beginnings of classical intuitionism in the following manner. Matters given passively as a unity can be actively partitioned into thing-components and value-components. In the context of the natural sciences the thing-components are then treated as originarily real. Then it is observed that the same value can appear in relation to various things and is consequently allocated to the ideal sphere, just as are geometrical qualities. The consequence is that one postulates a special kind of intuition for these ideal entities in order to explain how the values are applied to the things. Classical intuitionism reverses the fundamental genesis of values by making the passively founding matter or thing into the product of an activity (connecting thing and value). This shift and the usual metaphysical assumptions then lead to the seemingly necessary conclusion that values are intuitively attained, ideal entities. The crucial issue of phenomenological metaethics is the genetic perspective in connection with the epoché. The problematic ontological and epistemological status of valuing is understood as a status that has been attained and yet also stands in question. The manner in which we conceptually grasp our —————— 53. See the overviews mentioned in n. 50 above. 108 TORSTEN PIETREK experiences develops out of the structures of sensory experience. One central schema of this grasping is the problematic fact–value dichotomy. It has its basis in the different structure of internal perception of sensings and external (especially visual) perception. The internal, the external, and the other are constituted interdependently via haptic experiences of ones own Body, other living bodies, and inanimate objects.54 But the internal and the external are essentially different in intersubjective givenness; hence the putative less objective status of values. By revealing the development of the schema of fact and value both subjectively and intersubjectively, a new and rewarding approach to metaethical questions has been made available.

—————— 54. See my Phänomenologische Metaethik, 142–62.

Sensing and Creating: Phenomenology and the Unity of Aesthetics

Renaud Barbaras Panthéon-Sorbonne

If phenomenology is indeed that discipline which treats as an autonomous problem the way in which things appear, according to Paul Ricœur’s line of reasoning, then phenomenology is naturally confronted by the question of the unity of aesthetics. The sensible presence of the world and this singular presence of the work of art (which is, so to speak, only appearance) give rise, by their very duality, to the question of the essence and therefore of the unity of appearing, thereby posing the problem of the unity of sensibility beyond the separation between sensible experience and strictly aesthetic sensibility. Though this question is hardly broached by Edmund Husserl, it comes to the fore in the works of later philosophers, and particularly in the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Indeed, one could say that Mer- leau-Ponty’s determination of phenomenality, at least in the works he completed, takes as its fulcrum the confirmed continuity between perception and artistic creation, particularly pictorial creation, between the body’s spontaneous acts and their reprise in the specifically creative act. Experience itself is grasped on the basis of the activity that prolongs it and illuminates it in the form of works, that is, as expression, and painting then serves as a tool in the hands of a phenomenologist since it effects by itself a sort of phenomenological reduction. “All perception, all action which presupposes it, and in short every human use of the body is already primordial expression,” Merleau-Ponty writes, while understanding ‘primordial expression’ as the primary operation which first constitutes signs as signs, makes that which is expressed dwell in them through the eloquence of their arrangement and configuration alone, implants a meaning in that which did not —————— * Translated by Paul B. Milan. This is the translation of an essay published under the title “Sentir et faire. La phénoménologie et l’unité esthétique,” in Eliane Escoubas, ed., Phénoménologie et esthétique (Fougères: Encre Marine, 1998), 21–39. The editors wish to thank the author for permission to publish this translation here.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 109–20 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 110 RENAUD BARBARAS

have one, and thus—far from exhausting itself in the instant at which it occurs—inaugurates an order and founds an institution or a tradition.1 Correlatively, artistic activity does not represent a rupture vis-à-vis perceptual life; it prolongs its expressive power and thereby reveals, better than does perception itself, the visible in its pure state: “it is the expressive operation of the body, begun by the smallest perception, which is amplified into painting and art” (Signs, 87/70). There is indeed a profound interweaving of perceptual activity and art’s creative activity. Primordial expression of which the body is the vector announces the actual creative expression; conversely, the latter illuminates the true sense of corporeality and gives the native sense of the world that is the correlative of this corporeality. Even though this perspective seems indisputable in principle, it nevertheless presents certain difficulties. In Merleau- Ponty’s work, the unity of aesthetics, that is to say, the unity of perception and art, is never grasped from the aesthetic point of view. We must understand by this that Merleau-Ponty never approaches the question of the continuity between perception and art on the basis of sensible feeling nor on the basis of the mode of sensing that characterizes them both; the unity of perception and art is never understood as aesthetic unity, that is, based on a sensing. This becomes all the more difficult because what justifies the rapprochement of the two fields and the use of the term ‘aesthetic’, from Alexander Baumgarten on, is the reference to aesthesis, which, in both cases, is at the heart of the experience: it is because the work of art calls particularly upon sensing and presupposes a kind of amplification and a complication of sensing that the discipline that deals with it is called ‘aesthetics’. This definitely limits the phenomenological scope of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis. By having recourse to the concept of expression, Merleau-Ponty bases the continuity between the two fields on what does not belong, properly speaking, to either of them—and this amounts to saying that his analysis remains abstract. In fact, in speaking of primordial expression, Merleau-Ponty subordinates (on the level of sensing) the passive dimension of the givenness of a transcendence to the exhibition of a meaning at the very level of the sensible. Furthermore, by approaching art from the point of view of expression, he ignores the singularity of the sensible feeling that characterizes it: he accentuates again the emergence of a unitary meaning to the detriment of the specificity of the sensible element in which this meaning appears. In a way that is ultimately rather classical, Merleau-Ponty succeeds in establishing the continuity between perception and art only by grasping in each of them an ontological power of revealing which in the past would have been called a ‘power of knowledge’. Perception and art have in common the —————— 1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 84; English translation: Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1964), 67. Henceforth cited as Signs with French and English pagination, respectively. SENSING AND CREATING 111 fact that they bring forth a non-thematic sense, dimension, or principle of equivalence that is not distinguished from the plurality in which it appears; perception and art are unified on the basis of what in each of them transcends the properly aesthetic dimension of feeling. Correlatively, Merleau-Ponty refuses to question the conditions of this “amplification” which he evokes with regard to properly artistic expression and therefore refuses to restore the “reason” of art at the heart of perception. Indeed, in defining perception as primordial expression, he considers art at the very center of perception and thus subordinates the duality of perception and art to their unity, which is always already realized in expression. In essence Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology consists in conceiving of the unity of aesthetics based on a notion of aesthetics in the artistic sense, in seeing in perception an incipient art and thereby—basing the unity of the aesthetic field on what transcends aisthesis since the conception of art to which he has recourse, from the period of his description of perception stresses its power to reveal a meaning. This is why, during the 1950s, his reflection on art will be conceived of as the means of creating a philosophy of ideality that would not compromise the principles of Phenomenology of Per- ception,2 preserving the opaqueness or transcendence of meaning. The limits of the Merleau-Pontian aesthetics consist in the fact that it does not approach art on its own terms but as the means of describing a non-thematic unity of meaning that would prepare the further elaboration of a philosophy of ideality that would respect the sensible inscription of the idea. Our inquiry will proceed against the backdrop of the following questions. Can one, and based on what conditions, phenomenologically establish the unity of aesthetics on the level of aesthetics itself, that is, on sensibility? In other words, is there a sense of sensing that accounts for the duality of aesthetics, thus both for the sensible givenness of a transcendence and for the feeling created by the work of art? How can one conceive of aisthanesthai as the common root of sensible experience and aesthetic feeling? Since this involves a unification of aesthetics “from the ground up” (in other words, based on sensing) rather than “from the top down,” the question is a matter of reason or mode of rootedness of artistic activity within sensing. What is sensible experience insofar as it gives rise to an amplification in works, since its mode of appearing is extended and, so to speak, exacerbated in works described as artistic? While we will be unable to respond here to such broad questions, we do suggest a possible direction for further research. We must first begin with an analysis of the work of art in order to characterize, in a somewhat regressive way, the sense of sensibility that is capable of bearing this possibility. —————— 2. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la Perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945); English translation: The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Collin Smith (London: Rout- ledge & Kegan Paul, 1962). 112 RENAUD BARBARAS

In his “Discourse on Aesthetics” Paul Valéry distinguishes two constitutive fields of aesthetics: aesthesics, which would designate everything that is related to a study of sensations, and poietics, which deals with everything involving the creation of works of art.3 If one abides by this elementary division, the question of the unity of aesthetics will include that of the mode of unity or articulation between sensing and the creative act, between sensation and the production of a work of art. If aesthetics is to possess more than a purely formal unity, we must allow that there exists an internal relation between the sensation and an action that is not merely oriented towards the mere satisfaction of needs. As Valéry points out, art consists in relating useless sensations to arbitrary acts, thus conferring a form of utility on some and a form of necessity on the others. Moreover, he proposes a positive characterization of aesthetics, both as a property of certain objects and as a type of impression that corresponds to this property: Sight, touch, smell, hearing, movement lead us, then, from time to time, to dwell on sensation, to act in such a way as to increase the intensity or dura- tion of the impression they make. Such action, having sensibility as its origin and its goal, and guided by sensibility even in the choice of its means, is thus clearly distinguished from actions of a practical order. For the latter respond to needs and impulses that are extinguished by satisfaction. The sensation of hunger dies in a man who has eaten his fill, and the images that illustrated his need are dispelled. But it is quite different in the sphere of exclusive sensibility that we have been discussing: here satisfaction resuscitates desire; response regenerates demand; possession engenders a mounting appetite for the thing possessed: in a word, sensation heightens and reproduces the expectation of sensation, and there is no distinct end, no definite limit, no conclusive action that can directly halt this process of reciprocal stimulation. To organize a system of perceptible things possessing this property of perpetual stimulation, that is the essential problem of Art; its necessary, but far from sufficient, condition.4 This description of objects that belong to aesthetics creates a substantial opposition between the practical order and the aesthetic order. On the one hand, perceptions stimulate in us what is necessary in order to satisfy needs or at least to determine a tendency to satisfy them: the effect of this type of sensation is an “effect with a distinct end,” and the ensemble of such effects constitutes the practical order. In this regard, Valéry has in mind the order of feeling in the classical sense, in other words, lived experiences signaling a disequilibrium or a —————— 3. Paul Valéry, “Discours sur l’esthétique,” in Oeuvres, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, Pléi- ade, 1960), I: 1294–314, here 1311; English translation: “Aesthetics,” in Aesthetics, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), 41–65, here 61. Henceforth cited as Discourse with French and English page references, respectively. 4. Paul Valéry, “Notion générale de l’art” in Oeuvres I, 1402–12, here 1406–7; English translation: “The Idea of Art,” in Aesthetics, 70–79, here 73 (henceforth cited as Notion with French and English page references, respectively); see also Discourse, 1299/46–47 and 1308/ 58–59. SENSING AND CREATING 113 vital threat and triggering an adaptive behavior. In the case of aesthetic lived experiences, one observes a process of intensification: perception engenders its own expectation, namely an action that tends not to extinguish it but to renew it, indeed to intensify it, so that the sensation feeds on itself. Thus Valéry writes in his essay “The ‘Aesthetic Infinite’”: Taken together, all those reactions I have singled out as tending to perpetu- ate themselves might be said to constitute the aesthetic order. To justify the word infinite and give it a precise meaning we need only recall that in the aesthetic order satisfaction revives need, response renews demand, presence generates absence, and possession gives rise to desire.5 The aesthetic field is therefore defined both by a certain type of lived experience (a certain mode of presence of the corresponding sensible field) and by a specific relation between sensation and action. The aesthetic object stimulates in us a feeling that resembles desire and that Valéry compares explicitly to love: one finds in the aesthetic object, he says, “the combination he has found here of sensuality, fecundity, and an energy quite comparable to that which springs from love” (Discourse, 1300/48). In this context we must understand desire in the strict sense and contrast it precisely with the effects with a distinct end, namely with needs that are extinguished by the satisfaction they receive. The characteristic of the desire that the aesthetic object arouses is that dissatisfaction grows with possession and that satisfaction intensifies desire instead of extin- guishing it. We should point out here that if one can speak of an aesthetic pleasure, it is not pleasure in the sense of an autonomous satisfaction that would motivate desire. Desire is not desire for a particular pleasure: aesthetic pleasure consists in desire itself and in its intensification. To say that possession heightens expectation and satisfaction leads to dissatisfaction is to recognize that satisfaction consists in dissatisfaction inasmuch as it is experienced as desire. To this lived experience there corresponds a completely singular mode of presence since, as Valéry says, “presence engenders absence”; indeed, as it becomes fuller, the presence of the aesthetic object that arouses desire does not constitute an alternative to its absence. Quite the contrary, it presents itself only in the form of a certain withdrawal; it appears only by remaining retained in a sort of interior distance. It is this immediate identity between the projection into the light of appearance and the withdrawal into the depths that accounts for the infinite tendency of the effect it produces. Finally, the aesthetic object can be defined by the specific relation between sensing and creating to which it leads. We can describe as aesthetic the object whose presence gives rise to a movement that aims to prolong it; however, we must be precise here. The object gives rise to this movement to the degree that, in its very presence, it is —————— 5. Paul Valéry, “L’infini esthétique,” in Oeuvres II, 1341–44, here 1343; English translation: “The ‘Infinite Aesthetic,’” in Aesthetics, 80–82, here 81. 114 RENAUD BARBARAS experienced as incomplete. Hence this movement is not necessarily a passive movement that aims, so to speak, at making the object’s presence last. It is an efficient movement, one that aims precisely at filling the object’s incompleteness, in other words, at producing another object. Indeed, if absence is given in and as the very presence of the object, the satisfaction of desire cannot consist only in the renewal of this presence: it must add something to the object, create its missing part. Thus the perception of a work of art—at least the perception of this work as an aesthesic object, that is, as absent to itself—consists in an acting, in a creation that wants to be a re-creation. This is why the minimal act, which consists in perpetuating the object’s presence, appears as a minimal stage of the aesthesic experience; this act reproduces the presence instead of producing the missing work, it renews the absence instead of attempting to satisfy it. The first consequence of Valéry’s analysis is to neutralize the difference between the point of view of creation and that of sensibility or perception: perceiving a work of art as such is feeling its absence to itself; it is consequently desiring to make it present as such; in short, it is creating. In the aesthesic field, receiving and creating do not constitute alternatives. Artistic production is the mode of perception adequate for the specific presence of the work: simple aesthesic satisfaction, which is not followed by an effect, is like a minimal stage for recreation, and the artist’s creation is like a perception that is equivalent to lived experience. Creating and feeling are intrinsically linked as the interior moments of aesthesic feeling insofar as this feeling is one of a desire. In short, there is aesthesic emotion only as co-motion. In defining the field of aesthesic objects by a certain mode of interweaving of sensing and creating, Valéry blurs the distinctions within which the work of art was traditionally circumscribed. In particular, circumscribing these types of objects based on the idea of creation or production, in contrast to the objects in nature that would be passively received, is no longer permitted. The aesthesic predicate is neutral vis-à-vis the difference between art and nature since it designates a sensation whose effects are without end: such experiences are not circumscribed a priori in the strict domain of works of art, but are found in the field of the natural sensible. The strength of Valéry’s approach lies in the determination of the aesthesic experience that largely exceeds the field of the work of art while simultaneously integrating the dimension of unachievable productivity that characterizes the artistic sphere in the strict sense. Valéry succeeds in reconciling his approach to art that emphasizes the beautiful with the approach that takes into consideration the effective conditions of the work’s production. What is experienced as beautiful is that which leads to a desire for reproduction. Nevertheless, it remains true that aesthesic objects (whether artistic or not) represent a singular category within what can appear and that the question raised at the outset, that of the relation between artistic aesthetics and “aesthesics,” must now be posed. Far from postulating a rupture between SENSING AND CREATING 115 these two levels, Valéry emphasizes on various occasions the idea of a prefiguration of aesthesic experience within sensible experience in the strict sense. The example to which he constantly returns is that of the spontaneous production of a complementary color: due to a strong impression on the retina, the eye responds to the color that struck it by the “subjective” emission of a complementary color that can end up giving rise to a re-appearance of the original color. The dissatisfaction engendered by a sensation—in this context the fatigue linked to the perception of a single color—leads to a spontaneous creation that aims to compensate for this dissatisfaction. Moreover, one would find, Valéry writes, any number of spontaneous productions that come to us as complements of a system of impressions felt to be inadequate. We cannot see constellations in the sky without tracing imaginary lines between their stars, and we cannot hear sounds that are relatively close together without conceiving of them as a sequence, having an action within our muscular apparatus which, for the plurality of these distinct events, substitutes a rather complicated process of generation. All these are elementary works of art. Perhaps art consists merely in a combination of such elements. (Discourse, 1314/64)6 Thus, far from marking a break vis-à-vis a sensibility that would be merely passive, the work of art appears, to Valéry’s way of thinking, as what prolongs a spontaneous activity at the heart of sensibility. Indeed, the internal relation between sensation and creative movement, a relation that allows us to call this sensation aesthesic, would remain incomprehensible if it were not rooted in an essential property of sensation in general. The aesthesic feeling can give rise to a reproductive and creative act only to the degree to which the experience as such—that is to say, the sensible experience—contains within itself the principle of an articulation with movement, thus to the degree to which it is never the object of a pure receptivity but can give rise, in and of itself, to an artistic production. Valéry clearly recognizes that this analysis of elementary and essential facts concerning art leads us to modify quite profoundly the usual notion of sensibility. As a rule, it is taken to be merely re- ceptive or transitional, but we have seen that it must also be credited with powers of production. (Corot, 1409/76) In advancing the seemingly paradoxical idea of a “creative sensibility” (1409/75), he inscribes in sensibility itself the possibility—established by aesthesic experience—of an internal relationship between feeling and acting: if sensibility is creative, all creation is ultimately rooted in sensibility. Thus as does Merleau-Ponty, Valéry must recognize an essential continuity between sensible experience and art, but unlike Merleau-Ponty he grasps this conti- —————— 6. See Notion, 1408–9/74–75 and also “Autour de Corot,” in Oeuvres II, 1307–25, here 1319; English translation: “About Corot” in Paul Valéry, Degas, Monet, Morisot, trans. David Paul (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), 134–54, here 147. Henceforth cited as Corot with French and English page references, respectively. 116 RENAUD BARBARAS nuity at the very level of sensing. Sensation, since it gives rise to a spontaneous movement, appears as an incipient work, and the work appears as an amplification of the movement that is sketched in the sensation. The interweaving of sensing and creating is not only neutral vis-à-vis the difference between natural beauty and artistic beauty but precedes the difference between immediate sensibility and aesthesic feeling and thus constitutes its unity. It follows from this, in keeping with what was shown on the strictly aesthesic level, that the productive dimension of sensibility is driven by the awareness of an absence. Sensibility, Valéry writes, “abhors a vacuum,” and he adds: Whenever a lapse of time without occupation or preoccupation is imposed on a man, he undergoes a change of state marked by a kind of productivity that tends to bring back regular exchanges between potentiality and activity in the sensibility. The tracing of a design on a surface that is too bare, the birth of a song in a silence felt too keenly: these are only responses, complements to counterbalance the absence of excitation—as though this absence, which we express by a simple negation, had a positive effect on us. Here we capture the production of a work of art in its very germ. (1409/76) These characterizations are extremely important: they describe an essential characteristic of sensibility as the germ of art and thus allow the establishment in sensing of the unity between aesthetics and aesthesics. To say in effect that sensibility abhors a vacuum is to recognize, as Valéry will do later, that sensibility relates originarily to the vacuum, that absence exerts an efficiency on it—in short, that sensing does not mean coinciding with content, being filled with the sensed, realizing an absolute adequacy. The example given by Valéry of an absence—entirely germane—of sensation, an absence that gives rise to a creative movement, aims at elucidating the essence of sensing. If sensibility can in principle create a movement that completes it, it is because it relates con- stitutively to absence, it is because the sensible feeling of presence is just as much a feeling of the absence of what is presented. In other words, if every sensation can give rise to a spontaneous production and if, as the example suggested by Valéry aims to show, this production is driven by “abhorring a vacuum,” we must conclude that sensing relates originarily to absence: making the “sensible” experience out of something means grasping it as absent to itself. In this regard, the recourse to the concepts of act and potency is revealing. In- deed, the characteristic of any “act,” with the exception of God, is to extend in it the potency whose actualization it is. If action (what Valéry calls “a sort of emission”) tends to reestablish the equilibrium between potency and sensibility’s act, it is nevertheless the case that this equilibrium cannot signify an exhausting of potency by act; on the contrary, the nature of sensibility is that its potency always exceeds its act, that the actualization in which each experience consists renews potency to the exact degree to which it accomplishes it, and this is precisely why sensibility produces effects without a distinct end. In short, the germ of the work of art is present in sensibility because the latter is SENSING AND CREATING 117 essentially desire rather than coincidence or possession. The internal relation between sensibility and creating refers to the constitutive relation between sensing itself and an absence or a distance: it is to the degree to which sensible presence is identically the absence of what is presented and therefore a withdrawal into the self or an internal distance that sensing is originarily linked to movement. It is precisely movement that reduces distance, filling the absence of the sensed, and this movement is endless because this gap is not an empirical distance between sensing and sensed but a constitutive depth of the thing itself. If sensibility can be the germ of art, as effect without end, it is—to the degree to which the sensed is given in an irreducible depth—precisely infinite. Here we are echoing Erwin Straus’s conclusions concerning the essence of sensing. In defining sensing as “approach,” Straus means that sensing is neither a reception nor a passive representation but a movement towards the sensed and that it is situated in truth beyond the alternative between lived experience and objective displacement. Correlatively, the sensed itself must be characterized as distancing, not in the sense of an empirical separation susceptible of being reduced but as a sort of interior distance: sensing is always sensing at a distance, in which the thing’s manifestation has as its opposite and precondition a form of absence or inadequacy, and this is why sensing is originarily linked to movement. In Straus’s work this approach to sensing is ultimately rooted in a determination of the living subject as essentially constituted by desire. This means that the nature of the living subject is to tend towards the constitution of a totality to the world, consequently to reduce the separation that underlies its singularity; this totality is what is desired, both actualized and negated in each experience. As Straus writes, “the totality relation is one of the potentialities. It is actualized and specifically articulated in individual and specific sensations. In moving himself, the individual presses beyond his present limitations to find himself enclosed in new boundaries. . . . The Here and the Now are the expression of the actualization, delimitation, and specificity of the totality relation.”7 Thus Straus’s perspective provides the theoretical underpinnings of Valéry’s discovery of a unity between art and experience, a unity based on the level of sensibility—in short, a unity between aesthesics and aesthetics. The emission of another sensation or indeed a formatting thereof, with the aid of a layout or a song, proceeds from this movement of approach by which Straus defines sensing. The distance that approach aims at reducing is not geometric but ontological, such that the movement inherent in sensing must not be understood only as a spatial displacement: it includes any formatting, any creation insofar as it aims to fill the constitutive absence of the object while simultaneously renewing it within what this for- —————— 7. Erwin Straus, Vom Sinn der Sinne (Berlin: Springer, 1935; 2d, 1956), 256; English translation: The Primary World of Senses, trans. Jacob Needleman (New York: Free Press, 1963), 249. 118 RENAUD BARBARAS matting produces. On the other hand, only Straus’s determination of the living subject as a totality relation, as a desire for totality, allows us to account for artistic activity as an infinite process. Indeed, if the aesthesic sphere must be defined as what produces an effect without a distinct end, the sensibility in which it is rooted is necessarily characterized by an infinite excess of its potentiality vis-à-vis its actualizations, thus as a relationship to what could never be present in the flesh. Sensations reveal, Valéry says, an “exterior life” in the sense in which one speaks of interior life regarding those who, so to speak, intellectu- ally and spiritually feed on themselves (Corot, 1319/147). According to the double movement that we have tried to sketch out here, the specificity of aesthetics such as Valéry defines it calls for an original determination of sensibility in which it is rooted beyond the opposition between receptivity and activity; however, only the last characterization, which we borrowed from Straus, the characterization of sensing as desire and as approach allows us to account for the possibility of a “spontaneous production” within sensibility and therefore to establish aesthetics truly within it as the sphere of effects without end. We have thus succeeded in outlining a response to the question posed at the outset of this essay. The unity of aesthetics in the double sense of aesthesics and the production of works of art can be grasped on the level of sensibility as the very terms of the question require, but on the condition that meaning be profoundly redefined. Here the characterization of aesthetics borrowed from Valéry, a characterization dominated by the question of its mode of articulation with aesthesics, converges with the determination of sensing that stems from hyletic phenomenology, principally based on Straus’s work. Instead of clinging to the empiricist idea of sensation as a subjective state and coincidence with a quality, we must understand sensibility based on sensing and sensing as desire, as a relationship with what could not be given in the flesh and therefore ultimately as activity. Sensibility must be situated beyond the alternative between receptivity and activity because—far from being related to a positive content—it is a relation to what is lacking in content, a relationship to absence rather than to presence. Thus the inadequacy of Merleau-Ponty’s position that we had pointed out at the outset of this essay does not involve the principle of the search for an essential continuity between perception and art so much as the means used to establish it. It appears to us that Merleau-Ponty, at least prior to The Visible and the Invisible,8 does not thematize in a sufficiently clear way the level on which this unity can be established, namely that of sensibility in the strict sense. He tends to approach the hyletic level always from the noematic level, even if in a renewed way, instead of thematizing it for its own sake. It is evident that the —————— 8. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); English translation: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, Ill.: North- western University, 1968). SENSING AND CREATING 119 unity of aesthetics is based on a continuity between artistic creation and sensible experience, in other words, on the discovery of a formatting activity on the level of sensing: it is this activity that Merleau-Ponty calls ‘primordial expression’. But one succeeds in going beyond the abstract point of view of a philosophy of expression—which is based on this continuity instead of art being given in perception in the form of inchoative expression—only on the condition that one has the work of formatting appear at the sensible level as the work of the sensible itself, thus by establishing in the content’s mode of givenness its dynamic surpassing in a form. Instead of clinging to the observation of an expressive community, it is therefore a question of elucidating in the originary feeling of the content, in sensibility, the reason for spontaneous production of form and for its amplification in the form of artistic activity. This is precisely what allows the characterization of perception as desire: because sensing is the actualization of an absent totality, and therefore a relationship to what is essentially at a distance, it is surpassed in a creating, an original creating that accounts both for the very form of the appearing and for the proliferation of the created forms, spontaneous productions within the sensible and within artistic creation. By conceiving of sensing as desire, we acquire the means of establishing the unity—one only conjectured by Merleau-Ponty—between the form inherent in appearance and the meaning that shows through in a work of art. Both proceed from an originary creating that contains the principle of an infinite amplification since the former is rooted in a desire, in other words, in a relationship of totality in which absence is renewed as it is fulfilled. It is in dance that we find the essence of art. It seems in fact that we must confer on dance the role that Merleau-Ponty attributed to painting. As Straus has demonstrated, dance manifests an originary unity between sensing and moving, a unity before any apprenticeship and constitutive of them both. Dance is a spontaneous formatting of the auditory order inherent in hearing itself; it reveals a creative activity inscribed in sensible receptivity itself. Choreography is nothing more, as Straus points out, than a specific modeling of a general unity that precedes sensory impressions and movements and that is nothing more than approach itself. Dance is thus situated at the juncture between sensibility’s spontaneous creations and artistic creation and thereby reveals its continuity. Dance precedes choreographic art: it appears in all civ- ilizations, it accompanies spontaneously in us all the listening to a rhythm such that one can wonder if our aptitude for listening to music without dancing is not the result of a long, concentrated effort of inhibition. Dance attests in a brilliant way to the fact that aesthesic form proceeds from an amplification of a movement of formatting that is constitutive of sensibility. In this regard it reveals the sense of all artistic activity: as painting did for Merleau-Ponty, dance allows a phenomenological reduction of art in that it reveals its constitutive mode of existing. As Henri Maldiney writes, “every- 120 RENAUD BARBARAS thing that Straus says explicitly concerning the relationships between music and dance can be applied, according to his own principles, to all arts. Every art is essentially music and dance. . . . What we refer to as form, and what can be an independent flow of any contour . . . is the choreographic moment of painting.”9 There is an echo here of Valéry’s assertion in the “Philosophy of the Dance” that all arts can be considered as particular cases of the general type constituted by dance.10 In other words, dancing is an activity without a distinct end par excellence. Aroused by music and by bodily sensations induced by movements, it feeds on itself as if the gesture were intensifying the tension of the muscular sensations instead of liberating it, as if the music were to become more impenetrable as the body attempts to appropriate it by marrying and im- itating its rhythm. Like a dream, it does not contain in itself the principle of its interruption; only something accidental can make it stop. Thus, beyond the desire for love of which it is often a privileged incarnation, dance represents sensing’s constitutive desire, a desire on which is based its surpassing in art: it is a movement by appropriation without object, heightened by what appeas- es it. As Valéry writes, the dancing body “seems to be concerned only with itself and one other object, a very important one, from which it breaks free, to which it returns, but only to gather the wherewithal for another flight . . .” (Dance, 1397/204–5).

—————— 9. Henri Maldiny, Regard, Parole, Espace (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1973), 142. 10. Paul Valéry, “Philosophie de la danse,” in Oeuvres I, 1390–403, here 1400; Eng- lish translation: “Philosophy of the Dance, in Aesthetics, 197–211, here 207–8. Hence- forth cited as Dance followed by French and English page references, respectively.

Recollection, Mourning, and the Absolute Past: On Husserl, Freud, and Derrida

Christian Lotz University of Kansas

“Himmlische nemlich sind Unwillig, wenn eines nicht die Seele schonend sich Zusammengenommen, aber es muß doch; dem Gleich fehlet die Trauer.” 1 – Hölderlin, “Mnemosyne”

§ 1. Introduction Within the context of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in general, but also within the context of considerations that come out of Husserl’s phenomenology of time, his attempts to analyze memory, remembering, and recollection are of central importance. Throughout his entire career Husserl made several rigorous attempts to understand the constitution of the past not only in regard to the individual, but also in regard to the intersubjective and historical dimension of these concepts. In what follows, the focus will be particularly on certain aspects of the intuitive past that is constituted in acts, even though a full account of a phenomenology of the past will always be pushed beyond the past life of an individual. This essay will not integrate a) the emotional dimension, b) the practical dimension, c) the narrative and symbolic dimension, d) forgetting, promising and forgiving, or e) the intersubjective, cultural, and historical problems that are connected to a philosophy of recollection and memory. However, these basic distinctions do imply that—following Husserl—we are able to describe and analyze a basic level of remembering and memory that is not narrative, although a life identity and a self is certainly not thinkable with- —————— 1. Friedrich Hölderlin, “Mnemosyne,” in Hesperische Gesänge, ed. D. E. Sattler (Bre- men: Neue Bremer Presse, 2001), 64–66, here 66; English translation: “Mnemosyne,” in Hymns and Fragments, trans. Richard Sieburth (Princeton: Princeton University, 1984), 118: “For the Gods grow / Indignant if a man / Not gather himself to save / His soul, yet he has no choice; like- / Wise, mourning is in error.”

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 121–41 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 122 CHRISTIAN LOTZ out its narrative and symbolic constitution. According to Husserl, the intuitive level founds the narrative level.2 Specifically, the guiding intention here is to explore one central aspect of a phenomenology of memory, namely the relation between recollection and mourning. Our claim is that Husserl’s analysis of recollection and retention lends itself to the inclusion of non-Husserlian topics, such as a) a fundamental absence in consciousness, not within the lived present, but within one’s past, which leads us to the consequence that b) indeed, as Jacques Derrida claims, transcendental subjectivity cannot be thought of as the possibility of full self- presence, as well as that c) it must lead us to an inclusion of concepts such as mourning, and especially death. Phenomenological debates of the last two decades have often dealt with the development of Derrida’s early thinking, which is heavily dependent on the critique of Husserl’s distinction between expression and indication that he draws in the first of his Logical Investigations. In addition, in Speech and Phe- nomena3 Derrida develops a critique of Husserl’s phenomenological method as well as of his phenomenology of time consciousness, particularly of the concept of presence that is implied in Husserl’s analysis of the phenomenon of time. Several attempts have been made to critically explore Derrida’s interpretation of these aspects in Husserl’s philosophy, though it is rather infrequent- —————— 2. For this claim see Edward Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloom- ington: Indiana University, 1987), 45; see also Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and its Limits (London: Routledge, 1997), 441, who claims that memory is “preverbal,” whereas Gilbert Ryle seems to claim that the act of remembering is intrinsically a narrative skill (Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind [New York: Barnes and Noble, 1949], 276: “verbal narration”); see also Ryle, Concept of Mind, 274: “Reminiscence and not-forgetting are neither ‘sources’ of knowledge, nor, if this is any different, ways of getting to know.” Paul Ri- coeur, but also David Carr and Laszlo Tengelyi have convincingly shown that the constitution of one’s own past leads always back to phenomenological questions about narrative history. In Husserl, the problem is indicated by the distinction between structure and genesis of meaning, according to which the analysis of meaning is necessarily pushed back to its (historical) genesis. Jacques Derrida deals with this problem especially in his early essay “Structure and Genesis in Husserl’s Phenomenology” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980), 154–68. As is well-known in phenomenological debates, already here Derrida claims that a structural analysis of consciousness is confronted with the fact that the structure itself is never “closed.” The attempt to analyze a structure (closure) is based on its impossibility. Husserl encounters the historical dimension already in Ideas I when he explains how a phenomenon cannot be fully clarified within its present horizons, but is already dependent upon something that has been constituted before (history). Phenomenological clarification is only possible because it presupposes a fundamental moment of incomprehensibility. Only because phenomena are based on a moment of incomprehension, are we forced to clarify a phenomenon. 3. Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phénomènon. Introduction au problème du signe dans la phénomènologie de Husserl (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967); English translation: Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1973). REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 123 ly the case that commentators who work within the Husserlian tradition develop topics that Derrida introduced in his writings in his later texts.4 We do not have to overthrow the Husserlian framework of thinking if we are interested in including some of Derrida’s and Ricoeur’s ideas; rather, an extension of Husserl’s thinking is called for.5 In this vein, I shall show that Husserl’s analysis of the distinction between retention and recollection (re-presentation, presentification, Vergegenwärtigung)6 takes into account a basic “un- —————— 4. See, e.g., Natalie Alexander, “The Hollow Deconstruction of Time,” in William McKenna and Claude Evans, eds., Derrida and Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), 121–50. Derrida describes his general relation to Husserl with the following words: “Something that I learned from the great figures in the history of philosophy, from Husserl in particular, is the necessity of posing transcendental questions in order not to be held within the fragility of an incompetent empiricist discourse, and thus it is in order to avoid empiricism, positivism and psychologism that it is endlessly necessary to renew transcendental questioning” (Jacques Derrida, “Remarks on Deconstruction and Prag- matism,” in Chantal Mouffe, ed., Deconstruction and Pragmatism (London: Routledge 1996), 77–91, here 81. 5. David Krell (in agreement with Heidegger’s general critique) claims that Husserl’s phenomenology of memory and remembering is based on the wrong ideal of epistemological objectivity, by “mathematical imagination,” (David F. Krell, “Phenomenology of Mem- ory from Husserl to Merleau-Ponty,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 42 (1987), 492–505, here 499, which, according to Krell, led to a general “distortion of phenomena” (ibid., 497). The analysis that I develop in this paper is opposed to this position. What Krell presents in his article as counterexamples are empirical descriptions of experiences. For instance, he claims against Husserl’s tone example, which Husserl refers to in his Phenome- nology of Inner Time Consciousness, that one is not able to reconstitute a full melody when one recalls it. However, Husserl does not claim that one is empirically able to recall the full melody; rather, he claims that ideally one is able to do so. In other words, the eidetic description of the phenomenon of recollection necessarily includes the moment that we must be able to reconstitute the full melody, since otherwise one would not know that it was a melody, and not only tones. The melody in an act of recollection can be given and intended in an empty mode, that is, one might not be able to recall all phases of the melody. However, that one intends “the” melody implies that the time phenomenon has at least a beginning point and is a unity; for this see Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vor- lesgungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, ed. Margot Fleischer, Husserliana XI (Dor- drecht: Kluwer, 1970), 202; English translation: Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans. Anthony Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 253 (henceforth cited as ‘Hua XI’ with German and English page references, respectively). 6. English translations of German key terms are very difficult, since they lack the literal sense that these terms have in German. The main problem seems to be that the English terms have their roots in Latin (‘remembering’, ‘memory’, ‘reminisce’ go back to memorari). The terms Gegenwart and Vergegenwaertigung (re-presentation, presentification) are composed of gegen (towards) and wart (similar to waiting). Zukunft literally means something to come, something that is (already) coming and arriving. A crucial distinction has to be made between Erinnerung (memory) und Gedächtnis (memory), both terms of which are important for Hegel in his Encyclopaedia as well as for Heidegger’s What Is Called Thinking? The German Gedächtnis (memory) points to the term ‘thought’ (Gedanke), and erinnern (remembering, remembrance) points to something that becomes actively internalized, that is to say, to something that is turned into one’s own and belongs to one’s inner life. In English 124 CHRISTIAN LOTZ availability” of one’s past life, which Husserl calls in his Analyses of Passive Syn- thesis “being-in-itself.” The process of fulfillment within the sphere of memory and remembering refers to a being of one’s life that has to be laid out as something in-itself, and hence as that which escapes the possibility of a re-presentation. The past life as being-for the subject is a result of remembering and recollection. Consequently, the phenomenology of transcendental subjectivity is pushed beyond its limits, given that it must acknowledge something that remains absolutely “foreign” in consciousness. The possibility of recollecting one’s past is, to put it in Derrida’s terms, its impossibility, since the constitution of one’s past is only possible through a fundamental absence and the impossibility of truthfully recollecting it. This concept leads us to an inclusion of Freudian conceptions, such as mourning and melancholia, as well as to the insight that—as Derrida claims in his Memoires for Paul de Man—memory is a form of mourning. Given this, we must come to the conclusion that memory, in the form of acts of recollection, is based on a fundamental absence, which indicates the finitude of subjectivity itself. The fact that in every act of recollection a moment of loss is already inscribed, shifts our analysis to a constitutive relation between recollection and death. These reflections will push my considerations ultimately beyond Husserl, whose thought comes to its limits regarding topics such as loss, forgetting, and death.7 In § 2 I shall unfold Husserl’s thesis that consciousness is unable to constitute itself for itself as a unified consciousness without recollection, as well as without encountering an in-itself of its own being, the thesis of which is central for Husserl’s attempt to understand subjectivity in the Analyses of Passive Syn- thesis.8 The result of this position is that a past (life) becomes something essen- —————— the difference between “recalling” (points to voice) and “recollection” (points to gathering and synthesis) is important. In recollection one re-unifies oneself with oneself and gathers oneself together. In addition to this, we must keep in mind that Heidegger tries to establish a connection between Gedanke (thought) and Denken (thinking) and Dank (thanks). Since thinking, according to Heidegger’s later writings, is dependent on something that is given to it (Gabe, gift, present) in thought, namely being, it confirms and thanks as thinking for what is given prior to it as a gift, and which has to be thought of in thinking. 7. Several commentators have claimed that Husserl developed demanding concepts of the unconscious as well as of death and absence in his later writings. In principle, I agree with these commentaries; I remain rather skeptical though about the depth of Husserl’s attempts. For instance, the problem of death, given the attention that was given to it after Husserl, is absent from Husserl’s writings. For Husserl, death is an innerwordly event, that is to say, it belongs to the empirical and anthropological level of world constitution. Husserl was never able to conceive death as a substantial philosophical problem, since, according to Husserl, absolute time consciousness does not have a beginning and an end. It cannot die. He neither made a Heideggerian move, that is to say, 1) he did not realize that death has to do with the relation of the subject towards its beginning and end, nor did he make a Levinasian or Derridian move, since 2) he did not consider that the subject is unable to represent (recollect) its death’s status, the latter point of which is the topic of this paper. 8. Husserl’s term Wiedererinnerung is rendered as ‘recollection’ here since the wieder (= ‘re’) mirrors the English ‘re-collection’. REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 125 tially unavailable and inaccessible since the process of recollecting ideally refers to a being-in-itself of the recollected past. In § 3 I shall relate Husserl’s analysis to Derrida’s attempt to rethink the relation between memory and mourning with the inclusion of a few remarks on Sigmund Freud. In particular, I shall show that Derrida’s thoughts on mourning, if reconsidered within the Husser- lian framework of recollection, are convincing and thus can be taken as a substantial extension of Husserl’s phenomenology of memory and recollection.

§ 2. Remembering, Recollection, and the Constitution of the Past (Husserl) Although they are basic and well-known in Husserl research, we recall two distinctions that Husserl draws, namely: 1) the difference between eidetic (structural) and genetic analysis, as well as 2) the difference between retention and recollection. 1) A phenomenological analysis of remembering and recollection can be carried out in different ways, two of which are eidetic and genetic analysis: either we ask how we have to understand the specificity of acts of remembering, or we ask how acts of remembering are fulfilled and constituted within our dy- namically constituted lives. The first analysis is static, the second dynamic, or— in Husserl’s terms—genetic. The first analysis is based on an eidetic question, that is, we try to find out which criteria the act of remembering differentiate from other acts, such as acts of imagination or anticipation; the second analysis is based on a genetic question, according to which we try to find out how and in which cases phenomena constitute themselves through certain acts, such as remembering, imagination, narration, etc. In other words, the structural and eidetic description of acts provides us with ideal and conceptual differences between acts, in addition to which we could present ontological considerations, such as considering the distinction between person, life, psyche, body, and life- world. The genetic description of acts focuses on the temporal constitution of our lives and the constitution of acts within the “flow” of consciousness. For instance, the analysis of phenomena such as recalling, different types of association, and the different temporal chains of remembered acts, as worked out by Husserl in Analyses of Passive Synthesis, is a genetic analysis, since it explains how certain structures are constituted in time, whereas the pure essential (conceptual) analysis of remembering in contrast to imagination or perception, as worked out in Ideas I,9 is a static analysis.10 In the following, I will address both questions without an explicit differentiation, though I am aware of it. —————— 9. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuh- mann, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983). 10. Ultimately, both forms of phenomenological analysis cannot be separated, espe- 126 CHRISTIAN LOTZ

2) As is well known, the main distinction within the phenomenological field of memory and time that Husserl develops in his earlier writings is the distinction between retention and recollection, that is, the distinction between primary and secondary remembering.11 I will, however, discuss this later, after some preparatory considerations. First, it is important to note that “retention” is the non-reproductive consciousness of the have-been within the lived present and “protention” the consciousness of the “to come” (the arrival), whereas recollection or secondary remembering is reproductive.12 Here is an example: while I am speaking, I am aware of the beginning and the end of the current phase of my speaking, that is, I have an awareness of time while I utter the sentence ‘Certain American philosophers have resent- ments towards European philosophy’. If I would not be aware of the “have- been” of the uttered phrase, I would neither be able to come back and to return to the beginning point nor would I know that the phrase had a beginning point. However, when asked after I uttered the sentence what it is that I uttered, I will immediately be able to say ‘Certain American . . .’ The point is that at all times I am conscious (of) the beginning point of the phrase while the phrase is uttered in its temporal “flow.” In addition, while I am uttering the sentence, I am aware that something is to come. Otherwise, I would at each moment have to consider how I want to finish my sentence; instead I am all the time ahead of myself (to use Heidegger’s language). It is neither the case that consciousness in my present has to be described as a series of points in time nor is it the case that consciousness in my present must be defined as a single moment in time, as if consciousness were jumping from one moment to the next. Rather, my consciousness is a temporal unity and synthesis while I am continually experiencing my world within and in the form of a “lived present.” The lived present is the temporal—ecstatic—unity of the “has been” of the temporal phase as well as of its “now” point and the “to come” of its future. Past, present, and future in this sense are three moments of the lived present; they cannot be described as being after each other. The immediate future does not come after the present and the immediate past does not come before the present, the thought of which would already presuppose a temporal order between two points in time. Husserl usually gives tonal or musical examples to illustrate this. For instance, while listening to Tristan’s and Isolde’s —————— cially since every genetic analysis presupposes the eidetic analysis. For a discussion of the distinction within the context of Jacob Klein’s interpretation of Husserl, see Burt Hopkins, “Jacob Klein and the Phenomenology of History,” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy I (2001), 67–110, esp. 79–89. 11. For an overview of the aspects of this distinction see Casey, Remembering, 49. 12. Therefore Husserl remarks that the term “primary remembering” is not well chosen, since retentional consciousness is not a form of re-presentation (see Edmund Husserl, Die ‘Bernauer Manuskripte’ über das Zeitbewußtsein (1917/18), ed. Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar, Husserliana XXXIII [Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001], 55). REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 127 death song, I am aware of the beginning phase of a tone or tone segment, while already being aware of the coming “moment.” From this primary remembering (retention) we must differentiate acts of recollection that are intentional, which are therefore based on a moment of repetition. I can only re-collect or re-member something that has already gone through my lived present. In addition, acts of recollection have a reference to the ego or ‘I’, and can be fulfilled or modalized. In other words, recollection is reproductive consciousness. Let me briefly turn my attention to the phenomenon of recollection. In the natural attitude, it is usual to think of memories as being “in us” (I shall later come back to this “in us,” when I talk about Freud and Derrida); we conceive them via certain concepts, such as ‘brain’, and we refer to their being by using metaphors, such as a ‘store’ of objects in our head.13 Although we find it philosophically puzzling to move from a conscious process of thought to a memory object that is “stored” in nerves and cells, within the natural attitude we continue to think of our mental life as an empirical phenomenon that we can observe from outside. In this vein, we could think of two main characterizations of recollecting consciousness: 1) we might think that acts of remembering are a form of picture consciousness, or 2) we might think that they are a weaker form of perceptional consciousness. Husserl rejects both possibilities and tries to analyze remembering and memory in their own right by giving justice to the phenomenon of recollection itself. According to Husserl, recollection is a specific eidetic type of intuitive act and consciousness, which is—in outline and simplified for the purpose of this paper—characterized by the following five characteristics: 2.1) the act of recollection is not a form of sign or picture consciousness, 2.2) it is not a weaker form of perception, 2.3) it is connected to the whole referential and intentional system of one’s life (monad), 2.4) the fulfillment and “truth” of recollection can only be found internally, the point of which leads us, finally, to the consequence 2.5) that all acts of recollection refer to a being-in-itself of one’s own past, without the possibility of ever fully representing it (the phenomenon of an “absolute past”). The reason for the claim that the past can never be fully represented, and therefore that it must be partly conceived as a fundamental absence, can be seen in the fundamental difference between retention and recollection, which ulti- —————— 13. For an overview of the metaphorical changes throughout history see Douwe Draaisma, Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas about the Mind, trans. Paul Vincent (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2000): ‘house’, ‘storage’, ‘pit’, ‘hard drive’, ‘disk’, ‘book’, ‘library’, ‘writing pad’, ‘phonograph’, ‘photographic plate’, ‘computer’ were very successful and point to the cultural and technological context of theories of memory. 128 CHRISTIAN LOTZ mately will lead to the inclusion of Freudian and Derridian topics in the present considerations. Toward this end, the five aforementioned characteristics of recollection will first be developed.

§ 2.1. Recollection is not Picture Consciousness The naive and usually material view of consciousness (that our “memories” and “data” are stored somewhere in our brain) normally leads to a “naive metaphysics” of the natural attitude; and naive philosophies that are based on it define recollection by a representational14 or picture theory of consciousness. Husserl himself propounded a similar view in his early philosophy. He thought that acts of recollection are representative acts.15 In this vein, one could think of recollection as a presentation of the past via a picture or sign, but on closer inspection such a view is unconvincing. If the consciousness that we call recollection would indeed be a “picture consciousness,” then the given part of what is past would refer to something that it is not. In other words, the remembered past would consist of a present picture of something that is not present, but is referred to through the picture or sign, both of which are distinguished and analyzed as separate types of consciousness by Husserl. For instance, when I look at a photo, the perceived “material thing” points me to something that it is not, namely to the “real” picture or the motif, of which the material representant is a picture. Put differently, picture and sign consciousness are based on negativi- ty and a “negation-consciousness,” a view that was also held by Sartre. If we take a closer look at the consciousness that I have of a remembered thing or event, then we see that it is based neither on a sign or picture nor does it refer to something that it is not; rather, the recollected is presented to me as what it is. We do not find a substitute “in” recollecting consciousness that might be interpreted as a sign for or a picture of something other than itself. The type of consciousness of a photo of me reading for the first time Being and Time, is not identical with the type of consciousness of the recollected moment in my life. Recollection is not—as a representation theory would assume—a “passage consciousness” (Durchgangsbewußtsein). For in the act of recollection, the recollected is itself presented, though not in the form of a perception.

§ 2.2. Recollection is not a Weaker Form of Perception However this may be, the act of recollection must not be confused with a “weaker” act of perceiving, simply because the recollected is presented in —————— 14. At this point the translation of terms becomes difficult, since Vergegenwärtigung is not representional consciousness, according to Husserl, although most of the translators translate vergegenwärtigen with ‘representation’. ‘Presentification’ might be better. Accord- ingly, I indicate in this paper the problematic by using the expression ‘re-presentation’. 15. For this see Husserl’s early manuscripts in Edmund Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewußt- sein, Erinnerung, ed. Eduard Marbach, Husserliana XXIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1980), 55. REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 129 recollecting consciousness as past. Husserl needed years to formulate an appropriate description of this phenomenon.16 In sum, the remembered noema, the cogitatum of an act of recollection, has a special time index, since it does not appear as present, but as past. The temporal index, in other words, appears in addition to the remembered event or thing. This leads us to conclude that recollection is not a “lesser” form of perception, in which something is just given in an unclear, blurred or “weaker” manner than it is in a “normal” perception. Rather, perception and recollection are different types of acts altogether. Moreover, according to Husserl, perception and recollection are performed by positing consciousness, which refers to being, whereas—in contrast to perception and recollection—imagination refers to something that is not posited, but is—in his words—“neutralized.”17 Put differently, everything is totally clear in an act of recollection, the remembered is “in front of my eyes” and presents itself, even if I might ask whether the remembered is authentically remembered. Only in the latter sense are we allowed to talk about the lack of clarity in our acts of recollection.18 However, we must still differentiate between two temporal modes, within which something can appear: something can appear either as something that is given as present (perception) or as something that is given as past (recollection). The problem of the distinction between recollection, imagination, and perception is not primarily a problem of what is given in these acts; rather, the problem involves the consciousness and givenness of time that is given with the remembered noema, or, put differently, the crucial phenomenon is the temporal mode in which the how of the cogitatum is given.

§ 2.3. Recollection and its Truth (Fulfillment) Given that the act of recollection is not a sign or picture consciousness, we must come to an important consequence, namely to the consequence that recollecting acts are internally referenced. Put differently, acts of recol- —————— 16. The best description of the details of this central point are given in Rudolf Bernet, “Husserls Begriff des Phantasiebewußtseins als Fundierung von Freuds Begriff des Unbe- wußten,” in Christoph Jamme, ed., Grundlinien der Vernunftkritik (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1997), 277–306. 17. I cannot go into detail at this point. In sum, according to Husserl’s Ideas I, imagination (phantasy) is a neutralized act of recollection; see also Paolo Volonte, Husserls Phänomenologie der Imagination. Zur Funktion der Phantasie bei der Konstitution von Er- kenntnis (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1997). Section 2 of the Bernau manuscripts on time is very clear in this regard. Imagination is a type of consciousness that “quasi-posits” its noema (see Hua XXXIII, 55). 18. Casey calls this feature ‘schematicalness’ (Casey, Remembering, 45). Krell misses this point in his remarks on Husserl; he does not realize that Husserl—although he follows, as Krell claims, a “visual” language (by giving acoustic examples)—does not claim that recollection is similar to perception. See Krell, Phenomenology of Memory, 495. 130 CHRISTIAN LOTZ lection refer to acts of the same type; the “intentional reference” of memory is memory. Let me further explain this. There is no access to the past such that I could ever check my memory in the sense demanded by a picture theory of representation. I cannot immediately know whether my single act of recollection involves a “true” recollection, I can only find recollection as it exists in itself and within a “contest” (Wettstreit; Hua XI, 194/245) of different acts of the same kind. This is the only way of discerning whether it does in fact present my own past or not.19 Ultimately, then, I can only check reports that the other makes about my past in terms of my own intuition and evidence. Of course, I might believe and trust reports that others give about my past, but then I am already referred to the symbolic and narrative level of the constitution of the past (which requires language). If I want to find out if something “really” happened in my past, then I have to go back to my own acts of recollection, although empirically it might be the case that most of the time it is difficult to differentiate between imagination and true and false recollections. An example: Suppose that I remember sitting in a German school for my philosophy examination fifteen years ago when I finished high school. Sup- pose that for whatever reason I try to become clearer about my memories, since I cannot remember well if I really sat in a philosophy examination. Of course, I could ask other people or consult photos of my past life, but this would finally only lead to a symbolic, significative or narrative constitution of my past. If I want to fulfill my attempts to remember my past in a German high school, then I am forced to try to find the truth about my past life merely internally and intuitively, that is to say, I have to try to remember my past better than I did before. I have to go “in me” and try to remember “better” —————— 19. This thesis includes that there is, indeed, no criterion for a “false memory,” if one does not find a contesting act of recollection. Krell also misses this point in his Husserl interpretation, since he claims that Husserl believes in an intrinsic quality of an act of remembering that shows evidence for its truth or falsehood. However, the process of fulfillment and disappointment of intentional acts is a genetic phenomenon, and it requires a modalization of the intentional act. The latter presupposes that a recollection becomes—for what ever reason—doubted or problematic. See for the analysis of modalization especially the first two sections in Hua XI. In addition, Krell claims that Husserl does not take into account that an act of imagination can interfere with acts of remembering. Of course, acts of remembering and acts of imagination almost always interfere with each other. The point is that eidetically conceived Husserl is primarily interested in the pure possibilities of acts of remembering. The eidetic level is based on a criterion of distinguishing between recollection and imagination. Krell’s arguments are not absolutely wrong, but seen from Husserl’s point of view psy- chologistic, and hence they misconstrue Husserl’s analysis. See for the latter context Krell, Phenomenology of Memory, 501. Finally, Krell maintains that Merleau-Ponty is aware of the crucial role of forgetting and preserving within the constitution of memory, a point of which he also overlooks in Husserl’s analysis, which shows that the difference between retention and recollection is forgetting, though it is true that Husserl was not fully aware of the central topic of forgetting for the whole context of life, history and autobiography. REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 131

(with the help of others or symbolic processes) what happened. In Husserl’s words, this would lead to either 1) an internal change of my acts, that is to say, to an intuitive fulfillment of empty acts, or 2) a contest between different acts, which would in turn lead to a modalization of the noematic and given content (I shall return to this point when I discuss the monadic reference system). A reference to the present school building, as one might argue, will not help, since—as we have learned above—in this case I would perceive the school now (for instance, I could travel to my hometown and check if the school is still there). However, even if I found out that the school is there, my discovery will not give me the final and certain answer to the question if I really, that is to say, in truth, sat in this building and took philosophy classes in high school. If I really want to find out if I really sat in this building, then I am forced to go back to my intuitive acts. No logic and no rationality and no symbolic process (i.e. photos, descriptions of other people) will give me the final criterion of the truth of my acts of recollection, although most of the time they will help me recall my past. In other words, the certainty of my past, the truth of my past, is ultimately private and up to my own memory. It is, to put it in modern terms, a first person matter. The truth of memory, in other words, is memory itself. This is a puzzling fact, to which I will turn greater attention later. I shall now turn to the fourth aspect of recollection, as outlined above.

§ 2.4. Recollection and the Intentional Reference System The assumption that the past is in some sense “behind” the present is incorrect. Against this, we must analyze the past as something that is a constitutive moment of the temporalization of the lived life itself. The past is something that is part of the temporal constitution of someone’s life as a whole. Recollection, therefore, is the very act through which one maintains one’s own dynamic identity and unity while being present and being towards the future. What does it mean to talk of a past life in this way? We are intuitively familiar with the idea of a unified past of ourselves. When I recall an episode of my high school years, for example, I know immediately that this episode is one sequence within my whole past. I know that there is a permanent connection between this episode and my present life. Even if I can remember only a few things and am unable to remember what happened after the episode in question, I know with absolute certainty that another sequence followed.20 If this continuity of my life were not available to me, I would be forced to think that either my past life consisted of “jumps” from experience to experience or that it was a matter of permanently passing away and coming to be. 21 Yet I know —————— 20. For a similar description, but without reference to Husserl, see Casey, Remem- bering, 40. 21. Russell claims that memory is “is not a heap of events, but a series” (Russell, Hu- man Knowledge, 227). 132 CHRISTIAN LOTZ that in all the years “behind” me, no such lack occurred, and I even assume that were my faculties less imperfect I could potentially present my whole past to myself. Should someone claim that he or she had not existed in his or her youth for a particular period of time, one could respond by pointing out that whilst recollection of particular episodes of one’s youth might be impossible, the negation of a whole past life is patently absurd. One must, then, conclude, with Husserl, that with every “updating” of even a single act of recollection, “the whole consciousness of the past is recalled [mitwecken], from which the particular recalled and reproduced detail becomes apparent” (Hua XI, 122/167). Every recollection of my past implies intentionally the whole monad or the whole life, and given the iterability of intentional acts, that life can be represented and proved (bewähren) over and over again. A central Husserlian insight follows from this, namely, that my whole life is always potentially included in my lived present;22 for every change of belief concerning a particular act of recollection involves a modification of the whole past; all intentional references undergo change. We will later see that this thought is not convincing. An example can illustrate this point. Suppose I now remember my visit in my friend’s house and remember that while there I talked to Mr. X. Suppose further, that I met Mr. X a few days later and he informed me that he was not at my friend’s house during the days I remembered meeting him. Suppose that I would indeed suddenly notice that my act of recollection was not correct, and that I talked to Mrs. X instead. In this case the intuitive component of my recollection would undergo change. My recollection in this case would be accompanied by an “abundance of clarity” that produces a “modified belief”;23 it is now intuitively clear to me that I did not in fact speak with Mr. X at all, but with Mrs. X. Any changing in the subjective act of recollection brings about similar change in the noema, that is, the correlate, as well. The earlier case will be “crossed out,” as Husserl puts it, and from now on I know intuitively that I talked to Mrs. X and I will thus remember her presence on the occasion in question. The crucial phenomenon is the following: From the moment of change (modalization) on, I will also remember my mistake (Ent-Täuschung) and this is part of what Husserl means by “crossing out” (see Hua XI, § 2): because every —————— 22. This position is not reached by Husserl in Ideas I, since there he introduces the concept of intentional potentiality only in regard to the implicit background of explicit cogito-consciousness, whereas in Cartesian Meditations potentiality is conceived as the a potentiality of the whole intentional reference system of one’s life (monad). See Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser, Husserliana I (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1973), § 33; English translation of the former: Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960), § 33. 23. Husserl deals with noetic and noematic modalization of the Urdoxa in Ideas I, see § 103. REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 133 recollection refers to its intentional horizons of time, by negating some intentional implications and associations of my past not just a particular event but the whole monad is transformed. I establish new temporal connections within new frames of reference and from now on other experiences will be connected to this new structure. Further, since expectations are characterized by repetitions of my past as recollecting ahead (Vorerinnerung), my whole structure of anticipations changes as well.24 For instance, from the change of my recollection it will follow that I became aware that certain actions that followed from my wrong recollection (I talked to Mr. X) are becoming modified as well. The letter that I wrote to Mr. X in order to thank him for his polite- ness during our talk will produce an “embarrassed index,” since from now on I know that I should have written the letter to Mrs. X, and not to Mr. X. All references that are connected to my former belief (I met Mr. X) will change their status and be modified. Let me now turn to the last aspect of the phenomenology of recollection.

§ 2.5. Recollection and the Possibility of an Absolute Past Husserl does assume a permanent modification of monadic being, but he never gives up his thesis that ideally all acts of recollection can fulfill themselves apodictically. This apodicticity is present in every act of recollecting, however weak the acts themselves might be. Accordingly, every reference to my past is based on my “true” or “authentic” being (Hua XI, 208/260). This is an ideal correlate of all of my possible acts of recollecting to which those acts refer, which are simultaneously proved within the acts of recollection themselves. Although I might be confused about the contents of my own past, it is impossible to transform and negate my past being as such. This eventuality would be tantamount to the collapse of consciousness itself, a point that Husserl makes when he speaks of the “being-in-itself of one’s own past.” Behind every modification, modalization, and alteration, lies not only the possibility of trans- porting the flow of consciousness (Bewußtseinsverlauf) and the unity of my life back in harmony (Einstimmigkeit), but also an ideal possibility to refer, by recollecting, to an unequivocal past. This unequivocal being escapes from my access (unverfügbar). In this connection, Husserl writes in his manuscripts on intersubjectivity: “Modalization or deception in relation to myself all the time concerns my relative Being . . . , but not my Being as such, that is, my concrete Being, which lives and has lived its life” (Hua XV, 451). As either the ideal possibility of the totality of intersubjective world-perspectives or all experiences of —————— 24. See Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus den Nachlaß. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 418. 134 CHRISTIAN LOTZ one thing, my past is something phenomenologically in-itself. This leads me to the final aspect of Husserl’s insights into recollection and memory, namely, the ontological status of the past, that is to say, the concept of an “absolute past.”25 In a central passage in the Analyses of Passive Synthesis, Husserl asks whether the temporal constitution of subjectivity would be possible if we had only primary retentional remembering rather than secondary recollecting of our experiencing (Erlebnisse). He says: “But could subjectivity in truth have its own past, could we speak meaningfully of this ‘having’ if in principle every possibility of remembering were lacking . . . ?” (Hua XI, 124/169). This question is of central importance for the question with which I am dealing here, since it opens a path for including a concept of absence and loss within the analysis of transcendental subjectivity without leaving the Husserlian framework of thinking.26 What Husserl has in mind is the following: The subject as an identifiable unity can only be constituted through repetitions and through recollections.27 Without recollection (but with living through as the lived present) we would never be able to constitute an identifiable past, the consequence of which is that the past of a subject is exclusively constituted through recollection and not through retention.28 Put differently, to speak of one’s past necessarily includes —————— 25. Husserl’s attempt to reduce ontological questions to “epistemological” questions is clearly overturned in his phenomenology of recollection. Seebohm’s thesis that all ontological questions should be reduced to phenomenological questions is problematic in the discussed context of memory and recollection. He claims that Husserl’s project can only be defended if ontological questions are radically excluded, although Husserl himself is not always clear about the status of ontology in his philosophy; see Thomas Seebohm, “The Apo- dicticity of Absence,” in McKenna and Evans, eds., Derrida and Phenomenology, 195–200, here 186–87. 26. The other puzzling question is the question of why there is a difference between retention and recollection, or between primary and secondary memory. It is unclear why consciousness transcends itself within the lived present. A possible attempt to explain the gap between retention and recollection is the hypothesis that it has to do with the other. For a first attempt to solve the problem see Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wis- senschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (Dor- drecht: Kluwer, 1976), 196; English translation: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1970), 185. 27. It becomes immediately clear how Heidegger transforms this thought in Being and Time into a practical category. Repetition is conceived by Heidegger as the “proper” understanding of Dasein that conceives the past as future—and therefore as a repeatable—possibility, through which resolute action becomes possible. In addition, the importance of recollection for the constitution of one’s life within a narrative is another level of constitution that is not addressed in Husserl; for an overview of these levels see David Carr, Time, Narrative and History (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1986), esp. chap. 3. 28. Some commentators have claimed that even in terms of what he himself calls ‘self- reference’ (Selbstbezug), Husserl’s phenomenology lacks the resources to investigate the life history or the past of a subject. This thesis is exaggerated, although Husserl never fully investigated the relation between narrative elements, time and the constitution of the past life REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 135 the possibility of recollection. The reason for this thesis is the following: we could live within an ongoing lived present, but we are able to talk about a unity and an identifiable being-for-itself of a life and consciousness only by being aware of the processes of recollection mentioned above. What is at issue here is the possibility of a unified subjective life at all, which is made possible through the delay and deferral between retention and recollection. Put differently, a constitution of time through the passive synthesis of the lived present would give us a primitive notion of life, even though it does not provide us with a notion of subjectivity, the concept of which presupposes at least a minimal distance from itself, that is, from its own presence. Husserl himself (but not Derrida in Speech and Phenomena) claims that a past can only be, and that the subject can only have a real past, if there is a difference between retention and recollection. Consequently, consciousness is not self-transparent because subjectivity is only possible through recollection. The point is that the retentional process of modification (Abwandlungsprozeß) and the original temporalization (Urzeitigung) of consciousness is not identifying, and this then means that we can talk about a self or a subject only on the level at which an “I” performs the acts through the acts of recollection themselves.29 In other words: a past life as past is constituted only in recollection; and for this reason it cannot be described as a “blind” personal history. Put still differently, without the possibility of repetition we would not have—as Husserl puts it—a unified life; rather, we would only live it. The past would not appear as past, for the possibility of having a past is the difference between present and past. This difference is not constituted on the level of the unified present, but is presup- posed for recollection. Our life would be an ongoing lived present with retentional and protentional processes, but it would not be accessible as such. It would not be there, since there would not be (!) anything I could possibly refer —————— of an individual, a group of people or the whole history. See, e.g., Laszlo Tengelyi, Der Zwitterbegriff Lebensgeschichte (Munich: Fink, 1998), 103. 29. Interestingly, Husserl later thought himself that the relation between the present ego and the remembered ego could be described in term of an intersubjective relation. The past is the very being that appears to me as the past of an other. Consequently, the intersubjective relation in Cartesian Meditation as well as in the Crisis is described as a consciousness of Vergegenwärtigung (remembering, re-presentation). See Hua I, § 45; see Hua VI, 189/186; see Hua XV, 309, 344; within the context of Derrida’s critique of Husserl’s concept of presence see James Mensch, “Derrida–Husserl: Towards a Phenomenology of Language,” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy I (2001), 1–66, here 22. The “now,” as Derrida correctly claims, is in the Bernau manuscripts indeed conceived as an absolute presence. The hyletic primordial presence is both self-presence of the hyle and consciousness of it as being present (see Hua XXXIII, 58). This leads to the well known problems of how to conceive self-consciousness in regard to the hyletic level of experience. In the Bernau manuscripts Husserl also still uses the language of “sensation data” (Empfindungsdatum), which shows that he—at least in these manuscripts—had not overcome the sensualistic theory of consciousness. 136 CHRISTIAN LOTZ to. In order to recollect something in my life, in order to recollect and gather myself, I must refer to something that is there beyond my lived present.30 Let me further explain this crucial point: recollection alone allows us to speak of an identifiable past. For instance, a tone impression that is present within the retentional horizon of my lived present is within the lived present unidentifiable. Instead it is just self-consciously given, and it first becomes identifiable through an act of recollection of this impression as retentional and as an impression. Asked by someone else “What did you hear?” I am able to say that I listened to something (thanks to retention), but I must recollect in order know that it was “a tone.” Otherwise, according to Husserl, the tone as past tone, that is, the being of the heard tone “in me” would not have been constituted as a phenomenon that belongs to a subject. In the quote above Husserl uses a terminology that he takes over from Kant. To speak of an “in-itself,” as Husserl surprisingly does, implies the claim that there “is” a level of constitution “in us” that is not accessible through recollection and re-presentation, though re-presentation is constitutive for subjectivity.31 This thought is deeply puzzling within the Husserlian framework of thought, since the consequence of it is that the lived present must transcend itself; life must go beyond itself, if we can speak of subjectivity at all. Transcend- ing the living present is the same as becoming other, and recollection is both repetition and, since repetition is always repetition of something, difference. At this point it is instructive to look to Derrida’s concept of an “absolute past, not reducible to any form of presence.”32 Derrida claims in his early interpretation of Husserl that Husserl’s analysis of time consciousness does not account for a fundamental absence within the lived present, which then leads, according to Derrida, to the impossibility of a full self-presence of the subject. Derrida writes: Without reducing the abyss which may indeed separate retention from representation, without hiding the fact that the problem of their relationship is none other than that of the history of ‘life’ and of life’s becoming conscious, we should be able to say a priori that their common root—the possibility of re-petition in its most general form, that is, the constitution of a trace in the most universal sense—is a possibility which not only must in- habit the pure actuality of the now but must constitute it through the very movement of differance it introduces.33 —————— 30. Krell calls this ‘ultratranscendence’ (Krell, Phenomenology of Memory, 103). 31. Astonishingly so, this thought is similar to the idea of trauma in Freud and Levinas, since both claim that something happens to the subject that constitutes the subject as subject, but which cannot be represented by it. For an overview of these contexts, see Rudolf Ber- net, “The Traumatized Subject,” Research in Phenomenology 30 (2000), 160–80. 32. Jacques Derrida, Mémoires. Pour Paul de Man (Paris: Galilée, 1988), 77; English translation: Memoires for Paul de Man, trans. Cecile Lindsay, Jonathan Culler, Eduardo Ca- dava, and Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University, 1989), 66. Henceforth cited as Memoires with French and English page references, respectively. 33. Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 75/67. REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 137

Interestingly, Derrida does not follow his own observation of the fact that Husserl makes a sharp distinction between retention and recollection.34 How- ever, Husserl’s discovery that we have a past to which we can only ideally, but not really, return, shakes the traditional idea of a self-transparent subject, and leads us to an integration of certain concepts, such as the unconscious, loss, and mourning.35

§ 3. Memory, Mourning, Death (Derrida) Given the analysis that unfolded in § 2 I would like to go one step further in the following part of this essay by shifting the analysis of remembering and recollection to the next level, which follows from the considerations presented above, and which is especially introduced by the French branch of phenomenology. The interpretation of central aspects of Husserl’s analysis of recollection revealed the status of our past life as a being-in-itself. Husserl’s acknowledgment of a being-in-itself of one’s past life leads us to three new aspects: a) we must take into account a basic form of absence and absolute past that is constitutive for our life, so that, put paradoxically, recollection is possible because it is impossible, b) the act of recollection is the attempt to save something that had been lost—it is the return of the self to the self—as well as consequently, c) that memory can be reconsidered as a form and result of mourning, which is to say, through mourning, we constitute the reality and the being of (past, absent, and other) consciousness within consciousness. “Memory,” as Derrida puts it, “becomes memory only through this movement of mourning.”36 Accordingly, consciousness exists because it recollects, but at the same time it must fail to recollect, the latter of which Derrida calls the “law of mourning” (Mourning, 144).

—————— 34. In his further elaboration of Husserl’s concept of the lived present Derrida does not realize 1) that Husserl himself was already on the way to an acknowledgment of a difference and an acknowledgment of the thought that repetition in the sphere of recollection presupposes loss, as well as 2) that Husserl did not conceive both retention and recollection as forms of repetition. See Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, 67/75. For a thorough reading of Derrida’s essay, see Mensch, Derrida–Husserl, 23–36. 35. In addition, it would lead us to further considerations about the “reality” of the subject. If it is indeed the case that a fundamental absence is inscribed within one’s past, then the self is necessarily constituted by an imaginary part that responds to the fundamental absence in its past. The self always has to imagine and hallucinate about who it is, since it cannot fully recollect itself. 36. Jacques Derrida, The Work of Mourning, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001), 115. Henceforth cited as Mourning with page reference. 138 CHRISTIAN LOTZ

§ 3.1. Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” Let me first turn to the concept of mourning, as introduced by Freud in his famous essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), since it is important for the issue in question.37 In this short essay, Freud integrates certain key concepts that he later develops in more detail, such as identification, narcissism, ego ideal, and the feeling of guilt. Important for the context of my considerations at this point, is the crucial distinction that Freud draws between mourning and melancholia. Mourning, he states, is a normal “reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, and ideal, and so on.”38 The loss of the other, to which all energy was attached (cathexis), and which therefore was an external part of one’s self, is such that the self becomes shaken through the experience of loss; the “work” and “labor” of mourning, according to Freud, is the very attempt of the self to accept the reality of the loss, absence, and death. Through the process of mourning, which, according to Freud, takes unpredictable amount of time and must be conceived as an affective rather than a cognitive process, the self becomes aware that something outside of itself was lost. Reality, which is in this case the reality of death, is constituted through the painful process of detaching oneself from the identification with the lost object. The process of mourning is the return of the self to the self. The work and labor of mourning has a therapeutic effect. Instead of a repetition of symptoms, which is a sign of a failed decathexis, a successful mourning, according to Freud, will ideally lead back to an uninhibited and unlimited self. In contrast, melancholia is the situation of the ego within which the process of mourning is not successful. In this way, melancholia is “unresolved mourning,” and as such a result of the failure of mourning. In this situation, Freud claims, the identificatory “object cathexis” turns inward into one’s own self and becomes established as a part of the self. The identification can even be —————— 37. Freud’s theory of mourning and melancholia, although not taken over by twentieth-century psychology in its entirety, became a standard model in psychology up until today. For an overview see George Hagman, “Beyond Decathexis: Toward a New Psy- choanalytic Understanding and Treatment of Mourning,” in Robert Neimeyer, ed., Mean- ing Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2001), 14–24; for his critique of the “standard model” see ibid., 19–24, where Hagman argues that 1) Freud does not provide us with a social model of mourning, that 2) he focuses on specific affections, such as sadness, that are not always connected to it, 3) that the process of mourning is restorative rather than open and world changing, and 4) that it is self-centered, rather than dialogical. However, the empirical study of melancholia is not of central importance for the consideration presented in this paper, since I am more interested in a general view on subjectivity. 38. Sigmund Freud, “Trauer und Melancholie,” in Studienausgabe, ed. Andreas Mitscherlich et al. (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1975), III: 193–212, here 197; English translation: “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud XV, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1917), 239–58, here 243. REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 139 so strong that the other becomes incorporated and introjected within the self, so that ultimately the self refers to the other within itself.39 In other words, instead of giving up the lost object, as mourning does, in melancholia death and absence is denied and the other is kept alive with all psychic energy that is connected to it. One’s own self is partly exchanged with the identificatory energy, the melancholic subject feels therefore “empty” and experiences the loss as a loss of its own self. Moreover, melancholic consciousness does not know what is lost.40

§ 3.2. From Freud to Derrida Freud’s analysis is of importance in the context of my considerations because of three things: 1) mourning is the very consciousness of death and absence, 2) mourning establishes the relation to the other as an internal relation of absence, and 3) mourning is the very movement of recollection, since the absence of the other forces me to internalize the other, which is to say, to recollect the other in me. Since the other is dead, is absent, I internalize the absence of the other.41 In other words, death in the form of an absence of the other forces the self to internalize the other in form of an “image” (idealization in Freud, representation and “image” in Derrida), that is to say, in the form of memory. Mourning, therefore, is the very form of consciousness, within which the recollected is somehow 1) “in us” in the form of 2) a representation including the 3) absence/death (of the other). This strikingly reminds us of Husserl’s general characterization of recollection. Since, as we can learn from Freud, melancholia is the denial of the other’s death (the reality of death), mourning is the very attempt to recollect the other’s death, which would include an acceptance of death and absence, that is, of something that is real in-itself. If the process of mourning as that what constitutes the ego is inevitably connected with the process of recollection, and if recollection is based on ab- —————— 39. This structure within Freud’s own theory marks the development of the concept of the ego-ideal. Freud observed that depressed patients all the time judge and accuse themselves, and are unsatisfied with their own self and past. The melancholic person turns the lost person into itself and thereby incorporates it as an ideal. 40. In this connection, Freud writes: “In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty, in melancholia it is the ego itself” (Freud, Mourning and Melancholia, 246). Here, as Jennifer Radden remarks, the renaissance theory of melancholia enters Freud’s thinking. The tradition of thinking about melancholia, which runs from Aristo- tle through Kant, described melancholia as a mood that appears without a cause. See Jen- nifer Radden, The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000), 282, also 44. The cultural history of melancholia, especially its inter- disciplinary status between philosophy, medicine, psychology and art is very stimulating. Even thinking was traditionally conceived as a form of melancholia, since the thinker turns inward into his self and mourns the loss within him or herself. 41. For the concept of differance in this context see the brief overview in Len Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2002), 232. 140 CHRISTIAN LOTZ sence, then mourning/recollection must fail and with its failure constitute a being-in-itself within itself. Consciousness, in other words, is always mourning and melancholia at the same time, since something is fundamentally lost, where recollection is just the visible side. Put differently, recollection tries to recollect what is unable to be recollected. Something that cannot be recollected (absolute past) cannot be represented. Something that cannot be represented does not become subjective and remains foreign. This irreducible otherness is what Derri- da has in mind when he claims that mourning is possible, only on the basis of a failure of mourning.42 Let me further explain this point. The puzzling question that Husserl never raised is why we recollect and how we explain the force of recollection. The speculative answer that is given by Derrida is that recollection and memory presuppose a movement of inter- nalization that is identical with absence and “othering” in general. In other words, mourning is just another expression of the fact that recollection refers to a “being-in-me,” which is, as Husserl claims, constituted as an in-itself. It is in- approachable, lost, gone, inaccessible, and hence, other than me. It seems to be appropriate, therefore, to speak of the other of the self in terms of memory and mourning. Recollection is the first form of consciousness that is conscious of something other than itself: the “being-in-me or being-in-us is constituted out of the possibility of mourning,” as Derrida puts it (Memoires, 34/53). The paradox becomes immediately clear: although the subject tries to recollect, it is faced with the failure of recollection, since—as we now know—recollection already presupposes a difference, which makes it impossible to (truth)fully recollect. “There can be no true mourning, even if truth and lucidity always presuppose it, and, in truth, take place only as the truth of mourning” (29/50). Since recollection as a form of mourning must fail in its attempt to truthfully recollect what belongs to the self as its reality, it is unable to unify itself as a whole. In other words, if it is true that recollection can never be fully successful (= “untrue”), then the unified history of one’s self, that is, one’s identity and unity throughout one’s life, becomes ambivalent. Identity of one’s self, in this case, would be based on a movement of non-identity and otherness that renders it impossible for the self to re-appropriate itself as a whole (contrary to Hei- degger’s claims in Being and Time).43 In Derrida’s words: “But we are never ourselves, and between us, identical to us, a ‘self’ is never in itself or identical to itself. This specular reflection never closes on itself; it does not appear before this —————— 42. Derrida says: “The non-subjectivable in the experience of mourning is what I tried to describe in Glas and in Memoires for Paul de Man.” Jacques Derrida, Points de suspension. Entretiens, ed. Elisabeth Weber (Paris: Galilée, 1992), 285; English translation: Points: Inter- views 1974–1994, ed. Elisabeth Weber, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University, 1995), 271. 43. Derrida further writes: “This trace is interiorized in mourning as that which can no longer be interiorized, as impossible Erinnerung, in and beyond mournful memory— constituting it, traversing it, exceeding it, defying all reappropriation” (Memoires, 38/56). REFLECTION, MOURNING, AND THE ABSOLUTE PAST 141 possibility of mourning” (Memoires, 28/49). Given this temporal constitution of our lives, we can see how our present lives are always fundamentally “injured” (Mourning, 107), “traumatized,”44 characterized by an “openness”45 or fissured by an “open wound.”46 Every act of recollection presents the attempt to save the past and to escape death and dying. The structure of consciousness is possible only through this internal relation to what is dying in it, and the attempt to recollect oneself as oneself must fail, since it simply confirms what it tries to escape, namely its own death (awaiting it).

§ 4. Conclusion We must finally come to this result: a) Recollection is an infinite (impossible) process, according to Husserl and Derrida. It is therefore not “closed,” in Derrida’s words: “it precludes any totalizing summary—the exhaustive narrative or the total absorption of memory” (Memoires, 11/34); b) recollection is based on a fundamental absence within the self; c) because of this absence, recollection as the internalized being-in-itself is a process of mourning, in which the self mourns its own finitude; and, finally, d) the possibility of recollection is intertwined with the otherness of consciousness, the question of which I was unable to unfold fully in this essay.

—————— 44. For the attempt to grasp the problem of how the subject can be affected by something that it is unable to represent see Bernet, Traumatized Subject. 45. Emmanuel Levinas, “No Identity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1998), 141–52, here 145. 46. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 253. This page intentionally left blank

Adieu: Derrida’s God and the Beginning of Thought

Karlheinz Ruhstorfer University of Freiburg

For Heribert Boeder on his 75th birthday

In his talk on the occasion of Emamanuel Levinas’s death, Jacques Der- rida makes it clear that he has Levinas to thank in a certain way for the word ‘adieu’: “à-Dieu ... that word which he taught me to think or to pronounce otherwise.”1 Derrida hears three things in this word: 1) A salutation (salut) or a benediction (bénédiction) at the moment of meeting. 2) A salutation or benediction upon bidding farewell, sometimes for the last time. 3) A relation to God, specifically as the “à-dieu [with God or towards God], for God or before God prior to each, prior to every, and in each relation to the other, in every other adieu. Every relation to the other would be, before and after anything else, an adieu.”2 This gives a first indication of who Derrida’s God is: the other, every other, the wholly other. To the extent that thought, as ethical thought, is oriented towards and determined by the other, it can also be said that thought begins with the other. Yet this determination remains provisional and, as will be seen, one-sided. The present investigation bears the title “Adieu” for three reasons: First, Derrida’s thought is met with a salutation. We intend to shed light on it and —————— * Translated by Marcus Brainard. 1. Jacques Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas (Paris: Galilée, 1997), 9; English translation: Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stan- ford: Stanford University, 1999), 1. Translations have been modified without notice wherever it has been deemed necessary. 2. Jacques Derrida, “Donner la mort,” in Jean-Michel Rabaté and Michael Wetzel, eds., L’éthique du don. Jacques Derrida et la pensée du don. Colloque de Royaumont, décem- bre 1990 (Paris: Métailié-Transition, 1992), 11–108, here 50–51; English translation: The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995), 47. Henceforth cited as Gift with French and English page references, respectively.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 143–72 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 144 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER to give its due. Second, “Adieu” is also meant as a benediction, an approval of Derrida’s thought in view of its farewell, which is not impossible. It has reached its limit. The principle of Derrida’s thought is to be bid farewell, and in fact as it passes into a having-been (Gewesenheit) that implies a remaining. Third, we ask: Towards which God does thought move in this farewell? Be- fore which God does this passing occur? To answer these questions, Derrida’s thought will first be situated in the context of Heidegger and Levinas (§ 1. “Jewgreek is greekjew”). Then Derrida’s principle will be determined both regarding its content (§ 2. Derrida’s God) and formally (§ 3. Derrida’s Logic). ajlhvqeia Finally, our aim is to disclose—with reference to Heidegger’s talk of — a “concealed” ground of the history of thought (§ 4. The Repressed Beginning of Occidental Thought). In this connection, we shall first sketch briefly the Greek ground and then point to the other ground, which the revelation to Israel represents. The following reflections have their basis in the thought of Heribert Boeder, although we have sought to traverse our own path of thought.3 The hint concerning the double beginning of occidental thought we owe to Jacques Derrida.

§ 1. “Jewgreek is greekjew” “Hebraism and Hellenism,—between these two points of influence moves our world.”4 With these words from Mathew Arnold, Derrida begins his essay on Emmanuel Levinas, “Violence and Metaphysics,” which was first published in 1964. In it Derrida accords Levinas a place in that event of world-historical significance which has been interpreted as the death of philosophy, the completion of metaphysics, the overcoming of the onto-theological history of thought (VM, 117–118/79). Insofar as he is regarded as the completer of classical metaphysics, Hegel figures as the “most accused” in Levinas’s early magnum opus, Totality and Infinity (125/84).5 Now while Husserl and Heidegger each tries to overcome philosophy in his own way, according to Levinas and Der- rida they nevertheless remain thoroughly captive to metaphysics, which in the —————— 3. For Heribert Boeder’s interpretation of Derrida see his “Derrida’s Endgame,” trans. Marcus Brainard, New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy III (2003), 121–42. 4. Jacques Derrida, “Violence et métaphysique. Essai sur la pensée d’Emmanuel Levi- nas,” in L’écriture et la differance (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 117–228, here 117 (epigram); English translation: “Violence and Metaphysics: Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), 79–153 and 311–21, here 79. Henceforth cited as VM with French and English page references, respectively. 5. See Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961); English translation: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1969). ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 145 end each restitutes even in the mode of negation.6 Levinas was the first to set out on a new path, says Derrida. The thought of Levinas summons us to a dislocation of the Greek logos, to a dislocation of our identity, and perhaps of identity in general; it summons us to depart from the Greek site and perhaps from every site in general, and to move toward what is no longer a source or a site (too welcoming to the gods), but toward an exhalation, toward a prophetic speech already emitted [soufflé] not only nearer to the source than Plato or the pre-Socratics, but beyond the Greek origin, close to the other of the Greek (but will the other of the Greek be the non-Greek? Above all, can it be named the non-Greek? . . .) (122/82) What distinguishes—in Derrida’s account—the thought that is characterized as “the Greek,” “metaphysics,” and “onto-theology” and that stretches from Parmenides, from Plato to Husserl and Heidegger? The “domination of the Same and the One (other names for the light of Being and of the phenomenon)” have led since the Greek beginning of thought to “an oppression that is certainly comparable to none other in the world” (122–23/83). This “ontological or transcendental oppression” is said to be also “the origin or alibi of all oppression in the world” (123/83). In the concept of “totality,” which dominates occidental philosophy, metaphysical thinking takes on its solid shape. It is Levinas’s, and thus Derrida’s, objective to blast open that unity and totality. Levinas does not oppose a new dogmatics, a religion, not even a morality, to traditional metaphysics. Nor does he refer—in his philosophy—to “He- braic theses or texts.” Rather, he wants to find, in “a recourse to experience itself,” a new beginning of thought in “the passage and departure toward the other” (passage et sortie vers l’autre), in that which is “irreducibly other” in the other as “what is foreign” (autrui). Now the basic structure of this thought certainly recalls first of all the endeavors since Feuerbach or Marx to counter the superstructure of theological philosophy with a sense-explication (Besinnung) of the “sensuousness” of actual human beings, of the reality of the proletariat, of the oppression and, even more, of the withdrawal of what is essential to man, who has now become worldly.7 Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger each assumes a positive primal state that has been destroyed by the progressive domination of capital, Christian morality, and technology. Each experiences the height of expropri- ation in his own historical present. This experience is the beginning of thought for each of them. Thus it is necessary to negate in turn the prevailing nega- tivity. In the “proletarian revolution,” in the “revaluation of all values,” in the “turn,” each of which is anticipated for the future—a new, positive final state —————— 6. On this see Alwin Letzkus, Dekonstruktion und ethische Passion. Denken des Ande- ren nach Jacques Derrida und Emmanuel Levinas (Munich: Fink, 2002), 299. 7. Heribert Boeder has presented Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger as the “core sense- explication [Kernbesinnung] of modernity” in his Das Vernunft-Gefüge der Moderne (Frei- burg/Munich: Alber, 1988). 146 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER is to come about. The other and the negative will be annihilated, or left to its self-annihilation, in this future, final crisis. This modern negation of negation differs profoundly—and this must be stressed contrary to Levinas’s and Der- rida’s view—from Hegel’s ‘sublation’ (Aufhebung), in which the other is always preserved as well. Now what is Levinas’s original experience? It is precisely that negation of negation, the annihilation of the other—in the Holocaust. This is not only equated with Hegel’s “sublation” but ultimately with Parmenides’ separation of “Being” and “non-Being” and thus is traced back to the Greek beginning of metaphysical thought. The identity of being (Seiendes) with itself and the exclusion of its other is regarded here as the starting point of occidental thought as such, which ultimately leads to the Holocaust, to the annihilation of the other, the one who is foreign to the occidental-Greco-Christian.8 But how can Levinas stage a thought that is no longer based on unity and identity? “It is . . . toward a pluralism which does not fuse into unity that we wish to make our way; and, if it can be dared, to break with Parmenides.”9 This “patricide” implies first of all a break with the logic of the Occident, with the principle of non-contradiction (Aristotle’s translation of Parmeni- des’ separation of “how it is” and “how it is not”), the principle of excluded middle, everything that Levinas characterizes as “formal logic” (135/91). Pre- cisely this dismissal of the alternative between “being” and “non-being” also shatters the idea of experience as experience of something present. It is not the present One that is experienced but the other who has left its trace, without ever having reached the present (142/95; 142 n. 1/314 n. 25). Levinas thereby seeks a way out of that “archaeo-teleological” thought in whose circular movement an original state is assumed that returns in the future. The return to the Same, to original positivity, is according to Levinas an essential element of occidental philosophy, one found in all expectations of another, an eschatological future, as Heidegger last thought it in his expectation of the advent of Being. Heidegger’s “future god” is thus the last manifestation of a thought that has its mythical prefiguration in the myth of Odysseus. Unchanged, Odysseus returns home. His adventures in foreign parts appear imaginary in —————— 8. On this see Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 16–17/43–44. See also the dedication in Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-dela l’essence (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974); Eng- lish translation: Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981). Likewise see Jacques Derrida, Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974)/English translations: Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Ne- braska, 1986), Feu la cendre (Paris: Éditions des femmes, 1987)/English translation: Cinders, trans. and ed. Ned Lukacher, bilingual ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1991), and The Gift of Death. 9. Emmanuel Levinas, Le temps et l’autre, in Le Choix, le Monde, l’Existence, Cahiers du Collège philosophique (Paris: Arthaud, 1949); English translation: Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 1990), cited in Der- rida, VM, 132/89. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 147 the end.10 To Odysseus Levinas opposes the myth of Abraham, “who leaves his country forever for an as yet unknown land and who forbids his servant to take back even his son to the point of departure.”11 The Greek god of identity, who was always thought as ground, as essence, as Being, as identity, is to be replaced by a god of otherness. If like Levinas one calls Judaism the “experience of the other,” which for Derrida is always only a hypothesis (226/152), and if this orientation by “Abra- ham,” by “Hebraism,” is introduced as the alternative to the Greek, then— says Derrida—one is taken in by the illusion that one has completely left the Greek behind and is able to negate it. Thus one would still be caught up in the remnants of the old logic that thinks in oppositions.12 Derrida stresses with Levinas against Levinas: “‘One always has to philosophize’” (226/152). The Greek filiation of thought is not to be abandoned in favor of a Hebraic alternative. Consequently, Derrida refuses to answer the question “Are we Jews? Are we Greeks?”: “We live in the difference between the Jew and the Greek, which is perhaps the unity of what is called history” (227/153). How- ever, it is precisely this difference as difference, which does not permit of any sublation, that gives Derrida what is to be thought, and thus his confrontation with Levinas ends fittingly enough with a reference to a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses: “And what is the legitimacy, what is the meaning of the copula in this proposition from perhaps the most Hegelian of modern nov- elists: ‘Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet’?” (228/153).13 The encounter between Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas has just begun in “Violence and Metaphysics.” Whereas Derrida’s critique, which Levinas felt to be an “assassination under anesthesia” (assassinat sous narcose),14 moved the latter to make a “deconstructive turn,” Derrida is—to use the jar- gon—“contaminated” by Levinas’s orientation by the “other.” Derrida owes his “ethical turn” to Levinas’s bequest.15

—————— 10. See Letzkus, Dekonstruktion und ethische Passion, 222. 11. Emmanuel Levinas, “La trace de l’autre” (1963), in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 25 (1963), 603–23/“The Trace of the Other,” trans. Alphonso Lingis, in Mark Taylor, ed., De- construction in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986), 345–59, cited in Derrida, VM, 228 n. 1/320 n. 92. 12. On this see Letzkus, Dekonstruktion und ethische Passion, 305. 13. Claus-Artur Scheier has treated the question of the copula in postmodern thought, for example, in his “Nur noch eine Spur der Spur? Vom schwierigen Verhältnis des philosophischen Denkens zur theologischen Tradition,” Braunschweiger Beiträge für Theorie und Praxis 96, no. 2 (2001), 45–49. 14. Cited from Marie-Anne Lescourret, Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Flammarion, 1994), 320. 15. The relationship between these two paths of thought has been lucidly worked out in Letzkus, Dekonstruktion und ethische Passion. 148 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER

§ 2. Derrida’s God For the inquiry into Derrida’s God and the beginning of thought, the “tableau” is now arranged with the following elements: On one side is Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger negates the god of the “onto-theological” tradition, the tradition that thought God as the supreme being (Seiendes) but not as Being (Sein) itself. In the course of history, Being itself fell increasingly into oblivion, especially in the modern era’s version of God as subject and in the final transformation of metaphysics into technology. With extreme reticence, the later Heidegger now expects the advent of the “last god,” who is experienced in “denial,” and in fact “out of the more original naturing of Beyng, as it lights up in the thinking of the other beginning.”16 “The last god is not the end but rather the other beginning of immeasurable possibilities for our history.” The other beginning of thought points beyond the Greek beginning of philosophy in Parmenides and Plato to an indeterminate incipiency. As in the case of the beginning, likewise the future of this god has to be indeterminate. The last god as a substitution for the god of metaphysics is determined, above all, negatively: “The wholly other against those gods that have been, especially against the Christian God.”17 On the other side is Levinas’s thought. Levinas also replaces the God of Greco-Christian theology and philosophy, though with a twofold strategy. On the one hand, he makes room in his philosophy for a “god that is not contaminated with Being.”18 He thereby avoids the gesture of negation, but like a limitation or an infinite judgment19 the trace of this god is postponed without end. While this god is the “wholly other,” he is so in such a way that he has left his trace in every other, on the face of every human being. On the other hand, Levinas refers expressly to the God of the Judaic tradition, especially in his exegetical works on the Hebrew Bible. However, he has rigorously separated these two “orders” from one another.20 Thereby the concrete determination of God, as it emerges from the Torah, remains outside the proper sphere of thought as philosophy also in Levinas. Thus, like Heidegger’s, his god also remains indeterminate, because philosophically indeterminable. In his late essay “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” Derrida once again engages the positions of Hei- degger and Levinas, and he ascribes to Heidegger the source of the “safe and —————— 16. Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), Gesamtausgabe 65 (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1989), 411; English translation: Contributions to Philoso- phy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1999), 289. 17. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, 403/282 18. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, x. 19. On this see § 3 below on Derrida’s logic. 20. See François Poirié, Emmanuel Levinas. Qui êtes-vous? (Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987), 111. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 149 sound,” the “holy” (le saint, le sacré, heilig) and to Levinas the source of “faith,” “trust” (croyance, foi, crédit).21 Heidegger, who constantly endeavored to separate thinking from believing and who polemicized against the Christian faith,22 is said to stand for a “theiology” (a discourse on the divinity of the divine) (FK, 78/60). By contrast, Levinas, who opposes the holiness of the Jewish/Judaic law to the pagan, Greco-Christian sacred and thereby also to Heidegger’s concept of the holy,23 is said to advocate a “theology” (discourse on God, faith, revelation) (21/12). Derrida’s own attempt can be characterized as a constant oscillation between these two approaches.24 In view of both sources, Derrida notes an “aporia within which we flounder” (26/16). The movement aims at a third place that “could well have been more than archi-originary, the most anarchic and anarchivable place possible, not the island [i.e. Ithaca] nor the Promised Land, but a certain desert—and not the desert of revelation but a desert in the desert—that which makes possible, opens, hollows, or infinitizes the other.” Derrida makes it clear that this desert is more original than any possible concrete religion and any onto-anthropo-theological horizon. Nevertheless, in the desert there are also found—though still invisible—both of those sources (of religion) that Derrida now provisionally defines as the “messianic” (the cwvra Jewish-Levinasian source) and the (the Greco-Heideggerian source). Derrida thereby names two key concepts of his deconstructive program which for their part, alongside a series of other concepts such as différance, hymen, pas, and pharmakon, form the “original supplement” by means of which Derrida calls the opening that has arisen through the deconstruction of all those “names for the foundation, for the principle, or for the center,” namely “eidos, arché, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject), aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, God, man, and so forth.”25 —————— 21. Jacques Derrida, “Foi et savior. Les deux sources de la ‘religion’ aux limites de la simple raison,” in Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, eds., La religion. Séminaire de Capri (Paris: Seuil, 1996), 9–86, here 76; English translation: “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” trans. Samuel Weber, in Jacques Der- rida and Gianni Vattimo, eds., Religion (Stanford: Stanford University, 1998), 1–78, here 58. Henceforth cited as FK with French and English page references, respectively. 22. “Faith has no place in thinking.” Martin Heidegger, “Der Spruch des Anaximan- der,” in Holzwege (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1950), 296–345, here 343; English translation: “The Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 13–58, here 57. On this see Der- rida, FK, 21/12 and 78/60. 23. See, e.g., Emmanuel Levinas, Du sacré au saint. Cinq nouvelles lectures talmudiques (Paris: Minuit, 1977); English translation: “From the Sacred to the Holy: Five New Tal- mudic Readings,” in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1994). 24. Alwin Letzkus, “Religion zwischen Glaube und Vernunft. Ein theo-topologi- scher Versuch nach Jacques Derrida” (unpublished manuscript). 25. Derrida, “Le structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des sciences humaines,” in 150 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER

Derrida’s “principal theme” is the deconstruction of the “determination of Being as presence” in the concepts just mentioned. The word and topic ‘God’ is thereby drawn into the movement of deconstruction, which—unlike in Heidegger and Levinas—does not permit any substitution by a new, “wholly other” concept of God. Nevertheless, precisely those sources of religion are in the desert that death, the deaths of God, have left behind. Yet Derrida’s intention is not to cultivate a new oasis here, a new Ithaca, a new Promised Land, but to lay bare the “desert in the desert” (see FK, 26/16 and 33/22). The aim is to find an “other ‘tolerance.’” Derrida thereby alludes to the Enlight- enment, its tolerance concerning religion and its religion of humanity (e.g. Lessing). Yet it is not a matter of “tolerating” the many religions based on a new principle of unity (freedom, subject) as the Enlightenment had done, nor is it a matter of establishing a new rational religion (Kant), but rather one of taking account of the logic of “adieu”:26 departure of the former God, movement towards a god who is the non-god (a-dieu). This constant oscillation between negation and affirmation, which can nowhere be brought to a standstill, characterizes Derrida’s “religion without religion” and his “religion before religion.” In what follows, we shall sketch both sources in their relation to Derrida’s (non-)principle.

Cwvra § 2.1. and Différance In the Platonic dialogue that bears his name, Timaeus’s discourse on the genesis of the world begins with an invocation of God (Timaeus 27C–D). With- out his support, the discourse on the universe would not be possible. Then Timaeus presents the first and fundamental distinction: that between “con- gignov- tinuous being,” which has no genesis, and “continuous becoming” ( menon novhsiı ), which “is never being.” The former is apprehensible by , the ai[qhsiı latter by a prelogical (27D–28A). In a second approach Plato/Timaeus noouvmena fain- introduces a more precise distinction. Alongside the and the ovmena trivton gevnoı now comes a “third genus” ( ) (48E). It is distinguished by duvnamiı the power ( ) to take up in itself all that becomes. This pure abstraction from every concrete form can only be apprehended by a certain “bastard logismw`/ tini; novqw/ reasoning,” an “illegitimate/impure conceiving” ( ) (52B). Since strictly speaking it has no intelligible form, it can in no way be apprehended in the proper sense by reason, and since it has no sensible shape, it dovxa also eludes sensory perception and a corresponding view ( ) of the sensible. Nevertheless, according to Plato this third principle must necessarily be —————— L’écriture et la difference, 409–28, here 411; English translation: “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and Difference, 278–93, here 279–80. 26. See Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hop- kins University, 1999), 37 and 27. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 151 assumed alongside and between “being” and “becoming” as “space,” “(empty) cwvra place” ( ) (52D). cwvra 27 Now if Derrida introduces the as the Greek source of religion, if cwvra he discusses the in his triptych On the Name, then not so as to give an exegesis of Plato, but to situate “an exemplary aporia in the Platonic text.”28 cwvra Derrida attempts, by way of the “names” of the , to penetrate into the cracks in Platonic thought, to blast it open and deconstruct it. Nevertheless, cwvra the reference to the is meant to say more, for it is—in addition to the “archi-trace”, the “archi-writing,” the “margin-mark-march,” etc.—a link in the chain of “non-synonymous substitutions” for the (non-)concept of différance, which in turn is a (non-)substitute for the metaphysical concept of God, the ajrchv 29 beginning ( ), the principle. “According to the necessity of the context” (Dif, 13/12), these substitutions, like différance itself, help to instigate “the subversion of every kingdom” (22/22). Neither différance nor its substitutions have a kingdom. They do not dominate, they do not determine, they intend nothing. Both the “kingdom of God” in the sense of the Promised Land and the native kingdom of Odysseus or the Platonic realm of ideas are deconstructed. cwvra Yet neither does the simply oscillate between the intelligible and the sensible; it does not oscillate between two poles of a logically apprehensible opposition but between “two kinds of oscillation: the double exclusion (neither/ nor) and participation (both this and that)” (Khôra, 19/91). Différance forced Derrida to have recourse to “detours,” “locutions,” and “syntax” that “occasionally are indistinguishable from negative theology” (Dif, 6/6). Yet he leaves no doubt that that which is characterized by the term différance is “not theological, not even in the order of the most negative of negative theologies.” Negative theology is said to have always negated the finite categories of essence, existence, and presence in order to regain a “supraessentiality” on a superior, inconceivable, and ineffable level. As will be shown below, Derrida generally rejects a logic of negation, which always leads to a new position. Not only is différance irreducible to any on- totheological reappropriation but it opens the space for onto-theology, its system, its history, while ever transgressing its limits. If one wanted to give Derrida’s talk of things theological a name, one could speak of de-limiting rather than negative theology. (We shall seek to clarify the expression ‘de- cwvra limitation’ below.) Likewise regarding the Derrida states that in rela- —————— 27. See Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge.” 28. Jacques Derrida, Khôra (Paris: Galilée, 1993), 3; English translation: Khôra, trans. Ian McLeod, in On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University, 1995), 89–127, here xv. 29. Jacques Derrida, “La différance,” in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972), 3–39, here 13; English translation: “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982), 3–27, here 12. Henceforth cited as Dif with French and English page references, respectively. 152 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER tion to it “there is neither negative theology nor thought of the Good, of the One, or of God beyond Being” (Khôra, 4/xvi). Derrida sees in “negative theo-logy” its “Greco-Latin filiation.”30 It distinguishes itself as a language lovgoı lovgoı (langage), one whose innermost element is . Only where is replaced by the “name,” where there remains nothing of logical determinacy—save the name—can Derrida do justice to the name of God.31 And that cwvra is why the itself is introduced with respect to its name: “Khôra reaches us, and as the name” (Khôra, 15/89). It is not without misgivings that Derrida refers to Hegel—the final stage of logical philosophy—when he fixes in his gaze the moment at which “philosophy becomes serious,” namely the moment “it enters onto the sure path of logic: . . . with Plato” (39/100). With Plato philosophy awakens from its “mythological slumber.” Here it is necessary to ask in view of what will follow whether perhaps Parmenides, his separation of being and non-being, which also initiated the Platonic beginning of metaphysics (41/101),32 should not himself be regarded as having still been “contaminated” with mythical cwvra thought. And if so, in what sense? At any rate, the transgresses the lovgoı boundary between myth and , for it is itself no longer presented as logically apprehensible, though neither is it presented merely mythically. But how do these two ways of speaking distinguish themselves? Following Jean- Pierre Vernant, Derrida presents the logic of myth as the negation of the logic lovgoı of the , whose “logic of non-contradiction” (13/88) is indebted to the cwvra “binarity of the yes and no” (15/89). In addition, Derrida asks where the lovgoı does not represent a third genus of discourse beyond myth and the lovgoı (17/90). But then both the logic of the and that of myth will have to be deconstructed. cwvra Plato develops his cosmogony and thus the thought of the in reliance on and in contradistinction to the myth that comes down to him via Solon. Profoundly distinct from that kind of inspiration, Derrida’s thought remains related both to the pre-philosophical myth and to philosophy. Der- rida brings to speech—by way of disguise, postponement, distortion—the lovgoı Greek beginning of thought in the encounter between myth and the . Can it be, then, that in the horizon of postmodernity it is Derrida’s decon- —————— 30. Jacques Derrida, Sauf le nom (Paris: Galilée, 1993), 41; English translation: “Sauf le nom,” trans. John P. Leavy, Jr., in On the Name, 35–85, here 48. 31. Derrida, Sauf le nom, 80/68: “In the most apophatic moment, when one says: ‘God is not,’ ‘God is neither this nor that, neither that nor its contrary’ or ‘being is not,’ etc., even then it is still a matter of saying the being [étant] such as it is, in its truth, even were it meta-metaphysical, meta-ontological. It is a matter of holding the promise of saying the truth at any price, of testifying, of rendering oneself to the truth of the name, to the thing itself such as it must be named by the name, that is to say, beyond the name. The thing, save the name.” 32. Derrida himself refers to Plato’s Parmenides in this context. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 153 struction, of all things, that keeps the beginning of occidental philosophy present in thought? We ought, then, to speak at last of a fact (ergon) veritably, really accomplished. Now what happens? Let us note first that the essential would come to us from Solon’s mouth. . . . Now who is Solon? He is hastily presented as a poet of genius. If political urgency had left him the leisure to devote himself to his genius, he would have surpassed Hesiod or Homer ([Timaeus] 21a–b). (Khôra, 89/123) cwvra However much the originates in the Greek beginning, it nevertheless cannot be reduced, according to Derrida, to the alternative Greek/Jewish. Rather, it is itself already a “Greco-Abrahamic hybridization” of an anthropo-theological nature (FK, 30/19). Its idiom cannot be generalized. “It speaks solely at the borders or in view of the Middle-Eastern desert, at the source of monotheistic revelations and of Greece.”

§ 2.2. The Messianic and Justice cwvra Just as the Greek thought of the in Derrida’s account was borne by an endlessly extendable series of negations (“It is neither Being, nor the Good, nor God, nor Man, nor History”; FK, 30/21), so too is the talk of the messianic that issues from the Hebraic context: “This messianic dimension does not depend upon any messianism, it follows no determinate revelation, it belongs properly to no Abrahamic religion” (28/18). Nevertheless, “for essential reasons of language and of place, of culture, of a provisional rhetoric and a historical strategy,” Derrida feels compelled, “‘among ourselves,’” to continue to give the messianic “names marked by the Abrahamic religions.” But what does the talk of “messianism” mean in contrast to the messianic? “Messianism of the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic type, idea in the Kantian sense, eschato- teleology of the neo-Hegelian, Marxist, or post-Marxist type”33—all these hopes for the one, completely other future are grounded in the promise of an eschatological final state. They have their prototype in the promise given to Abraham that he would reach the Promised Land. The advent of the other future is thereby always tied to a condition, or in biblical terms, to the fulfillment of the law (loi) that has its ground in God’s will. From this concept of “messianism” Derrida distinguishes “the messianic [messianique], or messianicity [messianicité] without messianism [messianisme]” (FK, 27/17). Like the cwvra , the messianic marks an (empty) place: “the opening [ouverture] to the future [avenir] or to the coming [venue] of the other as the arrival of justice, but without horizon of expectation and without prophetic prefiguration.” —————— 33. Jacques Derrida, “Force de loi. Le ‘fondement mystique de l’autorité’/Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,” bilingual ed., trans. Mary Quaintance, Car- dozo Law Review 11 (1990), 919–1045, here 966/967. Henceforth cited as Force with French and English page references, respectively. 154 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER

By a insuperable desire, this “abstract messianicity” is bound up with the equally abstract justice, which has to be distinguished from every concrete right (droit) and law (loi) and—in accordance with the deconstructive manner—which also cannot be so distinguished since no logical opposition whatsoever can be rigorously maintained (28/18; Force, 944/945). Every concrete right can be deconstructed, for the violent-arbitrary, baseless, and this sense also “mystical foundation of authority” that permits legislation and the right that every concrete separation of How it is to be and How it is not to be is in turn convicted of injustice. By contrast, justice cannot be deconstructed, for it itself is identical with deconstruction,34 with its unfathomable, infinite negation of the concrete: This “idea of justice” seems to me to be irreducible in its affirmative character, in its demand of gift without exchange, without circulation, without recognition or gratitude, without economic circularity, without calculation and without rules, without reason and without rationality. And so we can recognize in it, indeed accuse, identify a madness. And perhaps another sort of mystique. And deconstruction is mad about this kind of justice. Mad about this desire for justice. (964/965) Nevertheless, deconstructive justice is for its part subject to a certain standard. Once more Derrida approaches the thought of Levinas, this time with regard to the question of ethics, and in fact due to the “infinity” of the concept of justice and the “heteronomic relationship to others, to the face of the other that governs me and whose infinity I cannot thematize and whose hostage I remain” (958/959). Derrida cites Levinas from Totality and Infinity (62), literally: “‘. . . the relation to others—that is to say, justice.’” The foundation of this justice of “Jewish humanism” is not the “concept of man” but of the indeterminate other. Correspondingly, it is based not on equality, not on a de- terminable symmetry, but rather on “an absolute asymmetry,” which finds its quasi-principial formulation in the maxim: tout autre est tout autre. God is the wholly other. But so is every other wholly other and thus the wholly other. The trace and the trace of the erasure of the trace of God is found in the face of every other (Gift, 76/77; see ch. 4): If God is the wholly other, the figure or name of the wholly other/every other, then every other is wholly other/every other is every other [tout autre est tout autre]. This formula . . . implies that God, as the wholly other, is to be found everywhere there is something/someone wholly other. And since each of us, everyone else, each other is infinitely other in its absolute singularity, inaccessible, solitary, transcendent, nonmanifest, originally nonpresent to my ego . . . then what can be said about Abraham’s relation to God can be said about my relation without relation to every other as every/wholly other [tout autre comme tout autre], in particular my relation to my neighbor or my loved ones, who are as inaccessible to me, as secret and transcendent as Yahweh. (76–77/77–78) —————— 34. Force, 944/945: “Deconstruction is justice.” ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 155

The abstractly messianistic character of justice as the source of religion is just as much a matter of faith and an experience of faith as is the relationship of man to the God of the Jewish tradition, who lies beyond all humanly possible reflection. Nevertheless, this faith cannot be brought into opposition to knowledge. Beyond the distinction between reason and mysticism, the hope bound up with faith aims wholly at “a universalizable culture of singularities” (FK, 28/18), a culture in which every other can live out its otherness unhin- dered and yet is unconditionally bound to the determination not to impose any determination on any other. Derrida’s justice is the determination not to be determined. The hope that is bound up with faith in justice aims at something that never was, never is, and never will be, but nevertheless: “Justice remains, is yet, to come, à venir” (Force, 968/969).

§ 3. Derrida’s Logic Now what is the peculiar logic that compels Derrida to think his (non-) cwvra substitution for God as the (il-)logical interstice of the or as “mad” justice? Derrida most clearly described the logical structure of his though in the lovgoı early essay “Différance.” First we recall: The of Parmenides, with which Greek metaphysics begins, marks a distinction between “being” and “non-be- to; o[n ing.” Being ( ) is everlasting and perfect. It is the supreme topic (Sache) of thought. Plato translates Parmenides’ one “being” into a multiplicity of “ideas” that have “being,” each of which has it own perfection. A “becoming” has a part in this being, a “becoming” that both is and is not and precisely on that account has a transitory nature. The Platonic “ideas” too are purely thought noouvmena lovgoi (Gedachtes, ), self-supporting concepts ( ) that rest in themselves. lovgoı lovgoı Thus the designates, indeed the is always “this” and not “that” lovgoı concrete general intelligible thing. In the the individually perceptible has its support. How does Derrida, by contrast, introduce his différance? The lovgoı intelligibility of the old is reduced not only to the sensible worldliness of the things themselves or a human consciousness, not only to the acousti- fonhv cally perceptible, because spoken language ( ), but to the material signality of the sign itself. “The sign is usually said to be put in the place of the thing itself, the present thing, ‘thing’ here standing equally for meaning or referent. The sign represents the present in its absence” (Dif, 9/9). In Derrida both the thought thing (signifié) and the sensibly perceptible thing (référant) fade in importance. This holds a fortiori of différance itself. Différance is first recognized by way of a written sign that is not even acoustically perceptible, namely the letter ‘a’, which diverges from the usual orthography. Following Hegel, Der- rida compares the “body of the sign” to a “pyramid.” Thus différance, the letter ‘a’, stands for a tomb and even for “the death of the dynast” (4/4). But who lovgoı has departed here? The dynast of what dominion? The dominion of the . lovgoı Différance is the sign for the death of the . Thus différance is neither a 156 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER word nor a concept. Nevertheless, according to Derrida the talk of différance is “strategically best suited . . . for thinking, if not mastering . . . what is most irreducible about our ‘epoch’” (7/7). As a result, différance, and with it the logic of différance, describe the logical structure of “our” way of thinking, which we can characterize roughly as ‘postmodern’, though by its self-understanding that limit that is supposed to be indicated with the prefix ‘post’ is deconstructed.35 The French word différer has two different meanings, both of which come to bear in différance. On the one hand, temporization, that is, to postpone, “to suspend the accomplishment or fulfillment of ‘desire’ or ‘will’” (8/8). On the other hand, “to be not identical, to be other, discernible, etc.” Différance as temporization is bound up with a spacing, precisely because the corporeality of the sign plays its games in space and time. To clarify this, Der- rida refers to Ferdinand de Saussure’s theories concerning the arbitrariness of signs and their differential character, which are inseparable from one another. There can be arbitrariness only because the system of signs is constituted by differences and not by the plenitude of concepts (11/10).A sign is determined merely by its difference from every other. A concept, understood as a signi- fied idea, is never present in itself. I acquire meaning only through the “chain” of differences, though the “systematic play of differences” (11/11). As a result, however, the trace of sign/concept to be determined always leads farther away from an origin, which as such was never present. It is thereby that dif- férance itself attains a quasi-original character insofar as it necessarily precedes every signification (Bedeutung), every language, every meaning (Sinn) because it alone produces the determinative differences (13/12). Paradoxically, with the progressive determination of a concept its indeterminacy also increases, for every concept has to be determined once again by means of its difference from others. Also at this point Derrida’s path crosses Levinas’s when he adopts the latter’s talk of a “past that has never been present” (22/21). With this formula, says Derrida, Levinas qualified “the trace and enigma of absolute otherness: of the other [autrui].” Once again, Derrida expresses his solidarity with Levinas by characterizing “our ‘epoch’” as the one that distinguishes itself by the délimitation of the “ontology (of presence).” It is necessary to dissociate oneself from the determination of Being as “presence” and “beingness,” though not through its negation, which would merely reinstate ontology, but precisely through différance, which itself is not, but also is not not: “It governs nothing, reigns over nothing, and nowhere exercises any authority. —————— 35. See Jean-François Lyotard, La condition postmoderne. Rapport sur le savoir (Paris: Minuit, 1979); English translation: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984). ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 157

It is not announced by any capital letter. Not only is there no kingdom of différance, but différance instigates the subversion of every kingdom” (22/22). It becomes threatening and dreaded by “everything within us that desires a kingdom, the past or future presence of a kingdom.” But différance—which, after all, lies right on every indeterminable boundary between intelligible and sensible, Being and being, being and non-being—is de-limited. Its subversion and transgression is limitless. Thus, according to Derrida, one can no longer speak of a particular “epoch” of différance. “Perhaps we must attempt to think this unheard-of thought, this silent tracing: that the history of lovgoı Being, whose thought engages the Greco-occidental —such as it is produced via the ontological difference—itself is but an epoch of the diapherein” (23/22). As a result, there is only one single epoch, that of différance. There is a peculiar tension between Derrida’s thought of différance and Heidegger’s “ontological difference.” Like the latter, the former runs through —says Derrida—the entire history of occidental thought. According to Hei- degger, at the beginning of this history lies the experience of Being as “presencing” (Anwesen), which is to be thought in contrast to being, “something present” (Anwesendes). Along with the incipient experience of presence as such, the difference between “presencing” and “something present” has been forgotten and has left behind only a “trace of the distinction,” which in turn is “obliterated when presencing appears as something present and finds its filiation in a supreme being-present [Anwesendes].”36 To think “presencing” as the supreme being, God, subject, will to power, is, according to Heidegger, the radical negation of “presencing,” a negation that itself must be negated. Différance also knows the “trace and the trace of the erasure of the trace,” though no longer in the logic of negation, indeed not at all in the binary logic of oppositional concepts. Thus the trace no longer leads to an “other beginning,” an “other future,” or an “other god.” The “myth . . . of a lost native country of thought” which must be regained must be abandoned (Dif, 29/27). Derrida’s “trace and the trace of the erasure of the trace” refers to something that is not, that is not even not and nevertheless gives what is to be thought— yet in what logic?

§ 3.1. Infinite Judgment and Endless Limitation lovgoı The of logic is presented here as “judgment.” This signifies and har- bors an original “division” or separation, such as that between Yes and No. lovgoı The question concerning how the is constituted thus leads to the quality of the judgement or to the judgment of quality. In his classic table of judgments, Kant names three forms of the quality of a judgment (affirmative, negative, and infinite), to which correspond three categories of quality: reality, —————— 36. Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” 336/50–51. 158 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER negation, and limitation.37 In an affirmative judgment, the subject is assumed from within the sphere of the predicate. In a negative judgment, the subject lies outside the sphere of the predicate: in that case, the negation bears on the copula of the judgment. The infinite judgment says merely that the subject lies somewhere outside the sphere of the predicate. Here the negation bears on the predicate. For example: “the human soul is not mortal; some people are non- scholars.”38 As for what the human soul or “several people” are precisely, that is not said. Merely one of infinitely many possible determinations is denied. In light of this brief presentation of the forms of judgment, we venture to claim that Derrida’s logic corresponds to the infinite judgment or limitation. To clarify this, a decisive modification must first be articulated. Already in Kant the third form of judgment or category is to understood as a synthesis of the two preceding forms.39 This three-step synthesis becomes even clearer and more fundamental in Fichte40 and Hegel. The positive and the negative judgment for themselves are shown to be one-sided. It is only in the infinite judgment that they are sublated in a higher unity and thus in their truth.41 However, the infinite judgment, and thus the limitation, thereby moves into the vicinity of the synthesis as such. For postmodernity, the sublation of the other in the One as the “eschatological omnipresence” and as the “archaeo- teleological Same” becomes the basic structure of metaphysical thought as such, the structure that the entire contemporary movement of thought seeks to escape. Expressed in mythological terms following Levinas, the postmodern problem is: the return of Odysseus to Ithaca and, as Derrida rightly adds, the return to the Promised Land. In any case, Derrida’s thought attempts not only —————— 37. Immanuel Kant, Logik, ed. Jäsche, in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften IX, ed. König- lich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1923), 1–150, here 103–4 (§ 22); English translation: The Jäsche Logic, in Lectures on Logic, ed. and trans. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992), 517–640, here 600. The Kantian categories, which will be employed here in modified form, aim first of all at a mediation of unity and plurality related to sensuousness. The unifying point is the transcendental apperception or the transcendental subject, which achieves the final combination of the manifold. In the present context, the categories, as well as the forms of judgment, help in the discovery of structures in the manifold of what has been thought, and in fact as monuments of speech. 38. Kant, Logic, 104/600. 39. See Wilhelm Metz, Kategoriendeduktion und produktive Einbildungskraft in der theoretischen Philosophie Kants und Fichtes (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1991), 116 and 245. 40. J. G. Fichte, Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (1794), in Fichtes Werke I, ed. I. H. Fichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), 83–328, here 117–18; English translation: The Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1988), 115–16. On Fichte’s limitative dialectic, see Wolfgang Janke, Vom Bilde des Absoluten. Grundzüge der Phänomenologie Fichtes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), 187–89. On the whole, see also Metz, Kategoriendeduktion und produktive Einbildungskraft. 41. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik II, Werke 6 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 6th ed., 1993), 324–26; English translation: Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), 641–43. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 159 to deconstruct the definiteness of a position and a negation but especially to cause the synthesis as such to slide by postulating the quasi-originality of dif- férance, producing an endless openness through the tracking down and transgression of boundaries,42 and placing every judgment in abeyance through the elliptical oscillation between position and negation.43 Every judgment is “aporetic,” and for Derrida that means that it is also “porous” in its margins.44 But how can the infinite judgment or the limitation be regarded as the basic form not only of Derrida’s thought but also of postmodern thought as a whole? First of all, Derrida’s own diction recalls a peculiar kinship between “limitation” and his logic, for he speaks of a principial “de-limitation of the circle.”45 Likewise, the expression dé-construction entails a positive and a negative moment without intending any sublation. Other supplements of dif- férance also point to a porous boundary (hymen, margin) or to the interstice cwvra between two opposites ( ), whereby the opposites ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, ‘yes’ and ‘no’, ‘domination’ and ‘servitude’ can constantly exchange places with one another. Yet whereas in the classical metaphysical context the infinite repetition compels the “ascent” from—to speak with Hegel—the bad to the true infinity, postmodern logic settles into endless repetition, limitless plurality, and indeterminacy—while excluding the prohibition against infinite regress. Kant’s definition of the infinite judgment suggests this possibility when he stresses the moment of indeterminacy and infinity in the limitation: “For in the same [i.e. the infinite judgment] it is not determined above and beyond the finite sphere A under what concept the object belongs, but merely that it belongs to the sphere outside A, which is really no sphere at all, but only the bordering of a sphere on the infinite or the limitation itself.”46 Precisely this version recalls the differential character of signs in Saussure as it has been taken up in postmodernity.47 In an endless trace, the defining of a subject moves farther and farther away from this subject in an endless post- —————— 42. Cf. Jacques Derrida, “Tympan,” in Marges, i–xx; English translation: “Tympan,” in Margins, ix–xix. The collection centers on the theme of limitation (marge), as the title Margins of Philosophy makes clear. 43. See Derrida, Sauf le nom and Khôra, passim, as well as Letzkus, Dekonstruction und ethische Passion, 443–45. 44. On this see Claus-Artur Scheier, “Aporien oder die poröse Moderne,” in Vit- toria Borsò and Björn Goldammer, eds., Moderne(n) der Jahrhundertwenden. Spuren der Moderne(n) in Kunst, Literatur und Philosophie auf dem Weg ins 21. Jahrhundert. Akten des Kongresses “Moderne(n) der Jahrhunderwende(n),” 24.–27. November 1998 an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2000), 57–66. 45. Jacques Derrida, “Donner le temps (de la traduction) – Die Zeit (der Überset- zung) geben,” Vortrag von Jacques Derrida (protokolliert von Elisabeth Weber), in Georg Christoph Tholen and Michael O. Scholl, eds., Zeit-Zeichen. Aufschübe und Interferenzen zwischen Endzeit und Echtzeit (Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1990), 37–56, here 39. 46. Kant, Logic, 104 lines 9–16/600. 47. See Derrida, “Différance,” 11/11, as well as Letzkus, Dekonstruction und ethische Passion, 104. 160 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER ponement of the definitive determination. In this movement postmodern thought itself makes a decisive “ascent,” though not to “true infinity” but to the assumption that the original subject for its part was never present, but in its “breaching” (frayage) or “trace” merely gives itself while simultaneously withdrawing (Dif, 19/18). This makes it clear that and how this determinate modification of the infinite judgment does indeed become the signature of Derrida’s thought and thus of postmodernity as a whole. An aporia arises, namely a thought is to be defined here that is per definitionem not definable. Derrida himself pointed to this aporia already in his first attempts to determine différance (15/14) and still points to it in his recent discussion of the possibility and impossibility of a (self-)representation of his oeuvre.48 But could an “archaeology” of postmodernity be possible, as it were, behind Derrida’s back? If postmodernity moves in the logic of the infinite judgment, of the endless dé-limitation, what would be the spheres of the affirmative and the negative judgment, of reality and nega- ajrchv tion? And, above all, what would be the to which these judgments are related? What is incipiently affirmed, negated, and de-limited?

§ 3.2. The Judgment of Existence and Inherence To make headway here, it is first necessary to attend once again to the peculiar character of the quality of judgments. For Hegel the quality is of fundamental importance since it is the quality that decides about the “existence” (Dasein) of a thing.49 Yet what in the present context would the thing be about whose “existence” is decided in the affirmative, negative, or infinite judgment? When the talk of “existence” is heard with Derridian ears, one thinks immediately of the question of presence, of the “present,” and thus the Heideggerian determination of Being as “presencing.” Could the thing that Derrida thinks in the de-limiting judgment be precisely Being as “presencing” and man as “Da-sein”? Derrida then de-limits Heidegger’s thought and metaphysical thought as a whole, starting with its Parmenidean beginning. Yet this is the place to pause and point to Heribert Boeder’s thought. lovgoı ajlhvqeia50 Boeder showed already in his early essay on and that Heideg- ajlhvqeia ger’s description of truth as goes astray. Instead of the “unconcealed- fuvsiı aj-lhvqeia ness” of or Being, is related to a non-concealment of a given directive. In his oeuvre Boeder shows that the incipient Es gibt (It gives) is not related to the gift of Being, as Heidegger claims, but to the gift of knowledge, namely to the given knowledge of the destiny of man. Boeder’s Topology of —————— 48. Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida (Paris: Seuil, 1991); English translation: Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999). 49. Hegel, Science of Logic, 311–26/630–43. lovgoı ajlhvqeia 50. Heribert Boeder, “Der frühgriechische Wortgebrauch von und ,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 4 (1959), 82–112. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 161

Metaphysics51 unfolds in three epochs the totality of metaphysical thought, sofiva which is found to be related in each of its epochs to a that is specific to sofiva filosofiva the epoch in question, a that is sheltered by in a correspon- filosofiva ding logic. In the core position of Parmenides, Greek conceives the knowledge of the Muses concerning the destiny of man. The Christian philosophy of Augustine conceives the wisdom of the New Testament,52 and Hegel’s thought finds itself in a peculiar reciprocal relation with Hölderlin’s poetry. In the Ratiotectonic of Modernity53 Boeder shows how, after the completion of the philo-sophical conceptions of the epochal configurations of wisdom, an autonomous dimension of post-metaphysical thought forms, that of “modernity.” This “modernity” no longer knows any purely rational beginning of thought; instead, the “sense-explication” (Besinnung) of modernity is set on its way by a mundane experience. In the “core sense-explication,” thus in Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the civil, Christian, and Greek beginnings of thought are obstructed. In these thinkers, the philo-sophical knowledge of the destiny of man is replaced by the expectation of another future. Yet not only the dimension of modernity is distinct from metaphysics, but also that of “submodernity,” which distinguishes itself from the mundaneity of modernity by giving priority to speech; here both the eschatological dimension and its thought of a worldly origin are destructed.54 Accordingly, Boeder terms the three decisive totalities: the history of metaphysics, the world of modernity, and the speech of submodernity. In view of what was said in the foregoing about the categories of quality, it is not difficult to draw the following conclusion: metaphysics affirms wisdom, modernity negates it, postmodernity de-limits it.55 History, world, and speech guarantee, each in its own way, the “existence” of wisdom. The “archaeology” of thought—‘archaeology’ in the sense of a search for the determinative beginning56—that comes into play in our historical present in Derrida, brings to light the following strata: Derrida – Heidegger – Parmenides – Homer/Hesiod/Solon. Parmenides shelters the core of the knowledge of the lovgoı Muses in a corresponding . Heidegger negates the Parmenidean beginning and indirectly the knowledge of the Muses as well. Derrida de-limits both —————— 51. Heribert Boeder, Topologie der Metaphysik (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1980). 52. I have articulated this relationship in my book Konversionen. Eine Archäologie der Bestimmung des Menschen bei Foucault, Nietzsche und Paulus (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004). 53. Heribert Boeder, Das Vernunft-Gefüge der Moderne (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1988). 54. See Heribert Boeder, “The Dimension of Submodernity,” in Seditions: Heidegger and the Limit of Modernity, ed. and trans. Marcus Brainard (Albany, N.Y.: State Univer- sity of New York, 1997), 227–40. 55. I have developed this in the introduction to my Konversionen, 39–47 (4b). 56. On the concept of archaeology as the doctrine of the beginnings and in this sense as the doctrine of principles see my Konversionen, 47–51 (4c). 162 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER metaphysical thought (to which he also ascribes Heidegger) and, implicitly, Greek wisdom. Wisdom leaves behind only a trace and the trace of the erasure of the trace.57 Yet what if precisely in Derrida’s thought every possible relationship to incipient wisdom were to be completed? A completeness that would have to horrify Derrida. What if precisely after Derrida thought were once again to make a turn? And in fact from the erasure of the trace to the “erasure of the erasure,” as Claus-Artur Scheier puts it?58 What if precisely today the “withdrawal” of wisdom makes a turn into a “remembrance”? What if it emerges that “one thing has shown itself? Namely something different in the Jewish and in the Christian tradition”?59 Once again it is necessary to attend with Hegel to the quality of judgments: “The judgment of existence, however, is also the judgment of inherence.”60 The predicate appears here as dependent. It is inherent in the subject and attains only in the latter its existence and its support. Applied to the present context, this means: Neither Parmenides nor Heidegger nor Derrida are independent; rather, they inhere in Greek wisdom. The wisdom of Homer, Hesiod, and Solon would therefore have its own, incipient present. What present could this thought have today? First, none because Derrida has ultimately erased its modern trace in Heidegger, but precisely in that way he kept the present of incipient wisdom present. It remains Derrida’s present to a post-postmodern thought insofar as it is possible in Derrida to take up the trace of the erasure of the trace and trace it back to its beginning. But then what remains of Derrida’s critique of presence? The boundary remains that he erected over against Heidegger’s thought. But thinking is thereby set on its way to its other beginning. This other beginning is then able to reach in our age its own critical present: The distinguished and, prior to that, distinguishing present of the said word is its own, not a present that is offered to it by any representiation [Vergegenwärtigung]. Everyday talk is so little foreign to this word that it has spoken into such talk. However, the latter’s understanding . . . is taken aback each time. Thus the word is both not received and received— in the latter case, heard with distinction. And this is how it happens that the present claimed by the word is different from one embedded in the trends of the times. A present that falls in no time, but also is not an eternity as it still remained related as an immobilized Now to so-called nature. Instead, [it is] a present purely of the thought that—addressed with respect to its turn—thinks “towards its present [gegenwärts].”61

—————— 57. On this see Scheier, “Nur noch eine Spur der Spur?” 58. Ibid., 49. 59. Ibid. 60. Hegel, Science of Logic, 311/630. 61. Heribert Boeder, “Göttliche Paradoxa,” Sapientia 54 (1999), 499–512, here 511. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 163

§ 4. The Repressed Beginning of Occidental Thought This investigation has now reached a point at which the title’s “Adieu” can be further concretized. Here we reach the point of farewell to Derrida’s thought. It begins to become clear before which god this “adieu” occurs, towards which god this thought is heading and whom it meets with a salutary “adieu.” It is the god in the beginning of occidental thought. It is the god who gives himself to be thought mutatis mutandis in the Greek and the Hebraic traditions.62 Here we recall that this god was identified in the classical Christian thought, for instance, of an Augustine or a Thomas Aquinas always with the Christian God, even if he—say, in Scholasticism—appeared merely as the God of natural reason; thus in the Summa theologiae 1,2,3 the biblical God, who announces his name: sum qui sum (Ex. 3:14), is equated with the primum movens immotum of Aristotelian philosophy. But it is necessary to think in another sense of the God whom, according to Hegel, is grasped in Jewish, Greek, and Roman religion only one-sidedly and who then in the Christian religion gives what is to be thought as the plenitude of truth.63 Our concern here, however, is to think the divine directive of the first epoch of occidental thought first of all without its interpretation by the patristic-medieval or modern epochs.64

§ 4.1. Greek Wisdom The sheltering of wisdom has taken a different form in each epoch.65 In sofiva the Greek epoch, only the essential core-thought of the of the Muses is filo-sofiva translated into , and in fact in such a way that the relation to wisdom completely disappears after Parmenides. For Plato and Aristotle, Homer —————— 62. On this see Karl Rahner, “Theos im Neuen Testament,” in Schriften zur Theolo- gie I (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1954), 91–169, esp. “Der griechische und alttestamentliche Gottesbegriff,” 103–8. 63. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion II, Werke 17 (Frank- furt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990), 50–96; English translation: Lectures on the Philosophy of Reli- gion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with the assistance of H. S. Harris, 3 vols. (Berkeley: University of California, 1984 ff.), II: 423–54. 64. It would be worth considering whether, following Claus-Artur Scheier, the first epoch can be regarded as that of the Father, the second as that of the Son, and the final epoch as that of the Holy Spirit. The rule of law came to the world in Greek myth through Zeus; he is the “father of gods and men.” Likewise the God of the Old Testament is regarded in a special way as the Father—particularly of the people of Israel (e.g. Ex. 4:22). See Walter Kaspar, Der Gott Jesu Christi (Mainz: Grünewald, 1982), 178. For a differing view see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematische Theologie I (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 284. See also Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion II: 223/III: 275 ff. 65. On my view, one can speak of an explicit conception, in which revelation and reason remain separate, only in the second epoch. Here alone does wisdom in itself (the Trini- tarian God) retain absolute transcendence. Only through God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ and the revealed Scriptures of the New Testament that deal with Jesus Christ can thought grasp the wisdom of God speculatively. 164 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER

ajoidoiv 66 and Hesiod end up on the side of the poets ( ), who “tell many a lie.” Indirectly, however, they too remain—through the mediation of Parmenides’ thought—to the core of Greek wisdom.67 But just what is this core? To be noted first is the proximity of Parmenides’ poem to the knowledge of the Muses in Homer and especially in Hesiod,68 and not only with regard to form—the poem having been composed in hexameter. Also the structure recalls that of the Theogony. In both cases the source of knowledge is expressly treated in a proem. Parmenides is led by virgins, whom the Muses cause to think, to the “House of Night.”69 In this place, where human cognition, as far as it remains dependent on sensory perception, is left behind, he Divkh encounters “retributive ,” the divine protector of right (B1,14). The dis- sociation from everyday opinions and also the usual course of thinking is “no moi`ra bad fate [ ]” (B1,26), but accords with the fundamental dispensation qevmiı divkh ( ) and right ( ) (B1,28). The goddess of right reveals to him, on the eujpeivqeoı one hand, the “very persuasive [ ], unshaken heart of truth” (B1,29) and, on the other hand, the opinions of the mortals, in which there is no true pivstiı 70 dependability ( ), as well as the reason for these opinions (B1,29–32). “Saying the truth—this means saying how it is.”71 Regarding truth the following paths of contemplation are distinguished: 1) the path of “how it is and peiqwv how it is not, it is not.” This is the “path of ,” the power of truth to win one over. 2) The path of “how it is not and how it is necessary not to be.” Here the necessarily true is separated from the impossibly true (B6,3–8).72 Aris- totle will give this state of affairs the form of the principle of non-contradic- ajxiwmav tion, which has to be acknowledged as the first of thought (Metaph. Divkh 1005b16–20). keeps Parmenides from entering onto the first path, for it is completely untraversable. 3) Not untraversable but rather much traveled is a further path from which the goddess keeps him from setting out on. This is the path down which the mortals wander who do not know how to judge a[krita fu`la ( ) and for whom “how it is” and “how it is not” appear as the same but also not the Same. Yet Parmenides already notes that this path also —————— 66. Concerning Plato see, e.g., the second, third, and tenth books of the Republic; concerning Aristotle see Metaphysics I, 2, 983a3–4. 67. On this see Boeder, Topologie, 97–166. 68. Heribert Boeder, Grund und Gegenwart als Frageziel der früh-griechischen Philoso- phie (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), 119, and G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2d ed., 1983), 243–44. 69. Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker I (Zurich: Weidmann, 16th ed., 1992), B1,9. For an English translation of the fragments of Parmenides, see, e.g., Parmenides of Elea, Fragments, ed. and trans. David Gallop (Toron- to: Toronto University, 1991). 70. On this see Boeder, Grund und Gegenwart, 124. 71. Ibid., 131. 72. See ibid., 133. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 165 has its legitimacy. Thus precisely Derrida’s oscillation between ‘is’ and ‘is not’ and the accordant tarrying in the undecidable would be the human, all too human way of thinking. The three paths cause us to think back to the distinction in myth between the gods (who are always present), the dead (who are always absent), and the mortals (who are at one time present and at another, absent). Yet what does it mean here “to be present” and, moreover, what does “to be” mean? The Par- menidean “being” (B6,1; B8,3; etc.), which occasioned much misunderstanding already in antiquity, stands for the perfect and unchangeable being. This means, however, precisely not the homogeneous totality of what is, say, in the sense of a generally enforced conformity (Gleichschaltung); it does not amount to a theoretical prefiguration of totalitarianism—even though that is how Der- rida hears the Parmenidean “being”—nor is it the “night in which all cows are black.” Rather, what is meant is something that is first binding, which lies beyond humanly possible opining and consulting, a perfection that is just as critical as it is binding. This is also, as Heribert Boeder has shown, the meaning of to; ga;r aujto; noei`n ejstivn te kai; ei\nai the phrase (B3: for it is the same, both that into which there is to be insight and that which is to be). It is possible for human beings to be present with, or attend to (anwesend bei), that which is perfect, at least for a time. And it is also possible for them to have insight into this perfect-being. It is precisely in this sense that in Book XII of Aristotle’s Meta- physics the path of reason leads to that god who is himself insight, because he is the pure attention of reason to itself (Metaph. 1072b14–30). filo However, the intention here is not to take the path “forward” to - sofiva sofiva but rather “back” to , first of all to Hesiod’s Theogony. “How it Divkh Qevmiı 73 is to be”— , daughter Zeus and , gives this directive. The Titan Qevmiı Gai`a Oujranovı is herself the daughter of and . The original distinction Qevmiı that men experience is that between the heavens and earth. And so is the “fundamental”; she stands for the “law of what is binding.” First she re- Wrai| Eujnomiva ceives from Zeus the three : (who grants the goodness of lim- Divkh Ei- its), (who shows the limits and punishes transgressions), and finally rhvnhj 74 (the peace that arises from well-ordered and observed legal relations). With a reference to Heidegger, Derrida insinuates, however, that peace is im- Divkh Eriı[ possible and that is just another name for (strife) (Force, 925/926). But why does Derrida fear peace, the firmness of the limit, and the “presencing” of the One? Without answering this question here—it was already answered above—we note: Greek wisdom aims not at the extermination of the Qevmiı other but at the preservation of limits. bears on the comportment of men to one another, from the welcoming of strangers via the cult of the gods —————— 73. Hesiod, Theogony 901–3. 74. Concerning the foregoing see Boeder, Topologie der Metaphysik, 111. See also his “Access to Wisdom of the First Epoch,” in Seditions, 293–318, esp. 306–7. 166 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER to the fight against enemies. Without compulsion, though with the eye-open- peiqwv ing power of truth ( ), she determines with her children “how it is to be.” In the Odyssey this is illustrated, for example, in the scene in which Penelope encounters Odysseus, does not recognize him, but is drawn to him almost without limit. She says, “If you, Stranger, sitting with me in the hall, do indeed wish to please me, sleep would not be poured onto my eyelids. But there is no way [i.e. it is not to be] that men are sleepless. For the immortals im- moi`ra posed on everything a determinate measure [ ] on behalf of the mortals on the fruit-bearing earth.”75 Wrai| Qevmiı In addition to the three , also gives birth to the three Moi`rai 76 moi`ra . In singular significance, means the measure that is due to moi`ra each, both gods and men, and that is not to be exceeded. Accepting the distinguishes man, however, from his own lack of moderation and allows him to achieve his destiny.77 Thus Achilles ultimately controls his wrath,78 and thus Odysseus is distinguished from his companions. He alone is promised a homecoming. The strife, the conflict, the passage through foreign parts, the suffering—men can be spared none of it. Yet through the suffering they can achieve prudence and wisdom.79 In a special way, it is right and proper that men come to know themselves as mortals, that they know themselves within their limits. Know that you are no god, know yourself as a mortal in gnw`qi seautovn your mortality. This is the original sense of . And the second Qevmiı directive at the temple in Delphi, which was dedicated to before Apol- lo, aims at the protection of limits: “Not too much!”80 Qevmiı Like the Horae, the Moirae are children of and Zeus, the father of gods and men. The Greeks regarded him as the epitome and protector of the law.81 The right measure—that is the fundamental thought of Greek wisdom. —————— 75. Homer, Odyssey XIX, 592 ff. 76. Hesiod, Theogony 904–6. 77. Homer, Iliad XIX, 420. 78. Homer, Iliad XXIV. 79. Consider the final chorus from Sophocles’ Antigone: “Wisdom is by far the greatest part of joy, / and reverence toward the gods must be safeguarded. / The mighty words of the proud are paid in full / with mighty blows of fate, and at long last / those blows will teach us wisdom.” (Sophocles, Antigone, in The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984], 59–128, here 128.) 80. On this see Walter Burkert, Die griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977), 232; English translation: Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1985). Similarly in Heidegger only the “mortal” who reflects on his “being-towards-death” has an authentic relationship to Being; see Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 16th ed., 1986), 235–36 (§ 46); English translation: Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1996), 235–36 (§ 46). See also Boeder, “Mortal of Which Death?” in Seditions, 161–68, and Vernunft-Gefüge, 322–23, 353, and 357. 81. See, e.g., Solon, “Prayer to the Muses,” 25–29: “Such is the punishment Zeus gives, he does not, like a mortal, / fall in a rage over each particular thing, and yet / it never ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 167

It is precisely the safeguarding of the right limits of what someone is due that give the other room and lets him be, leaves him his own, leaves him Being. In the first epoch and only here—and this must be stressed contrary to Derrida— oujsiva the sense of Being is indeed ‘presencing’ (Anwesen). ‘Presencing’ ( ) means: the well-ordered multiplicity of that which one is due.

§ 4.2. Hebraic Wisdom sofiva Greek lies at the beginning of Greek thought and its core is ab- lovgoı sorbed in philosophy. In the horizon of the Greek there is no abiding need to refer to a given, revealed knowledge.82 The principle can instead be qewriva seen immediately in by reason. Philo-sophical knowledge of the share in presencing need not be personified in divine figures, nor is there any need for belief in the sense of Christianity. As in every other epoch, here philosophy achieves a peculiar “enlightenment,”83 which in this context causes the Greek “god” to be completely absorbed by philosophy and reason and to be assimilated completely by reason. Nevertheless, of concern here is something holy, for even the reason of which Aristotle speaks is a divine reason, even if its divinity should not be confused with that of the Christian or the Jewish God, for divine reason in Aristotle allows at least partially of presence (Metaph. 1072b24–25). Here divinity basically means immutability, inviolability.84 Thus —————— escapes him all the way when a man has a sinful / spirit; and always, in the end, his judgment is plain. / One man has to pay at once, one later, while others / altogether escape overtaking by the gods’ doom; / but then it always comes in aftertime, and the innocent / pay, the sons of the sinners or those born long afterward.” (From Greek Lyrics, trans. Richmond Lattimore [Chicago: University of Chicago, 2d ed., 1960].) Concerning the way in which the Muses let one know something and the rule of law, see Boeder, “Göttliche Paradoxa,” 501: “Attending to everything distinguishes reason. But what everything is that? That which in the talking and acting of the mortals made a difference due to its excellence. And precisely for that reason remains worth talking about. That which not only is but is good, because in comparison it is better or superior. This in turn according to the standard of the distinction of ‘how it is to be’ from ‘how it is not to be’ as that which is known absolutely from the beginning. And in fact in the sense of that which always and everywhere gives what is to be thought. Precisely this gift is the highest. It can be met only with thanks. Thankful for—that is how the Greeks saw it—the rule of law, whose name is ‘Zeus’.” lovgoı 82. Matters are different with the of Christianity. The “Word” that was “in the beginning” and that was God (John 1:1) must remain expressly and abidingly related to a suprarational revelation. 83. On this see the discussion of the relationship between theology and enlightenment between Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (F.A.Z., January 8, 2000, pp. 1–2), Eberhard Jüngel (F.A.Z., January 18, 2000, p. 48), and Wolfhart Pannenberg (F.A.Z., February 1, 2000, p. 51) in the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. See also Claus-Artur Scheier, “Zeit, Glaube und Geschichte. Zum tragischen Grund des Christentums,” Braunschweiger Beiträge für Theorie und Praxis 100, no. 2 (2002), 80–85. 84. We recall here the holiness and inviolability of the dignity of man in the modern era, as it is expressed in the German constitution. That dignity is inalienable. It is also not simply human in the sense of a worldly, natural scientific anthropology, but is itself of a theological nature—hence the constitution’s reference to God. 168 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER

Derrida certainly was right to have associated the one source of religion, which is also connected with the name of Heidegger, with the holy, sacred, whole, while also referring to another source, which is connected with the name of Levinas and with the Hebrew faith. Here the abiding relatedness of thought to revelation survives. Now if we set out from Derrida, can we pick up a trace to Hebraic wisdom as a second source of occidental thought? Certainly not in the sense of a conception, that is, a sheltering of wisdom in philosophy, which would occur in parallel to the Greek conception. Aside from the—to speak with Derrida— “Alexandrian promiscuity” (VM, 124/84), the two worlds of thought, the Greek and the Hebraic, move largely apart from one another. Nevertheless, the Holy Scriptures of the Israelites are nothing foreign to occidental thought and belief. In the second epoch it is taken up into the canon of Christian revelation as the “Old Testament.” Constantly interpreted Christologically, in late antiquity and the Middle Ages it gives reason what is to be thought. Also in the modern era (Neuzeit), in which new readings emerge—for instance, Pas- cal’s talk of the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” whom he opposes to the god of the early (modern) philosophers—the Old Testament remains an integral component of occidental thought and Christian culture. Strangely enough, precisely in that phase of post-metaphysical/modern thought in which a series of thinkers want to destruct metaphysics, in which filo sofiva Heidegger negates the deed of early Greek - and thereby erases the sofiva trace of Greek , and in which the Christian faith fought for its survival in the face of its modern negations, European Judaism was largely annihilated. An abysmal connection, which has thus far been given far too little thought. Yet it is not least the thought of Levinas and Derrida that draws attention to the connection between the Holocaust and metaphysics—though in the wrong way, for the Holocaust is not embedded in the dynamic of metaphysics, but precisely the absence of a theo-logical determination of man is the condition for the possibility of the Holocaust. And yet: The question concerning Derri- da’s god and the beginning of occidental thought leads inevitably to the beginning that at first lies outside the Greco-occidental horizon, that enters into this horizon through the mediation of Christology, and that ultimately has something decisive to say even without the direct Christological reading. The trace, the trace of the erasure of the trace that is taken up in Derrida, thus leads to a wisdom that Derrida himself deconstructs time and again and therefore de-limits. The directive of the Torah is obscured and postponed in the very same way as is Greek wisdom. In the end it becomes impossible to obey the Torah since its determinacy, its power of distinction is also suspected of being totalitarian and desirous of exterminating the other. However, insofar as the erasure of the erasure of the trace is taken into account, after Derrida a new, literally philo-sophical listening to the Torah also can begin. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 169

Already when one first listens to the name of God, a remarkable point of contact with the center of Derrida’s thought become perceptible, namely the question of presence and a peculiar proximity to the Parmenidean beginning. God interprets his name Yahweh for Moses as “I am the ‘I am there’” (Ex. 3:14). It is doubtless after careful deliberation that the name of God is translated as ejgwv eijmi oJ w[n (I am the being) in the Septuagint. This recalls the Parmenidean “being.” Yet the differences must be borne in mind: The Eleatic “being,” like Aristotle’s god, grants thought presence with itself (Anwesenheit bei sich). Moreover, the “being” is that which is to be thought in truth. By contrast, Yahweh can be perceived neither by the senses nor with reason. And yet the deeds of this God are perceived in history. They give what is to be thought. This holds for God’s actions towards Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but most of all for the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and the accordant return to them of the Promised Land. Thus the interpretation of God’s name as “I am the ‘I am there’” promises the people of Israel the help of Yahweh. He is there to lead Israel home. Contrary to how Levinas thinks this, the basic schema of the Jewish thought of salvation (Israel – exile – Israel) most definitely aims at the return home, comparable to Odysseus’s return to Ithaca. Like Odysseus’s homecoming, so too the Israelites’ entry into and stay in the “Promised Land” are bound up with following the law. Only the just man who has not transgressed the law can enter the land, he alone can live in peace. With respect to content the early Greek and the early Hebraic law are quite close to one another. They comprise a large number of concrete directives that correspond to one another. Likewise the aim of each is the same. h\qoı Both represent an , that is, both grant humane dwelling. In both directives man is called on to distinguish himself from others and, moreover, from himself. The important thing is to set limits on desire. The limits set may not be transgressed since they have their ground in the decision of Zeus or in the will of Yahweh. The individual and the people so determined know to preserve the shares of “presencing” in the sense of existence, living space, possessions, and not least in the sense of reverence owed in the worship of God. Yet Qevmiı Divkh unlike and , which are matters of insight, the Hebraic law is a matter of the will. The correspondence of divine and human will is not absolutely a demand of reason, but a particular demand of Yahweh. Hence the Decalogue begins with the introduction of God: “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves” (Ex. 20:1).85 In the Decalogue ten limits are drawn that regulate the relationship of one to another and allow every other as other to attain his due. The first com- —————— 85. On this see Otto Kaiser, Der Gott des Alten Testaments. Theologie des AT 3: Jah- wes Gerechtigkeit (Stuttgart: UTB, 2003), as well as Wolfgang Laumann, Die Gerechtigkeit der Götter in der Odyssee, bei Hesiod und bei den Lyrikern (Rheinfelden: Schäuble, 1988). 170 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER mandment distinguishes God from all other gods. At issue here is not a decision about the existence of gods, for in its early period Israel is familiar with quite a number of them. However, only Yahweh is to be worshipped by Is- rael. God is then distinguished from all creatures. Nothing men know in all creation can serve as a likeness of God. God alone is the wholly other. While every other may be wholly other, no one is the wholly other, besides God. This must be stressed contrary to Derrida. Nor are the days of men simply different from one another. One day each week and only this one is wholly other, because it is consecrated to the wholly other. The remaining seven commandments draw limits among men which may not be transgressed. Here the concrete presence (Anwesen) of the other, that is, his life, his marriage, his possessions, his honor are protected from infringements. The Torah is not simply a body of law that possesses generally humane significance; rather, it is a sign for the special covenant that God made with his people. This special covenant is not meant to be called into question by the observation that Hebraic wisdom lies at the beginning of Christian, occidental thought, for the Christian churches acknowledge this special relationship.86 Independently of that, however, it should be noted that the wisdom of the Torah is already accorded in Deuteronomy a potentially universal relevance, for in the Torah lies “the wisdom and the insight” (Deut. 4:5 LXX: sofiva kai; sunesv iı ) of the Israelites before all peoples. Here too in the Sep- tuagint translation the sidelong glance at the Greek world of thought should be noted, especially as in the same verse it is asked “where [there] is a people sofo;ı kai; ejpisthvmwn that is so wise and knowing” ( ). In keeping with the Is- raelite understanding, the justice, wisdom, and reasonableness of the Torah can be seen by all peoples, even if only the people of God are bound to follow the directive wholly and rigorously. Within occidental history only the Decalogue becomes universally binding as the core of the law. All “moral precepts” of the law can be traced back to the Ten Commandments.87 Thus the Decalogue is identified with the natural moral law, as it is adopted from the Greek tradition and is expressed in the voice of the natural conscience, and holds ultimately for all men, for Jews, Christians, and gentiles alike.88 Yet neither is the Christian concept of the —————— 86. We refer here to statements of the Vatican Council II in the Dogmatic Consti- tution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), no. 16 (DH 4140), and the Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), no. 4 (DH 4198), as well as a more recent text from the Pontifical Biblical Commission (The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, Pronouncements of the Apos- tolic See 152, May 24, 2001). 87. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1–2,100,3. 88. A first indication of this is found already in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 2:12–16. This identification is developed in medieval theology; see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1–2,100. ADIEU: DERRIDA’S GOD AND THE BEGINNING OF THOUGHT 171 chosen people of God ethnically fixed any longer. Now whoever believes in Christ belongs to the people of God. In the modern era the thought of the people of God is further widened and, to recall only Kant, made to refer to all men insofar as they act not only dutifully but out of insight into duty.89 The revelation of the God of Abraham lies not merely at the beginning of the Jewish and the Christian religions with their peculiar proximity to and remoteness from one another—and Derrida also refers to this—but also at the beginning of the Islamic religion. Here we merely note that both Judaism and Islam have also thought themselves time and again with the aid of the Greek lovgoı —to mention only Moses Maimonides and Al Ghazali.

§ 5. Conclusion “Adieu: Derrida’s God and the Beginning of Thought.” Under this title our intention was first of all to shed light on the principle of Derrida’s thought. This protean non(-principle) appears under many different names: cwvra différance, , pas, hymen, pharmakon, l’autrui, the messianic, justice. It takes the place of the metaphysical principle that was thought in each epoch of philo-sophy ultimately theologically and thus envisaged as “God.” It also occurs, however, in the modern substitutions for the metaphysical god, especially in Heidegger’s version of “Beyng/Seyn” or “presencing/Anwesen,” though without wanting to make a new substitution for God. It is precisely on this account that Derrida’s principle remains determination in favor of non-determination or emptiness. More precisely: It moves in the interstice of determination and non-determination, fullness and emptiness, Being and non-Being. The logic of this interstice can be grasped as the logic of the infinite judgment or de-limitation. It is Heidegger’s thought that is first de-limited and then the history of metaphysics as a whole. By contrast, Heidegger himself negates that history and seeks opposite to it an other beginning. Contrary to Derrida, it must be stressed that there is indeed a beginning. In the foregoing we sought to indicate that in the beginning of philo-sophy a relation to an incipient gift is to be found, though it is no longer to be thought with Heidegger as “Beyng” but as wisdom. Parmenides acts affirmatively towards this wisdom by trans- lovgoı muqoı` lating into the the core thought of the Greek , which was first po- lovgoı etized by Homer and Hesiod. Through this the logic of myth itself can be found. The fundamental thought of Greek wisdom is: the just order of property/presencing as the destiny of man, in short: the divine measure. Both Heidegger and Derrida remain indebted to this thought ex negativo and ex de- —————— 89. Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Kant’s gesammelte Schriften VI (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1906), Part III; English translation: Reli- gion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998), Part III. In this text the concepts ‘ethical commonwealth’, ‘people of God’, and ‘church’ are used interchangeably. 172 KARLHEINZ RUHSTORFER limitatione, respectively. Therefore a limit can now be set to the limitless domination of deconstruction. We can now bid farewell to Derrida’s principle. However, as the third mode of acting towards Greek wisdom, which today literally has something decisive, something standard-setting (Maß-gebliches) to say to us, it does retain limited validity. Derrida has his place within the sphere of the media-saturated speech of daily life. But now the saying proper to wisdom can once again be perceived in the post-postmodern reality of our speech. From Derrida via Levinas a second trace also leads to that other beginning that first of all lies outside of the Greek, but which crosses the path of the Occident. Since the death and the resurrection of the law-abiding Jew, Jesus Christ, the Hebraic “directive” also gives the now Christian philosophy what is to be thought, and that—insofar as the rational love of wisdom is renewed beyond metaphysics—continues to be so to this day. In this regard, the “Old Testament” appears not only as the necessary prehistory of the “New.” As such it belongs to the gift to us from the second epoch. The path, which begins with Derrida, leads to the first beginning of thought, however. Each in its own way, ever distinct from and close to one another, the Greek and the Hebraic directives form the gift of the first epoch of our history.

Husserl versus Neo-Kantianism Revisited: On Skepticism, Foundationalism, and Intuition

Rosemary R. P. Lerner Catholic University of Peru (Lima)

§ 1. Introduction: A Tale of Estrangement The estrangement between Edmund Husserl and contemporary philosophy has long been a topic of discussion. Partly responsible for this estrangement was Husserl’s proposal at the beginning of the twentieth century to carry out a two-sided foundational project that seemingly reenacts the modern rationalist (“resolutive” and “compositive”) foundational project.1 As Rudolf Boehm has pointed out,2 this project amounts to a renewal of “the classical Greek ideal —————— 1. On the one hand, inspired by Leibniz’s version of the mathesis universalis, Husserl postulated an a priori positive foundation for all sciences that would be provided by a new conception of pure logic or formal ontology and, on the other, he pursued a twofold reconstruction of human experience as a whole: first, a reflective regression to the absolute transcendental subject, which is conceived of as the original region of sense-giving experience (by means of the transcendental phenomenological reduction); second, an eidetic descriptive reconstruction of intentional experience by means of intentional constitutive analyses, experience that is conceived of as the incessant production of the meaning that is apprehensible within the horizon of our encounter of the world. To achieve the first aim, he relies on studies of formal idealities while opposing the prevailing positivist psychologism. Husserl’s is one of several foundational enterprises that were formulated early in the twentieth century. In- deed, his project has frequently been assimilated to programs of rational reconstruction inspired by the modern idea of “foundation” which were conceived of at that time both in the most advanced investigations of scientific thought (e.g. logic, epistemology, and experimental sciences) and in more speculative enterprises (e.g. David Hilbert’s “meta-mathematical” project, logical atomism’s “mechanism of logical reduction,” and Rudolf Carnap’s reduc- tionist program). See Jean Ladrière, “L’Abîme,” in Savoir, faire, espérer. Les limites de la raison (Brussels: Facultés Universitaires de Saint Louis, 1976), 171–91. 2. Rudolf Boehm, “A Tale of Estrangement: Husserl and Contemporary Philosophy,” Research in Phenomenology 12 (1982), 13–20, here 13. Boehm’s title refers to Husserl’s peculiar estrangement from contemporary Continental philosophy, despite the fact that a great part of this philosophy “can be seen as implementing, mostly quite independently, Husserl’s last program for phenomenological research” (15). Thus, although Boehm aligns Husserl with great modern “storytellers” such as Fichte, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marcuse, and Levinas, he takes sides with those “estranged” from Husserl’s phenomenology (18) and concludes: “As for Husserl’s story, I think that it cannot be true” (19).

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 173–208 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 174 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER of purely theoretical knowledge,” which he maintains overtly contradicts Husserl’s own “storytelling” concerning the estrangement of modern rationality from our life-world and the need to overcome it. Many have dealt with the crisis of this foundational model. It has been shown that no method can determine the idea of a privileged, self-sufficient, and ultimate axiomatic domain to which we could “reduce” everything, as well as that there is no way of up- holding the idea of a self-sufficient, absolutely autarchic foundation without falling prey to self-referential paradoxes. Following Martin Heidegger’s critical reflections on the notion of ground, Continental philosophy has joined analytical philosophy in disproving this model. And in those instances where the need for rational foundation is still felt, as, for example, in Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, such attempts—so Jean-François Lyotard claims—continue to be subject to the requirement of “not having recourse to the Cartesian- Husserlian philosophy of subjectivity, which can provide as a foundation only evidences that are suspect since they are ultimately solipsistic, isolated.”3 What motivates our reflections in the present study is not the general re- buttal of the outdated, allegedly Husserlian “foundationalist” model. Instead, we shall focus on another essential element that has contributed to the estrangement between Husserl and contemporary philosophy: the pervasive and unquestioned influence of Kant and neo-Kantianism during most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries regarding the nature of rationality and the status of intuition therein. Indeed, we shall argue that the hidden influence of neo-Kantianism in this regard is largely responsible for the critical reception of transcendental phenomenology’s revolutionary views, within both the Continental and the analytic traditions. This problem is not unrelated, however, to the question of foundationalism. Indeed, it was a recent book4—in which its author, Karl Mertens, critically confronts Husserl’s problem of “ultimate foundation” with skepticism and makes use of transcendental (i.e. neo-Kantian) “arguments” thereby that have their origins in discussions within analytic philosophy—that first moved us to formulate the position argued for here. Mertens reaches a negative conclusion concerning Husserl’s attempt to prove transcendental phenomenology’s abili- —————— 3. “Elle vise à la fois à maintenir l’exigence d’un fondement contre une épistémologie qui n’excède guère la description de la pratique scientifique, et à ne pas recourir à la philosophie cartésiano-husserlienne de la subjectivité, qui ne fournit en guise de fondement que des évidences elles-mêmes suspectes parce que finalement solipsistes, incommunicables.” Jean- François Lyotard, “Argumentation et présentation. La crise des fondements,” in André Ja- cob, ed., Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle I: L’Univers Philosophique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989), 738–50, here 740. 4. Karl Mertens, Zwischen Letztbegründung und Skepsis. Kritische Untersuchungen zum Selbstverständnis der transzendentalen Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1996). Henceforth cited as ZLS with page reference. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. Those that are cited are modified whenever necessary and without notice. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 175 ty to resist skeptical arguments and thus the legitimacy of its claiming for itself the rank of an “ultimately founded science.” Contrary to Mertens’s views, in the present essay we intend to show how Husserl’s approach to the intuitive foundations of rationality puts his version of transcendental phenomenology in a better position than any other transcendental philosophy to resist any form of skepticism. Before developing our position, let us briefly outline the structure and context of what will follow here. The first part of this paper follows Eugen Fink’s 1933 account of the neo-Kantian critique of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, against the historical backdrop of intuition’s place in philosophy since Kant.5 We shall then review Mertens’s claim that there is a way of resisting the skeptic’s arguments and thus of legitimating the claim to an ultimately founded knowledge—and a fortiori to knowledge in general. He believes that this can be achieved by “reconstructing” Husserl’s theory of evidence, yet outside the context of Husserl’s account of transcendental phenomenology. In concluding the first part, we briefly compare Mertens’s critical conclusions regarding transcendental phenomenology’s claim to being “first philosophy” and an “ultimately founding and founded” science with Fink’s aforementioned discussion of neo-Kantianism and transcendental phenomenology. In Part II we develop the arguments supporting our position, focusing on the intuitive foundations of rationality within transcendental phenomenology. On our view the broad, Husserlian concept of intuition is the main source of the estrangement between his philosophy, on the one hand, and neo-Kantian, analytic, and Continental philosophy, on the other. It is our contention, however, that—both as the essence and the foundation of rationality—the Husser- lian notion of intuition provides a powerful weapon against skepticism. It also proves to be the key to a possible renewed interpretation of his controversial “foundationalism,” which we shall attempt below. Thus in the sections making up Part II we examine some salient aspects of the aporias, as well as their solutions, involved in the development of Husserl’s theory of intuition in the general context of his notion of intentionality. We first inspect Husserl’s struggle to liberate this concept from Brentano’s phenomenalist conception, whereby Husserl breaks away from an “immanent-directed” concept of intuition and shifts to a “transcendent-directed” one. Secondly, we examine Husserl’s efforts to introduce the Cartesian and Brentanian paradigm of “adequate evidence” within the realm of “tran- —————— 5. Eugen Fink, “Die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kri- tik” (1933), in Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 79–156; English translation: “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Contem- porary Criticism,” in R. O. Elveton, ed. and trans., The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings (Seattle: Noesis, 2d ed., 2000), 70–139. Henceforth cited with German and English pagination, respectively. 176 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER scendent” logical idealities. Thirdly, after reviewing the skeptical aporias gen- erated by the paradigm of adequacy within the “natural attitude” and its two, differently oriented intuitions (transcendent and immanent), we consider Husserl’s strategic decision to carry out a phenomenological reduction in order to overcome the natural attitude’s dualistic structure and to reveal the anonymously functioning transcendental life therein. We then take up this new concept of immanence as “pure” or “transcendental” and Husserl’s correlative theory of intuitive evidence, especially as it is formulated in Ideas I.6 In this context we describe his confrontation of new aporias that stem from his per- sistent claim to adequacy within the transcendental domain, against the backdrop of the open-ended temporal dimension of “pure” intuitive intentional experience. Here we elaborate on Husserl’s strategy of tackling this problem by making use of the “idea in a Kantian sense” in its manifold meanings. After in- dicating Husserl’s gradual replacement of the paradigm of adequacy with that of mere apodicticity, we end this essay by drawing conclusions regarding the nature of intuition in transcendental phenomenology, its status as the ultimate foundation of rationality, and its role in overcoming skepticism.

§ 2. Neo-Kantianism Revisited “The question of whether philosophical cognition is grounded in concepts (logic) or intuitions (evidence) remains a crucial point of contention between phe- 7 nomenological and neo-Kantian modes of thought.” In his 1933 essay, “The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl in Contemporary Criticism,” Fink addresses the perpetual criticisms—stemming mainly from Heinrich Rickert’s Southwest German School of Neo-Kantianism—to Hus- serl’s transcendental, “constitutive” phenomenology. Husserl himself had avoided entering into discussions with a view to dismantling objections and misunderstandings that had already been prevalent for decades and that arose mostly but not exclusively, according to Husserl, from a superficial reading of his work. Yet these objections and misunderstandings came from almost every —————— 6. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuh- mann. Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983); henceforth cited as Ideas I with page references to the original edition, which are located in the margins of both editions. 7. Steven Galt Crowell, “Neo-Kantianism: Between Science and Worldview,” in Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 2001), 23–36, here 33. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 177 possible direction and not only from Rickert’s school—which was influenced more by Kant’s practical philosophy and German idealism and was made up of the founders and defenders of the human sciences, or Geisteswissenschaften. On the other hand, Husserl’s work had also been disparaged by representatives of diverse philosophical enterprises, all of which appear to be rooted in neo-Kantianism—at least if we broadly consider as neo-Kantian both Auguste Comte’s positivism8 and, prior to that, the psychologism first advanced by Ja- cob Friedrich Fries (1773–1843) and Friedrich Eduard Beneke (1795–1854), the earliest positivist Kantians, who intended to offer a “general psychological foundation” of Kant’s philosophical system.9 Since then Kant’s conscious or unconscious followers oscillate between the empirical-sensuous or conceptual-formal poles of Kant’s account of knowledge or else seek to articulate these poles, depending on how they read his system. One may argue, of course, that the early psychologists just mentioned and those following John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic10—which added an empirical aspect to the positivist theory of knowledge—are mainly connected to modern English empiricism. Likewise, the nineteenth-century developments in the “algebra of logic” and in mathematics11 may be said to be connected primarily to Leibniz’s late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century projects of a mathesis and a characteristica universalis. Yet both nineteenth-century cur- —————— 8. It was actually Saint Simon who first used the term to characterize science’s exact method and its extension to philosophy. But Auguste Comte popularized the term and initiated the movement that mostly shaped the nineteenth- and, we maintain, twentieth- century worldview. The publication of Auguste Comte’s Course of Positivist Philosophy (1830–1842) marked the downfall of German idealism. 9. Both Jacob Friedrich Fries’s Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft (1828) and Friedrich Eduard Beneke’s Die Philosophie in ihrem Verhältnis zur Erfahrung, zur Spekulation und zum Leben (1833) were written explicitly against Hegelian idealism and both considered the method and task of philosophy to be self-observation or consciousness. Since for them psychology was the description of internal experience, this discipline was considered the only possible philosophy. Both anticipate John Stuart Mill’s empirical gnoseology and the confirmation of the truth of any knowledge as being drawn from its psychological genesis. 10. John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive was first published in 1843 and went through many editions. It was highly regarded due to its inductive method, which was held to provide the empirical sciences with a set of formulae and criteria that would replace traditional argumentation with syllogisms proceeding from general principles. The work is not a traditional manual of logic but an empirical theory of knowledge or gnoseology, such as Locke’s and Hume’s works provide. Mill’s account addresses the question of proof or evidence. 11. See Edmund Husserl, “〈Besprechung von〉 E. Schröder, Vorlesungen über die Alge- bra der Logik (Exakte Logik), I. Band, Leipzig 1890,” in Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), ed. Bernhard Rang, Husserliana XXII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979), 3–43; Eng- lish translation: “Review of Ernst Schröder’s Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik,” in Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, trans. Dallas Willard (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 52–91. Henceforth cited as ‘Hua XXII’ with German page references, which are included in the margins of the English edition. 178 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER rents of thought may also reflect motifs in Kant’s transcendental critique of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, as is well known, these alleged philosophical foes all share the same aversions to any sort of essentialism and, correlatively, any sort of “eidetic” or “categorial” intuition. Indeed, Kant had sanctioned the dictum that human intuition is only individual, tied to the hic et nunc, and thus empirical; hence, it is blind, devoid of any synthetic, teleological self-generating capacity. Whereas for Kant the understanding, with its conceptual and synthesizing tools and functions—those of judging (i.e. raising phenomenal contents to the objective unity of “apperception”12) and “constituting” (construing) objects—is empty when left to itself,13 incapable of actually giving us an object. Kant’s followers never challenged grosso modo this spontaneous, purely formal notion of the understanding, nor its philosophical, rational significance. For them intuition was just the empirical basis and starting point of rational procedures, and not rational in itself. Even Hegel and his followers are neo-Kantians in this wider and sui generis sense. Indeed, he radicalizes Kant’s views by reducing the value of intuition to the unmediated and undeveloped starting point of experience. Hence, he only seems to refer disparagingly to the understanding when criticizing the modern rationalists’ fascination with the paradigmatic status of mathematics (geometry) with respect to philosophy and when rebutting Kant’s subjugation of science to analytics and its “logic of contradiction” (“logic of the understanding”). Beyond Kant, for whom the main synthetic operation of the understanding is founded on the originary subjective function of apperception, Hegel claims that his dialectics are based on “the objectivity of illusion and the necessity of contradiction that belong to the nature of the determinations of thought.”14 Thus for Hegel the synthetic activity, which allegedly makes possible the “self-movement of the content,” is the active spontaneity of the concept, and logic is the foundational science sensu stricto. Thus Hegel does not regard intuition as merely blind, in need of being subsumed by the understanding, as Kant would have it. Because it remains in the realm of pure immediacy, it must instead be sublated and made intelligible through the “hard work of the concept.”

—————— 12. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften 3, ed. Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1904/11), B141–42; English translation: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Lon- don: Macmillan, 1968), B141–42. 13. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A50–51/B74–75. 14. G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik I (Hamburg: Meiner, 1975), 38; English translation: Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), 56. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 179

§ 3. The Analytic and Hermeneutic Disavowal of Phenomenology Most of Husserl’s detractors follow the same lead regarding the place of intuition. The early defenders of a “formal” foundation of logic, mostly mathematicians and logicians, aligned themselves with the neo-Kantian defense of a “formal” and purely analytic Apriori. They were followed by the “analytic philosophers,” whose method of logical analysis seemed to be concerned solely with logical propositions, as if “a logical possibility,” as Elisabeth Rigal notes, would eo ipso imply “material possibility,” that is, a description of “physical reality.”15 Intuition appears here to be completely superfluous. By contrast, Gottlob Frege is an atypical analytic philosopher. A would- be “neo-Platonist” and a virulent anti-psychologist while also a disciple of Her- mann Lotze16 (himself a “neo-Kantian” logician), Frege focuses on logic and thus on the objective structures of language. Accordingly, he chiefly deals with meanings (Bedeutungen), that is to say, truth values, since logic (at least, Um- fangslogik, or extensional logic) aims primarily at a “theory of truth.” But what distinguishes Frege is how he conceives of the logician’s access to true propositions, the properties of which resemble Husserl’s characterization of “idealities” (meanings and objectivities). Indeed, propositions are imperceptible, that is, beyond any empirical or psychological perception; they are also supra-temporal and intersubjective, yet irreducible to the semiotic realm. In “The Thought” he even maintains that propositions as “objects of contemplation”—being neither contents of our consciousness as representations nor conclusions of indirect proof procedures—are given to us through a sui generis act of the intellect: “apprehension.”17 He avoids, of course, the phrase ‘intellectual intuition’ or others noei`nijdei`n nou`ı offered by the tradition ( , , etc.),, which are laden with metaphysical connotations. Yet Frege, who as an anti-psychologist asserts that sensory perception has been overrated and on this ground attacks Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic mercilessly,18 does not seem to contradict Husserl’s concept of “eidetic” and “categorial” intuitions explicitly. Unfortunately, his lack of interest in psychology or theory of knowledge prevents him from developing the question concerning the nature of this “apprehension,” for his in- —————— 15. See Elisabeth Rigal, “Mais lesquels sont-ils donc des philosophes analytiques?” in Gérard Granel and Elisabeth Rigal, eds., La notion d’analyse (Toulouse: Presses Univer- sitaires du Mirail, 1992), 161–92, here 163. 16. See Hermann Lotze, System der Philosophie. Erster Teil: Drei Bücher der Logik (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1874). 17. Gottlob Frege, “Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil: Der Gedanke” (1918), in Kleine Schriften, ed. Ignacio Angelelli (Hildesheim: Olms, 2d ed., 1990), 342–62; English translation: “The Thought,” trans. Peter Geach and R. Stoothoff, in Michael Beaney, ed., The Frege Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 325–45. 18. Gottlob Frege, “Rezension von: E. G. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik. I” (1894), in Kleine Schriften, 179–92; English translation: “Review of E. G. Husserl, Philoso- phie der Arithmetik, I,” trans. Eike-Henner W. Kluge, Mind 81 (1972), 321–37. 180 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER terest in logic allows him to focus only on the objective (logical) structures of language. There are also other neo-Kantians, however, who are critical of Husserl for whom the understanding requires empirical “givens” and ought to function in conjunction with an intuitive faculty, the latter being conceived of as solely empirical and passive. This holds particularly of the more epistemologically-oriented Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism and their successors. This holds also for Brentano and his followers—as well as for the naturalists and psychologists who were early targets of Husserl’s own critique of positivism’s relativistic and skeptical theories. Yet it was not only the neo-positivists of the Vienna Circle, the self-pro- claimed defenders of the natural sciences, who did not spare phenomenology, but attacked Husserl’s idea of a “material Apriori.”19 Indeed, Husserl’s own followers from Göttingen and Munich, the first members of the phenomenological movement that formed around the Logical Investigations, did not understand their master’s own critical appraisals of the naturalistic remnants and consequent skeptical dangers still involved in that breakthrough work from 1900–1901, dangers that centered on the “foundational” claims made for phenomenological intuition. Last but not least—and more difficult to discern—is the neo-Kantian provenance of the nascent, allegedly “rebellious” anti-neo-Kantian Continental philosophers, most of whom were followers of the young Heidegger’s “hermeneutic turn” in transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, with increased virulence they explicitly opposed both a neo-Kantian and a Husserlian epistemological, transcendental, and foundational concept of philosophy as a theory of science. They radicalized Husserl’s innovative conception of philosophy as autonomous with respect to science. Yet some philosophers, such as Georg Misch, classed transcendental phenomenology with neo-Kantianism since they remained ignorant of the “historical living movement in human existence and thought,” whereas Heidegger and his disciples were deemed to have correctly followed Wilhelm Dilthey’s life philosophy.20 Without going into the history of post-Heideggerian anti-foundationalist, pragmatic, hermeneutic, deconstruc- tionist, structuralist, and postmodern “philosophies,” it would nevertheless be worth inquiring into whether their rejection of Husserl’s alleged “representa- tionalism” is not once again motivated by a hidden neo-Kantian misunderstanding of the role and scope of phenomenological intuition and evidence. —————— 19. See, e.g., Moritz Schlick, “Gibt es ein materiales Apriori?” (1932), in Gesam- melte Aufsätze 1926–1936, ed. Friedrich Waismann (1938; reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1969), 20–30; English translation: “Is There a Factual Apriori,” trans. Wilfrid Sellars, in Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars, eds., Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), 277–85. 20. See Georg Misch, Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie. Eine Auseinanderset- zung der Dilthey’schen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl (Leipzig/Berlin: Teubner, 1931), esp. “Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Dilthey und Husserl,” 180–97. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 181

In view of the foregoing criticisms, it becomes possible, indeed necessary, to adopt and even expand on Steven Galt Crowell’s assessment of neo- Kantianism as generally having “set the agenda for philosophies which displaced it.”21

§ 4. Fink and the Neo-Kantian Critique Whereas Fink took up the task of addressing some of the charges leveled by the neo-Kantians, Husserl—feeling that his work was so far removed from contemporary interpretations of it (even potentially serious ones)—preferred to give Fink his support while himself continuing to develop the philosophical sense of his phenomenology in the multiple directions in which it was leading him. Fink’s 1933 account of neo-Kantian critiques of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology has two parts: the first addresses phenomenology’s method in the Logical Investigations,22 and the second considers—without any regard for Husserl’s development between the publication of both texts—the erroneous claim that the first book of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy is “critical philosophy.”23 Let us first recall the neo-Kantians’ four main objections to the phenomenology worked out in the Logical Investigations. The first objection bears on the intuitionism of its method, according to which phenomenology erases all essential differences between the cognitive faculties of sensibility (authentically intuitive) and the understanding (aprior- istic and discursive) and thus unjustifiably extends intuition’s reach, not only to knowledge in general (everyday and scientific) but also—and more dangerously still—to philosophical knowledge. Thus in the Logical Investigations Husserl defines knowledge in terms of a prototype of intuition: self-givenness (Selbstgebung) or “adequate perception,” which he is said to grasp inadmissibly as “eidetic” and “categorial.” By contrast, Criticism, having successfully brushed aside all naive theories of truth as adequacy, claims that it has preserved “empirical realism” and shown the transcendental conditions of the theoretical object’s scientific construction out of “given contents.” The second objection concerns phenomenology’s alleged dogmatism: as a consequence of phenomenology’s methodological intuitionism, it is maintained, Husserl does not carry out a transcendental deduction or “objective legitimizing” of eidetic intuition. The third targets phenomenology’s alleged ontologism (in its breakthrough work): as a theory of eide or essences it is said to transform the ideal Apriori into objective “entities.” Due to this “objectification” of the ideal sense (and validity) of pure concepts, it also interprets “values” as entities, thereby —————— 21. Crowell, “Neo-Kantianism,” 23. 22. Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl,” 82–86/73–78. 23. Ibid., 95–98/85–89. 182 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER misunderstanding their axiological character and erasing the essential differences between ideality and reality. Philosophy is thus inadmissibly conceived of as following a naive notion of knowledge. Finally, phenomenology is said to be in general a dogmatic philosophy since it intends to reawaken pre-Kant- ian rationalist philosophies, whereby the “thing-in-itself” is attainable without a transcendental deduction of the corresponding intellectual categories. As a consequence of these four objections, Criticism maintains, phenomenology cannot claim to be scientific. The second part of Fink’s account of the Rickert school’s objections to phenomenology begins with the alleged basic “community” (Gemeinsamkeit) of problems, means, and goals between “critical neo-Kantianism” and phenomenology. Having overcome the dogmatic position of the Logical Investi- gations regarding the self-givenness of entities by assuming a transcendental point of view, Ideas I posits the same fundamental problem posited by critical philosophers: that of the “possibility of knowledge.” Husserl also scrutinizes this possibility by returning to transcendental consciousness and its synthetic activities, which issue from the pure, “unreal” ego of “transcendental apperception.” Phenomenology as a “critical theory” also questions the “presuppositions” on which all positive sciences are based and thus is concerned with problems of “constitution.” But phenomenology, according to Rickert’s disciples, proves to be at odds with this critical standpoint insofar as it admits “intuitive” and “ontological” points of view into the doctrine of transcendental apperception, thus smuggling in a hidden “methodological dogmatism.” The “pure I” is consequently not a “pure form”; the “transcendental ego” is instead interpreted ultimately as an individual, entitative ego. Furthermore, the naive “eidetic” method is carried over from worldly pre-philosophical experience into the philosophical realm. The universal preeminence of the pure form of consciousness in general, as the transcendentally constitutive “valid form” of the world, is still burdened in phenomenology by “intuitionistic prejudices” that cause consciousness to be transformed into a dogmatic entitative realm. Thus, according to the neo-Kantians, the “intuitionistic” consequence of Husserlian phenomenology is that an “entity” is the transcendental presupposition of every other “entity.”

§ 5. Between Skepticism and Ultimate Foundations Let us now examine the foregoing, neo-Kantian objections in light of Karl Mertens’s Between Ultimate Foundation and Skepticism: Critical Investigations of the Self-Understanding of Edmund Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology.24 In it he proposes a critical confrontation between transcendental phenomenology’s claims to “ultimate foundations” and skepticism. For that purpose he —————— 24. See n. 4 above for the full reference. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 183 uses “transcendental arguments” that stem from current discussions within the context of analytic philosophy and transcendental pragmatism. The book concludes critically that Husserlian transcendental phenomenology is incapable of resisting skeptical arguments and thus of claiming for itself the status of an “ultimately founded—and founding—science.”25 However, on his view there is a way of resisting the said arguments, whereby the claim of an “ultimately founded knowledge”may be legitimized. Nevertheless, this way is not Husserl’s, though Mertens claims that it results from a “reconstruction” of Husserl’s theory of evidence. Two presuppositions sustain Mertens’s line of argumentation: He maintains, first, that any philosophy claiming for itself the status of a “definitive knowledge” ought to legitimize itself in debate with skeptical critiques and, second, that there is a deep contradiction in phenomenology’s later, genetic period between two motifs. They are a) the discovery of the temporal and historical genesis of all knowledge (whether scientific, philosophical, or everyday), thus the exposition of its surmountable character and open-endedness; and, as a consequence of the latter, b) transcendental phenomenology’s radicalized self-characterization as an eidetic science, of definitive, “supratempo- ral,” and “suprahistorical” truths—ultimately founded and founding—which have allegedly overcome the historicity of knowledge and all relativism (ZLS, 9–11, 19–20, 22–24, 27, 29–33). Although many of the passages Mertens cites from Husserl refer to the latter’s Platonic ideal of philosophy and science, he nevertheless insists on interpreting them—as do many of his critical predecessors—as purely Cartesian. According to Mertens, had Husserl instead followed Kant’s transcendental idealism more closely, Husserl’s theses would only exhibit a hypothetical, not indisputable, character (43, 45, and 101–31). It is on the alleged “contradiction” between these two motifs that Mertens focuses his attention and his critical examination (13). Mertens aims to “develop Husserl’s work in new contexts”—just as Hus- serl himself apparently would have done. Hence, on the basis of both Husserl’s systematic-programmatic enunciations concerning transcendental phenomenology and his analytical manuscripts on intentionality, Mertens first claims to “reconstruct” phenomenology’s basic “arguments” from within. But then, following the lead of Ulrich Claesges’s “On the Problem of Encyclopedic Phe- nomenology,”26 he proposes to submit transcendental phenomenology to an —————— 25. Mertens’s interpretation of the “ultimate character” of phenomenology’s foundational claims is developed in the first chapter of his book, “Die Aufgabe der Letztbe- gründung nach Husserl,” whereby Husserl’s “foundationalism” is characterized as “fundamentalism.” See ZLS, 19–36, esp. 36. 26. Ulrich Claesges, “Zum Problem der enzyklopädischen Phänomenologie,” in Lothar Eley, ed., Hegels Theorie des subjektiven Geistes in der “Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse” (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1990), 185–202. 184 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER external critical scrutiny regarding the justification of its premises’ truth claims and its general systematic consistency. Thus Mertens alternately employs two types of “reconstruction”: an internal one, whereby a theory is “demonstrated” on the assumption of the truth of its premises, and an external one, whereby a given theory is examined presupposing the truth of certain premises not belonging to the thought it intends to reconstruct. At first glance, it seems that when reconstructing Husserl’s work from an immanent viewpoint, Mertens draws on Husserl’s central “theory of evidence” (ZLS, esp. 170–243), whereas when he adopts an external viewpoint he puts into practice his conviction that “[e]very attempt at a modern determination of transcendental philosophy must lead back to Kant” (44).27 However, the actual development of his book does not proceed along these lines; rather, it seems that the external point of view prevails. Indeed, his scrutiny of transcendental phenomenology’s foundation of knowledge is undertaken from a critical (i.e. neo-Kantian) point of view in constant debate with both dogmatic and skeptical positions, where each is used against the other. Furthermore, he carries out his critique in the context of his own, very ingenious debate with numerous other authors of very different—though not phenomenological—“camps”: pragmatic transcendentalists, deconstructionists, hermeneutists, and analytic epistemologists, neo-Kantians and neo-Hegelians, and scholars of thinkers from Aristotle to Hegel.28 Thus the first half of the book, which is supposed to carry out the internal reconstruction of Husserl’s concept of knowledge, does not draw on Hus- serl’s theory of evidence. Instead, it directly confronts its claims to “ultimate foundations” with skeptical arguments, which results—according to Mertens— in the refutation of that claim. On the other hand, the second half of the book, which is supposed to undertake an external reconstruction of transcendental phenomenology, draws on elements from a phenomenological theory of evidence (internally reconstructed). Yet Mertens’s aim lies beyond the scope of phenomenology since his intention is to understand legitimation as verification or “giving proof” (Bewährung), whereby phenomenology’s instances of “evidence” themselves (and their ultimate foundations claims) must be “test- ed.” Mertens thus seeks to reconstruct transcendental phenomenology in the image of a neo-Kantian transcendental philosophy, which is why he does not disavow the foundationalist claim altogether, but—in order to save this claim and legitimize the founding and founded character of phenomenology—be- —————— 27. Our emphasis. Yet, despite the passage just cited, Mertens explicitly denies that he is explaining Husserl’s philosophy against the backdrop of Kant’s philosophy. Husserl also draws his ideas from the Greeks and Descartes, whence he obtains the concept of “ultimate foundation” (ZLS, 44). 28. Mertens lumps together many philosophers who belong to different historical periods and traditions but who he maintains offer material—both data and strategies—for his “reconstruction” of rational “arguments.” HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 185 lieves it necessary to eliminate from its research program all elements pertaining to the “ultimate” and “definitive” character of its foundations. In view of the latter, he argumentatively29 incorporates in the program certain skeptical elements that are meant to effect a “foundationalist cleansing” so as to free phenomenology from two kinds of unilateralism: dogmatism and skepticism. Hence a properly immanent reconstruction of Husserl’s theory of evidence is never carried out, nor does Mertens ever presuppose the “truth” of the “theory” under examination. This explains why Mertens himself, in the course of this marvelously argued book, largely ignores or misses the sense of Husserl’s intuitive method. Now let us summarize the stages of Mertens’s reconstruction of Husserl’s alleged “transcendental arguments” and conclusions, so as to assess Mertens’s critical scrutiny. Mertens begins with an internal reconstruction of phenomenology’s claims to “ultimate foundation.” These claims are made already during the static period of transcendental phenomenology’s development, where ‘ultimate foundation’ has at least three meanings: a) definitively true and invariable, b) original in the sense that there is no previous knowledge from which it derives, and c) as “absolute or irrelative givenness.”30 Hence phenomenology claims for itself the status of a “definitive science,” the truths of which exhibit “ultimate and permanent validity,” “invariability,” and “eternity”31—all of these notions being bound up with the a priori character of “essences”32 and, thus of “eidetic intuition.” As noted above, these assumptions acquire a foundationalist profile in the radical sense when, during phenomenology’s genetic —————— 29. Mertens seeks to justify his argumentative strategy by claiming that in his later years Husserl had related the “procedural” character of all philosophizing—and its con- comitant “relativity”—to his own philosophy. This strategy is neo-Kantian according to our earlier characterization, and not properly phenomenological, i.e. intuitive (ZLS, 10, passim). 30. Edmund Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana II (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), 50; English translation: The Idea of Phe- nomenology, trans. William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), 50 (original German pagination is included in the margins). Subsequent to their initial citation, volumes from Husserliana are cited as Hua followed by Roman volume number and Arabic page reference. 31. Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänome- nologischen Reduktion, ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana VIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959), 21, 30, passim. 32. ZLS, 19–20, passim, quoting from Ideas I, 7–16, Hua II 39–40, and Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), § 98/English translation: For- mal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978), § 98, passim (henceforth cited as FTL with original German pagination, which is included in the margins of both editions). These quotations ignore the nuanced contexts from which they are usually extracted. E.g., when Husserl refers to his idea of philosophy as a “universal science,” he generally refers to it as having “a certain definitive character and a certain type of radicalism or definitive character” (Hua VIII, 21). 186 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER period in the 1920s, a contradiction becomes apparent between the “universality” and “ultimate character” claimed by philosophical knowledge on the one hand and the open-ended, genetic, historical, variable, and replaceable character of all knowledge—including philosophy’s own claims as an ultimately founding and ultimately self-founded science—on the other hand, as laid bare by intentional analyses. In view of this internal contradiction, phenomenology has to clarify the sense in which it is first philosophy, a “discipline of beginnings,” the sole ultimately founding and ultimately self-founded science.33 This, according to Mertens, is the dogmatic turn taken by Husserl’s transcendental genetic phenomenology during the Twenties. However, Mertens continues, transcendental phenomenology claims not to be a dogmatic but rather the most critical of all sciences. Further- more, Husserl professes that his phenomenology is a “theory of reason,”34 thus that it is actually subject to the criteria of rational demonstrability (ZLS, 23). As a consequence, phenomenology must also characterize itself “critically,” that is, it must examine its presuppositions and contrast them with dogmatic and skeptical arguments, as did Kant. And since skepticism questions the very possibility of knowledge, phenomenological method must first tackle the skeptical objections raised against the claim to “ultimate foundations” (36–60). Yet for his scrutiny Mertens conveniently highlights the performance of only two aspects of phenomenological method: a) its “freedom from prejudices” (29–30) and b) the phenomenological “reduction,” the true nature and function of which is barely seen here—except for its “subjective” orientation (31), as we will see below. —————— 33. As Husserl says at Hua VIII, 3, it is a science that possesses “the highest and ultimate self-meditation, self-understanding, self-responsibility of the knowing subject regarding his knowledge-performances, or, equivalently, the absolutely self-justifying science and hence universal science. . . .” See ZLS, 32. Mertens also refers to Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte, ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana VII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956), 349–50; Hua XVII, 274, 279–80; Edmund Husserl, Carte- sianischen Meditationen, ed. S. Strasser, Husserliana I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), 47/Eng- lish translation: Cartesian Meditations, An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff: 1960), 5–6 (henceforth cited as CM with the German pagination, which is included in the margins of the translation); and Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomeologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften, ed. Marly Biemel, Husserliana V (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952), 139/English translation of the cited “Epilogue” of Ideas I: Ideas pertaining top a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 406 (original German pagination is included in the margins). 34. See Hua VII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956), 95 and 130; Die Krisis der europäischen Wis- senschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954), 83; English translation: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcen- dental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 1970), 81 (henceforth cited as Crisis with German and English page references, respectively); Ideas I, 314 ff. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 187

The traditional skeptical arguments that phenomenology must confront when making the claim to “ultimate foundations” are all reducible to an insol- uble trilemma:35 a) dogmatism, according to which the foundational procedures must lead to an ultimate, founding, self-legitimating principle; b) regressus ad infinitum, whereby there is no possibility of reaching the end of a chain of inferences, and, c) petitio principii, whereby “ultimate foundations” are secured through a self-referential (circular) procedure.36 Since all three fail, whoever persists in maintaining a theory of “ultimate foundations” is eo ipso a dogmatist. If Husserl is to prove that he is not a dogmatist, his phenomenology must perform a “transcendental deduction,” as must every “transcendental philosophy” (ZLS, 46). “Transcendental arguments” that lack the required “transcendental deductions”—as some analytic philosophers maintain37—are insufficient for this purpose (41). Stronger and more akin to Kant are the deductive strategies of a transcendental pragmatism (41–50), such as Rüdiger Bubner’s, which “deduce” (legitimate) certain factual and contextual (i.e. subjective) categories of knowledge and language (language-games) that are insuperable or “ultimate.”38 Since it relies on neither empirical facts nor dogmatic principles alone, Bubner’s transcendental argument develops “in the form of a self-referential argument, as a circular type of justification that is circular in a certain way and does not retreat to further foundations” (50). On this view, “ultimate knowledge” is “self-referential” since it can only be founded in itself. However, Mertens argues that, although the transcendental pragmatic argument is in a certain sense circular, it is only “apparently” dogmatic and only seemingly falls into a vicious circle or a petitio principii, since it is not properly a “syllogism” in the traditional sense, wherein the founding principles are clearly distinguished from the founded conclusion (49).39 Hence this neo-Kantian variety of transcendental argument appears to provide a solution to the problems raised by the dogmatic trilemma and seems —————— 35. See ZLS, 36. Mertens refers there to Hans Albert’s 1968 work, “Traktat über Kriti- sche Vernunft,” in Die Einheit der Gesellschaftswissenschaften 9 (Tübingen: 1968), 13 ff., where Albert formulates the Münschhausen Trilemma, as well as to Wolfgang Kuhlmann, Reflexi- ve Letztbegründung. Untersuchungen zur Transzendentalpragmatik (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1985), 271, among others. 36. The Münschhausen Trilemma derives from Pyrrho’s five argumentative modes or tropes regarding the impossibility of absolute knowledge, as well as from Aristotle’s discussion on the non-demonstrability of axioms (Post. Anal. I, 2 and 3). 37. Mertens refers in n. 28 (ZLS, 41) to the work of P. F. Strawson, Jonathan Bennet, Ross Harrison, Jaako Hintikka, among others. 38. Mertens refers to the work of Rüdiger Bubner, Thomas Grundmann, and Karl- Otto Apel, among others. See ZLS, 41–50. 39. Mertens seems to be referring here to the difference between syllogism, the classical Aristotelian deductive demonstration, and induction—a “topical” type of argument. The transcendental pragmatic argument discussed here seems to be a variation of the latter sort of Aristotelian inference. We shall return to this point. 188 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER to suffice for the moment in order to point up the skeptic’s inconsistencies. The most ancient inconsistency arises when the skeptic, while denying knowledge, makes use of theoretical principles, claims to make sense, and aspires to his own truth.40 The absurdity in which he entangles himself results from his denial of the conditions of possibility pertaining to his own opinions Does Husserl fare better in the confrontation with skepticism than analytic philosophy or transcendental pragmatism? Once again the answer is bound up with phenomenology’s kinship with Kant’s philosophy: both con- tend that transcendental philosophy and critique are able to unveil the a priori conditions of knowledge and both propose a transcendental idealism, subject skepticism to a fundamental critique, and appoint subjectivity as the ultimate source and locus of all knowledge. Nevertheless, according to Mertens, Husserl appears at the outset to be better equipped to resist skeptical arguments than other transcendental philosophers since he has a “differentiated view” of skepticism. Indeed, he integrates skeptical arguments into his program in order to reveal imperfections in knowledge and the ways to overcome them so as to securing “ultimate foundations.” The most favorable element that skepticism brings to the debate is its emphasis on the subjective character of knowledge itself, the fact of the knowing subject—as Husserl puts it: “The essence of skepticism is subjectivism” (Hua VII, 58; see ZLS, 56–57). Mertens believes that only this strategy may help to avoid the skeptic’s trilemma entirely. He also notes that while most analytic philosophers and transcendental pragmatists have only a negative assessment of skepticism, they nevertheless use it as a means for prov- ing the transcendental character of their thought. By contrast, transcendental phenomenology has a positive approach since it uses skepticism to determine subjectivity as the ultimate foundation. Mertens also approves of the elenctic and heuristic character of phenomenological method: a) the skeptical epoché enables the philosopher to break away from the “natural attitude,” and b) the reduction directs philosophical investigations towards subjectivity as the ultimate criterion. Despite his approval of phenomenological method in this regard, Mertens immediately questions Husserl’s claim to “make true, in a higher sense, the radical subjectivism of the skeptical tradition” (Hua VII, 61, 185; ZLS, 58). Indeed, Husserl only criticizes skepticism in general regarding its absurd, self-refuting arguments. But by incorporating skepticism into his own arguments so as to se- cure “ultimate foundations,” Husserl ultimately undermines those same claims for “ultimate foundations” (58–59).41 On the other hand, he has not contested all —————— 40. This critique is very old, leading back not only to Aristotle’s elenctic arguments but also to Plato’s arguments against Protagoras. As Mertens also points out, Husserl himself makes use of these arguments in many texts. 41. Mertens immediately subjects transcendental phenomenology’s claim to “ultimate foundations” to critical scrutiny by confronting it with different forms of skeptical arguments that Husserl himself did not envisage (see ZLS, 61–142). HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 189 forms of skepticism. For instance, even if it is proved that subjectivity is the “ultimate source behind which there is no other” (Unhintergehbarkeit), the skeptic could retort that it has only been proved to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a “definitive” type of knowledge (76–100). Furthermore, Mertens is more interested in the skeptic’s demand to confront phenomenology’s return to subjectivity with alternative attempts to determine “ultimate” conditions of knowledge—which Husserl does not do—by which alone transcendental subjectivity’s claim could have been legitimated (101–31). Mertens goes still further and asserts that even if subjectivity were accepted as the ultimate domain beyond which there is no other, transcendental phenomenology would still have to prove that it internally satisfies the ultimate character of its own conclusions (132–42). As was noted, this confrontation ends in favor of skepticism since Husserl cannot convincingly shore up his claim against objections raised by skepticism in its various forms (that is, radical, external, partially absolute, etc.). Never- theless, Mertens—as a “normal or rational skeptic” himself—“accepts the bases of phenomenology” while rejecting its “ultimate character” (143). He therefore undertakes, in the second part of his book, an external reconstruction of phenomenology in order to eliminate all its elements that pertain to its claim to “ultimate foundations” (143–69). Mertens believes that the skeptical critique forces phenomenological method to undertake a total programmatic revision of its view. Once the Cartesian and foundationalist elements have been eliminated from it, any risk of leaning towards either the dogmatic or the skeptical side disappears: according to Mertens, the skeptical moment eliminates all dogmatic tendencies, whereas the “foundational” element legitimates knowledge in the face of the skeptical excesses. Yet the notion of legitimation as validation (Bewährung) itself must be also subjected to examination. In a broad sense, the notion of validation (which is used here for critical scrutiny) could give the false impression of being the “ultimate” source of truth. Hence legitimation as validation cannot be the last word (see 159), and the principles of validation must lie outside validation. It depends on certain structural premises—“foundations” or principles— notwithstanding their possible aporetic character, as in the case of the phenomenological ego. Indeed, there are critical limits to a transcendental self- apprehension, since “all structures hide or dissimulate their inner life” (161). Ultimately, one has to accept some sort of “circularity” in the foundational procedure, as well as: 1) a certain facticity of the principles at the outset (as external skepticism demands); 2) a confrontation of these principles with “alternative determinations of ultimate presuppositions”; and 3) the possibility of changes and variations of these ultimate premises (as partial and normal forms of skepticism demand). Since Mertens’s approach to Husserl’s concepts of intuition and evidence is deficient and sometimes appears to interpret instances 190 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER of phenomenological first evidence (i.e. “the principle of all principles”42) as means of gaining access not to certain ultimate yet morphological and genetic structures and functions of experience but to certain contents and “beliefs” that could be contrasted to other “beliefs,” he rejects Husserl’s account of the non- demonstrability of “first evidences.” For this reason Mertens favors procedural and argumentative strategies above all others—like all neo-Kantians, preferring procedural validation (“deduction”) over intuition. This is clearest when he confronts ‘validation’ with ‘truth’. Truth is indeed what is validated—or else that which could be rejected in the course of validation. But if validation rests upon something prior, something non-demonstrable, truth falls prey to skepticism and relativism. How then can the skeptic subject phenomenological premises to critical scrutiny? Since they are unable to validate transcendental phenomenology’s “ultimate premises” themselves, some skeptics will examine only the demonstrable character of some of their alleged properties, such as their “in itself” character or their “invariability.” On the other hand, relativists will either a) stick to an internal conception of truth as procedural validation (“verificationist theory”), or b) adopt an external conception of truth as intuition (“correspondence theory”), which allows of no verification. The former is internal in two senses: i) it is limited to our inner knowledge, and ii) knowledge is related in each case to what is factually validated, ever changing, and contingent. Consequently, the verificationist theorist (whom Mertens favors) believes truth to be ever- changing, whereas the “intuitionist” (whom Mertens disparages) sticks to an external, absolute truth. So the first type of relativist (a) is a skeptic with regard to the second type’s contentions (b). Mertens concedes that a combination of both types could be attempted, yielding “compatibilism.” This mixed type of skepticism would bear only on intuition from the vantage point of “verifica- tionism” (a). Yet Mertens is not satisfied with this solution either, which simply reformulates and weakens the skeptical (“procedural”) stance (164). Now like every good neo-Kantian who pursues his transcendental “deductions” to the end, Mertens believes that truth must be accounted for, both from the standpoint of (procedural) validation and from that of intuition. He thus seems to value Husserl for his successful articulation of both demands in his genetic phenomenology: where the relative character of validation is described as the ever-changing process of constitution under a regulative idea, and the absolute character of intuition is oriented towards a perfectly adequate experience in line with the goal of an external and definitive truth. Mertens ap- preciates Husserl’s use of the “Idea in a Kantian sense” in the context of per- —————— 42. Ideas I, § 24. Husserl’s “first evidences” in this context refer to phenomenological evidences, i.e. those obtained with “pure intuition” by the pure ego after the reduction. They concern phenomenological (pure) experiences, i.e. the structures and functions of pure consciousness as given to a phenomenological scrutiny. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 191 ception, as well as the pre-determined concept of an absolute, albeit unattainable, truth. But he criticizes Husserl for subordinating the former to the latter and for having avoided the relativist consequences of his theory for his own theory. In other words, Mertens maintains that phenomenological evidences themselves are constituted (and thus relative) unities of sense, such as the worldly evidences the constitution of which phenomenology seeks to describe and ground (ZLS, 213–14; see FTL, 242–43). Hence they are also the product of a “transcendental constitution” of sense and validity. For Mertens, then, Husserl’s claim to “ultimate foundations” as ultimately founding and founded privileges the intuitionist point of view, and as a consequence truth can no longer undergo subsequent corrections. Since this point of view is based on an uncritical stance, according to Mertens, it is time to submit it to criticism. Mertens concludes his book by proposing his own—“phenomenological”—theory of validation, which he builds out of an external reconstruction of three key concepts that Husserl himself developed: evidence, aprioricity (where Husserl’s material Apriori or “essence” is subjected to critical scrutiny), and historicity. Of these it is evidence that is the key concept, since the other two presuppose its articulation. Regarding adequate evidence, Mertens remarks that from the Logical In- vestigations on Husserl understands it as “givenness,” the ideal of “perfect givenness,” and an “exceptional form of fulfillment,” which is posited as the goal of all knowledge. Mertens traces these properties of adequate evidence all the way up to the genetic phase of transcendental phenomenology, particularly from the Twenties on, when other—quite different properties—come to the fore. Evidence now appears within the context of a teleological, temporal, active and passive, and inter-referential structure of knowledge, which gives rise to a tension between two types of evidence: inadequate and adequate. Mertens points out, however, that Husserl does not employ these last dynamic traits so as to describe phenomenology’s own cognitive claims; furthermore, he contends that there is a sharp distinction between them and those that formerly pertained to perfect and adequate evidence. He also refuses to examine them together, and immanently, using phenomenology’s own tools—contrary to Elis- abeth Ströker’s demands, for example (ZLS, 213).43 Despite his erudition (or precisely because he is too erudite and too little inclined to heed the “things themselves”), Mertens’s “external reconstruction” introduces a series of false —————— 43. Mertens draws very strange conclusions regarding Husserl’s late distinction between adequate (vs. “inadequate”) and apodictic (vs. “non-apodictic”) evidence, adducing as an example of “adequate” yet “non-apodictic” evidence that of transcendent or external intuition or perception. Yet since when is outer perception “adequate”? Husserl even doubts the “adequacy” of immanent perception in Ideas I. (See §§ 8–9 below.) Mertens’s muddled presentation of this distinction and the role it plays in the development of Husserl’s notion of evidence is at odds with the rest of the book, which—although very debatable in its premises, strategies, and conclusions—is more cleverly conceived. 192 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER insights, which have special consequences for his examination of Husserl’s differentiation between “adequate” and “apodictic” evidence in the final phase of his thought. Mertens does not seem to realize that adequate evidence is finally replaced by apodictic evidence in Husserl’s final phase, at least as of 1924. He thus introduces a strange difference between both from “without.” For Husserl, he says, adequate evidence is the result of absolute fulfillment and therefore as a telos it lies in infinity, preserving from within the tension between anticipation and absolute fulfillment (ZLS, 220). By contrast, he says, apo- ajrchv dictic evidence is absolute evidence from the outset, a pre-supposition (or of phenomenological knowledge, one in which there is no such tension and whose denial implies a contradiction (219). According to Mertens, adequate evidence agrees more with the notion of truth as (procedural) “validation” and “process,” whereas apodictic evidence simply suspends the thought of demonstrability. Mertens’s presentation is surprising, to say the least, since, on the one hand, he equates adequate evidence with truth as validation, that is, as contingent, variable, and subject to correction; on the other hand, however, he has to admit that Husserl acknowledges that apodictic (not adequate!) evidence—the only evidence to which phenomenology admittedly can aspire—may change into error in the course of experience.44 One is tempted to say that for Mertens these two kinds of evidence represent two facets of Husserl’s work, facets that others too claim to have “de- tected”: a) apodictic evidence (which is allegedly found in the program of transcendental phenomenology that Husserl made public during his lifetime) is equated with a hardcore “essentialism,” that is, a frozen ultimate Apriori or an intuitionistic notion of truth; and, in contradiction to the former, b) adequate evidence (which is allegedly found in the unpublished phenomenological analyses) is equated with a newly discovered historicism and a “procedural,” relativistic notion of truth (242–43). The latter is said to be bound up with an emphasis on an open-ended justification and a “regulative idea” that lies in infinity (282). Since adequate evidence prevails, Mertens assumes that he has proved phenomenology’s failure to justify its claim to “ultimate foundations” since it can offer only “presumptive evidences” (230–33). Yet this conclusion hinges on two misconceptions: there is not an actual contradiction between Husserl’s published work and his opus postumum as some have presumed, nor does Mertens correctly depict Husserl’s concept of adequate and apodictic evidence. —————— 44. Thus Mertens thinks that when Husserl refers to the “Zweifellosigkeit, die notwendig und prinzipiell unaufhebbar . . . absolute Zweifellosigkeit” and “absolute Gewißheit” of “apodictic evidence,” he is not describing a process that contains “unfulfilled components,” may be partially inadequate, and may not exclude the conceivability of becoming subsequently doubtful, as Husserl himself carefully explains (CM, 55–56). On the contrary, he believes that Husserl describes unmovable, eternal, perfect, and ultimate truths upon which rests the whole development of phenomenology. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 193

Finally, Mertens claims that he is a “non-foundationalist” transcendental phenomenologist who has succeeded where Husserl has failed, namely insofar as Mertens has laid the foundations of a “historical and systematic” phenomenological theory of evidence—a phenomenologically open-ended conception of validation—that harmoniously combines certain a priori truths and historicity (283–84). Thus, Mertens claims, the “regulative idea of truth” that Husserl conceived of as a historical task is finally realized.

§ 6. The Despised Intuition Despite being inspired by Husserlian motifs, Mertens’s preference for a procedural as opposed to an intuitive account of evidence and truth curiously reenacts the objections of the Southwest German School of Neo-Kantianism to transcendental phenomenology, objections that Fink addresses in his 1933 text: the “intuitionism” of its method and the dogmatic consequences thereof, which Husserl does not subject to a legitimating “deduction,” and the “ontologism” concealed in Husserl’s theory of a material or “eidetic” Apriori, and of the transcendental ego. Mertens may claim to be a “non-foundationalist” transcendental phenomenologist, but his critique—and interpretation—of Husserl’s “intuitionism” shows that he is not a phenomenologist but a transcendental philosopher in a renewed neo-Kantian guise. As such, he does not altogether give up philosophy’s claim to an ultimate foundation—which he describes as a certain type of “definitive” knowledge (ZLS, 9). On the contrary, he optimistically claims to be able to validate or legitimate that claim himself. The new element that Mertens adds to the “contemporary critique” of Husserl’s work as Fink describes it in 1933 is his general recognition of Husserl’s contribution to problems such as those of the life-world and historicity within the context of a genetically conceived transcendental phenomenology, which Mertens contrasts with more classical Husserlian topics. Mertens himself does not wholly ignore Husserl’s own efforts in describing the dynamic nature of evidence and truth, since he heavily draws on them. Yet he will not acknowledge Husserl’s gains and increasing success in thinking together the nature of eidetic, a priori evidence and historicity—the open-ended character of every rational justification and the regulative idea of truth. Mertens falsely maintains that Husserl holds fast till the end to a hardcore “essentialism,” that is, to a frozen ultimate Apriori or a-historical, stable truth, while simultaneously, in contradiction to the former, ascertaining in his later years a historicism whereby truth appears as an open-ended justification and a “regulative idea” (282). He claims to have externally “reconstructed” those elements himself in a “non-foundationalist” conception of transcendental phenomenology (284). Yet is this “reconstruction” phenomenological? For, instead of attending to the call of the “things themselves” and to originally validating intuitive expe- 194 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER rience, he privileges a conceptual and argumentative approach that follows the paradigm of transcendental deduction upheld by critical theories. His procedure is the same whether he undertakes an “internal” or an “external” reconstruction. The difference concerns the nature of the premises—whether they belong to the theory under examination or to other theories “accepted as true.” In both cases Mertens is “reconstructing” an argument, a demonstration, an explicative procedure that draws conclusions from established premises or reconstructs the premises based on the conclusions. He is obviously aware that transcendental arguments (or his own “reconstructions”) are not the sort of “demonstrative” inferences of the analytical (mathematical, deductive) type, such as Aristotelian syllogisms. To validate phenomenological premises he argues differently, seemingly using a strategy more akin to an Aristotelian inductive argument45—a rational procedure in vogue in current neo-Hegelian discussions. The consistency of a theory and its premises is examined in light of the conclusions. But the first point here is that Mertens carries out his own examination while presupposing those same rational “theoretical procedures” that phenomenology claims should first be laid bare in their own constitution and in the “how” of their intentional and temporal “functions” and “performances.” Transcendental phenomenology claims to do so by purely “intuitive-descriptive” procedures that are not to be “validated” by means of constructive-conceptual-argumentative strategies, not even genetic ones, conceived of “procedurally.” Even Wittgenstein—in many ways more of a phenomenologist than Mertens—demanded in his final phase that one “see and describe” rather than “explain.” Hence Mertens carries out his examination—as Husserl would say—within “positivity,” that is, from the standpoint of the “natural attitude.” For he operates with concepts and forms his arguments based on a “theoretical-explicative” mode of grounding—one that also can be found in Husserl’s pure logic regarding material ontologies and particular sciences (a procedure that has its own legitimacy and proper place).46 Yet he does not seem to understand —————— 45. Aristotle, Topica 100a18–164. Inductive arguments are also known as “topical” arguments, which are negatively useful for the establishment of scientific premises (for helping discard inconsistent premises) and positively useful for establishing the premises in rhetoric and practical sciences. 46. See, e.g., Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein, Husserliana XVIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), § 71, A 254/B 254; English translation of the second edition (B): Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay, 2 vols. (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), I: 41–247, here 245; and Logische Un- tersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984), A 20–21/B1 20–21; English translation: Logical Investigations, trans. Findlay, I: 248–432 and II: 435–659, here I: 264–65. See also Hua XIX/1, § 2, A 8–9/B1 7–8/253–54; and Edmund Husserl, “Ent- wurf einer ‘Vorrede’ zu den Logischen Untersuchungen (1913),” ed. Eugen Fink, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 1 (1939), 106–33 and 319–39, here 127–28; English translation: Introduction to HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 195 the “transcendental phenomenological” mode of grounding that Husserl sets in motion. This properly philosophical mode of grounding is only attained by an adequate understanding of the nature and goal of the phenomenological epoché and the “reduction,” which moves the inspection sui to make a peculiar “return” to a newly conceived life, as one that bestows “sense and validity.” Thus one of the major problems with Mertens’s book—as is generally the case in this sort of critical study—is his deficient treatment of phenomenological method (ZLS, 29–33, 240, passim). He refers only to an “absence of presuppositions” and (warily and unsatisfactorily) to the phenomenological reduction, intuition, and “the principle of all principles.” This allows him, first, to refer to Wesenschau (eidetic seeing) as it is presented, for example, in Ideas I (4–10 passim) and Formal and Transcendental Logic (219–20), a seeing that originates in “ultimate givennesses” and that produces only permanently valid and invariable truths, so as to oppose it to the historicity of knowledge; and, second, to reconstruct Husserl’s theory of evidence outside phenomenological method proper. He thus passes over the careful distinction that Husserl himself draws from Ideas I on between the exact “material” Apriori of geometry, for example, and the “morphological” (thus perfectible) descriptive “material” Apriori of the phenomenological eide and the evidence for each (Ideas I, 138), as “ideas in a Kantian sense” (166–67). These deficiencies also prevent Mertens from properly understanding how Husserl articulates two very different types of foundation—which describe two different levels of constitutive problems—during the genetic period: “validity” foundation (Geltungsfundierung) and genetic foundation (Genesisfundierung). By remaining on the first level, Mertens can more readily find contradictions in Husserl’s texts. Hence Mertens’s external reconstruction of Husserl’s theory of evidence is deficient from the ground up. A proper development of the notion of intuition would have enabled him to draw better conclusions concerning its two main constitutive axes: intentionality and temporality. It would have prevented him from sharply contrasting and opposing—as if remaining in a typically neo- Kantian “logic of understanding” or of “contradiction” (a Kantian error disparaged by Hegel)—Husserl’s intuition of essences on the one hand and the temporal and historical motives on the other, the latter of which Husserl consistently develops during his genetic period. Indeed, Husserl’s theory of evidence cannot be read from the perspective of a “logics of contradiction.” His theory of evidence—synthetic, “horizonal,” and temporal—instead seems to follow an Ariadnean thread, along the lines of Hegelian dialectics. But Hegel is a sui generis neo-Kantian, too, since he privileges the concept as the instrument of reason, whereas Husserl—transforming the notion of reason and laying open —————— the Logical Investigations: A Draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations (1913), ed. E. Fink, trans. Philip J. Bossert and Curtis H. Peters (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975), 127–28 (original German pagination). 196 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER its doxic roots—discovers that the tissue of evidence begins to be woven from its sensuous threads, whence the first sense-unities emerge. Thus his dialectics— if there is such in his thought—are not conceptual but “aisthetic.” None of this is perceived by Mertens. Certainly he wants to avoid the conceptual traps and “trilemmas” of the on-going transcendental arguments and instead to reconstruct a transcendental, non-foundationalist, phenomenological alternative, albeit “beyond Husserl.” However, his procedural-argumentative strategy appears neither Husserlian (descriptive-phenomenological) nor philological-historical. His external reconstruction of and critical distance towards Husserl’s theory of evidence would be perfectly legitimate only if he were to recognize that his own standpoint is a variant of neo-Kantianism—with some phenomenological motifs—rather than transcendental phenomenological.

v v v

The point of this first part was to suggest the presence of a hidden, even unconscious, but pervasive influence of a basic sort of neo-Kantian transcendental (formal, argumentative) philosophy on twentieth-century philosophical movements. This influence has been felt in currents in the analytical tradition, as well as currents in the Continental tradition. This influence is especially manifest regarding the restricted nature of, as well as the subordinate place occupied by, “intuition” within what is generally understood as “rational” knowledge. It gives rise precisely to the “blindness” towards the “material Apriori” and eidetic intuition, a blindness that Husserl characterized as skeptical. There is no doubt that this conception has had considerable influence, and it is the main cause of the difficulties and essential misunderstandings that Husserlian phenomenology has consistently met with in the mainstream of contemporary philosophical discussion.

II Husserl’s estrangement from contemporary philosophy can best be approached by way of the question of the nature, status, and role of intuition in phenomenological method and transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, fre- quent objections to Husserl’s alleged Cartesian “foundationalism” may well rest upon misconceptions about intuition. In the following, the focus will be on the salient features of Husserl’s reflections on this topic and some of the problematic issues that brought about its development, as well as the development of intentionality and consciousness. While Husserl’s genetic period provides more convenient means for addressing these issues, in the present context we shall examine Husserl’s conceptions as they are laid out in Ideas I, subjected to the interpretations of Southwest German School of Neo-Kantianism as Fink presents them in his 1933 article, since revisiting their formulations and apor- HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 197 ias promises to offer important insights into the qualities of phenomenological method.

§ 7. Intuition and Adequacy Brentano defines “psychic phenomena” as intentional and intuitive representations since among their properties they are not only directed towards objectivities but contain them intentionally, that is, their objective (intentional) objects are in-existent (that is, they are their “really inherent” contents). In this sense, “descriptive psychology,” which is charged with the study of such representations, is the discipline that is to provide the ultimate intuitive foundation for every a priori and empirical science.47 Earlier in Brentano’s thought the objective correlates or contents of “psychical phenomena,” which Brentano names ‘physical phenomena’, also included irre- alia (universal objects and states of affairs). However, in a later (increasingly neo-Kantian?) period he conceives of them as purely realia or individualia (sense data). Intuitions, however, are not only directed towards their “contents.” Although they always remain within psychological “immanency,” intuitions may be oriented either “externally,” in which case perception intends the “objective intentional (in-existent) correlate” (physical phenomena), or “internally,” in which case intuition is conscious of itself. On the one hand, “outer” intuition is “observational” and “false,” a Falsch-nehmung; thus it is inadequate. On the other hand, “inner” intuition is apperception, and thus when referring to its content it is always a self-perceiving act. Only the latter is adequate, an actual Wahr-nehmung. “Descriptive psychology” merely describes the foundations upon which all other sciences are constructed. Contrary to descriptive psychology, all other sciences use “inauthentic representations,” which means that their knowledge of physical (actually transcendent) objects is always an inferred knowledge, thus indirect or symbolic. In this case, “physical phenomena” constitute the basis of scientific inferences, functioning as signs whence the scientists proceed deductively, hypo- thetically, explicating the respective contents, etc., of their science. In his Philosophy of Arithmetic from 1891 Husserl also uses this distinction between “authentic” (intuitive) and “inauthentic” (symbolic) representations. Like his teacher, he wishes to derive every symbolic (inauthentic) concept of arithmetic, indeed mathematics in general, from the “authentic” intuitive concept of number, which he regards as being contained in intuitive representations as “physical phenomena.” In this context it suffices to say that Husserl failed in his attempt to “derive” symbolic concepts and the entire formal do- —————— 47. The a priori value of judgments belonging to a priori sciences does not lie on the apodictic nature of their concepts, since these are always a posteriori, but in the fact that they are purely derived by concepts, i.e. in that they are analytic judgments. See Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt I (Hamburg: Meiner, 1973), xvii–xxiii and xliv–liv. 198 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER main of deductive sciences from the intuitive realm. Nor did he deal with intentionality in his first work. But then he sees that some of the aporias he encountered there may be solved precisely by investigating intentionality. He makes important inroads in this regard in his 1893 essay, “Psychological Stud- ies in the Elements of Logic.”48 In it he makes a first attempt to liberate his concept of intentionality from Brentano’s phenomenalist conception. In general, Husserl distinguishes between two types of “presentations” (Vorstellungen): intuitions (Anschauungen, which are authentic) and “representations” (Repräsen- tationen, which are inauthentic, symbolic). He is naturally more interested in the latter since—as underpinnings of logic and mathematical concepts—they are the basis of scientific knowledge (Hua XXII, 121). He then observes—contrary to Brentano—that these symbolic representations—and not the intuitive ones—are the properly intentional acts. They are oriented towards intentional correlates that are neither present nor given and may never be (as are geometrical figures or mathematical objects) (106). Thus inauthentic representations are an important tool for “building” and developing sciences. By contrast, intuitions are poorly worked out and still remain tainted by Brentano’s phenomenalist conception. They are directed “immanently” and are thus authentic, since their “object” is always given. However, most of our presentations are mixed containing “double” intentional orientations. The most interesting development here is the insight into the “temporality” of intuition, an insight that results in both a narrower and a broader concept of intuition. The former refers to “an immanent and primary content of an instantaneous act of representation—or perceiving (Bermerkens),” while the latter “is the content of an enduring, unified perception” (272–73). Not only is the correlate of intuition thought as a temporal object but intuition itself is also thought as enduring, though Husserl does not yet know how to account for all its implications. Only in 1894 does he free his concept of intuition from Brentano’s phenomenalism and distinguish these “subjective,” inner contents of intuition (subjektiven Inhalte) from its “objective, intentional” outer correlate.49 Husserl also introduces a third element: the “logical (ideal, conceptual, meaningful) contents” of an intuition, or the objective contents (objektiven Gehalte), which are responsible for the intentional relation to the object (Hua XXII, 336–38). Hence, only now is Husserl in a position to deal with the question of adequate and in- —————— 48. Edmund Husserl, “Psychologischen Studien zur elementaren Logik,” in Hua XXII, 92–123; English translation: “Psychological Studies in the Elements of Logic,” in Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, 139–70 (again, we cite the Ger- man pagination, which is included in the margins of the English edition). 49. See Karl Schuhmann, “Husserls Abhandlung ‘Intentionale Gegenstände’. Edi- tion der ursprüngliche Druckfassung,” Brentano Studien 3 (1990–1991), 137–42, 174–76, esp. the “Introduction” and “Final Notes,” 137–42, 174–76 on the details surrounding Husserl’s (mostly) 1894 essay on intentional objects and the differences between Schuh- mann’s edition and that published in Hua XXII. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 199 adequate intuitions. In a text from 1898 entitled “The Idea of Truth,”50 he adopts the traditional interpretation of truth as adaequatio, not as a “similarity” between propositions and their correlates but as an ideal coincidence founded in the “objective ideal contents.” Intuition appears as “fulfilling” functional, symbolic, and empty representations. The Logical Investigations are the result of ten years of work devoted to the solution of aporias encountered in his first book. Here Husserl still works within the “natural” attitude, as well as within the framework of a dualist conception inherited from Descartes and modern philosophy through Hegel. Yet he has already overcome the phenomenalist view of intuition, for his “descriptive psychology” makes use of a distinction absent in Brentano’s proposal. Indeed, Husserl’s notion of intuition is built on a distinction between a real subjective, psychic immanence and the realm of transcendence. Husserl conceives of transcendence as both ideal and real. By ideal transcendence itself he means two things: on the one hand, the objective ideal contents of presentations, such as concepts and meanings, and, on the other hand, ideal and formal objects, such as the geometrical or arithmetical entities. Real transcendence instead includes everything that exists in the physical world in general. Husserl asserts that both ideal and real objects are “thought” by means—or through the mediation—of concepts and meanings. In the final appendix to the Sixth Logical Investigation, “External and In- ternal Perception: Physical and Psychical Phenomena,”51 Husserl attributes to Brentano the Cartesian criterion of evidence as pertaining to “internal perception,” the only perception that deserves the name and that, as absolute certainty, is held to be unassailable by skepticism (Hua XIX/2, A 696–97/B2 224–25/ 853–54). Yet Husserl already disagrees with Brentano’s distinction between fal- lible or infallible intuitions based solely on their respective intentional correlates. According to Husserl: Whether I have a toothache, feel heartache, am anxious, or feel the wind blowing in my hair or the sun warming my skin, whether I perceive a wooden box or a tree, I am always having a natural perception. Moreover, contrary to Brentano, Husserl ascertains that apperception is also at work in “external” perceptions; it is in fact not perception proper. Husserl calls “external” his perception of “primary” or “sensuous” contents, which are obviously “subjective” and internal (A 709–12/B2 237–46/864–66). As a consequence of these differences in view, Brentano’s equation of transcendent —————— 50. Edmund Husserl, “Intentionale Gegenstände,“ in Hua XXII, 339–48; English translation: “Intentional Objects,” in Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathe- matics, 378–87. 51. Edmund Husserl, “Äußere und innere Wahrnehmung. Physische und psychis- che Phänomene,“ in Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984), A 694–715/B2 222–44; English translation: Logical Investi- gations, trans. Findlay, II: 852–69. 200 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER and inadequate perception versus immanent and adequate perception must be abandoned. Indeed, Husserl realizes that internal and external intuitions are not equivalent to evident and non-evident intuitions. The first pair addresses the “natural” difference between the psychological and physical realms, whereas the second addresses an epistemological difference between adequate and inadequate intuitions. Inadequate intuitions offer only partial fulfillments of intentions, since intentional objects transcend the subjective contents that analogously “represent” them. By contrast, in an adequate intuition the “objective correlate” is the same subjective content of intuition, immediately given and apprehended. Only the latter distinction is epistemologically relevant. In sum: “only the perception of one’s own actual experiences is indubitable and evident” (A 711/B2 240/866), though not all internal intuitions are evident, such as a toothache (for a toothache may seem to come from a sound tooth). Another argument against Brentano’s position is that adequate intuitions bear not only on the “act characters” of lived experiences (such as Descartes’s cogitationes or Locke’s “acts or op- erations of mind”) but also on the sensuous contents themselves, thus on Brentano’s physical phenomena. In other words, to achieve adaequatio, two elements are needed: the “ideal coincidence” between the two ideal contents of the symbolic (signitive) and intuitive experiences and the fulfillment that intuitions provide to symbolic representations by means of their subjective, primary contents. As Husserl notes in the Sixth Investigation, the “adaequatio rei et intellectus has been achieved” when the “object is actually ‘present’ or ‘given’, and present as just what we have intended it” (A 590/B2 118/762). This “ideal of adaequatio brings with it evidence,” yet perfect adaequatio is only an idea—in fact it is only given by degrees. Husserl refers to this as the broad sense of evidence. Now this account generates its own aporias. On the one hand, according to the Cartesian paradigm that is still operative here, even if in fact adequate intuition is a factually unattainable goal, there is an exception in “certain cases” of internal perceptions in which the primary contents coincide with the perceptual object. On the other hand, Husserl has shown evidence to be the ideal correlate of truth, thus as the result of a synthetic act of coincidence between the “ideal objective contents” of both a meaning-intention and an intuitive objectifying act, that which gives the objectivity. Therefore, he has not succeeded in giving an account of logical and mathematical evidence. It is obvious that these sciences, which deal with ideal entities and laws, manifest a greater “evidence” that any “adequate perception” described in the Logical Investigations (that is, certain “internal” perceptions), and yet their objects “transcend” lived experience. Because an incongruity remains here, a radical “critique of reason” is still required.52 —————— 52. See Edmund Husserl, “Persönliche Aufzeichnungen,” ed. Walter Biemel, Phi- losophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (1956), 293–302, here 297; English translation: HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 201

Husserl considers his failure to be due to his “naturalism” and to the Carte- sian “dualism” still operative in the Logical Investigations. In fact, he realizes that both types of intuition described—those oriented immanently and those oriented externally—are transcendent; both share the natural “belief” in the division of all facts into bodily and spiritual facts. This division forms the background of the “metaphysical problems of the possibility of knowledge.” Transcendence is an enigma, one that also pertains to “ideal objectivities,” precisely those that he considers logically evident.53 It is in this context that Husserl makes the “transcendental turn,” it is here that “phenomenological intuitions” come into view, that is, sui generis intuitions “which are not to be confused,” says Husserl, “with internal perceptions” (Hua XXIV, 21 and 372).A new conception of immanence and transcendence is proposed, though it entails terminological ambiguities with certain negative consequences for Husserl’s interpretation. This turn is achieved through epoché and phenomenological reduction, which are not to be understood according to the rather misleading expressions used in Ideas I (as “excluding” the world and leaving a “residuum” in pure consciousness) (Ideas I, §§ 31–33), but in the sense of “gaining its (the world’s) presence and opening its meaning,” as Donn Welton notes.54 Thus immanence and transcendence acquire an epistemological meaning in Ideas I since they refer only to the “modes of objective givenness” involved in intuitions. Im- manence, according to the 1907 lectures on the Idea of Phenomenology, means the “actual, absolute, immediate, and clear” self-givenness of objectivities, whereas transcendence is every givenness that goes “beyond what at any time is truly given, beyond what can be directly ‘seen’ and apprehended” (Hua II, 35). Moreover, “actual givenness” will reach not only the immanent, real, noetic elements of lived experiences but every element involved in the intentional correlation proper to consciousness, thus also its correlate as its irreal, noematic, objective meaning-component. In this context, Husserl’s idea of philosophy as universal rigorous science, which is guided by the idea of a “theory of evidence” and ultimately founding and founded on adequate intuition, begins to take shape. Meanwhile Husserl’s research on the temporality of intuitions continues. His investigations of non-“originarily-giving” intuitions (Vergegenwärtigungen), such as memories and empathies, in his Basic Problems of Phenomenology from 1910–1911 have two problematic consequences. The first has to do with the fact that both memory and empathy are lived experiences that seem to mani- —————— “Personal Notes,” ed. W. Biemel, trans. Marcus Brainard, New Yearbook for Phenomenol- ogy and Phenomenological Philosophy I (2001), 319–29, here 324. 53. Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. Vorlesungen 1906–1907, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana XXIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1984), 208–11. 54. Donn Welton, “Structure and Genesis in Husserl’s Phenomenology,” in Fred- erick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick, eds., Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1977), 54–69, here 54–55. 202 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER fest an immanent “otherness” that threatens the life of the subject in its very identity. Indeed, on the one hand, memory is temporal and diachronic and pertains to the pervasive difference that splits consciousness’s actual present from its past. On the other hand, empathy is synchronic and pertains to the difference between our own conscious temporal flux and that of the others. The second consequence concerns the very possibility of adequate intuitions in an actual, immediate givenness or immanence. Responding to the first problem, Husserl feels compelled to include an “egological structure” parallel to the function of the living body (Leib).55 As for the second consequence, he remarks that in fact all living experiences, both in their noetic and in their noematic components, are given in an un-ending temporal stream. So the phenomenologist himself, when faced with the transcendental realm that he is charged with describing “adequately” after the reduction, is faced with new aporias. The question is how to reconcile the concept of evidence as absolute, immediate givenness (adaequatio) and the open infinity of transcendental experience.56 Thus, in order to overcome these new aporias, Husserl re-interprets the very notion of immanence, which then is no longer understood as purely “actual,” “immediate” (thus absolute) givenness but as an enlarged givenness involving horizons of what is potentially, not actually, given. A re-invented conception of “adequacy” will be used from now on. We shall return to this point below in our consideration of the different meanings of ‘idea in the Kantian sense’. To this point our intention has been to contest one aspect of the interpretation of Husserl’s early “intuitionism” championed by the neo-Kantians and Mertens. As will become clear, a dynamic conception of intuition is already present in Husserl’s earliest investigations, and he never ceases to tackle the aporias of that conception which threaten his transcendental project.

§ 8. Intuition of Essences Let us briefly consider some of the salient aspects of Husserl’s conception of “eidetic” and “categorial” intuition. Indeed, scholars have paid more attention to these aspects of Husserl’s alleged “intuitionism” than to his pursuit of “adequacy.” —————— 55. Edmund Husserl, “Beziehung des Ich zum Jetzt und Hier” (Beilage XXXIV), in Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus den Nachlaß. Erster Teil: 1905–1920, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 247–48, here 248. 56. In the very section of Ideas I where Husserl expounds the difference between the “merely phenomenal” being of something transcendent and the “absolute being” of something immanent (§ 44), he nonetheless remarks: “It is the case also of a lived experience that it is never perceived completely, that it cannot be adequately seized upon in its full unity. A lived experience is by its essence in flux, which we, in directing the reflective regard to it, can swim along after it starting from the Now-point, while the stretches already covered are lost to our perception” (Ideas I, 82; my emphasis). Thus since transcendental experience takes place in an open-ended flow, the absolute, immediate givenness demanded of its evidences seems must be abandoned. HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 203

Twenty-six sections of Part I of Ideas I expound Husserl’s very well- known doctrine of “essence and eidetic cognition,” in addition to contesting the naturalist’s skepticism concerning the realm of “ideas.” It is there that Husserl—after describing eidetic intuition and the interdependence between the factual and the eidetic sciences, as well as the difference between “eidetic (material) “regions” and the “analytic (formal) region”—distinguishes between “generalization” and “formalization” (Ideas I, § 13). On the one hand, “general- izations” are said to proceed from individuals to species and from these to gen- ders, while specialization can always take place again by proceeding from the latter down to individuals. On the other hand, “formalization” is an entirely different sort of “abstraction,” it is of a symbolic—no longer “intuitive”—nature. It consists of the “universalization of something materially filled”(eide) into formal concepts (“in the sense of pure logic”) entirely devoid of content and not properly genera in themselves (26). The movement contrary to “formalization” is “materialization of something logically formal”; in other words, it is the “filling out” of “empty logico-mathematical forms or a formal truth.” Furthermore, forms are not “contained” in the eide, as “colors” are “inherent” in red or blue. If in the case of generalization one speaks of subsumption, then in the case of formalization one refers to subordination. But let us return to eidetic intuition itself, thus to the faculty that secures a “material Apriori,” or an eidos. Beginning in § 6 of Ideas I Husserl refers to a subtle difference between two types of eide, each of which has a different kind of “necessity.” Indeed, the first type of eide concerns, for example, geometrical figures and their corresponding truths, to which corresponds an essential un- conditional universality that warrants their application in nature (that is, their apodictic validity for corresponding individuals). To these eide Husserl accords eidetic necessity. In this sense he justifies geometry as being one of the regional (material) ontologies of the physical world. For example: ‘all material things are extended’. Barely distinguishable at this point from the first type of eide, the other type refers to the so-called “material” eide, which are concerned with the “unrestricted universality of natural laws” (82), as in the proposition ‘all bodies are heavy’, which must not be mistaken for eidetic universality. In this case, there is an implicit “positing of existence,” a reference to facts in general. Hence, Husserl introduces a distinction between two types of eide which also explains the difference between eidetic and empirical sciences, as well as the relationships between them. The former do not derive from the latter. In § 2 he already referred to the difference between the essential universality—the “natural laws” that govern contingency, facticity—and essential necessity (or eidetic universality), and their essential predicates, which correspond solely to the material essences (such as those belonging to geometry) that lead towards the “highest universals or genera.” In this context intuition is the special kind of objectifying act that lies at the base of our lived experiences, in which objects and 204 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER the world as a whole are given to us. Of all forms of intuition, perception alone “gives something originarily” (7). Despite the “originariness” of perception, it is empirical, while another kind of intuition can build on it after a process of “ideation,” the correlate of which is another kind of object (8–9). However, we are told in § 2 that “essential intuition” may be adequate (Husserl’s example being a temporal object, the essence ‘sound’) or inadequate (the infinite sequences of experience), depending on the type of intuition upon which its constitution is based. So, unlike Descartes, Husserl’s intellectual intuition not only requires an intuition that serves as the basis for a new positing (eidetic “seeing”), but it is also temporally (synthetically) extended. In the case of the latter, the basic intuition may be empirical, that is, a perception or a memory, or a non-empirical one, such as a fantasy. But let us return to the difference within eidetic intuition which derives from the two types of eide mentioned above. The first chapter of Part III is devoted to “preliminary methodical deliberations” in which Husserl once again takes up this issue. In § 69 he repeatedly warns that eidetic intuitions sometimes carry over to their ideal spheres the degrees of obscurity and clarity found in their basic intuitions—that is, their temporal and spatial horizons (their “halo of undetermined determinability”)—yet sometimes a single individual example suffices to achieve clarity at the level of essences (that is, we need only one instance in order to distinguish colors from sounds, or perceiving from willing). As mentioned above, not only “presentive” intuitions or presentiations (Gegen- wärtigungen) may function as basic intuitions accompanying eidetic ones, but also “representiations,” (Vergegenwärtigungen), such as fantasies and memories. Yet Husserl notes that there is a definite primacy of (outer) perception over “reflection” (since its non-enduring objects find themselves in an open-ended stream) and representiations (such as fantasies, memories, or empathies). Notwithstanding their obvious non-originariness, he prefers fantasies as basic intuitions. Paradigmatic for him here is the geometer who deals with examples worked out in his factual, singular imagination and then proceeds to transform the data freely by observing the objects from “different sides” and thereby to discern their essential structure. At this point Husserl intends to introduce phenomenology as an eidetic science of the “essences” of consciousness by comparing it to geometry and expounding their similarities. The phenomenologist also works with his singular lived experiences as instantiations of the corresponding essences (perceptions, fantasies, memories); he “transforms the observed data freely” and then verifies it with an originary intuition. But is phenomenology comparable to geometry as an exact eidetic science? Not quite. Husserl clearly points to their “different theoretical type.” Despite the fact that both are eidetic material and concrete sciences (Ideas I, §§ 72–74), phenomenology is a “descriptive” science, in contrast to geometry, which is an ex- HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 205 planatory science. Phenomenology “describes” its objects; geometry “defines” them. So their respective eidetic intuitions differ: exact sciences, such as geometry, operate with exact, ideal concepts and objects that cannot be seen. Husserl terms the corresponding type of “eidetic intuition” that applies in this case “ideation” (138), by which he means that, starting from an empirical intuition, there is an “infinite approximation” to these objects, which are never properly attained. Here we have the first meaning of ‘Ideas in a Kantian sense’, or ‘ideal limits.’ By contrast, phenomenology, being a “descriptive, non-substructive, non-idealizing” science (139), only apprehends lived experiences eidetically in their noetic, real components and noematic intentional components, that is, their essences as “morphological types” (138). It is impossible, says Husserl, to fix or define exactly in concepts these eidetic concreta. Eidetic intuition is in this case performed by dropping the hic et nunc elements of lived experiences and their correlates (their “individuation”). Yet the more universal essences are easi- er to identify in their universality (that is, the description of essences belonging to perception, memory, and the like). In sum, a mathesis of lived experiences is impossible: It is only a misleading prejudice to believe that the methods of the historically given a priori sciences, all of which are exclusively exact sciences of ideal objects, must serve forthwith as models for every new science, particularly for our transcendental phenomenology—as though there could be eidetic sciences of but one single methodical type, that of exactness. Transcendental phenomenology, as a descriptive science of essence, belongs however to a fundamental class of eidetic sciences totally different from the one to which the mathematical sciences belong. (141)

§ 9. Ideas in a Kantian Sense This notion, as Husserl forewarns in the introduction of Ideas I, is taken from the philosophical tradition and, as in Kant’s case—mutatis mutandis—it ought to be carefully distinguished from the notion of ‘concepts’, ‘ideas’, or ‘essences’ in the current sense. That is why for the latter he uses eidos, or else ‘essence’ (Wesen). In the previous section the notion of ‘ideas in a Kantian sense’ came into play in the context of “ideation” as it is employed in exact material sciences such as geometry. Thus Husserl refers to the geometrical essences themselves, as correlates of ideations, as “ideas in a Kantian sense.” But this notion appears in two other passages concerning phenomenology’s subject matter. The phenomenological ego is said to achieve an adequate intuition and description of the morphological types of lived experiences belonging to transcendental life. Now transcendental life, in its essential structures, is intentional and temporal, thus horizonal. Immanence in the sense of “absolute givenness” thus implies not only actual but potential givenness. Hence Husserl refers to phenomenological intuition in this context as a “continuous 206 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER progression from seizing-upon to seizing-upon, in a certain way,” that is, “we now seize upon the stream of lived experiences as a unity. We do not seize upon it as we do a single lived experience but rather in the manner of an idea in a Kantian sense” (Ideas I, 166). Indeed, Husserl still wishes to preserve the paradigm of “adequacy,” yet this notion has already lost much of its original meaning. Nevertheless, he does say that through this version of the “idea in a Kantian sense” what is posited is not posited “or affirmed by chance; it is instead an absolutely indubitable givenness.” So, although he formerly differentiated clearly between phenomenological idealizing abstraction and geometrical ideation (the objective correlates of which were said to be “ideas in a Kantian sense”), here the “unitary stream of mental processes” is also to be seized upon as an “idea in a Kantian sense.” Indeed, the “adequate determination” of the content of this stream—“the stream of lived experiences”—is according to Husserl “unattainable.” “At the same time,” he continues, “we see that a series of distinguishable modes of givenness belongs to the stream of lived experiences and its components. . . .” Furthermore, “no concrete lived experience can be accepted as a self-sufficient one in the full sense. Each is ‘in need of supplementation’ with respect to a prescribed concatenation, which is therefore not arbitrary according to its kind and form” (167). So the specific content is unattainable, whereas only the eidetic “type” is attainable as an idea in a Kantian sense. Husserl’s third use of ‘idea in a Kantian sense’ appears in the chapter of Ideas I in which—under the scope of the phenomenological reduction—he applies it to the “perception of the physical thing,” which is never definitely concluded. Yet it is intuited as an “‘idea,’ physical thing, with evidence and adequately,” in the sense that it is an “idea” of determinate, infinite directions that the intuitional course of our experience can follow. These references point in the direction of a dynamic conception of intuition that Husserl is in the process of developing already in Ideas I, though the results of this process will not be visible until the 1920s. They also indicate the difficulties that Husserl encountered in maintaining the paradigm of adequacy, as well as its later replacement, the paradigm of apodicticity.

§ 10. Skepticism and Foundationalism It is well-known that Husserl’s phenomenology is not devoid of neo-Kant- ian influences. He actually uses Kant to counterbalance the Cartesian influences on his theory of evidence and his concept of intuition, influences felt in the paradigm of adequacy/apodicticity. In a 1922 lecture course he carries out a “critique of transcendental experience”57 in order to overcome the aporias in- —————— 57. See Edmund Husserl, “Phänomenologische Methode und phänomenologische Philosophie 〈Londoner Vorträge 1922〉,” ed. Berndt Goossens, Husserl Studies 16 (1999), 183–254, here 243–45; henceforth cited as LV with page reference. See also Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Philosophie, Vorlesungen 1922/23, ed. Berndt Goossens, Husserliana XXXV HUSSERL VS. NEOKANTIANISM REVISITED 207 volved in that paradigm, but, keeping his distance from neo-Kantian critical strategies, he does not proceed in a “deductive,” “argumentative,” “procedural,” or formal manner in order to validate the “concept,” to establish the “right” or legitimacy of intuition and its corresponding theory of evidence. Now skepticism can only flourish within a reduced concept of reason: as procedural. Neither Sextus Empiricus nor Hume could dismiss intuition. Their skepticism is the result of two sorts of blindness: the one regarding the reduced notion of intuition (only empirical); the other regarding the limited concept of reason (only procedural). Phenomenology’s revolutionary approach to the problem of reason consists in proposing a radical reform of the lovgoı meaning of , which was traditionally reduced to the sphere of validating inferences, whether demonstrative, deductive, or argumentative.58 Husserl extends rationality to include the domain of phenomenological experiences wherein the formerly “rational” procedures are themselves “validated”—the ultimate source of which is “originally giving intuition.” Rational, indeed, is the subject’s life as a whole—whether perceptive, axiological, or normative. However, it would be an error to understand this as an intolerable “intellec- tualism” that suffocates other sense-giving and sense-endowing dimensions of spiritual life. To do so is to persist in a deficient concept of reason. Primary experiences—not intellectual procedures—are the originarily validating sources and roots of rationality itself. Thus only a limited conception of reason which values procedural strategies as the ultimate rational stance nurtures skeptical objections—such as that of the trilemma (vicious circles, petitio principii, regressus ad infinitum)—to transcendental arguments. These arguments do not acknowledge that the source of their validity lies beyond their control, that “ultimate” validation is not a “validating procedure” itself. These argumentative subterfuges disappear as soon as one finally recognizes that the ultimate source of all evidence is precisely this extended concept of intuition, which is understood not only temporally and horizonally but also as including eidetic and categorical dimensions. Without procedural devices there is obviously no science, yet every procedural validation emerges from a source that is not procedural in itself and cannot be dealt with in this same procedural manner. From his Philosophy of Arithmetic on, Husserl acknowledges the advantages of procedural (symbolic) devices in the unlimited construction of human knowledge, since they compensate for the finitude of human intuition. Yet even in his final work, the Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenol- —————— (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), esp. Part IV, “Der Weg zu einer apodiktischen Wissenschaft. Apodiktische Kritik der transzendentalen Subjektivität” (115–246); see also Beilage XI (“Zur universalen Kritik der reduzierten Erfahrung [der transzendentalen]”), and Beilage XII (“Apodiktizität – Adäquation, Kritik der Apodiktizität und Adäquation”) (397–404). The question here is the reach of the ego’s apodicticity. 58. A similar critique to the modern concept of reason is to be found in Husserl’s review of Schröder’s Algebra der Logik (1882). See n. 11 above. 208 ROSEMARY R. P. LERNER ogy from 1936, in which he thematizes the radical mathematization of nature that occurs with the rise of modernity, he continues to point to the life-world as the “forgotten meaning-fundament of natural science.”59 Therefore phenomenology’s alleged “foundationalism” and “dogmatism” must be reconsidered. It does not interpret its “ultimate” and “absolute” foundations—behind which there is no other instance—as sub specie aeternitatis, consisting of an infinite, absolute, nearly divine domain. Rather, its foundations are to be found sub specie temporis in temporal and finite human experience. Thus the objections that have been raised against phenomenology as a dogmatic and “foundationalist” theory—in the sense of the Enlightenment— disappears as soon as this is taken into account. Hence against neo-Kantianism and according to his own phenomenological strategy Husserl carries out a “transcendental critique” so as to return to “the things themselves,” that is, the realm of experience in general and intuition in particular. This means abiding by the “principle of all principles,” according to which only intuitive experience is the ultimate source of all evidence, legitimizing and self-legitimizing. Nevertheless, the “transcendental critique of experience,” which seeks to neutralize the aporias emerging from the Cartesian paradigm, has an interesting outcome: it also indicates the reach and limits of intuition and evidence, hence of the “principle of all principles.” It is obvious that Husserl always intended to harmonize his “essentialism” with temporality. These two motifs are recast in transcendental phenomenology’s genetic phase in the relation between two kinds of foundations: the theory of evidence as Geltungsfundierung and a primal Genesisfundierung, on the basis of which the former is constituted. It is in this sense that, with its claims to “ultimate foundation,” transcendental phenomenology successfully responds to and resists to all forms of skeptical “argumentation.”

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A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer

Sebastian Luft Marquette University

§ 1. Introduction In the introduction to the third and last volume of his Philosophy of Sym- bolic Forms of 1929, entitled “Phenomenology of Knowledge,” Ernst Cassirer remarks that the meaning in which he employs the term ‘phenomenology’ is Hegelian rather than according to “the modern usage of the term.”1 What sense can it make, then, to invoke Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in this context? Yet if, roughly speaking, phenomenology can be characterized as the logos of phenomena, that is, of being insofar as it appears (phainesthai) to a conscious subject, then the sense of phenomenology need not be so different from what Cassirer terms “the modern usage.”2 Phenomenology in this more liberal sense would be an account of how consciousness experiences the world through different forms of experience and in different spaces of meaning. The addition ‘hermeneutic’, moreover, points to a broader methodological scope —————— 1. Ernst Cassirer, Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, I: Die Sprache; II: Das mythische Denken; III: Phänomenologie der Erkenntnis (Oxford: B. Cassirer, 2d ed., 1954). The three volumes of Cassirer’s work are henceforth cited as PSF I–III with page reference. The above quotation is from PSF III, vi. Cassirer’s work is available in English translation as The Phi- losophy of Symbolic Forms, I: Language; II: Mythical Thought; III: Phenomenology of Knowl- edge, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University, 1955). All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 2. It is noteworthy that around 1925, at a time when Martin Heidegger still conceived of himself (more or less) as a phenomenologist in the traditional (Husserlian) sense, he notes: “Contemporary phenomenology has, with certain caveats, a good deal in common with Hegel, not with the Phenomenology [of Spirit] but with that which Hegel meant with logic. The latter is to be identified with certain reservations with contemporary phenomenological research.” Martin Heidegger, Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, Gesamtausgabe 21 (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1976), 32. This is not merely a historical remark about Heidegger; he merely, and rightfully, points to a common problem in Hegel, Husserl, and the neo-Kantians.

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than that which one usually associates with phenomenology, that is, the phenomenological paradigm of description based on intuition. ‘Hermeneutic’ connotes an interpretative dimension that goes beyond mere description. It will become necessary to expand phenomenology in this direction. In this attempt at a comparison between Cassirer and Husserl, I shall employ this broad concept of phenomenology—with the addition ‘hermeneutic’— as a philosophical project that investigates how consciousness relates to the world. In this sense, it is neither solely Cassirer’s nor Husserl’s nor, for that matter, Hegel’s, although the phrase ‘of subjective and objective spirit’ undoubtedly has a Hegelian ring to it. Indeed, it points to a subjective and objective tendency that is present in Husserl and Cassirer, respectively. Moreover, ‘a hermeneutic phenomenology’ indicates that both philosophical concepts and methods, phenomenology and neo-Kantianism, usually taken to be so different from the very outset, can be mediated and brought to a certain synthesis. This synthesis forms a correlation within an account that aims at a transcendental theory that elucidates the interrelation of mind and world. This comparison does not intend merely to compare terminology when employing the words ‘phenomenology’, ‘hermeneutic’, and ‘subjective and objective spirit’ to characterize this enterprise. Instead, I propose to broaden the restrictive sense in which both philosophical schools have used these terms, in order to open them up towards a more encompassing account of transcendental philosophy in the spirit of phenomenology and Kantianism. Indeed, Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of the world through subjectivity’s passive and active achievements and Cassirer’s account of the symbolic forms, as transcendental forms of intuition that constitute and structure the cultural “spaces of meaning,”3 can and must be seen as forming a correlation. This correlation gives an account of the way the world appears for an experiencing subject in the framework of a philosophical doctrine that is committed to transcendental idealism. Idealism states that all being is being-for-consciousness, and this forms a correlation that cannot be severed. Both Husserl and Cassirer endorse this general doctrine, yet they pursue it in different but reciprocal “directions.” Both the neo-Kantian and phenomenological methods in this sense are incomplete without one another. Certainly, for both Cassirer and Husserl this would have been asking a lot. Neither of them saw their philosophies as complementing each other in this way. However, both not only took over crucial elements of the other’s theory and integrated them into their own. They were also working on complementary projects. Perhaps they were not able to really see eye to eye due to the belligerent character of the —————— 3. I take this term from Steven G. Crowell’s Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Mean- ing (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University, 2001). To thematize the specific “space of meaning” for experiencing subjects is, to paraphrase Crowell, phenomenology’s grand achievement. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 211

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philosophical scene in Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century. In- deed, the vigor with which discussions were fought out in defending opposing philosophical doctrines at that time is hardly comprehensible some eighty plus years afterwards. Philosophical convergences were both ignored and deliberately overlooked. Yet to spell out these intersections and filiations after so much time has merit not only for the sake of historiography and for rectifying the tired image that neo-Kantianism was a floundering project that was rightfully super- seded by phenomenology and existentialism. Reassessing the philosophical debate in this historical situation has significant systematic ramifications and points to a discussion that is ongoing in philosophy today, namely the question of how to analyze adequately the subject matter germane to transcendental philosophy. A modern conception of philosophy—in this Husserl and Cassirer agree—could only be placed in a transcendental framework. This is a systematic claim of timeless character. Yet, in order to show how Husserl and Cassirer arrived at this conclusion one cannot proceed purely systematically. This discussion requires a reconstruction of the historical developments in both thinkers. Indeed, their philosophies are not conceivable without the constant interaction with proponents of the other school that aided them in their own philosophical progress. Although proceeding historically, however, this should not cloud the fact that stating that there is such a correlation implies a strong systematic claim. After all, phenomenology has traditionally presented itself as forming a stark antithesis to Kantianism, especially to its alleged formalism vis-à-vis phenomenology’s intuitive approach. To show that phenomenology and transcendental philosophy in a Kantian vein are complementary has crucial consequences for both philosophies. As contemporary discussions show, this is not a dated issue but one that is reemerging in scholarship today.4 This discussion hinges most prominently on the method used for giving an account of the field or region germane to philosophy. The debate over method lies at the heart of the dispute between phenomenology and transcendental philosophy in the Kantian tradition: in particular, it has consequences of phenomenology itself. The critique, which has followed phenomenology like a shadow since its inauguration with Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1900– 1901),5 is leveled at nothing other than what Husserl considered the most basic —————— 4. See the interesting systematic introduction in Crowell’s Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, where he shows how many of the ideas that, e.g., John McDowell discusses in his Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1994) have been discussed between the neo-Kantians and phenomenology in the period I am dealing with in the present paper. 5. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Band: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (1900), ed. Elmar Holenstein, Husserliana XVIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1975); Logi- sche Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, Erster und Zweiter Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänome- nologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (1901), ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX/1–2 (The Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 212

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methodological premise, namely that of pure intuition that brings phenomena to clear and distinct evidence. In other words, the neo-Kantian critique aims at the method of direct, evident description based on intuition. Later (re-)formulated in the phenomenological movement by Martin Heidegger and others following him,6 it is nearly forgotten now that this criticism was already intensively discussed in the early years after the publication of the Logical In- vestigations among the prevailing thinkers at the time, including the proponents of hermeneutic (or life) philosophy and the neo-Kantians, most importantly Paul Natorp. This is more than merely a historical observation. Rather, Natorp’s initial critique aided Husserl in transforming his phenomenology into a transcendental philosophy. Husserl was well aware that his new method was a radical departure from those of these established schools. Proponents of these challenged, as a reaction, this intuitionistic paradigm, which seemed fundamental to the point of being trivial, by insisting that pure intuition rests on unclarified presuppositions. In other words—as Gadamer later formulated it—Husserl’s ideal of presupposi- tionless description and presuppositionlessness was itself a presupposition. Ac- cordingly, to stick entirely to description based on pure and evident intuition would result, for the most part, in trivial findings. Knowledge the way the Kan- tians understood it, as based on principles (not intuition), would never be reached. Through intuition one would not gain any true understanding, since understanding entails a certain interpretation whose basis is necessarily a specific type of construction, that is, it involves a cognitive activity. Description based on intuition might reach a high level of concretion, but it is neither the first task for transcendental philosophy, nor the last. Yet in spite of this critique, the merits of the phenomenological method were also acknowledged, within certain limits; description can certainly give a rich account of the life- world and consciousness that experiences it; but, truly philosophically, nothing much is gained by it. One needs more than just description in order to attain a philosophically satisfying method. Yet very few philosophers, least of all Natorp and Cassirer, were dismissive of the phenomenological method but saw it, instead, as a valuable tool to give an account of the life of consciousness. It was generally hailed as a method that was here to stay, while at the same time not being the last word on method either. Description needed to be complemented by construction. —————— Hague: Nijhoff, 1984); English translation: Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay, 2 vols. (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). Henceforth cited as LI with German page reference to the second volume. 6. Heidegger’s critique of the intuitive method comes most clearly to the fore in his emphasis on Dasein as being-in-the-world, which can at best “re-lucently” thematize its intentionally constituted interiority. Dasein’s true intentionality consists of “being-with” objects (as ready-to-hand or present-to-hand) or other Dasein “in the world.” This criticism is further advanced, e.g., in Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of the transcendence of the ego. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 213

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Indeed, this critique did not have the power to overthrow phenomenology; rather, it can even potentially strengthen it precisely by incorporating elements which were originally considered alien to it; Husserl did precisely this but thereby moved into the direction of the neo-Kantians. Husserl himself was much more open to the neo-Kantian point of view than many others of the phenomenological movement who saw in Husserl’s transcendental turn a mere aberration from his early principles. As such, this is certainly not merely a discussion from a Husserlian point of view intended to strengthen it at all costs. Rather, what is at stake is the method of doing philosophy within an enterprise committed to the transcendental turn. It was Husserl’s being true to the principles of phenomenology that led him to make the transcendental turn. Like- wise, it was the compelling nature of Husserl’s phenomenological descriptions that led Cassirer to incorporate elements of Husserl’s method into his own. In general, the methodological opposition between phenomenology and Kan- tianism can be seen as a paradigmatic debate over this question of adequately studying what one could call “the transcendental realm,” and it is precisely a dispute over intuition versus construction as the basis for analysis with regard to the transcendental realm. The result of this essay will be that in order to analyze this transcendental realm, one needs both methodological principles. The perceived contradiction concerning both methods need not be maintained. In- stead it can be conceived as a complementary correlation. Moreover, in the application of this method, both the phenomenological and the Kantian approach adhere to their own subject domains, which as well turn out to be a correlation “within” the transcendental realm, that is, the “subjective” and “objective” side, respectively. Thus what is at stake here is a double correlation: a methodological and a thematic one regarding the subject domain of this method. Besides Natorp and Husserl, there is yet another figure of crucial importance here: Cassirer’s teacher and Husserl’s personal friend Natorp. Natorp was one of the first to publicly criticize Husserl’s method of phenomenological intuition and, later, Husserl’s static method in Ideas I;7 and it was with Na- torp that Husserl had the most intense interaction of all contemporary philosophers.8 Natorp’s sketch of a philosophical psychology in his Introduc- —————— 7. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, ed. Karl Schuh- mann, Husserliana III/1 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976); English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983). Henceforth cited as Ideas I with original page reference, which is included in the margins of both editions. 8. For an account and a discussion of their relationship see Iso Kern, Husserl und Kant (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), 321–73, as well as their lengthy correspondence, published in Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, ed. Karl Schuhmann with Elisabeth Schuhmann, Husserli- ana-Dokumente III, 10 vols. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 5: 39–165. (Henceforth cited as BW followed by volume and page numbers. After first mention, volumes from Husserliana Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 214

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tion to Psychology9 from 1888 and later in his General Psychology according to Critical Method10 from 1912 had a significant influence on Husserl. Moreover, it was the method expounded in Natorp’s work that was to be the cornerstone of Cassirer’s method of symbolic formation. Confronting Husserl with Cas- sirer is impossible without first walking the reader through the discussion between Husserl and Natorp. Although Cassirer himself rests entirely on the “Marburg method,” the transcendental method proposed first by Hermann Cohen and expanded by Natorp by a critical psychology, Cassirer has signifi- cantly broadened and transformed its original scope. Thus, in order to properly assess this relation, one must take the historical route and discuss first the issues arising in the debates between Husserl and Natorp. Taking Natorp into this discussion also contributes to adding a largely unwritten chapter of the history of twentieth century philosophy, as his influence both on Husserl and Cassirer is usually downplayed by scholars. Hence this paper is divided into two parts. The first part will reiterate the dispute between Husserl and Natorp and show how it helped bring about Husserl’s full-fledged method that stands under the heading of genetic phenomenology. Yet Husserl’s incorporating insights of Natorp’s method into his own “softens” the opposition between both methods. Since Cassirer builds upon Natorp’s method, the correlation between the phenomenological and neo-Kantian methods is visible already here. That is, Natorp’s method, originally intended as a critique of the intuitive phenomenological method, can be viewed as a way to complement Husserl’s phenomenology, because Natorp puts his finger on a weak spot in Husserl’s method, namely his alleged “static Platonism.” Husserl originally rejects Natorp’s genetic method of reconstruction, yet he later realizes that he must make use of “reconstructive” elements as he moves towards his “genetic phenomenology.” Incorporating these reconstructive elements implies a self-critique of Husserl’s intuitionism; indeed, certain “constructive” elements are necessary for his genetic phenomenology and hence for a full-fledged transcendental phenomenology. Natorp is the strongest influence behind Husserl’s turn to genetic phenomenology. —————— will be abbreviated as Hua with the corresponding Roman volume number and Arabic page reference.) This is by far the most extensive correspondence Husserl had with any contemporary philosopher. As is well-known, Husserl and Natorp also masterminded Hei- degger’s call to the University of Marburg in 1923. For a further comparison between Natorp’s and Husserl’s conception of psychology, see Kurt W. Zeidler, “Das Problem der Psychologie im System Cohens (mit Blick auf P. Natorp),” in Wolfgang Marx and Ernst W. Orth, eds., Hermann Cohen und die Erkenntnistheorie (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neu- mann, 2001), 135–46, esp. 144–46. 9. Paul Natorp, Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (Freiburg: Mohr, 1888); henceforth cited as EP with page reference. 10. Paul Natorp, Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (Tübingen: Mohr, 1912); henceforth cited as AP with page reference. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 215

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The second part will illustrate how Natorp’s method sets up Cassirer’s own systematic approach precisely in overcoming Natorp’s methodological shortcomings. Cassirer readily and openly acknowledges Natorp’s influence. However, he views Natorp’s method as too narrowly conceived and thus expands it into a pluralistically conceived method. Husserl, for his part, makes a similar move that makes it possible to confront him with Cassirer. Having presented both the phenomenological and neo-Kantian methods, it will become clear how they can be synthesized into what I have termed ‘a hermeneutic phenomenology of subjective and objective spirit’. This is not meant merely as a historic account of the relationship between Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer. In- stead both methods together can help us gain a better understanding and yield a richer account of what transcendental philosophy is to accomplish. Both methods are neither unrelated nor unmediatable. They can—and in fact should—be unified. They complement each other in decisive ways that for the most part have not been acknowledged by representatives of either side of the “divide” to this day. In this sense, this discussion is, on the one hand, intended to reinvigorate a somewhat forgotten debate in the history of modern philosophy. On the other, it is a systematic contribution to overcoming the strict separation between the Kantian and phenomenological ways of framing transcendental philosophy.

§ 2. Husserl and Natorp: Intuition versus Reconstruction, Or Intuition and Reconstruction? The dispute between Husserl and Natorp begins immediately after the publication of the first edition of the Logical Investigations in 1900–1901. To understand Natorp’s objections, one should keep in mind that in most philosophical circles, especially in the early phenomenological groups in Munich and Göttingen, Husserl’s call to the “things themselves” was perceived as a liberating turn away from questions regarding subjective foundational structures and categories and a turn towards the object. Although Husserl confusingly calls phenomenology “descriptive psychology” in the preface to the second volume of the Logical Investigations11—after he had just completed a refutation of psychologism in volume I—the analyses are object-oriented insofar as phenomenology talks about objects as phenomena, that is, as they appear in (or “fulfill” themselves in) intentional acts, following the correlation of intention and fulfillment of the First Logical Investigation. What was to be thematized in intentional analysis was the intentional relation that governs “between” ego and object. Consequently, in this early account Husserl took the stance of skepticism with respect to a pure ego synthesizing all these subjective acts; —————— 11. See LI, 24, see n. 1 for the text of the first edition (which was subsequently modified in the second edition of 1913). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 216

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such would be succumbing to an “ego metaphysics”12 that phenomenology had purportedly left behind. Natorp was the first to press Husserl on the issue of the pure ego and in the first book of Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenolog- ical Philosophy from 1913, Husserl records that Natorp’s arguments in his In- troduction to Psychology—arguments that he reiterated in his 1901 book review of the Prolegomena13—led him to reconsider the question of the pure ego. As Husserl acknowledged, it was through Natorp that he had “learned to find” the pure ego (LI, 374).14 It was in Ideas I as well that Husserl introduced the phenomenological reduction, thus inaugurating the transcendental turn for phenomenology, and, in so doing, estranging a good number of followers of phenomenology. Phenomenology, Husserl realized, needed to make recourse to an ego as a foundation or center point synthesizing all experience. While this was framed as a Cartesian motive, as method of radical doubt, it is equally a concession to Natorp, who claimed from the outset that intentional acts must have a “radiating center [Ausstrahlungzentrum].” In Natorp’s words, it is constitutive for “facts of consciousness [Thatsachen des Bewußtseins]” to have a “relation to the ego” (EP, 11). Performing the transcendental turn in the Carte- sian way made it unnecessary, if not impossible, for Husserl to deny the existence of such a center within egoic life. Also, closer insight into the nature of intentionality made it necessary for Husserl to focus on the subjective “side” of acts (the “noeses”) and hence their character as constituting or “transcendental.” These acts are transcendental insofar as a critical “epoché” was needed in order to thematize the structure of intentionality in its purity. Only such a “pure” thematization could be rigorously scientific (eidetic). Husserl sees the epoché as “purifying” consciousness of its worldly elements and “reducing” it to its essential structures, those of intentionality. Intentionality, in —————— 12. This concept of a pure ego that is lacking in the first edition of LI can also be termed ‘transcendental’ ego from Husserl’s later standpoint. Although, to be sure, both are not the same, what Husserl is about to discover is the ego which experiences world and thus cannot be part of the world, and is therefore “pure.” This conception of the pure ego as standing opposed to the world it experiences is, in simple terms, the way Husserl understands the “transcendentality” of transcendental consciousness. See Husserl’s letter to Dietrich Mahnke of 1925 (BW 3, 450–51): “Then the phenomenological reduction, carried out on the basis of the general thesis [of the natural attitude], is merely the method ... to study human interior life in its purity” (emphasis added). 13. Paul Natorp, “Zur Frage der logischen Methode. Mit Beziehung auf Edmund Husserls ‘Prolegomena zur reinen Logik’ (1901),” in Hermann Noack, ed., Husserl (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 1–15, see esp. 10–12. 14. See also his addition to this § 8 of the Fifth Logical Investigation in the second edition, ibid., 376. Here Husserl states that through Natorp he has learned to be less “shy of metaphysics” with regard to a metaphysics of a pure ego. Here he also mentions that he left this section in its entirety for the sake of documenting a certain, dated, discussion, since it also does not diminish the importance of the train of thought Husserl pursues in the Fifth Investigation. See also § 57 of Ideas I, 123–24, where he discusses the pure ego Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 217

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turn, necessarily includes an ego that relates intentional acts around a center.15 This is, however, already a presentation of the results of Husserl’s reflections as a response to Natorp. Let us backtrack to reconstruct how Husserl arrived at this conclusion. Ironically, although Natorp is the one to insist on the existence of a pure ego, he himself takes a skeptical stance with regard to a description of this pure ego. Following Kant, the ego is a mere transcendental, a priori, synthesizing principle that makes experience possible. Experience itself, however, is at all times a dynamic process. Paradoxically, the manner in which Natorp conceives of his “psychology,” albeit framed “according to critical method,”16 implies that a psychology later envisioned by Husserl—an eidetic, descriptive discipline of intentional structures—is impossible. Natorp’s psychology has a different scope than an eidetic science, precisely due to the specific character of subjectivity. Psychology is supposed to tap into the concrete life of the subject, that is, precisely in its dynamic flowing that evades an eidetic characterization. What Natorp has in mind with psychology is not an experimental science but a philosophical consideration of subjectivity that heeds to subjectivity’s special and distinct character. As such, the question is whether it should be part of transcendental philosophy. So, first, what is the character of transcendental philosophy according to the “Marburg method”? Transcendental philosophy according to the “Marburg method” has to do entirely with objectivity and how objectivity becomes constructed through sub- —————— as the “residuum” of the phenomenological reductions and again refers to his modified stance vis-à-vis the first edition of LI (Ideas I, 124 n. 1). 15. See Husserl’s account of the pure ego in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweiter Band: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, ed. Marly Biemel, Husserliana IV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952), §§ 22–29; English translation: Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andrew Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), §§ 22–29. 16. Although this cannot further be discussed here, it is worth pointing out that the title of Natorp’s work is already programmatically aimed at the title of Franz Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical [!] Point of View and is, to be sure, completely opposed to an empirical framing of subjectivity. Brentano’s work was first published in 1874. It plays vir- tually no role in Natorp’s Einleitung in die Psychologie nach kritischer Methode from 1888 and is mentioned only twice in passing in the new edition of the work from 1912, which bears the new title, Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode and here only in the context of Natorp’s discussion of Husserl’s doctrine of intentionality (see AP, 274 and 286). As is well- known, Husserl saw himself in his early years as a member of Brentano’s school of thought but emancipated himself from this school at the latest after the publication of the Logical Investigations. Except for the theme of intentionality, that is, Husserl’s phenomenological psychology is much closer to Natorp’s than to Brentano’s. In a seminar from the winter semester of 1922–23, dealing with Natorp’s Allgemeine Psychologie, Husserl refers to Natorp’s Einleitung in die Psychologie as “one of the most important books [in psychology] of the nineteenth century” (Johan Heindrickus Pos’s unpaginated notes in the Husserl Archives in Leuven under the signature N I 26, here Husserl’s seminar of November 24, 1922). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 218

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jectivity, through the conditions that make constructed objectivity possible. The realm of objectivity—reality—comes to be known through objectivating acts (perception, for example), and continues to be objectively known, or simply “objectivated,” through positive sciences as higher-order objectifications. In simpler terms, experience constructs reality, and transcendental philosophy ascertains the conditions of possibility of this construction. This focus on the construction of reality, first through experience and then through science (and ultimately all other cultural activities), expresses the Marburg paradigm that transcendental philosophy has to take its departure from the factum that is primarily that of science (das Faktum der Wissenschaft).17 According to this Mar- burg reading, Kant’s critique of reason is firstly (if not exclusively) a doctrine of the “logic of scientific discovery,” a theory of science. Hence, every scientific deed discovers and ascertains new “findings” and as such objectifies them. Transcendental philosophy consequently clarifies the lawful conditions of the possibility of these cognizing deeds. Now, in this “objectifying” consideration, where is the subject? Subjectivity is “found” in the objects it creates, and critical, transcendental philosophy clarifies solely what is involved in constructing these objects. Transcendental philosophy is directed at the object, and as such, is inherently constructive, that is, object-oriented.18 Natorp’s point now is that the factum, however, is a fieri, that is, something that is accomplished by human beings in their cultural activity. Psychology thematizes this fieri itself. Natorp thereby intends to fill in a dark spot that was left open in the original scope of Hermann Cohen’s method, namely, by providing a discipline dedicated to the subjective “side” of this process, to the fieri itself. The originality of this method becomes clear when one sees that this aspect was considered an entirely unnecessary discipline by Cohen.19 Natorp’s key insight was that philosophy in —————— 17. This formula (“the factum is the factum of science [das Faktum der Wissenschaft]”) goes back to Natorp’s teacher Hermann Cohen. Furthering this idea, Natorp then insists that the factum is properly understood a fieri; i.e. the factum as that which consciousness experiences as (literally, from the Latin facere) “finished” is at the same time a product of experiencing and thus of “producing” (fieri) consciousness. See also Paul Natorp, Philoso- phische Systematik (Hamburg: Meiner, 2000), 12. 18. In his discussion of the constructive character of subjective description, Rudolf A. Makkreel is rightly making a connection to Kant’s conception of the reflective power of judgment which needs to construct a priori a teleology of (and for) empirical intuition. Thus, already at this level, Natorp as well as Cassirer (although the latter might have been more aware of it) go beyond the conception of subjectivity conceived as pure reason. See Rudolf A. Makkreel, “Wilhelm Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians: The Distinction of the Gei- steswissenschaften and the Kulturwissenschaften,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 7 (1969), 423–40, here 430. 19. Cohen dismisses this subjective side wholesale. As he says in his most famous work, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (Hildesheim: Olms, 1987), 103: “It is hence a sign of critical maturity to assume undissolvable elements of consciousness.” Kant’s theory of experience, in this reading, has simply nothing to do with experience but with concepts. Greetings to John McDowell! Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 219

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some way or another needed to address this concretion of the life of the subject in its creative (‘poietic’, as he later calls it) character, and it makes understandable why Natorp saw himself in alliance with Husserl’s phenomenological approach from the outset. Yet, since he is steeped in the transcendental method, the character of his psychology is problematic. Indeed, because experience is constructive and objectifying Natorp takes a skeptical stance with respect to a description of subjectivity itself: every utter- ance is objectifying. This holds also for that regarding subjective occurrences: the moment they are objectified, through whichever method, they are no longer subjective. But in this objectification—and one cannot avoid it—the subjective is lost; it is made objective. In objectifying subjectivity through experimental science, for example, that very element which accounts for the true meaning of subjectivity dissipates. The immediate subjective character has vanished, its dynamic nature is brought to a standstill and hence can no longer be recognized as what it intrinsically is, a dynamic process of concrete life. Objectifying subjective experience “inserts” subjectivity into another element in which it is treated like a doctor treating a corpse instead of a living being (AP, 191):20 Because this is so, [consciousness] must be inaccessible to all further description; for all that through which one would want to describe it . . . could only be taken from the content of consciousness, that is, it would presuppose itself, the ego. . . . Being an ego means not being an object [Gegen- stand] but, opposed to all objectivity, that to whom something is an object. (28–29; emphasis added) It is psychology’s task to “save” subjectivity from objectification. This does not mean that Natorp rejects an account of consciousness altogether; rather, there can be no direct description of consciousness in the way that there can be a direct intuition of a perceptual object or a direct cognition of a law of nature. Consciousness is not among, next to, or above other objects and objectivities; for it is not an object. Rather, it is opposed to all objectivity and as such the “foundation” of all objectivity as that from where construction takes its departure. Because Natorp insists on the special character of consciousness in the most radical way, it can never be conceived along the lines of or by any analogy to objective reality; there persists, as it were, an “ontological differ- —————— 20. I shall quote the passage for the sake of its striking language: “When reading nearly all books on psychology, one cannot lose the impression that one is walking through morgues: One sees corpse next to corpse and hundred hands busy with stripping the dead of even the faintest appearance of livelihood, even the faintest memory of any life, a memory that was at least preserved before taking apart the corpse, when all joints were together according to their original combination.” Husserl comments on this passage with “Notabene,” marginal note on page 192 of Husserl’s personal copy of Allgemeine Psychologie, which is stored at the Husserl Archives in Louvain under the shelf signature BQ 342. Husserl’s personal copy of Allgemeine Psychologie will be henceforth referenced as ‘BQ 342’ with page number (quoted after Husserl’s copy of Allgemeine Psychologie). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 220

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ence” between subjectivity and objectivity. Natorp is keenly aware of the immediacy and absolute originality (AP, 29:“absolute Ursprünglichkeit”) of that which one nowadays might call ‘first-person perspective’ that renders his consequence this radical. Excluding this direct access to subjectivity is intended to preserve its very nature. Yet, although Natorp is correct in insisting on this radical difference, Husserl contends that he does not carry through with it completely on the methodological level. Let us thus briefly turn to Husserl before discussing Natorp’s psychological method. Although Natorp already makes these claims before Husserl begins his philosophical undertaking, it is clear that they contradict everything phenomenology stands for. Indeed, it is paradigmatic for any phenomenological approach—transcendental or “realistic”—to declare intuition based on subjective evidence as a foundation for any further philosophical inquiry. Phenomenolo- gy is, in its purest and most basic sense, description of consciousness based on intuition. This is formulated in Husserl’s famous “principle of all principles,” according to which everything philosophy builds upon must have a foundation in “self-giving evidence and intuition” (Ideas I, § 24, p. 51). However, this foundational principle does not entail just any intuition, such as basic sensuous perception. Phenomenological intuition comes into play when describing essences. This implies a claim concerning what is not yet truly phenomenological description. In this sense, where the phenomenological principle is carried out most impressively is precisely in thematizing consciousness eidetically. In this respect, both Natorp and Husserl are vigorously against “naturalizing” consciousness as not recognizing the radical difference between subjectivity and “objective” being, that is, nature. Whereas Natorp proposes an approach to consciousness that is different from the objectifying tendency, Husserl goes a different path, yet for the same reason, that is, to avoid naturalism. Yet precisely with this eidetic science he is also intent on getting back to the concrete life of consciousness. Indeed, that consciousness Husserl wants to describe with the phenomenological-intuitive method is not the natural consciousness we find in our everyday experience. It is from this consciousness and having-of-world that we must practice an epoché and look at pure structures of consciousness-as-such. This “bracketing” of the natural attitude, which consists of believing in the existence of the world independent of subjective experience, reveals “absolute” subjectivity that is not part of the world but opposed to it as its transcendental correlate. The subjective structures that transcendental phenomenology describes are hence no longer those of worldly (human) subjectivity, but subjectivity-as-such. However, this subjectivity is only attained by a radical change of attitude, in which (Husserl insists) nothing is “lost” but viewed from a radically different perspective. Phenomenology is conceived as the eidetic science of transcendental subjectivity, something Husserl also likes to term “transcenden- Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 221

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tal empiricism,”21 a provocation to any Kantian, neo- or otherwise. From here, Husserl comes to embrace transcendental idealism as the doctrine which is committed to the radical opposition between (constituting) subjectivity and (constituted) objectivity, both of which are related to each other in a “correlational a priori.” It is clear, however, that Husserl operates with a novel concept of “transcendental.” It is not a formal set of knowledge from principles a priori but a field of intuition into the subject after the epoché has occurred (and with it, a bracketing of the naive belief in the independent existence of the world); it is not merely a formal, but a material a priori that thematizes the concrete life of subjectivity eidetically.22 Thus, consciousness can be described when one makes a shift from the naive, everyday perspective to the phenomenological standpoint. In other words, as opposed to Natorp, Husserl insists that a description of subjectivity in itself is possible if one concedes that subjectivity is an expe- rienceable region of conscious life to which one can gain access via reflection (or “introspection”) when one breaks with the ordinary way of viewing things.23 Yet Husserl agrees with Natorp that this description must not natu- ralize subjectivity and treat it as another worldly being—hence the shift via the phenomenological reduction to pure, transcendental consciousness. Yet, whereas Natorp employs his critique of intuition of consciousness as a criti- —————— 21. See Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23, ed. Berndt Goossens, Husserliana XXXV (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 111, as well as 473–78. 22. Although this terminological distinction between formal and material a priori can be found in Husserl—see Hua XVIII, 220—it was especially Max Scheler who emphasized the “material a priori” as phenomenology’s main discovery vis-à-vis the purely formal a priori in Kant. See his magnum opus, Formalism in Ethics, and also his text “Phänomenologie und Erkenntnistheorie” (Phenomenology and Epistemology) from circa 1916. It is noteworthy that in this text from his Nachlass Scheler formulates the distinction between formal and material a priori precisely in the context of a critique of Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms (this passage shall be discussed subsequently), see Max Scheler, Schriften aus dem Nachlass I: Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre, ed. Maria Scheler (Bern: Franke, 2d ed., 1957), 383–84: “Phenomenology’s apriorism is indeed able to take up the correct intuitions that were present in Plato’s and Kant’s apriorism. Yet an abyss divides phenomenology from these other doctrines. . . . Next to the so-called formal a priori of the intuitive facts of pure logic, every factual region reveals to the intuitive regard in each case a whole system of material principles a priori, based on essential intuition, principles that tremendously expand Kant’s apriorism. And in each case is the a priori in the logical sense a result of the a priori of the intuited facts that constitute the objects of judgments and principles.” 23. I am using the terms “introspection” and “reflection” very loosely here. All that I mean to say is that access to subjective structures requires a turning-away from the world and a turn-to experience of world. Since Husserl later distinguishes between “natural” and “radical” reflection, he concedes a rudimentary form of this type of reflection already in the natural attitude, whereas only “radical” reflection performs a break with the natural attitude. We can, however, neglect this complicated issue in Husserl’s theory of the phenomenological reduction in this discussion. For a discussion of this distinction, see Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana VIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959), 92–97. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 222

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cism of phenomenology, for Husserl it becomes the very starting point for a transcendental recasting of the phenomenological method. From this perspective, the phenomenological reduction is a way out of the epistemological dilemma Natorp had described, that is, that describing involuntarily is objectifying. The problem is not solved but avoided by taking a detour via another level of reflection by breaking with the natural attitude. The transcendental standpoint attained in the transcendental reduction situates itself in another “dimension” vis-à-vis that of objectivity. This is possible because the phenomenologist practices a radical break with the natural attitude and thereby is in a position where she can intuit conscious structures, which are not her private structures but which belong to any subjective experience-as-such. Hence, the transcendental turn first truly enables phenomenological (eidetic) intuitionism; a pre-transcendental account would be by necessity naturalistic. Although Natorp, in turn, agrees with Husserl’s emphasis on intentionality and its discernible structures,24 this structure is to him a mere formal framework which in itself does not yield the basis for any further “material” investigation. Thus, Husserl writes on the margin of his copy of Natorp’s Gen- eral Psychology, in a passage where Natorp expounds his critique of intuition: The opposition object-subject at play here finds its understandable resolution only through the phenomenological reduction, or in the contrast between the natural attitude, which already has givennesses, being, objects, and the transcendental attitude which goes back to the ego cogito, that is, that makes a transition to absolute reflection which posits primal facts [Urtatsachen] and primal cognition [Urerkenntnis], that is, absolute cognition . . . that has no pregivenness but is cognition which solely has itself [sich selbst habendes Erkennen].25 Husserl’s method of the transcendental reduction is a critique of the Kant- ian paradigm that intuition into the true realm of subjective life—whether one wants to label it transcendental or not—is impossible without “killing” it.26 —————— 24. Natorp weighs them somewhat differently, however: he calls them consciousness, the “fact-of-having-something-consciousness” (die Bewußtheit), and the content of the latter. See AP, 33–37 (§ 6), although this threefold distinction is already to be found in Einleitung in die Psychology from 1888. This characterization is not identical to Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Husserl criticized Natorp’s view in the Logical Inves- tigations of 1900–1901, which was in turn criticized by Natorp in Allgemeine Psychologie from 1912. On the margin of Allgemeine Psychologie, in the passage where Natorp critically discusses Husserl, Husserl writes: “In the LI,I had posited ego = stream of consciousness. With ‘experienced’ in the LI I meant ‘to be part of the being of the stream.’ I denied a pure ego. But what I said there was of course wrong” (BQ 342, 34). Thus Husserl’s later stance on intentionality as breaking down into pure ego, the intentional act, and the content of this act can be seen as a modification of his earlier view with an incorporation of Natorp’s notion of a pure ego. 25. BQ 342, 22. 26. As an aside, it should be pointed out that Husserl’s later reflections on time-consciousness in the thirties and the thematization of the “lived present” (lebendige Gegenwart) Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 223

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However, while Husserl believes to have secured his sense of “transcendental empiricism,” we will see that the opposition between “intuition” and “construction” is not so easy to maintain when actually doing phenomenological description. This skepticism with regard to consciousness is not the last word Na- torp has to say about the method of psychology; for if this were the case, obviously his whole project of a rational psychology would come to an end right here. So, what is the method of Natorp’s psychology? Rejecting the approach of direct intuition does not mean that nothing can be said about consciousness. To be sure, consciousness cannot be described immediately and directly, but why not indirectly and mediately? This is the way Natorp in effect proceeds. If subjectivity is radically opposed to objectivity and if the transcendental method is about constructing objectivity, it is conceivable that the method Natorp proposes for the subjective “side” merely goes the opposite way of the constructive method; namely, it is re-constructive. It takes its point of departure from the “finished,” “crystallized” objectivities (the facta) and pursues the opposite direction in reconstructing the dynamic, flowing life from which objectivity has become constructed (the fieri). Natorp also speaks of a “turning inside out” (Umstülpung) of the constructive method in going the opposite path of reconstruction. This reconstructive method is indeed a form of reflection (AP, 20),27 only with the clear knowledge that this reflection cannot directly access the immediacy of subjective life. It can only reconstruct it retrospectively, moving “backwards” from its objectified achievements. It is a “reverse” movement and in this sense comparable to a “reduction” in making recourse from the immediately given unities (the seen object) in experience to the subjective multiplicities in concrete subjectivity, which “constitute” the former in “intentional” activities (the dynamic, ever- new acts).28 Hence, the method of reconstruction is designed to bring back —————— can be understood as a reflex of this attempt to gain access the absolute, concrete and hence “flowing” (“living”) life of subjectivity by practicing a reduction to the “here and now constituting subjectivity” (the lived present) precisely in its “standing-streaming” character. It is for this reason that Husserl considers the “reduction to the lived present” the “most radical reduction” possible. See Edmund Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), ed. Sebastian Luft, Husserliana XXXIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 185–88. See also the still decisive monograph on this topic by Klaus Held, Lebendige Gegen- wart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei Edmund Husserl, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 66–78. 27. That is, Natorp does not operate with the Husserlian distinction between “natural” and “radical” reflection, the latter of which breaks with the general thesis of the natural attitude. 28. Husserl also characterizes the reduction as accessing the dimension of intentional manifold from the uniform “object pole” (from the experienced object to the multiple intentional acts which “constitute” it). See Ideas I, 231: “If we take this ‘object’ and all of its objective ‘predicates’—noematic modifications of the object’s predicates, predicates which are Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 224

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the concretion of subjective life, however mediately, for every direct description would be an abstraction. The reconstructive move goes backwards from the objectivations that are achieved by science and before all science, without any conscious intent, [in] every quotidian way of representing things. It [namely, reconstruction] consists . . . in undoing the objectivations ... in thought [= construction], by reinserting that which has been severed by abstraction into the original interconnections, by giving back dynamics to the fixed concepts, and in so doing by bringing them back to the flowing life of consciousness. . . . It is . . . a complete and pure turning-around [Umkehrung] of the method of objectifying knowledge, scientific as well as prescientific. . . . (AP, 192–93) It is for this reason that psychology comes at a point where the work of philosophy is finished, it is philosophy’s “last word,”29 as it presupposes the constructive work, that is, the objectification of facta. However, the question lingers, what exactly it is that remains to be discussed for a general psychology if it is framed in Natorp’s way, by merely giving a reconstructive interpretation of that which has already been thematized in constructive analysis. It should be mentioned that Natorp’s sketch of such a discipline in General Psychology (which he calls a “foundation of the foundation”30 of psychology) has remained a fragment and never is carried out.31 Despite the internal problems with this discipline, however, the main insight of his psychology is his emphasis on the dynamic character of consciousness as opposed to the fixed nature of facta. In —————— straight forwardly posited as real in normal perception—so the object as well as the predicates are certainly unities vis-à-vis manifolds of constituting conscious lived-experiences (concrete noeses).” 29. Natorp uses this phrase in his essay “Philosophie und Psychologie,” Kant-Studien 2 (1913), 176–202, here 202. 30. See AP, vi: “Grundlegung zur Grundlegung.” In a letter to Husserl from July 2, 1918, Natorp characterizes his attempts as follows: “actually it is not psychology, but a doctrine of categories for psychology” (BW 4, 139). 31. The Allgemeine Psychologie was conceived as Book I of altogether (presumably) two books. Natorp announces in the preface that he will “shortly” make the second volume available, but this second part never appeared. One can speculate that it was due to internal problems in his method that he felt compelled to change his stance on a “general” psychology. In turn, Natorp focused on what he was later to call “general logic” and abandoned the project of a critical psychology altogether. This transformation is reconstructed in detail by Jürgen Stolzenberg in Ursprung und System. Probleme der Begründung systematischer Philoso- phie im Werk Hermann Cohens, Paul Natorps und beim frühen Martin Heidegger (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 189–249 (chap. 4). Helmut Holzhey, in his comparison between Husserl’s and Natorp’s draft of a psychology, also comments critically: “Natorp’s foundation of a philosophical psychology gives us only meager contributions to a theory of subjectivity, contributions that are oriented at traditional psychological dispositions. Husserl’s phenomenological analyses give us incomparably richer material and have, accordingly, been received much more intensively in the positive sciences.” Helmut Holzhey, “Zu den Sachen selbst! Über das Verhältnis von Phänomenologie und Neukantianismus,” in Sinn und Erfahrung. Phänomenologische Methoden in den Humanwissenschaften (Heidelberg: Asanger, 1991), 3–21, here 18. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 225

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this sense, Natorp at all times emphasizes that this reconstructive method proceeds “genetically” (AP, vii) in recapturing the dynamic life of the original, flowing character of consciousness, as opposed to the “static” constructive method which treats objectivities as “finished” unities. Natorp’s reconstructive psychology does not become executed, but it makes the point that will become important for Husserl, that is, that an analysis that does justice to the life of consciousness must be cast in a manner that conforms to this dynamic life. What is furthermore problematic in Natorp is that, since construction and reconstruction merely differ in the direction they pursue (Natorp also speaks of a “plus” and “minus” direction of the same path), their methodological character is also the same: whereas the constructive way is teleological, the reconstructive path is causal; it merely goes the opposite way of the former; it is a “reverse teleology.” Thus, contrary to Natorp’s pronouncements, the way the reconstructive method treats subjectivity is still “naturalizing.” This is also the reason why the reconstructive method does not really add anything new to the transcendental method, and certainly nothing to a genuine understanding of subjectivity.32 But let us now turn back to Husserl. Although Natorp’s position seems weak with respect to Husserl’s more elaborate method of the phenomenological reduction, it is this reconstructive method that forms the backdrop of Husserl’s genetic turn, a method that essentially rectifies Natorp’s legitimate intentions; and Husserl never questioned the agreement between Natorp and himself in these principal matters. In this respect, Husserl even reluctantly admitted Natorp’s influence in taking over the “genetic” aspect of psychological description that Natorp declares the paradigm of reconstructive analysis (see AP, § 9, 249–50). In fact this is one of the only aspects where Husserl explicitly agrees with Natorp upon studying his works in 1918, although he presents it as though he came upon the genetic method on his own terms by predating it. During this phase (1917–18), Husserl explicitly begins drafting a genetic phenomenology.33 In a letter to Natorp from the summer of 1918, Husserl not only underscores the importance of the genetic, dynamic account of consciousness, but also drops the rather off-handed comment that he has posited the theme of genetic analysis for phenomenology “for already more than a decade.”34 —————— 32. For a critique of Natorp’s method, following Heidegger’s criticism of reflection, see also Dan Zahavi, “How to Investigate Subjectivity: Natorp and Heidegger on Reflec- tion,” Continental Philosophy Review 36 (2003), 155–76, esp. 155–60. 33. The development of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology begins in this period, when Husserl, in 1917–18, penned his famous “Bernau manuscripts” on time-consciousness, now published in Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein, ed. Rudolf Bernet and Die- ter Lohmar, Husserliana XXXIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001). See the elucidations regarding the connection between the analysis of time-consciousness and genetic analysis in the editors’ introduction, ibid., xlvi–xlix. 34. BW 5, 137. Husserl makes this statement in the context of the alleged characterization of his phenomenology as “Platonism,” a critical point Natorp had made in his review Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 226

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While one can say with certainty in the light of the development of Husserl’s thought that this is incorrect, scholars have wondered what he meant with this comment, and the primary candidate is usually, and rightly, considered Husserl’s analysis of internal time-consciousness. Husserl has dealt with this topic since 1905, and in his epilogue to Ideas I from 1930 he judges retrospectively that the omission of time-consciousness is one major shortcoming of Ideas I.35 The phenomenology of internal time-consciousness is by no means already a genetic analysis of subjectivity. However, the discussion of time in the phenomenological context is the privileged path towards it. As Kern argues,36 Husserl probably had this in mind in this letter to Natorp. So, how does Husserl move from an analysis of time-consciousness to genetic analysis? In short, Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness thematizes the temporality of the flow of subjective life itself. Conscious life is a dynamic flow of ever new now-points in which the ego lives, in the “lived present.” However, the “nows” are not discrete points (as, for example, in Aristotle’s concept of time37) but each present consciousness is embedded in a temporal horizon, in —————— of the Logical Investigations. However, in his discussion of Husserl’s “new standpoint” in All- gemeine Psychologie (§ 14, 287–90), Natorp insists that—although Husserl came “a good deal closer” (289) to a “genetic Platonism”—his account of subjectivity is still “static.” Natorp cites here Husserl’s Logos-article, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science” from 1911, which (to be fair to Husserl) was merely intended as a programmatic essay against “historicism” and Lebens- philosophie. On the margin of this passage in Allgemeine Psychologie, Husserl thus writes: “There is no mention of the difference that I make in the Logos[-article] concerning phenomenology and psychology!” (BQ 342, 290). With regard to Natorp’s conception of philosophy as “genetic,” Husserl most likely extracted this from Natorp’s Deutscher Weltberuf of 1918 (see BW 5, 172 n. 178), which he also read at the time (at the end of the Second World War). In this book, written for a broader audience, Natorp lays out a teleological view of world history. 35. Edmund Husserl, “Nachwort zu meinen ‘Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,’” in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften, ed. Marly Biemel, Husserliana V (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952), 138–62, here 142; “Epiologue,” in Ideas II, 405–30, here 409. 36. See Kern, Husserl und Kant, 348. The above statement is incorrect, but not because Husserl did not broach genetic themes in this period, as he did, e.g., in his “Thing and Space” lecture course from 1907; see Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, ed. Ulrich Claesges, Husserliana XVI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973). What makes it problematic is that Husserl claims that he has “posited the theme of genetic analysis for phenomenology,” which implies an explicit statement about “genetic analysis.” While it is true that genetic analysis was at work in this period as well as, more explicitly, in 1917–18, Husserl does not come to characterize his attempts as “genetic phenomenology” until the 1920s. In other words, his reflections on method came after his actual methodological work. 37. Aristotle in Physics 219b2 defines time as arithmòs kinéseos katà tò próteron kaì tò hysteron, i.e. as the (counted) number of movement regarding the earlier and the later, much like pearls on a string, whereas for Husserl the “now” is only an ideal limit. In this analysis, Husserl is indebted to William James’ and Henri Bergson’s analyses of internal time as Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 227

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that each now-impression is preceded by a previous one which is not “past” but which “lingers,” and likewise, the present now anticipates a new now. Hearing a melody as melody (and not as a sequence of unrelated tones) is only possible if that which I just heard is retained while I hear a present note and the hearing of the note now anticipates another coming note. The analysis of the temporal structure of subjective life itself reveals that the primal impression of the now is embedded in a series of immediately past retentions and proten- tions immediately to come.38 A phenomenological description of how the ego experiences something in time must pay heed to this “internal time-consciousness” itself vis-à-vis objective, physical time. Or said differently, the way the ego’s intuition functions can only occur in this temporal fashion: to the intuition here and now belongs necessarily an original presentation and a halo of de-presentation, past and future. To say it in Natorp’s words: the fundamental character of consciousness is that it is dynamic, hence the method to analyze it must be genetic (reconstructive). If this is the case, then one must concede that the focus on intuition (in the “here and now”) only grasps a very small aspect of conscious life. It is a “static” description that is based on what is intuited in this here and now only. If one wants to give a phenomenological description of other dimensions of conscious life, such as memory or imagination, it is clear that one cannot bring the past memory, as past, to direct evidence and intuition. I can remember a past occurrence here and now, but only as past and not now; this constitutes the very essence of memory.39 If one acknowledges that consciousness is dynamic, then one must accept that there are aspects and elements of conscious life of which I can never have direct intuition, although they certainly exist as having undoubtedly contributed in shaping my current experience. Examples of such essentially unintuitable yet decisive occurrences are my own birth or death, the subjective life of others (be they past or present) or the primal impression of a type of object I have known since shortly after my birth (or —————— consisting of an “impression” of now with “fringes” rather than discrete boundaries. See Klaus Held, “Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Life-World,” in Donn Welton, ed., The New Husserl: A Critical Reader. (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2003), 32–62. 38. This is, to be sure, a very condensed summary of Husserl’s phenomenology of inner time-consciousness. His 1904–1905 lecture course and other texts pertaining to this topic are to be found in Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana X (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969); English translation; On the Phenome- nology of Consciousness of Internal Time, trans. John Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991). 39. The same goes, although not in a temporal fashion, for the conscious life of another person: I can never bring another’s own subjective experience to direct intuition. This is precisely the problem setting up Husserl’s reflections on intersubjectivity, see esp. the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, see Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Stras- ser, Husserliana I (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1950), 87–88; English translation of the former: Carte- sian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960), 87–88 (original pagination). See also Hua XXXIV, 287, where Husserl uses the term ‘reconstruction’ precisely in the context of describing the experience of another ego. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 228

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which I have not constituted at all like a cultural object that was “given” to me “ready made”). Yet these are the preferred topics in Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. Hence, the method of intuition reveals its limits in cases such as these, where one thematizes, not static intentional structures, but the dynamic flowing life that produces (“constitutes”) objects of experience. This was the brunt of Natorp’s critique from the very beginning, when he termed Husserl’s analysis of act-intentionality a “static Platonism” (AP, 288–89). Indeed, these dynamic phenomena are not topics externally related to Husserl’s thought but his own favorite examples and areas of research. However, the topic of transcendental phenomenology is—ideally—a description of the totality of subjective life in all of its facets and dimensions. Hence, in thematizing the temporality of subjectivity itself, Husserl realizes that a description of “fixed” intentional structures of consciousness is merely a static description which is blind to the dynamic, genetic dimensions (“layers”) of consciousness. Static description, in ignoring any notion of the subject’s temporality, catches merely the surface dimension of subjectivity, disregarding its “depth structure.” Thus, seemingly in his own way, Husserl discovers Natorp’s “flowing” (dynamic, genetic) structures of subjectivity by expanding his view beyond mere givennesses in intentional acts (which are merely thematized as given in the now) to their genesis. Yet this insistence on the dynamic flow of subjective life is not only the bedrock of Natorp’s psychology; it was also his strongest point of contention with Husserl’s static phenomenology. In other words, as Natorp already proposed, the structural (“eidetic”) account has to be supplemented by a dynamic (“explanatory”) account. A genetic account can no longer be eidetic but moves into a “hermeneutic” dimension, as Husserl himself indeed likes to refer to his genetic analyses as interpretation (Auslegung). Moreover, since this dynamic depth structure—which Husserl also calls a passive genesis40—cannot be brought to direct intuition, it can merely be made evident through a reconstructive method. Although Husserl prefers the terms ‘restitution,’ ‘unbuilding’ (Abbau), or ‘regressive method’, or even ‘interpretation,’ there are a few places in his manuscripts where he does indeed use Natorp’s term “reconstruction.”41 While this is not the place to analyze the reconstructive elements of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology—a description of the temporality and ultimately historicity of transcendental consciousness42— —————— 40. See Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis: Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten (1918-1926), ed. Margot Fleischer, Husserliana XI (The Hague: Nij- hoff, 1966), 345; English translation: Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 634. 41. See the passages Kern has collected in his Husserl und Kant, 370–73. See also Hua XXXIV, 287 (see also n. 39 above). 42. For an in-depth presentation of Husserl’s turn to genetic phenomenology and a full outline of this genetic method, see Donn Welton, The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Tran- scendental Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2001), as well as Anthony J. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 229

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only this should become clear, that Husserl’s own intuitive method applied to consciousness as a whole cannot but revert to reconstructive elements in its attempt to grasp the full “body” of the transcendental realm. In other words, it is impossible for phenomenological analysis to remain at the purely intuitive, static level if it wants to do justice to consciousness as a whole. Static analysis per se bleeds into a genetic account in an organic expansion of its descriptive scope. Yet, when one enters genetic spheres the descriptions that one gives are not and cannot be based on intuition, at least not on intuition alone. The consequence is that the difference between intuitive and reconstructive methods cannot be strictly maintained. Indeed, this difference is artificial, although Husserl takes pains to show that even interpretation rests on intuitive elements. Although he insists, rather stubbornly, on the paradigm of evidence, he does concede the necessity of “explanatory” or “interpretative” analysis that is not based on evidence. In a remarkable passage where he discusses the scope of genetic analysis, he concludes: This is “interpretation,” but obviously it is not arbitrary, but an unwrap- ping [Auseinanderwicklung] of an evidencing intentionality. Or rather, such unraveling [Aufwicklung] is from the very start interpretation; and all intentional analysis, all self-understanding [Selbstverständigung] of consciousness, which finds its expression in “description,” is interpretation . . . .”43 —————— Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After Husserl (Evanston, Ill.: North- western University, 1995). Since Husserl’s genetic phenomenology is not the topic of this paper, I can limit myself to pointing to these two studies devoted to this theme. 43. Emphasis added. Here the quote in its entirety, from A VII 13/62b probably from the beginning of the 1930s, where Husserl struggles with the attempt to maintain an “evidencing” element of intuition within phenomenological “description” (I am indebted to Rochus Sowa at the Husserl Archives in Louvain for bringing this passage to my attention): “But here is something else we need to pay attention to. There are not only acts that, based on the intentional explication of their horizons, bring the evidence to bear that they are continuing validities of previous primal validities. There are also those validities that are not themselves such continuing validities but bear within themselves continuing validities of a similar type. There are also acts that give themselves as primally instituting insofar as they yield to ‘new’ information that is not given to us in the sense of a continuing validity. In this sense, all our external experiences of new objects that we have never encountered before are, as new experiences, ‘primally instituting.’ Yet in another sense they are not primally instituting. First of all one should point out that the first seeing of a palm tree has an influence for seeing future palm trees that themselves have not never been seen. They are individually unknown but yet ‘something,’ ‘a’ known object. Already in the first viewing of something new we have a sensual scheme of that which we have to expect in continuing seeing and in closer knowing (in which the new individual objective sense first of all constitutes itself). In the new-validity as validity of its meaning we have at the same time co-valid the old validity with its old meaning that slides over the newly developing meaning from its beginning stadium onward. And in this overlapping the new meaning forms itself as meaning with an anticipatory content, and the anticipation itself fulfills itself more or less perfectly, thereby modifying itself.” The rest of the quotation is cited above. Here the original German: “Aber hier kommt noch anderes in Betracht. Es gibt nicht nur Akte, die durch intentionale Expli- kation ihrer Horizonte die Evidenz mit sich bringen, dass sie Fortgeltungen früherer Urgel- Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 230

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Thus, contrary to Husserl’s own emphasis that such interpretation is interpretation of “evidencing intentionality,” his latter claim, that “all self-understanding is interpretation,” runs counter to his original claim. Intuitive evidence is in fact a very late phenomenon in the life of consciousness as well as for the phenomenological method, as it rests on the larger foundation of interpretation that can only proceed reconstructively. Although Husserl claims in the above-quoted letter genetic phenomenology as his own discovery, the genetic, dynamic dimension that is required to analyze subjectivity through reconstruction was the whole point of Natorp’s psychology that he already laid out in his Introduction to Psychology from 1888, which Husserl knew well before any talk of genesis in his own writings.44 Thus, phenomenology as a description of consciousness needs to be complemented by a reconstructive account. In other words, phenomenology becomes hermeneutical. Although Husserl’s genetic phenomenology is in this sense crucially indebted to Natorp’s reconstructive method, there is, however, one decisive difference. The subjectivity that phenomenology analyzes is not part of the world (of “objectivity”). The “reconstructive” method that phenomenology employs —————— tungen sind, sondern auch solche, die es selbst nicht sind, aber Fortgeltungen anderer ähn- licher Akte doch in sich bergen. Es gibt auch Akte, die sich als urstiftende insofern geben, als sie ‘Neues’ bieten, was für uns da ist nicht in der Weise einer Fortgeltung. So sind all unsere äußeren Erfahrungen neuer Gegenstände, die uns noch nie begegnet waren, eben als neue Er- fahrungen ‘urstiftend’. Aber in einem anderen Sinn sind sie es nicht. Zunächst sei darauf hin- gewiesen, dass das erstmalige Sehen einer Palme auf das Sehen künftiger Palmen, die selbst noch nie gesehen waren, von Einfluss ist: Sie sind individuell unbekannt, und doch ‘etwas’, ‘ein’ Bekanntes. Schon im ersten Anblick des Neuen haben wir ein Sinnesschema dessen, was 〈wir〉 nun im Fortschreiten des Sehens und in näherer Kenntnisnahme (in der der neue in- dividuelle gegenständliche Sinn sich erst konstituiert) zu erwarten haben. Wir haben in der Neu-Geltung als Geltung ihres Sinnes zugleich mitlebendig die alte Geltung mit ihrem sich über den neu werdenden Sinn von seinem Anfangsstadium an überschiebenden alten Sinn; und in dieser Deckung gestaltet sich der neue Sinn als Sinn in antizipatorischem Inhalt, und die Antizipation ihrerseits erfüllt sich mehr oder minder vollkommen, sich dabei abwan- delnd. Das ist ‘Interpretation’, aber offenbar nicht willkürliche, sondern Auseinanderwick- lung einer evident aufweisbaren Intentionalität. Oder vielmehr, solche Aufwicklung ist von vornherein Interpretation; und alle Intentionalanalyse, alle Selbstverständigung des Be- wusstseins, die in ‘Deskription’ ihren Ausdruck findet, ist Interpretation; in all ihrer Evidenz ist 〈sie〉 eben evidente Interpretation, die also ursprünglich rechtgebende ist.” See also the following passage from the same period: “In a certain way, we can therefore distinguish ‘explanatory’ phenomenology as a phenomenology of regulated genesis, and ‘descriptive’ phenomenology as phenomenology of possible, essential shapes . . . in pure consciousness and their teleological ordering in the realm of possible reason. . . . In my lectures [on Tran- scendental Logic, see Hua XI], I did not say ‘descriptive’, but rather ‘static’ phenomenology” (Hua XI, 340, trans. Steinbock). 44. Judging from the stylistic character of Husserl’s marginal remarks, Husserl read Einleitung in die Psychologie in the first decade of the twentieth century. He also was confronted to Natorp’s ideas through discussion groups conducted by Johannes Daubert in 1905 and later. See Karl Schuhmann, “Daubert Chronik,” in Selected Papers on Phenome- nology, ed. Cees Leijenhorst and Piet Steenbakkers (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), 299–301. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 231

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is not a causal reconstruction, since subjectivity in its original sense is not part of the world of objectivity; hence something like a “causal” account will not do justice to subjectivity in its “own” right. One can give a causal account of subjectivity, but that would treat it as a part of nature in what Husserl calls the “naturalistic” attitude. This was, as we recall, Husserl’s earlier critique of Na- torp’s methodological naiveté. Indeed, treating subjectivity in its germane sense means occupying a position that reveals subjective structures in their own original character and lawfulness, a lawfulness that is radically different from that pertaining to the sphere of objectivity. The “causality” in the sphere of conscious life, which Husserl calls “motivation,” functions according to its own, very distinct laws, such as, association.45 Again, this topic need not be discussed here; all that should become clear is the context of Husserl’s specifically phenomenological approach to subjectivity through the genetic phenomenological method, which came into being only after having been exposed to a decidedly non-phenomenological conception of subjectivity, both thematically and methodologically.46 To summarize, one can say that both Husserl and Natorp employ a method which in each case can be termed reconstructive. However, the difference is that although Natorp proposes a reconstruction of the concrete life of the subject in the framework of his General Psychology, he stops short of actually “delving” into the “depths” of subjectivity. He proposes but does not perform an actual genetic analysis. The reconstructive method is solely meant to “undo” that which has already been achieved by objectivation. It can only revert back to reconstructing “subjectivity” from the objective achievements which stand before us as cultural objects. The label for all that man constructs is culture. Ultimately, although Natorp had the crucial intuition, subjectivity in his method can only be known ex negativo; that is, Natorp does not cash in on his own legitimate intuition. Reconstructive work comes to an end with the pure ego as merely an a priori principle, a sheer ideal zero-point beyond which one cannot trespass. Hence, a real philosophical “psychology” is not carried out, although he gives the main guiding clues to Husserl. Natorp’s analysis has —————— 45. For this distinction, see the classic monograph by Bernhard Rang, Kausalität und Motivation. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Perspektivität und Objektivität in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973). 46. Welton, The Other Husserl, also mentions the influence of Natorp (443 n. 38), but does not get into this influence in any detail. See, however, his essay “The Systematicity of Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy: From Static to Genetic Method,” in Welton, ed., The New Husserl, 255–88, where he gives the Natorp influence a broader treatment, see ibid., 266–70. Here (270) he concludes that “from Husserl’s perspective after the transcendental turn, Natorp’s analysis could be viewed only as an unwelcome mixture of psychological and transcendental analysis,” while conceding that there is an influence on Husserl from the part of Natorp. From what has been said above, it should be clear that this influence was crucial to Husserl’s transcendental recasting of phenomenology. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 232

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its “locus” in the transcendental realm; yet the “subjective side” of it is essentially a black box. As has been argued, however, Husserl’s whole endeavor is to demonstrate how such a description of conscious life is indeed possible when one takes seriously the ontological difference between both spheres (subjectivity and objectivity, attained in the transcendental and the natural standpoints, respectively) in the methodological sense. Indeed, Husserl’s subtle descriptions of consciousness in his intricate analyses of time-consciousness, perception, memory, and phantasy belie any skepticism concerning the efficacy of such analyses. To be sure, Husserl’s descriptions are also “object-oriented,” as they thematize intentional acts (as intending-something). Yet they are intentional structures of experience and as such they can be made thematic in a reflexive turning away from the world “out there” into its origin in meaning-bestowing intentional structures of consciousness. Yet the other point inspired by Natorp is that even these phenomenological descriptions cannot methodologically do without reconstructive and constructive elements, insofar as there are dimensions of conscious life which simply cannot be brought to direct intuition. They can be reconstructed, not causally as in Natorp, but in a new attitude that brings into view consciousness’s specific character. This does not, however, mean a bankruptcy of the phenomenological method, but rather a deepening and an opening towards (if one does not shy away from the term) speculative, metaphysical dimensions. Although Husserl throughout his lifetime steered clear from such designations of his phenomenology, in his later phase his analyses are full of such elements, especially in his speculative thesis of the inborn teleology of all consciousness. Although he never went beyond mere announcements and did not go through the pains of truly working out these speculative ideas, Husserl openly acknowledges—and not only in his correspondence with Natorp—his connection with the innermost intentions of speculative idealism.47 Comparing Natorp’s and Husserl’s methodology, one can conclude that both of them represent “transcendental methods.” Yet, while Husserl gained important insights through Natorp’s method, Natorp’s own psychology is methodologically flawed. What is not touched by this critique, however, is Na- torp’s original transcendental method of construction, a method that uses constructive elements to explain how it is possible for consciousness to experience the world of culture. Thus, while Natorp is oriented towards the object of the investigation, Husserl is oriented toward the subject, or (in other words) Na- torp in the objectifying, Husserl in the subjectifying aspect of transcendental life. Seen from this perspective, the opposition turns out to be a relative one in that —————— 47. See the aforementioned letter to Natorp from 1918 (BW 5, 137), as well as Husserl’s letter to Cassirer of 1925 (BW 5, 4–5). One should also bear in mind that the bulk of Husserl’s manuscripts on metaphysics and teleology are still unpublished (section E III of his Nachlass). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 233

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Natorp—in Husserlian terms—looks at the noematic, Husserl at the noetic side of the “transcendental realm” as that which makes experience of world possible. Both locate their philosophical projects within a transcendental register.48 Although Husserl was himself not blind to this noematic dimension, he rarely thematizes this aspect as more than an afterthought, whereas Natorp, due to his dogmatic restrictions, shies away entirely from conceding a proper description of the noetic. Both positions, however, need not be mutually exclusive; they merely emphasize different sides of the same coin. Both thematize the conditions of possibility of experience of world in “subjective” and “objective” directions, respectively. Ironically, it is Husserl who fulfills the idea of a “subjective grounding of knowledge” that Natorp had envisioned as a counterweight to the transcendental method firstly introduced by Cohen.49 Furthermore, whereas Natorp employs a constructive method for his subject domain (objectivity), Husserl’s method, in going the reconstructive path, becomes thereby genetic. Thus Husserl, firstly, exploits Natorp’s radical difference between subjectivity and objectivity to establish a methodological difference, enabling him, secondly, to access and analyze genetically the noetic side of “the transcendental.” The important methodological conclusion of this section is that in this respect both methods form a correlation; one necessarily supplements the other. Whereas up to now this sounded like a purely formal correlation, it will be up to Cas- sirer, who was well-versed in both Natorp’s and Husserl’s methods, to fill this “promise” with content.

§ 3. Husserl and Cassirer: Noetics and Noematics within the Pluralistically Conceived Transcendental Realm To show how Cassirer fits into the picture, we first have to point out the shortcomings of Natorp’s method as they appear to Cassirer. These shortcomings are not internal flaws in Natorp’s psychology but rather appear as an —————— 48. Following Husserl’s terminology especially in Ideas I, the noetic “side” of transcendental subjectivity is the act of (thinking, remembering, etc.), whereas the noematic aspect is the object insofar as it is experienced. Thus, the immanently given, not the transcendent object, must be viewed as intentum. See Ideas I, 200–24 (the chapter on “Noesis and Noema”). This interpretation is indebted to Holzhey’s lucid article “Zu den Sachen selbst!” where he compares especially Natorp’s and Husserl’s methods as paradigms of both philosophical schools. He interprets the task of Natorp’s psychology as—in Husserl’s terms—“constitutive- noematic” (15), which leaves out the constitutive-noetic aspect, the aspect that is supplied by Husserl. Although Holzhey does not spell out this consequence, I do not hesitate to admit that it is this basic insight which has aided the author in developing the interpretation presented here. 49. “On the Objective and Subjective Grounding of Knowledge” was the title of Na- torp’s first publication where he introduced the subjective tendency that later, first in Ein- leitung in die Psychology from 1888, became the reconstructive method. Husserl knew this article and cited from it in the Logical Investigations. See Paul Natorp, “Ueber objective und subjective Begründung der Erkenntniss,” Philosophische Monatshefte 23 (1887), 257–86. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 234

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unwarranted—and indeed unnecessary—restriction on Natorp’s part, which Cassirer purports to overcome. However, Cassirer by no means does away with the Marburg method. Rather, he both transforms Cohen’s transcendental and Natorp’s reconstructive method. Specifically, Cassirer considers Na- torp’s method, although in principle correct, too narrow and in need of broadening. It is important to note that this is an insight the late Natorp himself had reached, which prompted, for example, Heidegger to rightly point out a methodological convergence in the late Natorp and the Cassirer of the Phi- losophy of Symbolic Forms.50 In either case, one can say that both Natorp and Cassirer have, in their way, moved away of the original neo-Kantian focus on scientific experience without simultaneously giving up the general framework of transcendental philosophy in the spirit of Kant. The label that has been applied to neo-Kantianism by critics, that it merely provides a justification for the positive sciences, is both incorrect and, in the light of where Cassirer took the Marburg method, especially unfair.51 Both Natorp and Cassirer have proceeded to a novel and original concept of transcendental philosophy and of “the” transcendental, and it was especially Cassirer’s conception that came close to that of the late Husserl. The decisive insight that both Cassirer and Husserl had independently of each other was that the transcendental realm is structured in a plural fashion. To start out, Natorp was widely perceived as the most severe “methodological fanatic” of the neo-Kantian movement.52 This characterization—which —————— 50. See Heidegger’s little known text on the history of the philosophical chair (Lehrstuhl) in Marburg, written on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the University of Marburg in 1927 (in Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1991], 304–11, here 309–10), an account that gets the relation between Natorp and Cassirer just right: “In the last years, Cassirer strives to sketch a general ‘philosophy of culture’ on the basis of the neo-Kantian paradigms. His ‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’ strives to subsume the activities [Verhaltungen] and formations of spirit under a systematic interpretation following the idea of ‘expression’ as guiding clue. In his way, Cassirer converges with the attempts of Natorp, attempts that take their bearings more on the general categorial grounding of the system and not in the concrete interpretation of single ‘sym- bols’ of spirit.” 51. Indeed, such a judgment is also unfair with respect to Natorp and Cohen as well. Cohen first conceived of the transcendental method and limited it, at least in his commentaries to Kant’s First Critique, to the positive sciences. Yet to reduce Cohen to his work on theoretical philosophy deliberately ignores his extensive works on ethics, aesthetics and, especially, religion. See the accounts of the scope of Cohen’s philosophy by Stolzenberg, Ur- sprung, and Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp. 52. See Hans-Georg Gadamer’s (after all, a pupil of Natorp’s) introductory text to Na- torp’s late work, Philosophische Systematik, xii–xiii: “[In his draft of a General Psychology] Natorp was moving along paths that converge with Dilthey’s psychology of the spiritual sciences as well as with Husserl’s phenomenology. Yet his question with respect to this psychology did not have the purpose of a new grounding of the spiritual sciences, nor that of a methodological reorientation of philosophical research. Instead, it had to do with the systematic notion of the unity of philosophy as such that appears to him in the correlation of Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 235

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was not entirely positive—pertained to the fact that he seemingly wanted to reduce every factual philosophical problem to a methodological question within the transcendental method, and in a sense this judgment is correct. As he emphasized, every factum is a fieri and as such subject to the transcendental method. Method is the absolute of philosophy, or philosophy is nothing but method because the method, in the sense of met-hódos, retraces the steps of the fieri.53 In this sense, Cassirer charges Natorp with a methodological monism54 stemming from his alleged “metaphysical monism,” that is, that there is just one objective reality which can only be broached by one method, that of objectivation. To Natorp the realm of objectivity is originally nothing but nature, indeed, the nature with which the positive sciences deal. Although there is no reason to believe that there is more than one reality, Cassirer asserts, this is not to say that there is only one type of or one way of experiencing reality, a point clearly influenced by phenomenology. Natorp’s transcendental method, at least before changing his view in his late philosophy, does in fact pay heed to only one type of objectivity: it merely focuses upon that which the positive sciences cognize and claim as the product of their cognizing activity. His approach only considers what Kant had thematized in the framework of theoretical philosophy. This was indeed Cohen’s point of departure, to focus on the factum as the factum of the sciences (das Faktum der Wissenschaften).55 However, did not Kant himself insist, if not on different realities, then at least on different ways of thematizing reality, namely through the disciplines of ethics, aesthetics, and religion? Recalling the scope of Kant’s critical philosophy, Cassirer states: The meaning of the moral ought, the meaning of the work of art, the meaning of the religious, all of this is only visible to us in a special attitude of spiritual regard [geistiger Blick]. . . . Can we set ourselves to rest with this manifold of “perspectives” [Gesichtspunkte]; shall we just accept it as a last facticity, as a factum of spiritual being and spiritual life that we can no further explain and break down? If this were the case, then the very idea of philosophy itself would threaten to get lost.56 In other words, was not reason more than pure reason alone? Surely, there is but one reason; however, as already Kant insisted, it has different ap- —————— objectivation and subjectivation. That is, it is about the full dominance of the concept of method, of process, the dominance of the fieri even over the factum of science. In this sense, Natorp appeared to be the most rigorous methodological fanatic and ‘logicist’ of the Mar- burg school.” 53. See Paul Natorp, “Kant und die Marburger Schule” Kant-Studien 17 (1912), 193–221, here 199: “This is precisely what we mean by philosophy as ‘method’: Every fixed ‘being’ must become soluble into a ‘path,’ a movement of thought.” 54. In Cassirer’s obituary of Natorp: “Paul Natorp,” Kant-Studien 30 (1925), 273–98, here 288. 55. See Helmut Holzhey, Cohen und Natorp, 56 and passim. See also Hans-Ludwig Ollig, Der Neukantianismus (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 30–33. 56. Cassirer, “Paul Natorp,” 288. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 236

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plications and intentions.57 Is therefore, as Cassirer asserts, reason not better understood as spirit? Seeing reason in a broader conception as spirit, there are, accordingly, different ways in which it can experience the world. Yet, although the move from reason to spirit seems like a mere repetition of Hegel, Cassirer moves into an entirely different direction. Indeed, the world we live in and which is constructed through subjective activity—this transcendental paradigm Cassirer does not question—is not merely the world of science. Science is but one, and certainly not the most fundamental, manner in which the world is constructed. As one of reason’s points of crystallization, science presents merely one type of the broader account of subjective activity, which is more properly conceived as spirit. Kant’s canonical differentiation of the applications of reason into aesthetics, ethics, and religion is a start, but not enough for Cassirer. He goes even further as to include all activities and achievements of subjectivity, insofar as they are principal ways in which subjects encounter the world in a meaningful (“spiritual”) way. This is in keeping with Natorp who does not differentiate between “rational” and “ir- rational” human activities; all human activities somehow contribute to the way the world is for human beings. The world is entirely a world of culture, even something like “pure nature” is a product of the sciences as cultural activities. To Cassirer, this is the consequence of the sense and tradition of what he calls “modern idealism,” which is committed since the Renaissance positing and further investigating the correlation between world and spirit.58 He is merely drawing the most far-reaching consequence from the Marburg method that all experience constructs reality, namely, that different experience constructs differently. Following Natorp’s train of thought but at the same time breaking with him critically, Cassirer asserts: Eye to eye philosophy stands again not only with the particular sciences but rather with the world of spirit, which comprises, besides science, law as well as morality, art as well as religion. All of these need to be investi- —————— 57. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B641, in Kant’s gesammelte Schriften 3, ed. Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1904/11); English translation: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1968), B 218: “Yet if pure reason for itself can be practical and really is practical, as the consciousness of the moral law demonstrates, it remains nevertheless always one and the same reason that, be it in theoretical or practical intent, judges according to principles a priori.” See also Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990), 2; Eng- lish translation: Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 3. Here Kant differentiates the application of reason in its “purely theoretical” Gebrauche (use, employment) vis-à-vis its practical use and the power of judgment, thereby bridging the gap between both applications of reason and as such constituting another “moment” of reason, see ibid., 11/14-15. 58. For Cassirer’s view of modern idealism in a nutshell, see the introduction to volume I of The Problem of Knowledge, see Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wis- senschaft der neueren Zeit I (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), 1–18. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 237

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gated, they need to be understood in their own immanent sense, in the particularity of their structure.59 In taking over Natorp’s constructive method, Cassirer thereby multiplies the process of objectivation. He, too, employs the “transcendental method”; this method, however, has many forms of application. Opposed to Natorp’s methodological monism stands Cassirer’s pluralism, again merely following an insight Natorp had but did not exploit methodologically. Yet in this pluralization of Natorp’s method Cassirer goes one crucial step beyond. The problem with Natorp’s method was that, again following Kant, he remained fixated on the lawful character of scientific objectification. As mentioned, in his late period Natorp did arrive at thematizing art and religion and other “spiritual” regions; Cassirer was aware of Natorp’s last vision. Yet even then Natorp remained fixated on the laws that govern their constructions and characterize their internal structures; he did not overcome the paradigm of lawfulness.60 Yet the criteria of “general truth” and “lawfulness” only pertain to science and not, say, to language or art as equally valid expressions of the human spirit. Where one talks no longer of a lawful type of experience as in science, the character of what it is to be a law changes as well. Science, for example, uses language, but in a different way and to a different end than that of everyday parlance. To be sure, everyday language has a certain regularity or general nature as well, but this is of a different kind and rigor than that of scientific discourse: The generality of linguistic ‘concepts’ does not stand in the same line as that of scientific . . . “laws”: one is not merely a continuation of the other, but each moves in different tracks and expresses different directions of spiritual formation. (PSF III, 66)61 The full range of reality as formed by spirit would be too narrowly understood if one only examined it through the categories of lawfulness and exactitude as guiding clues. We are not just embedded in and given over to nature but are constantly in the process of forming reality into a world of humankind, into a culture. Cassirer thusly concludes his critical discussion of Natorp: If we want to gain a truly concrete view of the ‘full objectivity’ of spirit on the one hand, its ‘full subjectivity’ on the other, we must attempt to execute this methodological correlation, that Natorp posits as principle, for all regions of spiritual creating. It will become clear that the three main directions —————— 59. Cassirer, “Paul Natorp,” 290 (emphasis added). 60. See esp. Paul Natorp, Vorlesungen über praktische Philosophie (Erlangen: Philosophische Akademie, 1925); here he mainly deals with art, philosophy of economy (Wirtschaftsphilosophie), and pedagogy. His philosophy of religion is sketched in his Philosophische Systematik. Natorp died in 1924 and was unable to complete his philosophical system. 61. This whole chapter deals with Natorp and Cassirer’s critique of Natorp’s method, see PSF III, 53–67, esp. 58–67. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 238

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of ‘objectivation’ that Natorp presupposes in close connection to the Kant- ian Critiques ... do not suffice. (PSF III, 67) Hence different spheres of experience require different guiding principles in ascertaining how they construct their specific reality. The main directions of spirit’s objectivation are what Cassirer calls the ‘symbolic forms’. His philosophy of symbolic forms only becomes understandable in light of the foundations laid by Natorp.62 The symbolic forms are the ways in which reason, conceived as spirit, manifests itself and through which the world comes to be experienced in different forms of experience. These forms shape the “spaces of meaning” that conscious human beings occupy in the manifold of their activities. As opening and allowing for spaces for spiritual activities, these forms are functional contexts (of which constructing nature is but one type) in which spirit comes to reveal itself, in language, myth, art, religion and, to be sure, science. They are “ways which spirit pursues in its objectivation, that is, in its self-revelation” (PSF I, 9). These forms are not empirically discernable modes of human behavior but dimensions in which spirit “lives” and comes to understand itself. They are, in their plurality, transcendental forms of intuition in the Kantian sense, but with different and distinct “internal” logics and manners of functioning, of which scientific “lawfulness” (or lawfulness in general) is but one. These forms are “symbolic” because, in the literal sense of symbol from Greek sym-bállein (to throw together), each individual object is tied into a functional context, it stands in and for a specific space of meaning. In totality, these forms shape reality in the universal sense of that which is formed by human spirit. This totality Cassirer calls “culture.” Hence, “the critique of reason becomes the critique of culture. It strives to understand and to show how all content of culture, insofar it is more than a mere particular content, insofar it is grounded in a general form-principle, presupposes an original deed of spirit. Only in this endeavor does the basic thesis of idealism find its true and complete realization” (PSF I, 11). The actual task of Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbol- ic Forms is to discern and to describe these symbolic forms in their own specific —————— 62. In fact, Cassirer somewhat obfuscates the origin of his theory in Kantian philosophy in his first introduction to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms; he introduces it by way of symbolic notation in mathematics that he has learned from the mechanical scientist Hertz, see PSF I, 5–6. 63. In his discussion of newer concepts of transcendental philosophy, Hariolf Oberer claims that “since the publication of the ‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’ Cassirer has always been judged (against his own self-understanding) as a phenomenologist. That is, in his ‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’ one has pointed with special emphasis to the (alleged) non-neo-Kantian character of this work.” Hariolf Oberer, “Transzendentalsphäre und Konkrete Subjektivität. Ein Zentrales Thema der Neueren Transzendentalphilosophie,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 23 (1969), 578–611, here 586. Contrary to this assessment, one can show that Cassirer claimed for himself at least phenomenological influence. See the famous footnote in PSF II, 16 and the quotation in the letter to Husserl in the Con- clusion. In the footnote in PSF II, Cassirer does not refer to himself as a phenomenologist. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 239

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ways of functioning. For the factual implementation of these descriptions Cas- sirer does not hesitate to employ the term phenomenology,63 insofar as this analysis attempts to be true to the internal functional structures of each of the symbolic forms and describes them in their essential and necessary traits. The phenomenological influence lies precisely in taking experience seriously in the way the spirit constructs different “spaces of meaning.” His method is thus constructive as well as descriptive. In this respect, Cassirer also calls his endeavor a “phenomenology of consciousness” (PSF III, 64),64 with consciousness constantly being “objectified” in the symbolic forms as spiritual contents through which human beings understand the world. In this sense, it is phenomenological more in the Husserlian, descriptive sense than in that of Hegel. What is Hegelian is the move from reason to spirit. What distinguishes him most from the latter is, however, that there is no hierarchy involved in spiritual formation, but each symbolic form is an independent and equally valid expression of spirit. There is no teleology, but rather a centrifugal emanation of spirit into different directions. Yet Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms comes with the same “objectifying” focus as Natorp’s. Thus, Cassirer refers to his philosophical project as a phenomenology of “objective spirit” (PSF III, 65),65 and in so doing explicitly makes recourse to Natorp’s method of objectification. Only what is objectified is not reason but spirit. Cassirer’s philosophy of culture represents a phenomenology of objective spirit, a spirit, however, that is pluralized into different symbolic formations with their own particular modes of functioning and “lawful” regularity. As such, he is both loyal to Natorp’s transcendental method and the phenomenological paradigm of unprejudiced, phenomenon-oriented —————— Rather, he commends Husserl’s phenomenology for “bringing into sharp view for the first time again the differences of spiritual ‘structural forms’” and for having “shown a new way that is distinguished from psychological questions and methods” (ibid.). Furthermore, as the present essay intends to show, his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is also decidedly of neo- Kantian character. To be sure, Cassirer’s philosophy—as a philosophy of culture—has expanded its scope by opening itself up to other forms of “structural forms” of Geist. Due to the phenomenological character of his approach, one can say that Cassirer treads on middle ground between both schools, as Husserl himself has moved towards a neo-Kantian conception of symbolic formation as well. 64. Although Cassirer uses this term to describe Natorp’s project, it becomes clear from the context that he also includes his own philosophy of culture in this framework, however, to be sure, without Natorp’s problematic restrictions. The term “phenomenology” in general is certainly not exclusive to Husserl’s treatment of consciousness. For instance, Thomas Nagel uses it as a title for a scientific discipline with the first-person perspective; see his The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University, 1986) and Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1979), 179. 65. For a discussion of Cassirer’s “hermeneutics of objective spirit,” see Rudolf Bernet, La Vie du Sujet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 139–61, esp. 141–53, for a comparison between Cassirer’s theory of perception and Husserl’s theory of eidetic intuition. This discussion lies beyond the scope of this paper. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 240

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description. Whereas Natorp looks at the world purely formally from the standpoint of an absolute method, Cassirer actually immerses himself in the manifold traditions of human culture, as witnessed in his works on Renaissance philosophy, mythology, linguistics and modern physics. Due to his impressive erudition, he is the first to truly bring the transcendental method to life. Yet there can be no mistaking that in this original interpretation of Na- torp’s (and Kant’s) method, Cassirer also buys into a claim of Natorp’s that has been shown to be problematic. For the same reasons as Natorp, Cassirer denies any direct access to subjectivity or, for that matter, spirit. He insists that his analysis of spirit is equally a “reconstructive analysis” in the sense of a genetic account of spirit’s formation (PSF III, 65). We can only ever speak about subjectivity by reconstructing it backwards from the endpoint of its objective achievements, the symbolic forms themselves. Yet as he insists even then, “spirit does not reveal itself in its essentiality.”66 We are, as subjects, what our place in culture is.67 In other words, although Cassirer overcomes Natorp’s methodological impasse by multiplying the types of objectivations to capture all realms of spiritual activity, he nevertheless remains bound to the neo-Kantian dogma of the inaccessibility of subjectivity. His talk of “spirit” instead of subjectivity clouds his position with regard to the latter, but his doctrine of the “symbolic forms” implies the paradigm of subjectivity’s (or spirit’s) inaccessability; I am not spirit, I partake in it. The term ‘symbolic’ implies this as well. There can never be a direct intuition of entities; all intuition is always mediated through a symbolic meaning. Each experienced entity, qua experience, is a functional element within a symbolic form. Entities can only be perceived as bearing a “symbolic pregnancy” that “connects them internally” to a symbolic form. We never experience being “eye-to-eye” but always through the “tincture” of symbolic vision, which is not an obstacle but a necessary precondition of our finite experience.68 This symbolism does not distort being but is the way—the only way—in which we can have any experience.69 It is for this reason—experience can only be symbolic—that any analysis of subjectivity can only be indirect as well. There is thus a double reason for subjectivity’s inaccessibility: Not only do we not see subjectivity “in itself”; we only have access to it symbolically. All that can be said about it will be “re- —————— 66. Ernst Cassirer, Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, ed. John M. Krois et al. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1995), 52. This volume is a collection of Cassirer’s unpublished drafts for the fourth volume of the Philosopie der symbolischen Formen. 67. Although Gadamer’s paradigm is history, one can well apply his famous metaphor of the subject as a “flickering light.” 68. In this context, Cassirer likes to refer to Kant’s image of the “light dove” that feels the bothersome resistance of the air but can in fact only fly in this very element. Cas- sirer, Zur Metaphysik der Symbolischen Formen, 218, 265. 69. It is in this light that Max Scheler—in a discussion of the relation between phenomenology and neo-Kantianism—came to define phenomenology precisely as a “de- symbolization of the world.” See n. 20 above. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 241

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constructive” and will only give a “negative” image by means of an explication of the symbolic forms and of what occurs within them. The reconstructive method will be genetic only with regard to the objectifying symbolic forms. Cassirer scholars might object that Cassirer does discuss subjectivity, in the context of knowledge as a symbolic form of its own (in the third volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms). Yet Cassirer’s account only deals with the structures that are needed to clarify the functioning of cognition, not subjectivity itself, that is, the concrete dynamic life of the subject. The dynamic vivacity of the subject remains (deliberately) untouched. Thus, although Cassirer expands the concept of objectivation in a most original and fruitful way, he still remains bound to the problematic Kantian paradigm of subjective analysis as a region that is “off limits.” However, as we have seen previously following Husserl, this alleged inaccessibility of subjectivity due to its non-intuitability need not be maintained. One can support this by conceding that a phenomenology of subjectivity (in the style Husserl has demonstrated it) need not and in fact cannot rest entirely on intuition. Rather, this “direct and evidencing intuition” is merely the up- permost stratum of a larger and multi-layered structure, of which even subjectivity—as the rational, self-conscious personal agency—is but the abstract top stratum. It would be abstract, that is, if one were to isolate it from its larger, genetic “depth structure.”70 We have now come to the point where we can put the pieces together and see how Cassirer’s “expanded” position of the neo-Kantian method and Husserl’s mature standpoint form an encompassing theory that ac- commodates both the noetic and noematic direction of the transcendental realm. Let us first turn to Husserl. Although no longer bound to strict intuition but also including construction or interpretation, Husserl’s genetic phenomenology intends to show how the world is constituted for an embodied subject by the subject’s very acts in his method “from the bottom up,” that is, through an analysis of foundational strata beginning from the most primitive levels of perception and moving to the highest strata of judgmental and scientific consciousness. For instance, by showing how perceptual objects are constituted through our bodily interaction with them in primitive kinaesthesia, Husserl gives a lucid account of subjective acts in which objectivity becomes “constituted,” whether these descriptions be intuitive or not. Indeed, it is this reconstructive interpretation that enables Husserl to access this depth structure of subjectivity, a dimension he calls ‘passivity’. This is precisely the meaning of ‘passivity’ in ge- —————— 70. Husserl in his late manuscripts dealing with the relationship between transcendental and mundane ego employs—among other metaphors—the distinction between “concrete” and “abstract” to characterize the nature of the transcendental ego. The ego would be understood as abstract were one to disregard its transcendental, genetic depth structure. Only as such can one truly reach “concretion.” See Hua XXXIV, 198–201 (text no. 13). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 242

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netic phenomenology: by describing how through primitive intentional acts more complex objectivities such as cultural objects and ultimately culture itself (as a universal horizon of meaning) are “built up,” “passivity” means nothing other than “no current ego-involvement.”71 In a perception of spatial objects in the here and now, I have things already of a higher order (as ‘cup’ or ‘table’), that is, as cultural artifacts. It takes an analysis of Abbau or reconstruction to reach the primitive level of just perceiving an object in its “pure” and uncultured existence. Husserl’s mature genetic phenomenology thus reconstructs acts that have been executed in the past—by myself, by others, before me, alongside with me—but that nevertheless contribute, in a sedimented and habitualized ways, to the manner in which I, here and now, perceive and understand the world. To use an example, in reconstructing acts of a certain type of experience, say visual perception, we can “hit upon” a primal instituting (Urstiftung) in which a particular type of object (‘tree’) is given for the first time and from which “radiate forward” certain apperceptive guiding clues that prefigure future tree perceptions. To be sure, this reconstruction is not factual in that person X, reflecting back on her past experience, will “find” this first “actual” vision of a tree. The reconstructive analysis is reconstructive in that it goes back to what ideally must have been a first tree vision, and describes interpre- tatively what this must have been like. These descriptions, though not themselves eidetic, generate such eidetic insights as the presumptivity of all perceptual world experience.72 Thus, genetic phenomenology necessarily goes beyond intuition towards the reconstruction of that which cannot be made evident, but all of the structures it describes are those of intentional acts; acts, that is, of experience. This reconstruction cannot proceed causally when it talks about transcendental subjectivity. Causality can never be a law of passivity, for these “events” within the passive sphere are not guided by rational thought un- —————— 71. The realm of passivity Husserl also calls “the unconscious,” which is “nothing less of a phenomenological nothing but itself a limit mode [Grenzmodus] of consciousness,” see Formale und Transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Jansen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), here 318–19; English translation: Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969), 318–19. Because the realm of passivity is where self-consciousness has not asserted itself actively, Husserl can also call the natural attitude—as that way of being which knows nothing of its involvement with constituting the world—passive, see Hua XXXIV, 49 n., as well as 64. 72. The topic of passive genesis is dealt with most broadly in Husserl’s lecture course on transcendental logic from the early Twenties. This lecture is published in Hua XI and XXXI. Parts of this lecture have also been used by Ludwig Landgrebe in his edition of Husserl’s posthumous work Erfahrung und Urteil: Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (1938), ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Hamburg: Claassen & Goverts, 1948); English translation: Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Geneal- ogy of Logic, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Uni- versity, 1973). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 243

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der “logical” principles. They are proto-rational acts, but as such subjective activities, unaware of what they may accomplish. For example, the movements of the eye are unconsciously part of the constitution of a physical object. In this sense, one can plausibly speak of Husserlian philosophy as a phenomenology of subjective spirit that strives to give a description of the subjective “conditions of possibility” that are involved in a concrete subject’s having of world. Now it is crucial to see that Husserl, similar to Cassirer, moves to a pluralistic conception of “subjective spirit” as well. Although there might be one world, what is experienced in intentional acts in the normal pursuit of life is always something singular according to the “active” mode of experience. Differ- ent acts constitute different objects and spaces of meaning. Thus, in his later reflections on the nature of intentionality as world-constituting, Husserl ultimately moves towards a pluralistic concept of constitution that brings him in connection to Cassirer’s plural conception of symbolic forms. His train of thought goes roughly as follows: Husserl realizes that intentional acts, as ways of “having” objects, come forth from a “horizon” of intending. This horizon is a certain meaningful way of intending or having, not just singular cogitata, but a world. However, in each cogitatum is intentionally implicated a horizon of other possible objects of experience. Yet in the sense of the correlational Apri- ori, the horizon has a correlate on the side of the acts as well. Husserl calls this “horizon” on the noetic side “attitude.” An attitude is a perspective one takes with regard to that which one experiences. Depending on the perspective, one will experience wholly different phenomena. To use Husserl’s example: something like a “house” will be something completely different to an architect, a real estate agent, or a potential buyer, with special interests guiding their perceptions in each case. Each attitude determines the specific “spiritual regard” that is different depending on the attitude taken. Husserl’s house-example has striking similarity with Cassirer’s famous “line-example”; the line in the form of a sine curve can be understood, depending on the “context,” as a mathematical graph, an artistic ornament, etc. (see PSF I, 30). What consequence does the introduction of the concept of plural horizons have for the last stage of Husserl’s philosophical development? Moving from a “pin-point” thematization of intentionality as intentional acts to “horizonal intentionality” opens up a whole new array of phenomenological research. What comes into view is a plurality of attitudes. Different attitudes “intend” different worlds (the aesthetic attitude intends the world of art, etc.), and henceforth one can speak of a plurality of worlds as meaningful “contexts” that are correlated to a plurality of attitudes.73 Husserl focuses only on a few examples of attitudes and does not really develop this important insight. —————— 73. I can merely hint at the problem of attitudes in this context. For a detailed analysis of these issues, see the first chapter of my “Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie” (Dor- drecht: Kluwer, 2002). Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 244

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One may suggest that this would be a meaningful way to further develop Husserl’s phenomenology of “subjective spirit”; indeed, Husserl merely began working on these issues in his late philosophy in the context of the life-world. Yet it is fair to say that Husserl, too, has thereby expanded the original scope of his transcendental method of constitution by multiplying the “forms” in which the world becomes constituted for us in a plurality of meaningful ways. However, all of these worlds as horizons of meaning have their ultimate foundation of constitution in transcendental subjectivity that is pluralized into different constitutive attitudes. He thus supplies the “subjective” dimension that is missing in Cassirer. Also, although Husserl acknowledges the plurality of types of subjective constitution through different attitudes—which equally may be called transcendental forms of intuition—he has not made the attempt to cat- egorize them in the way Cassirer has done with his order of symbolic forms. Perhaps one reason why Husserl has shied away from this task was that he intuitively feared a “constructive” element creeping into such an analysis. Yet one can take one’s point of departure from meaningful contexts (“worlds”) and move towards subjective structures that correlate to them and in this sense pursue Cassirer’s systematic agenda that takes its departure from the “finished” spaces of meaning. In other words, there is no reason to believe that one should preclude a priori such a systematization in the context of Husserl’s constitutive analyses. By contrast, one could say that Cassirer’s “system” of symbolic forms is perhaps too constructive or rigid to allow for other conceivable forms.74 Yet despite this systemic outlook that is lacking in Husserl and arguably too strong in Cassirer, Cassirer’s phenomenology of objective spirit cannot stand on its own and in this sense can be a “partner” with Husserl’s. As shown, in his late philosophy Husserl presents a rudimentary form of a phenomenology of subjective spirit in the form of the plurality of attitudes that complements Cassirer’s philosophy of objective spirit, in that Husserl strives to thematize the plurality of attitudes that constitute the different worlds of meaning that Cassirer calls symbolic forms. Yet the different symbolic forms depend on human beings and their activities. They are the “element” in which humanity dwells, and this dwelling cannot be separated from the activities that engender them. In Cassi- rer’s terminology, the symbolic form of, for example, myth is constituted by a different way of subjective “comportment” than that of science. Yet the objectification of spirit must have a subjective, constitutive side to it that Cassirer ignores. And in this sense one can rightfully speak of Husserl’s phenomenology of subjective spirit and Cassirer’s phenomenology of objective spirit as correlative methods that are but two directions of the “transcendental consideration,” —————— 74. This issue whether the symbolic forms are to be understood as a systematics (hence a construction) or a certain description with “systematizing” tendencies is discussed especially in Cassirer’s drafts for a fourth volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 245

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directions that can be isolated only artificially. They are both committed to a transcendental account of the world, focusing, in Husserl’s case, on the noetic, and in Cassirer’s case, on the noematic side of “the” transcendental, both of which break down into a plurality of meaning-formation and meaning, respectively. Furthermore, both strive for a “phenomenological” analysis of their subject domain, and both use description (based on intuition) and interpretation (based on reconstruction) as the methodological tools to describe it. Yet, in so doing, just like Natorp and Husserl, they merely emphasize two different sides of the same coin. Indeed, focusing on one side does not stand in contradiction to looking at the other, if one concedes that both of them will yield a different type of account. And in both cases, description as a static account (which Husserl would call ‘eidetic’, Cassirer ‘substantial’) necessarily leads to an interpretative or genetic dimension, which Husserl calls ‘explanatory’, Cassirer ‘functional’. Both phenomenologies can be subsumed under the title ‘hermeneutics’ insofar as the descriptive account must be expanded into the explanatory, interpretive dimension. This interdependence comes most clearly to the fore when one excludes one side of the correlation. In his mature philosophy, Husserl came to realize that constituting subjectivity and constituted world cannot be analyzed in iso- lation. The ego cogito necessarily includes the cogitatum in its horizonal dimension as world. Only late in his career did he come to focus on the noematic aspect of this correlation in thematizing the horizon into which intentional life is directed. This horizon as a nexus of meaning and referential implication is concentrated in the term “life-world.” However, this life-world is not merely a homogenous cogitatum, but breaks down into different nexuses of meaning, which Husserl calls ‘special worlds’ (Sonderwelten), the world of science, the world of the natural attitude, with its sub-forms of the world of business, art, religion, etc.75 These are meaningful nexuses of referential implication and as such not essentially different from the symbolic forms in Cassirer’s sense, in that they are guided by a “spiritual regard”—a specific attitude—that shapes the specific space of meaning and the way entities are experienced in and through this specific attitude. However, Husserl achieved these insights too late as to devote exhaustive treatment to them; something he realized with great dismay. Moreover, his account lacks systematic overview, a perspective maintained by Cassirer so rigorously from the start. Yet Husserl’s realization was precisely that if one merely drafts a phenomenology of subjective spirit without giving a correlative objective account of the forms into which these subjective achieve- —————— 75. These topics are dominant especially in the Crisis, though they are to be found nearly everywhere in his research manuscripts as of the late Twenties. See Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenolo- gie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel, Husserliana VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), 504–7. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 246

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ments actually “crystallize”—an account of the constituens without the consti- tuta—one ends up with a random collection of narratives of subjective acts, of something he himself mocked as “picture-book phenomenology.” Without a noematic account of that to which the achievements of subjective life are actually directed, subjectivity diffuses into thin air. In other words, how it exactly happens that transcendental life constitutes a world of culture with its plural forms is a task that, Husserl saw, would have to be completed, if there was to be any lasting value for his phenomenology. On the other hand, merely remaining on the “objective,” noematic side of things, as Cassirer did, renders any type of subjective agency obsolete. Without a strong concept of subjectivity, the symbolic forms remain devoid of “life.” The term “spirit,” though sublime, ultimately fails to hide this dark spot in Cas- sirer’s theory. One could even go so far as to suggest that this omission made it systematically impossible for Cassirer to draft an ethics.76 Where there can be no access to subjectivity, any talk of moral agency, ought, volition, and personal responsibility is meaningless. Without a subjective (noetic) account sup- plementing the objective (noematic), Cassirer’s objective spirit remains impersonal and ultimately dead. Spirit can have no agency of its own, though it may be spirit’s necessary condition to be anonymous. Surely one cannot content oneself with what would be a renewed version of Hegel’s vision of the sacrifice of individual subjects on the altar of absolute spirit. To keep spirit “alive,” one needs to remember that it is actually a subjectivity, ultimately an intersubjectivity, that generates spirit forming culture in all of its activities. Taking over Natorp’s paradigm of subjectivity’s inaccessibility accounts for this weak point in Cassirer. In this sense, Husserl’s counter-position vis-à-vis Natorp holds against Cassirer as well. Indeed, from a Husserlian standpoint, one would have to reject this anonymous notion of ‘spirit’ as this seems to advocate an impersonal “agency” governing the world. Cassirer’s use of ‘spirit’ bears too much idealistic weight as to be satisfactory to Husserl. However, also Husserl’s expansion of the transcendental realm that incorporates intersubjectivity is equally in danger of losing sight of personal agency. In Husserl’s late philosophy one can sometimes get the impression that the subject is but an insignificant “zero point” in the ocean of intentional acts that are not mine. With this caveat on both sides, one can still agree on a philosophically acceptable use of the term “spirit” as the totality of subjective activities in different “attitudes.” Yet only a “noetic” consideration that Husserl gives fills spirit with life. And only a sys- —————— 76. For a critique of Cassirer’s omission of a moral philosophy in his system, see Bir- git Recki’s (at times rather polemical) essay, “Kultur ohne Moral? Warum Ernst Cassirer Trotz der Einsicht in den Primat der Praktischen Vernunft Keine Ethik schreiben konnte,” in Dorothea Frede and Ralf Schmücker, eds., Ernst Cassirers Werk und Wirkung. Kultur und Philosophie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), 58–78. The brunt of her critique is that Cassirer’s paradigm of human beings’ practical activity precisely obliterates any genuine difference between activity as such and specifically moral activity. Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 247

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tematic “noematic” account of culture as constructed in various symbolic forms provides the necessary objective counter-balance to Husserl’s act analyses.

§ 4. Conclusion In the forgoing I have sought to show that both Husserl and Cassirer can be seen as working on the same philosophical project, that is, a description of the subject and the world insofar as both form a correlation within a philosophy that can be termed transcendental idealism. It is a philosophical project that thematizes how the world comes to be experienced for subjectivity through a plurality of conscious processes that terminate in a plurality of meaningful contexts. Although both thinkers were darkly aware of this kinship, they did not, unfortunately, pursue this lead themselves. Indeed, Cas- sirer writes in a letter to Husserl in 1925: Since the publication of the first volume of the Logical Investigations I have always held the conviction that between the tasks that phenomenology sets for itself and the basic insights of critical philosophy there lies a deep com- monality: to be sure, what is at stake for both of us is what you call . . . ‘the radically executed science of the transcendental, to be executed ad infinitum.(BW 5, 6)77 Yet both were too engrossed in their own mindset and their (partly erroneous) presuppositions about the others’ standpoint as to make it possible for either to truly synthesize their projects. This goes for Husserl and Cassirer and Husserl and Natorp. Unfortunately, this is also true for most scholars focusing on either strand of the tradition. If one removes the blinders on both sides, one will find remarkable similarities in the way their mutual tasks are actually carried out.78 Thus, this retelling of the history of Husserl’s, Natorp’s, and Cassirer’s philosophical interaction—and this can only be a beginning—has the systematic result of revealing the commonalities in both methods, enabling them to contribute in the joint effort of critical transcendental philosophy. In describing and reconstructing transcendental structures, broken down into an account of subjective acts on the one hand and of symbolic forms on the other, both Husserl’s phenomenology and the neo-Kantian method are committed to a “phenomenology of spirit.”79 But, it is in the realization of the —————— 77. This comes from a letter to Husserl from April 10, 1925. Cassirer quotes here Husserl’s letter of April 3 of the same year (BW 5, 5). 78. As an example I would merely like to mention Cassirer’s account of myth in which Cassirer openly admits his indebtedness to Husserl (PSF II, 16 n.) and towards which Husserl, in turn, was very sympathetic, as well as generally towards a phenomenology of primitive consciousness as witnessed in Husserl’s enthusiasm for the works of the French ethnologist Claude Lévy-Brühl. 79. Whereas Geist (spirit) is ubiquitous in Cassirer’s oeuvre, Husserl only seldomly mentions it as a topic of its own, e.g., where he talks of phenomenological psychology thematizing “universal intersubjective spirituality” (Hua XXXIV, 102), or what he also calls Luft-Neokantian 18/12/2004 14:49 Page 248

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limits of intuition and the necessity of incorporating constructive as well as reconstructive elements that the methodology of this phenomenology takes on a hermeneutic dimension. It strikes the reader as a compelling coincidence when Husserl characterizes his phenomenology—in a public lecture of 1931—as “hermeneutics of conscious life,”80 and Cassirer for his part—in the drafts for the planned but unpublished fourth volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms—writes: “Theory of knowledge is essentially nothing but a hermeneutics of cognition, a hermeneutics that in each case grasps a special ‘direction’ of cognition and uses it as a basis for interpretation.”81 Both only hint at what they mean by ‘hermeneutics’, but this term is employed here to characterize their mutual projects, it is used as the method of faithful description expanded into interpretation and directed into opposite but correlative directions. Drafting such an encompassing “phenomenology of spirit” is of course a truly Her- culean task, one that can merely be hinted at from afar. Instead, I would like to end this discussion with the humbler, but perhaps not less important, suggestion that, with respect to the correlation between the noetic and noematic sides of the transcendental realm, the phenomenological method based on intuition need not stand in contradiction with the neo-Kantian transcendental method based on construction. Rather, both can and need to be mediated in the way attempted. They emphasize the two aspects of the same hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to transcendental philosophy as the proper way to analyze the transcendental realm in its “subjective” and “objective” dimensions.82 —————— Gemeingeist (communal spirit) in his reflections on intersubjectivity, see Zur Phänomenolo- gie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil: 1921–1928, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XIV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), 165–204. In his reflections pertaining to theory of science, he oftentimes discusses the distinction of nature and spirit as different regions that have to be analyzed by different methods. In his 1927 lecture course “Nature und Spir- it,” Husserl discusses this distinction and deals here especially with Rickert’s distinction between “nomothetic” and “idiographic” methods. In other words, ‘spirit’ serves as a general term for consciousness in an intersubjective dimension. See Edmund Husserl, Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen 1927, ed. Michael Weiler, Husserliana XXXII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001). 80. Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937), ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana XXVII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), 177. On this analogy, see also Ernst W. Orth, Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Kulturphilosophie. Studien zu Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), vii, and esp. the essay “Phänomenologie in Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen,” ibid., 162–75. 81.Cassirer, Zur Metaphysik der symbolischen Formen, 165. 82. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered as part of the Leroy Loemker Lecture Series at Emory University, Atlanta, in January 2003, as well as the Society for Phenome- nology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) in Boston in November 2003. I would like to thank the participants in these discussions, as well as David Carr, Rudolf Makkreel, Donald Verene, Paul Crowe, David Weberman, Steven Crowell, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments and criticisms, most of which I strived to incorporate in this version. Last but not least, I would like to thank Kyle McNeel for his help with grammar and style.

Truth in the First Epoch of Philosophy

Heribert Boeder University of Osnabrück

For Stanley Rosen

What is of concern here? A task that—how could it be otherwise?—has arisen out of the present of philo-sophy. Not in the usual and ever so vague sense, according to which this would go without saying, but rather the present as it has always been a realm of well-distinguished tasks of reason. The distinguishing of their present practiced here has recognized first its an-archic, then its structural, and finally its analytic expressions.1 Together these dimensions form the sphere of today, which we call “submodernity”; for each dimension is destined to deplete the core of the fundamental positions of modernity as they were unfolded into the hermeneutic, apocalyptic, and functional sense-explications.2 The latter arrangement is grounded, however, in a perspective that is ec- centric to the totality of the submodern positions. How is that possible? Only in view of a history of philosophy that has proved to be concluded.3 Yet its —————— * Translated by Marcus Brainard. 1. For a more detailed account of the an-anarchic dimension, see “The Dimension of Submodernity” in my Seditions: Heidegger and the Limit of Modernity, ed. and trans. Marcus Brainard (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1997), 227–39, and “Derrida’s End- game,” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy III (2003), 121– 42; concerning the analytic dimension, see “The Submodern Character of Linguistic Analy- sis,” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy II (2002), 117–36. 2. See my Das Vernunft-Gefüge der Moderne (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1988), as well as the editor’s introduction to Seditions, esp. xxiii–xxxii. [Translator’s note: The following translations are used in the present essay: ‘sense-explication’ (Besinnung), ‘what has been’ (das Gewesene), ‘what has been thought’ (das Gedachte), ‘enunciation’ (Aussage), ‘Being’ (Sein), ‘being’ (Seiendes, Wesen), ‘beings (Seiendes), ‘nature’/‘essence’ (Wesen), ‘naturing’ (wesen), ‘mission’ (Geschick). For additional terms, see the German-English Glossary in Seditions.] 3. See my Topologie der Metaphysik (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1980), as well as, e.g., “The Distinction of Reason” in Seditions, 101–9.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 249–62 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 250 HERIBERT BOEDER tectonic comes to light only after its epochs have been distinguished in prin- sofiva ciple and grounded in their corresponding configurations of . Again and sofiva again, arose prior to philosophy, though always engaging the latter; for philosophy responded to wisdom by either rejecting or replacing or conceiving the epochally distinct configurations established principially by Homer, Paul, and Hölderlin. Be that as it may—the mention of the latter poet admonishes us to stress at once the departure of modernity and thus also of Heideggerian thought— more precisely, his assumption of a “neighborhood of thinking and poetizing.” As for his position on the Greek conceptions—and they alone are of concern here—it is to be discerned, in accordance with his own directive, from his re- ajlhvqeia flection on . There he assumes the following: First, all metaphysics in mundane significance is focused on the Being of beings; then in historical significance on a mission that is distinct from this Being; finally in linguistic sig- lovgoı nificance on the as enunciation, as it is ultimately revealed in the lovgoı naturing of technicity, thus in the fact that the does not allow speech to come to speech as speech. However, this experience of “denial” and “with- holding” in the “naturing of truth” proper to desheltering neither characterizes ejpochv the contemporary reflections nor indeed the logotectonic , the reticence with respect to philosophy as it has been. If we fix its history in our gaze as a concluded history, then not with Hegel’s insight “it is completed” but rather with the acknowledgment “it is accomplished”—that is to say, the tasks of conceiving have been accomplished. This alone demands the distinction of the sphere of history from that of our world; for in it the latter dictum does not apply, least of all for the apocalyptic sense-explication of modernity—that of Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. For the reflections of submodernity, however, that saying is absurd, since there is no longer anything to be accomplished in their sphere—and certainly not the sofiva distinction of man from himself as brought it to speech in each of its epochal configurations. Nevertheless, the recollection of the demands of wisdom has already attained its own present—through the mediation of the reason that has distinguished itself from itself in philosophy. It requires everywhere that one grasp what has been thought as an edifice of concluded figures—bearing in mind the beginning of Aristotle’s treatise On the Heavens, where it reads: “As also the Pythagoreans say, the all and everything are defined by the number three; for completion and middle and beginning”—precisely in this order—“have the number of the all, but this is the number of the triad. Thus, taken from nature, like its laws.”4 Yet we can no fuvsiı longer rely on the former theory of ; for it has subsided just as much as Kant’s starry heavens. The triad of the all is to be honored especially with respect to what has been thought as such. This by transforming what Heidegger —————— 4. Aristotle, de caelo 268a10 ff. TRUTH IN THE FIRST EPOCH OF PHILOSOPHY 251 called “the destiny of the topic of thinking” into a syllogism made up of the terms ‘standard’, ‘thinking’, and ‘topic’.5 It is precisely this syllogism that gives lovgoı us our first foothold for the renewal of what historically has been the : it has displayed itself as a ratio terminorum (Leibniz). From its Greek beginning on, however, it could never remain a singular ratio. This due to the independence of a reason that fulfilled its tasks first as ob- iJstorivh serving or “historical” reason (cf. ), then as “cosmological” reason, and finally as “conceptual” reason. It is alone to the latter that we shall attend here. Once again: there has never been just one kind of philosophy, but only distinct characters of reason, each with its own task. What reason is in each case has been shown only in the conflict of its tasks. And in fact over that which each instance of reason recognized as a totality. For it was constantly occupied with totalities and could have, to borrow Kant’s phrase, “no other business.”6 In the submodern present, let us restore this business to reason, which has fallen into ruins. How does the concludedness of such a whole and the completeness of its parts come into view? We shall seek to answer this in what follows with the requisite condensation.

I Unlike “historical” or “cosmological” theory, conceptual theory depends on a revelation for its inauguration. Since its standard can be immediately gathered neither from the incipient observation of what appears nor from the kovsmoı latter’s . By contrast, a mortal could attain the “poietic” beginning of conceiving only when an immortal let him know. Because she is nameless, this immortal—unlike the Muse who knows all—cannot even be appealed to by the mortal or called to his side. Her absolutely free letting-know is the first side over against the other of the complete causing-to-be-forgotten in death as it necessarily befalls the mortals. The absence of the dead with respect to everything that ever claims attention is the most fundamental withdrawal of every knowledge. That is their “bad lot”; for there even what must first and —————— 5. Concerning Heidegger’s understanding of the phrase Die Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens (rendered here as ‘the destiny of the topic of thinking’), see his Wegmarken (Frank- furt a. M.: Klostermann, 1967), ix; Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969), 80; and Zur Frage nach der Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens (St. Gallen: Erker, 1984) (also in M. H., Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910–1976), ed. Hermann Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe 16 [Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2000], 610–33). [Translator’s note: The ratios of concern here are composed of the terms ‘standard’ (Maßgabe), ‘topic’ (Sache), and ‘thinking’ (Denken).] 6. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, in: Kant’s gesammelte Schriften 3, ed. Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1904/11), 448.22 (B 708); English translation: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Normal Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s, 1965), 556 (B 708). 252 HERIBERT BOEDER foremost be known—namely, what is always already established and its direc- qevmiı divkh tive: and —thus the standard-setting word, is obliterated. What is revealed there is such a complete knowledge that it includes its other, its counterpart, which is determined by death. However, the revealer turns only to him who has already desired a knowledge of all under the conditions of mortality. Only for such a one does the path to departedness become a homecoming. Only in following this path to its end does Parmenides learn of iJstorivh a hitherto unheard-of “all”—no longer, as for the older , the many gath- lovgoı ered into an all; not, as for cosmology, the “all–one”; but rather the con- lovgoı cluded , that of the truth that wins one over by its beauty and precision. With respect to this truth, the first moment of the standard is the self- ajlhvqeia thinking heart of , which distorts nothing and convinces completely. It is here that truth first becomes thematic for philosophy, which is moved by its discovery that one can rely neither on the observation nor on the topic of truth. This explains the incipient dependence of a mortal on the truth of an immortal’s letting-know—on her saying, which conceals nothing. The Greek experience of truth is separated toto coelo from Heidegger’s, for his rests on the fuvsiı self-concealing of and not on a denied letting-know. What Parmenides must then experience, where there is nothing left to observe, are the many views of the mortals on which one can only seemingly rely. As for why they were nevertheless able to persuade and therefore acquire a good reputation, that can be explained only by the fact that they generate the semblance of a whole of truth. Now which thinking—not Being—corresponds to the standard determined in this way? One that only here is directed into its essentially critical movement—first with the all of its solely possible, mutually contradictory paths. Their simple division opens up not only the path of “how it is,” which excludes the impossibly true, but also the path of “how it is not,” which includes the impossibly true. The latter is certainly traversible, but it does not lead to an end, to any justified conviction. This all of thinking is then reduced to the One. It rests in the sameness of that into which there is to be insight and that which is to be. And precisely this sameness also determines what is to be presented. The third path, however, characterizes the understanding of the many. They too have reason, of course, but it remains blind and thus restlessly busy, for it cannot free itself from its dependence on the many sensuous things and thus is driven to self-contradiction. Only after the standard and thinking have been clarified does Parmenides take up the term of the topic. First of all, it is no longer the multiplicity of contradictory views, but rather that of given signs that provide thinking with the reliable directive in its movement through “how it is.” Then the many signs are gathered into the all—that of the immovable insofar as it, resting in itself, has no reason to go beyond itself. It lacks nothing. TRUTH IN THE FIRST EPOCH OF PHILOSOPHY 253

Applied to insight, however, it is that “on account of which there is insight”—emptying all the names by which appearing was understood. The concluding moment of the topic is the One, because it is always already complete—the epitome of settlement and balance, thus of justice as the Greeks understood it. pisto;ı lovgoı So much for the , the reliable word about the truth, which is completed in the relationship of simple justice and possesses absolute reliability for thinking. To this Parmenides contrasts the totality of appearing opposites: first of all, posited signs. As posited they require a different identity from that of the immovable being: a Same that is always related to its other— from the multifariously appearing down to the conditions of the corresponding views as they are constituted in the mortal body. What remains of Parmenides’ thought in Heidegger? In essence nothing. ajlhvqeia And yet a semblance remains; for is wrested from its original place in letting-know—and thus also from the unheard-of event that is disclosed to a mortal, an event about which he could not even ask: the thinking heart of truth, which wins one over completely but now is reinterpreted as “unconcealedness.” Then the sameness of that into which one is to gain insight and that which is to be is distorted as a “belonging together” of Being and human being, as something absolutely inconceivable: “It is namely Being”—absolutely distinct from beings. Finally, however, being is stripped of its beauty and thus impoverished such that it remains the obscure bifurcation of “being” (seiend). Through the latter, Heidegger succeeded in placing Parmenides’ insight in the shadow of his apocalyptic sense-explication of the origin of “ontology.”

II Plato begins immediately in the horizon of a “human wisdom”—which was present for him in the form of Socratic wisdom. It has always enchanted due to the semblance of its immediacy, relegated to the deceptive familiarity of encounters in the marketplace. Here the first term of the ratio, transforming the last in Parmenides’, is the topic. This at once in practical significance, and in fact as excellence in action; for it was always already regarded as especially worthy of mention.7 There the views have their proper element. But how are “beings” to be discovered in them? The first moment is to be understood with respect to beings: a uniformly posited predicate such as “is courageous.” The excellent is something and not nothing. This gives rise to the question: What is it? It is questionable due to something invisible that is addressed thereby. For the proper “beings” do not possess the sensuousness of what becomes. Rather, their What is to be sought in the truth of a Same. —————— 7. See “Zu Platons eigener Sache” in my Das Bauzeug der Geschichte, ed. Gerald Meier (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994), 189–222. 254 HERIBERT BOEDER

The attempt at delimitation then brings into view as the second moment the manifold of the excellent and the multiple ways in which it shows itself in the individual instance. There it is no longer only that which deserves esteem dovxa in the sense of ; for the other side over against it, namely the multiplicity of the incomplete and even bad, also demands attention. Due to the distinction of truth within itself, it is necessary to take account of the views about what is to be done and what not regarding the “beings.” The question concerning the What is concretized finally in the assumption of a participation that gathers the many instances of an excellent Same into an all. There the question concerning the What of essence becomes that concerning the Whereby of its presence as a This. What occasions it? That which makes uniform in each all, namely the “ideas.” It is only with reference to them that the views can fulfill the requirement that they not be contradictory. Such an idea of a pure Same not only allows the distinction of the said beings to be posited, but likewise that of persuading—whether based on knowledge of the subject matter or not. How does this topic of judging positing enter into its standard? When an idea is itself convincing, and in fact because something attractive prevails in the excellent, namely the beautiful, which is both sensuous and disclosed by reason. For it awakens on both sides the desire to unite with it. Thus that which e[rwı persuades of itself and for itself, but requires a scrutiny that distinguishes in itself and traverses the span the latter thereby opens up as a gradation oriented towards the “true being”—steered by the identity of the beautiful itself. Then follows the condensation of this moment into the One, namely the sole first. It cannot be assumed since it precedes every essence; it can no longer be inquired into regarding the reason for its presence since it itself is such a reason in each instance—of both its coming into being and its becoming known. Thus it is the precondition and goal of every verifying and every convincing. This “principle” is the Good and its idea. Goal of all striving. Its goodness requires the liberated man to return to the realm of shadows. He seeks to reveal the truth. It first responds to the moment of multiplicity as it was formulated in the Protagorean dictum that man is the measure of all things. But such is a measure of each measuring by individuals and their desires—though in the element of the public and thus standing in comparison. Here, where the views offer themselves to consultation, they are exposed to the scrutiny not of their truth so much as of the persuasiveness. There it is a matter of one’s achieving a mastery of the vindication or invalidation of views—all the more so as what is at stake in the conflict of the views is the reputation of the individual. But those formerly with the greatest reputation, namely the gods, are no longer taken into consideration as those who set the standards, for if the gods can be noticed at all in the horizon of views, then they do not appear clearly and do not participate in the conflict. Now what TRUTH IN THE FIRST EPOCH OF PHILOSOPHY 255

kovsmoı obliges the man left to his own devices to respect the of the polity and its laws? A new foundation of its obliging nature in thinking. In the final term of the Platonic ratio, the sophist’s way of thinking must first be regarded. His eristic art did not even yield the reliability of knowledge as it is manifest in every producing. The break with such a spurious art must start out from thinking as it attends to itself. It reaches the concept of the many in the completion of the relating proper to it by starting out from the One—in the pervasive alternation of “is” and “is not” in its positing significance. In the corresponding transit, it discloses the many not only as its other e{teron ta; a[lla ( ) but also as indeterminately other ( )—as a de-limited multiplicity. The other moment of relating thinking realizes the all as the community lovgoı of ideas. Here the no longer appears only in its predicative character but proves to be a synthetic faculty—with the distinction between noun and verb, standstill and motion. Only in this way does it find itself in a position to help the views themselves to achieve a justification and thus make it possible to de- lovgoı cide about their correctness. For them the must also prove itself ex- a[logon pressly over against its other, the . to; ejovn After in this way the Parmenidean characterization of being ( ) has been released, with respect to both its completeness and its immobility, from the exclusive consideration of its perfection, Platonic thought returns finally to the moment of the One as it is understood with respect to a relating that subjects its other to itself. Yet his thought never lights upon that other, but must think it up, and in fact as “verisimilitude,” which is to say: the image of the rational. For the convincing intuition of the One—and it is necessary for action kovsmoı muqoı` in a communal —a must be thought up as the sufficient reason. This all the more so as the first can hardly be seen in its perfection. If it is seen, however, then always already in the “syllogistic” sense of a cause.8 mivmhsiı As a whole the Platonic ratio serves , the representation of the true in the element of views. As such it is indivisibly linked to the thought of participation. Only through participation can truth come to bear in praxis. There the first task is to expose sophistry as the adversary it is, then to attain dialectic insofar as it serves knowledge, in order finally to make room for the kovsmoı projections that are convincing regarding the verisimilitude in the of povliı becoming, of its image in the incipient as well as in its present instau- ration or constitution. But what becomes of Platonic thought in Heidegger? The rational intention has vanished: First in view of the “rational” topic with the distinction of presence as “appearance and visibility”9 for the senses and for reason, respec- —————— 8. Plato, Republic VII, 517 C 1. 9. Martin Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit (Bern: Francke, 1947), 35 (Weg- marken, 131). 256 HERIBERT BOEDER tively—thus ousting the priority of its attention to everything (Anwesen bei Allem) on behalf of “phenomenality”; by contrast, from the Platonic perspective beings as ideas approach the sensuous. Then the standard vanishes in the interpretation of the idea of the Good in the sense of the “stout”; for the idea “gives rise to the interpretation of ‘the Good’ in its ‘moral sense’”10 instead of as “that which makes fit”11 because it is “the most apparent”; it is especially the “change of the naturing of truth . . . into the correctness of perceiving and enunciating”12 that obstructs the original “unconcealedness.” That is why truth degenerates into correctness. This assertion of Heidegger’s rises to the level of the historical distortion according to which from Descartes to Hegel truth was grasped as certainty. As regards, finally, the term of thinking in Plato, the task that was put to him in the transformation of the Parmenidean conception is obliterated by Plato’s alleged reinterpretation of truth—especially under the impression of the “nihilating” force of the sophist. In the face of that force, the rational intention disappears that requires the renewed distinction between truth and conviction—more precisely, the latter’s “accommodation” to the truth under the conditions of a frail “human wisdom.” The truth peculiar to it, however, does not even allow a presaging of “correctness,” which was first thought with good reason in the Middle Epoch, and certainly not of the Kantian relation between cognition and object; for Plato is concerned solely with the possibility of “accommodating the god”—he who knows what is perfect. By contrast, Heidegger comes into his own where he thematizes the fundamentally priva- ajlhvqeia tive trait of . Hence his perspective continues to be dominated by the modern experience of withdrawal proper to apocalyptic thinking. Plato’s alleged subjugation of truth to correctness becomes the precondition for the perspective that Occidental philosophy as Platonism is marked by a growing forgetfulness of its origin down to Nietzsche. Heidegger’s strained affinity to the latter also dominates his assessment of Plato. To desire to correct this perspective, however, would be to miss its historical destiny.

III The question arises: How do matters stand—in accordance with the building practiced here—with the tectonic of Aristotelian thought? From the Platonic ratio it becomes clear: Aristotle will begin with the term of thinking. In which determinacy? With respect to truth, Aristotelian thought is to be developed from the lovgoı , specifically in accordance with its synthetic character, which has already —————— 10. Ibid., 37 (133). 11. Ibid., 38 (134). 12. Ibid., 42 (136). TRUTH IN THE FIRST EPOCH OF PHILOSOPHY 257 become apparent—yet freed from its dependence on the correct view. Abiding lovgoı only by the requirement of decidability between true and false. Then the logismovı comes into view as activity, namely as , as inferring. It is completed sullogismovı in the , the syllogism, more precisely: the complete tectonic of its schemata. Among the latter, the proof alone serves science, combining necessary lovgoı propositions. Their principle, however, lies in reason; it grounds the of the mathematical sciences. So much for science as science. Science, however, is at the same time the basis for the assessment of inferences from arguments that can only be probable; ultimately for the expo- sure of merely specious, or sophistic, inferences; their sole aim is superiority in debate. On the one hand, they are to be avoided; on the other, dissolved. The term of thinking thus unfolded is followed by the term of the topic. It appears first of all in the counterpart of dialectic which is rhetoric. How can lovgoı a[logon that be? Its must get involved with its other, namely the . Thus lovgoı the becomes “concrete” in oration, specifically with the intention to con- vince the public. This first with the task of giving counsel, then of dispensing justice, and finally with the intention of showing solely the persuasiveness of lovgoı a . The aim thereby is to form the currently prevailing affects of the listeners in a certain way or even to transform them. lovgoı Adjoining rhetoric is poetics. It considers the as it is produced for its own sake. Only the epic, the comedy, and the tragedy are considered as the corresponding inventions; for they alone make a claim to truth poetically. lovgoı This is superior to history inasmuch as it does not recount “how things have been” but invents “how they might have been”—in an essentially agonis- lovgoı tic plot. The poetic reveals its completion where it itself makes its ap- prwtagwnivsthı pearance in the tragedy as the , as the principal agonist. Once paqhv again the come to bear, principally fear and empathy. They disturb the soundness of mind, but at the same time have the distinction that they can be expressly produced in the drama. Precisely this makes it possible for art to pu- paqhv lovgoı rify one of such . So much for the as it is productive in discourse. lovgoı Following its expression in the poietic work, the finds its place in a[logon praxis. There it is accompanied by an that is intrinsic to him who has lovgoı povliı —man alone. Both have their main element in the —in the free polity. At issue in it is first of all the latter’s origin in the household or the fam- ily, then in the public ranking of the constitutions of polities—from the best povleiı to the worst. Further, at issue are the changes in existing down to and including the cause of their ruin. The political exposition is completed with povliı the establishment of the excellent , its festivals and how it raises its children, with the formation of the citizens in the free arts. Adjoining political science is ethical science. Here at issue is no longer the common good, but rather the good of the individual as he conducts himself in action. Focused on a goal that concerns him personally but also humanity. 258 HERIBERT BOEDER

eujdaimoniva There he seeks a life of , “guided by a good spirit.” It encourages him to achieve excellence in action. It requires first of all the distinction of ac- lovgoı tions as either voluntary or involuntary. Once again, the intertwining of a[logon and makes itself felt. In this span attitudes are developed, each of which needs constant care—most eminently, that of justice. On the other hand, how- lovgoı ever, those virtues are to be promoted that lay claim to the inner , name- frovnhsiı ly reasonableness. Among those, the first virtue is prudence, . It alone makes possible relationships between individuals in the sense of friend- ship, relationships that are free and yet borne by feeling. And yet it too remains subordinate to the freest, the perfect way of life for individuals, namely qewriva the blissful even if only temporary experience of philosophical —obviously different toto coelo from the industry bearing that name today. Only the lovgoı transit through the aforementioned sciences of the ultimately allows en- paqhv try into the theoretical sciences. There the , though still in effect, can no lovgoı longer impair the . lovgoı It is only here that the is realized in “beings.” There is no talk of them previously. Why? That is shown by the science first conceived of here, namely “physics.” It is the first to deal with something that, though of a transitory nature, cannot act otherwise. As it is in each case, it is to be; for the accidental and the abnormal are not considered by science as such. Its knowledge of the four kinds of the natural cause of change has its own completeness—sufficient for the disclosure of that which has the ground of its presence in itself. Its most distinguished ground, however, is the completion proper to it, the teloıv a[logon of what is present of its own. The is retained only with the material cause; it is due to matter that it is possible to fail to achieve the destiny. Such failure is excluded, however, where a being realizes the circular motion of the heavens. In them the theory of the moved reaches its limit, namely it comes upon the moving immovable. The other of the theoretical sciences, and in truth the first of all others, is the science of the first grounds and causes. It brings beings into view not only as wholes but also as immovable and thus no longer physical beings. This theory begins with being qua being, though it is not at all “ontology.” This label became acceptable merely to the schools. Aristotelian First Science is through and through Theological Science because it is justified in light of its goal. It begins with the thematization of being qua being. But what is its specific character? To begin with, it is essential to it that it legovmenon be —not, as it is usually interpreted, with respect to a speaking but to an understanding. Therefore, it is necessary to point out at once that this being is understood in various ways, though with a singular reference: ultimately to the principle of all that is understood. That is the state of affairs that in its universality is itself understood as state of affairs—namely: such and such is due to such and such in such and such a respect—and is translated into what TRUTH IN THE FIRST EPOCH OF PHILOSOPHY 259 must be acknowledged first, the “axiom,” the so-called principle of non-contradiction. It is no accident that it makes its appearance in the form of the impossibly true: “It is impossible that . . .” In the latter the extreme limit of being qua being is secured. With a second thrust, being that is understood in terms of its singularity becomes being understood in four ways. When Heidegger remarks that this fourfold is merely pieced together without justification, he overlooks its di- hairetic origin. It leads to the division of being into the What and the Is. The schemata of the categories have their ground in the difference that the essence, more precisely, that a What was determined to be. On the other hand, this “was” already indicates that at issue here is the completion of something. It is fulfilled within the span between that which makes possible and its actualization. It is to be preferred, however, only when what is actualized is something good. If it is something bad, it would be better if it were to remain possible. Already here the fundamental significance of the good for the theory of being qua being becomes apparent. Now we have reached the point at which Heidegger’s relation to Aristo- tle must be brought to its proper crisis. Namely, he remarks in Plato’s Doctrine Q of Truth that in Metaphysics 10 “Aristotelian thought reaches its summit concerning the Being of beings,”13 thus at the point at which the true is no longer understood in opposition to the false, but rather in its essentially simple unconcealedness—relieved of the connecting understanding. In the face of this much-discussed passage, we should first stress what Aris- totle expounded earlier concerning the actuality of the good. When he now un- expectedly takes up the true and false once again as it is in the understanding, namely the true and false as it earlier had been excluded from being proper, then he does so in order to emphasize within being in the sense of the actual the goodness of the activity of the intellect. The decisive characterization of the true begins at 1051b23; it is disclosed by means of a paleographically legitimate TOMEN TOINUN change of into . Let us consider only the result of this change: the truth of simple being derives from the actuality of reason, whereas the false derives from ignorance—a blindness that lacks reason. By contrast, when Heidegger stresses “unconcealedness” here, which is lovgoı supposedly more original than the , then he does so not in the least by fuvsiı looking ahead to reason but by looking back at , which tends to conceal itself. This ousting of reason draws its force solely from the sense-explication of modernity. This with the consequence that the third and completing phase of Aristotelian being remains closed precisely at the point at which it qua being ultimately must be perceived with the determinacy of a This—thus the fundamental “theological” trait of the entire exposition. To distort this trait —————— 13. Heidegger, Platons Lehre der Wahrheit, 44 (138). 260 HERIBERT BOEDER as the “onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics” and the latter in turn as the alleged theory of the “Being of beings” attests only the innermost will ajlhvqeia in Heidegger’s thought of —the confinement of his perspective to the “mission” of modernity. Let us not blame him for this. ajlhqevı Yet our memory hears: the is located neither at the beginning nor at the end of First Science. With it reason still remained related to its other: blindness. Aristotle shows the occasion for this relation in a final movement in the theory of causes. It brings into view the actuality not only of the good but of the best—severed from the whole of nature but related to it. There the standard becomes apparent that steered the entire transit through the sciences lovgoı with the help of the : reason as it is the best and imbued with its own actuality. Precisely in its seclusion, because in the pleasant relation to itself alone, it moves all—not least philosophy. Prior to that, however, reason is set on its sofiva way by a . For it achieves harmony with the “myth” as conceived of, the tidings of which contract into the acknowledgment “that there are gods and the divine encompasses nature in its entirety.”14

IV We started out from our present and we return to it now. Here the tasks of thinking must be set off from those of modernity as concluded—in ajlhvqeia the end released from Heidegger’s legacy: “Say as: the clearing: the desheltering of the self-withdrawing authorization.”15 The naturing of technicity and the world of the fourfold give nothing more to be thought. Both already had their future. Not only due to the awakening of submodernity mentioned above, which no longer heeds the distinction—based on a fuvsiı —between essence and appearance, not even that between concealing and desheltering, but prior to that due to a present in which the philosophy sofivai that has been reveals its incipient relation to the epochal . The ground of its distinctions could not come to light in modernity; for in the latter the acknowledging that precedes knowing is totally effaced. sofiva In his later years Heidegger took an oblique glance at when, with lovgoı Mallarmé and contrary to the tradition of established by Homer, he recalls Orpheus. This name calls to mind those who, as Aristotle says, philosophize “out of the night.”16 Their underworld is totally different from that in which Odysseus and Parmenides received the directive they sought. Even Pla- poivhsiı to opposes the of Homer’s, Hesiod’s, and Simonides’ “initiations” to the “prophesies sung” by Orpheus and Musaeus;17 he resists the typically in- —————— L 14. Aristotle, Metaphysica , 1074b2. 15. Martin Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, Gesamtausgabe 13 (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1983), 224. L 16. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica , 1071b27. 17. Plato, Protagoras 316 D 6; cf. Ion 536 B 2. TRUTH IN THE FIRST EPOCH OF PHILOSOPHY 261 discriminate talk of “poetry” and thereby brings out the distinctiveness of the “logical” tradition of Homer. Would one now like to assert against this tradition’s “logocentrism” that other kind of song and thus word? Who is this Orpheus? He was unable to get over the death of his wife through a departing of his own—that is to say, by distinguishing himself from himself, such as Achilles did in view of his fallen friend. Orpheus succumbs to e[rwı his fate. He is carried away by his . He is unable to control his curiosity. He fails to comply with the saving precondition that, when heading home out of the underworld, he not look back; for he doubts whether his beloved is fol- Lhvqh lowing him. Thus the desired being must return to the House of , into ajlhvqeia seclusion. Orpheus stirred animals and stones. Yet the about all the difference that death can make in speech goes unsaid by him. In which speech? Let us ask Hesiod’s Muses. They know first of all how to present much that is counterfeit, which only looks like “how it is.” Solon still knows that the singers are in the habit of clinging precisely to the counterfeit; but their im- yeu`doı perceptible is nevertheless inspired. That is why they are able to bring about in their listeners a forgetting of the troubles of everyday life and thereby fulfill their traditional task. This task, however, must be distinguished from the first task, that of proclaiming the truth. For what distinguishes the Muses as those who know is the memory of the law-establishing deeds of their father. The word of this memory cannot be reduced, following Heidegger, to an “enunciation.”18 As Aristotle still knows in his Poetics, talking of the first order is a praising or a rebuking. This is the standard-setting distinction of say- e[pea ing that comes to bear precisely in the Homeric : in the end, say how it is not to be. This too allows another “step back” from the praise of the father of the Muses to the core of the first task. Invited to the wedding of the “god-heeding 19 fivlon Cadmus” and Harmonia, the Muses sing: “What is beautiful is , which befriends.” Naive? And further: “What is not beautiful, however, does not be- 20 ajlhvqeia peiqwv friend.” Trivial? Is the relationship between and , of truth and its persuasive nature, not grounded therein? The ground of the Muses’ praising is the distinguishing that is based on the “critical” because essentially as- lovgoı sessing character of the . If this “axiomatic” distinguishing is ousted, then what is said, and not merely spoken, in our history so as to set a standard will be obliterated. In submodernity the most genuine realm of forgetting has burst open—notwithstanding its reflections on “how it is not,” namely on that which the “current circumstances” lack again and again and have always lacked; thus, in the thor- —————— 18. Martin Heidegger, Vier Seminare (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1977), 74. 19. Thebaïs II 3, in: Homeri Opera, ed. T. W. Allen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), V: 113. 20. Theognis I 15, in: Anthologia lyrica graeca, ed. Ernst Diehl (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1950), II: 3. 262 HERIBERT BOEDER ough besmirching of our history, one pretends to a “critical thinking.” Even Heidegger’s commemoration, in its fundamentally obstructive trait, has suc- cumbed today to an intensified oblivion. All the more so as he himself could not admit that his task was fulfilled. The illusion of its future remained over- powering. With the insight into the concludedness of modernity, Heidegger’s apoc- alypse has been exhausted. It was possible to see this only in the present that is distinguished from modernity. The present is borne by the discovery of that sofiva which precisely , the beautiful and befriending, has been for philosophy; sofiva furthermore, it is borne by the rescue of from the Orcus into which conceptual thought had to sink. That was the precondition in the present for the reappearance of the configurations of wisdom which have been, that is, insofar as they have their own rationality, or in other words: can be disclosed logotec- tonically. That is the gratitude that precisely the logo-centricity of the Occident deserves and has found in the present. Epoché and Epoch in Logotectonic Thought

Marcus Brainard

The logotect does not argue, he builds. What he builds is, generally speaking, the history of thought extending from its beginnings down to the present. He does so by relying on how the integral positions of that history show themselves. In a sense this places Heribert Boeder’s work in the phenomenological tradition, which since Edmund Husserl has rejected argumentation in favor of bringing the things themselves (die Sachen selbst) into view as they give themselves. Since the things take care of themselves, argumentation is deemed unnecessary, that is, provided that one sees and then presents the things just as they present themselves. The kinship of the logotectonic to phenomenology is grounded at least in the similarity of their “approaches” in this respect. The only difference between the two would seem to lie in the kind of “things” to which the phenomenologist and the logotect each attends. Yet this proves to be no small difference, but makes all the difference, inasmuch as everything turns on it for logotectonic thought—‘everything’ not only as defined by the task it pursues but also as the whole in which logotectonic thought itself has tovpoı its place, its . In short, then, this apparent nuance provides a key to the difference that the logotectonic makes. The pivotal difference between phenomenology and the logotectonic is already indicated in the name of each undertaking: for phenomenology the lovgoi principal concern lies with phenomena; for the logotectonic, with , that is to say, with thought grasped in each case as a ratio. Whereas Husserl and Hei- degger base their thought on phenomena—whether on reduced Erlebnisse (or the phenomena of consciousness) or on the phenomena encountered in the world (e.g. a bridge, a temple, a pair of shoes, a nuclear power plant)—and thus take Being mutatis mutandis as the proper starting point for thought, Boeder purifies thought by bracketing, as it were, the modern thesis of the priority of Being over thinking and instead devoting himself to thought alone. Such de- votion is literally para-doxical nowadays. By contemporary standards, it has to seem strange or even dangerously solipsistic, if not plain incestuous: after all, everybody knows that experience determines thinking. To deny this basic fact would seem to be not only naive but irresponsible. Yet this semblance is mis-

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy IV (2004): 263–72 ISSN 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-4-6 264 MARCUS BRAINARD leading. For logotectonic thought is indeed responsible (verantwortlich) insofar as it acts in accordance with the answers (Antworten) given by what has been thought (das Gedachte) in our tradition and insofar as it listens to the words—or what has been said (das Gesagte)—that have animated that tradition and give what is to be thought in our present. Despite the fact that Boeder studied in the phenomenological milieu, namely with Eugen Fink and Martin Heidegger, he came into his own only after departing from it, especially from the force field of Heideggerian thought. The first step out of that horizon was necessitated by insights gained in the 1959 study, “The Early Greek Usage of the Words Logos and Aletheia,”1 which, despite appearances, is far more than a mere philological study. Indeed, in retrospect it is no exaggeration to call it Boeder’s manifesto. (Though, typically enough, he does not announce it as such, nor for that matter as the obituary it represents for Heideggerian thought.) In it he lays out the justification for both his later “method” (one he employs, of course, already in that early study) and the “object” of his subsequent investigations. For anyone even vaguely familiar with Boeder’s current work, it is striking that already in “Lo- gos and Aletheia” he turned not to philosophical but to pre-philosophical sources (principally Homer, Hesiod, and Solon) in order to determine the lovgoı ajlhvqeia meaning and relative status of the words and in early Greek thought. In doing so, he takes a “step back” to an other beginning that precedes the beginning of philosophy, and in fact sets the latter in motion. It is in this first encounter in print with “das Älteste des Alten” (the most ancient of the ancient) that not only provides the resources for refuting Heidegger’s claims about those words but also carries the whole of the logotectonic undertaking. Here it is tempting to say that the end lay already in the beginning. Contrary to his teacher, Boeder finds that those “basic words” are not fuvsiı 2 lovgoı grounded in Being understood as , but that is fundamentally crit- krivnein levgein 3 ical—a belongs to every (LA, 7) —and thus rational in character, ajlhvqeia lovgoı and that inheres only in so understood. Key here is further- lovgoı more that is incipiently bound up with a letting-know (Wissenlassen): someone lets someone else know something that the former has witnessed, —————— 1. “Der frühgriechische Wortgebrauch von Logos und Aletheia,” in Das Bauzeug der Geschichte. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur griechischen und mittelalterlichen Philosophie, ed. Gerald Meier (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994), 1–30; henceforth cited as LA with page reference. This essay originally appeared in Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 4 (1959), 82–112. See my introduction to Seditions: Heidegger and the Limit of Modernity, ed. Marcus Brainard (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York, 1997), ix–xlix, which provides the background of the present essay. Unless otherwise noted, all texts cited are by Heribert Boeder and all translations are my own. 2. See “Was ist Physis?” in Bauzeug der Geschichte, 69–94 (first published in Abhand- lungen der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft 32 [1981], 129–51). 3. See also “Privilege of Presence?” in Seditions, 81–90; henceforth cited as PP with page reference. EPOCHÉ AND EPOCH IN LOGOTECTONIC THOUGHT 265 provided that the former deems the latter worthy of such knowledge—the relation is one between a speaker who has seen for himself (or herself, as the case may be) and a listener who seeks knowledge from him (or her) (LA, 9). As for ajlhvqeia lhvqein , Boeder notes its privative character, but shows that both and ajlhvqeia ajlhvqeia bear on a possible participation in knowledge (Mitwisserschaft): fuvsiı is not proper to a self-concealing but to saying (Sagen), that is, “a saying letting-know” by the speaker “from memory” (13); it is the negation, as it were, of a negation of participation in knowledge. It is thus in a twofold sense—as lovgoı reason and saying or talking (Reden)—that “ is and remains the place of ajlhvqeia ” (15). A second step away from the horizon of Heideggerian thought was taken in Ground and Present as the Aim of Early Greek Philosophical Inquiry (1962).4 Beyond the fact that it represents Boeder’s first attempt to lay out the tectonic of early Greek thought, what is most significant for our purposes here is his insight into “the provenance of the distinction between Anwesen and Abwesen— the most human of all distinctions” (GGF, 225). It is the insight into the fact that for the Greeks the distinction proves to be incipiently epistemological rather than originally ontological: “Anwesen and Abwesen are determined first and foremost based on the presence of one who knows or one who can know with something” (224), that is, based on his attention to it. The pivotal distinction is between Anwesenheit für (someone) and Anwesenheit bei (something). Whereas Heidegger asserts that “metaphysics is the theory of the Being of beings and this Being is continuously understood therein as Anwesenheit” (PP, 81), namely as Anwesenheit für (presence for someone), Boeder shows that in its beginning it is not the latter understanding that has priority for Greek thought but Anwe- senheit bei, thus “attention” or “presence of mind.” Put differently: while what Heidegger asserts to be first may be first for us (or, more precisely, for the mod- erns), it is not first by nature—at least not for the early Greeks. Anwesenheit für presupposes Anwesenheit bei. This insight confirmed and strengthened those insights gained in “Logos and Aletheia,” making it even clearer to Boeder that it is fuvsiı reason—not Being, not as Heidegger understands it—that led philosophy from its very beginnings. That it continued to do so up through its end in Hegel Boeder would later demonstrate most forcefully in his Topology of Meta- physics (1980).5 With this background we can now turn to the first of our title’s two key terms: the epoché. In its appropriation of this term logotectonic thought testifies, of course, to its phenomenological provenance, but even as it does so it carries out a break with that very provenance. The logotectonic epoché proves to be radically different from every phenomenological epoché inso- —————— 4. Grund und Gegenwart als Frageziel der früh-griechischen Philosophie (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962); henceforth cited as GGF with page reference. 5. Topologie der Metaphysik (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1980). 266 MARCUS BRAINARD far as it is firmly grounded in the aforementioned insight into the priority of lovgoı . While this epoché is the enabling moment of logotectonic thought, it was not developed in advance on the basis of methodological reflections. It is not theoretical (in the submodern sense6) but fundamentally practical in character. Namely, it was motivated—in accordance with the findings in “Logos and Aletheia”—by the intention to learn, whereby Boeder’s understanding of learning rests on the deceptively simple distinction between what is to be learned and what one already knows. This distinction is itself bound up with the insight that learning is possible only to the extent that one listens to one who has knowledge. Hence, the attention to what is to be learned, to what one does not know, was seen to require reticence (Verhaltenheit) on the part of whomever wishes to learn, which is to say that one must initially cease to assert oneself, one’s own concerns, and instead turn in openness to what is to be learned. On the other hand, logotectonic reticence is not passive or subservient but rather skeptical, critical. It gives rise to an openness that aims at distinction, distinction that itself enables the building so important to the logotectonic. A word of caution, however: Just as this reticence is not passive, neither is its openness to be confused with submodern pluralism, with its predilection for the many. Rather, logotectonic reticence aims at discerning a whole, one that by no means includes everything possible, but only everything necessary. (In- lhvqein cidentally, recalling the relationship touched on earlier between and ajlhvqeia , we note: not only is such reticence and its accordant openness the sole safeguard against possible deception or concealment on the part of the knower, but also against self-deception. It is worth considering just how much the assertion of one’s idiosyncrasies blinds one to the truth, as well as how much they aid any knower in deceiving one or concealing something from one who seeks knowledge.) If we consider briefly the phenomenological provenance of this new epoché, it becomes clear both that and how logotectonic thought has departed from the horizons of phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. On the one hand, this epoché receives its original impetus from Heidegger’s, which itself is a transformation of the Husserlian epoché; nevertheless, the talk in the foregoing of a knowledge that has precedence over thinking already indicates a crucial point of divergence from Heidegger. On the other hand, while it is true —————— 6. ‘Submodernity’ is Boeder’s term for what is generally called ‘postmodernity’. The ‘sub-’ in ‘submodernity’ is meant, as he points out, to echo that in ‘subculture’ but first and foremost to underscore its relation to modernity. For Boeder’s understanding of modernity, see his Das Vernunft-Gefüge der Moderne (Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1988). For his articulation of constituent positions of the sphere of submodernity, see, e.g., “The Dimension of Submodernity,” in Seditions, 227–39, as well as “The Submodern Charac- ter of Linguistic Analysis,” New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Phi- losophy II (2002), 117–36, and “Derrida’s Endgame,” ibid., III (2003), 121–42. EPOCHÉ AND EPOCH IN LOGOTECTONIC THOUGHT 267 that for both Boeder and Husserl the performance of the epoché brings about a modification of thinking and while neither allows the modification to give rise to the neutrality that paralyzes thinking, they part radically with regard to the character and end of the intended modification. Husserl’s epoché is purely instrumental; its methodical function is to open up the field of inquiry proper to phenomenology, namely pure consciousness, which is to provide an absolute foundation for knowledge. This epoché can be employed or not—turned on or off, so to speak—at the will of the phenomenologist in order to effect the shift between the natural and the phenomenological attitudes. The phenomenological epoché excludes, or brackets, the thesis fundamental to the former attitude, namely the “world thesis,” or the belief in the existence of the world and all it contains, and thereby facilitates the move into the phenomenological attitude while also disclosing the desired sphere of inquiry. If, however, the phenomenologist chooses to stop performing the epoché or otherwise slips out of it, he falls back into the natural attitude and its world. By contrast, the logotectonic epoché plays no methodical role in the Husserlian sense, for it is rooted not in the intention to found a First Philosophy that would orient all other sciences but in the aim to open up a present for each thought that makes a difference, and in fact with the intention to inaugurate dwelling therein. This epoché cannot be turned on or off at will—there is no shift between attitudes. Rather, logotectonic thought always takes place, as it were, within this epoché, under its influence. Furthermore, the logotectonic epoché does not target (primarily) a thesis but instead “purifies” thinking of all idiosyncrasies, of all narcissism, which one might be tempted to impose upon what has been thought. The exclusion of narcissism yields the said reticence; such frees one to turn to lovgoi the “things themselves”—that is, the —as they present themselves. Logotectonic reticence was learned, of course, from Heidegger as Gelassenheit (releasement).7 Yet, whereas for Boeder it forms the starting point of thinking, for Heidegger it has a resultant character, coming to the fore only in the final phase of his thought: it itself is not Heidegger’s epoché but only a response to the latter. Here Gelassenheit follows upon his transformation of the exclusion proper to Husserl’s epoché, and in fact in Heidegger’s experience of the calamity marked by the “epoch”—a keeping-to-itself (An-sich-halten), a retention, even a withdrawal—of that which gives what is to be thought. It is his experience of “the mission (Geschick) of the withdrawal of the topic of thinking” that is decisive for his epoché. And this is where Boeder parts with Heidegger: instead of receiving its impulse from the latter’s negative experience of what has been given, logotectonic thought is moved by the insight into the gift itself in the beginning of philosophy—an insight enabled only by a rad- —————— 7. See Martin Heidegger, “Gelassenheit,” in Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959; 10th ed., 1992), 7–26; English translation: “Memorial Address,” in Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 43–57. 268 MARCUS BRAINARD icalization of this epoché such that even Heidegger’s thought is subject to it; all thinking within the epoché knows itself to be dependent upon the knower for the “gift,” as it were, of the knowledge sought.8 The radicalization and the said insight necessitated the translation of Gelassenheit. If for Heidegger Gelassenheit is a waiting upon that which withdraws itself from thinking, for Boeder it is the reverent attention to what has been given to be thought. Here, in keeping with the later Heidegger, the piety of thinking is no longer a questioning but rather a listening to what has been thought. It is precisely Boeder’s transformation of this piety into the acknowledgment (Anerkennung) of and attention to a preceding knowledge, of and to the gift that this knowledge represents, that has enabled him to make his way into the present (Gegenwart). Now this last remark may strike some as odd, at least it should, for it is in fact quite paradoxical. After all, most of us would maintain that it is as plain as day that we are always already in the present, now, today. How great of an achievement could it be, then, to reach the present? A proverb relayed by Heraclitus, one that Boeder himself has often cited (see, e.g., PP, 84), gives a clue: “Being present, they are absent.” This saying involves the very same paradox. It rests on a distinction of presence: between physical presence and presence of mind. The former is no guarantee of the latter. This indicates that there is nothing immediate about being present in the sense that is decisive for the logotectonic. Indeed, it is highly mediated. The nature of the mediation involved here becomes clearer in view of the second key term in our title: the epoch. It is in the Topology der Metaphysics—in answer to Heidegger’s question “What is metaphysics?”—that the sense of ‘epoch’ in the logotectonic first became determinate. That question had directed Boeder’s attention to metaphysics as a concluded whole of philosophy, as a totality whose end was necessitated by its beginning. And yet his investigation of this totality revealed that Heidegger’s account was errant: metaphysics proved to be not just a simple totality in the sense of the continuously increasing oblivion of that which gives what is to be thought, a totality whose end was marked by the decay of metaphysical into technical thinking. And it no longer bore out Heidegger’s assertion that this thinking fell in a single epoch of the mission of the withdrawal of the topic of thinking. Furthermore, the topic of thinking was found not to be singular, that is, not solely the Being of beings, but different. Combined with the insight into the precedence of knowledge, these observations led Boeder to renew Heidegger’s question, this time putting it to that metaphysics itself which was held to have come to an end. The answer to this renewed question became evident as the result of Boeder’s complete traversal of the whole of metaphysics, which showed itself to be a totality composed of three epochs, a state of affairs that accorded with the tripartite determination of the whole that —————— 8. Paradigmatic in this regard is the opening sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. EPOCHÉ AND EPOCH IN LOGOTECTONIC THOUGHT 269 metaphysics itself established for thought. Namely, in metaphysics the triad was esteemed as the simplest complete construct—consisting of beginning, middle, and end. A totality comprises only the necessary parts, where their necessity is confirmed, as Aristotle put it with reference to drama, by the fact that they are “so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.”9 For Boeder a part makes a difference in the whole—that is, all the difference—only insofar as its presence necessarily contributes to the completion of that whole; otherwise, that part is not integral and thus makes no difference. To contemporary ears this has to sound harsh, of course, since the rhetoric of inclusion prevails (even if the inclusion practiced today is often selective). This will sound harsh so long as one has not effected the logotectonic epoché. Again, at issue for logotectonic thought is not what anyone might happen to prefer, not what society might happen to countenance at any given moment. The logotect’s aim is not to demonstrate his solidarity with the others but only to attest to the solidarity of logotectonic thought with what has been thought in the tradition. Such solidarity aims only at what is necessary to the whole. This does not mean that a position that initially is excluded from the logotectonic cannot prove later to serve the whole better than one previously chosen (Boeder himself has revised the composition of the logotectonic—for instance, replacing Berkeley with Shaftesbury or adding Machiavelli).10 Again, it is not a question of personal preferences, but only of what best serves the whole. A word is in order here before concluding. At the outset we said that the logotect does not argue, but builds. And yet from what has been said thus far it might sound as if Boeder has engaged in a constant argument at least with Heidegger. Boeder seems to have sought to prove Heidegger wrong at every turn. Yet this semblance is misleading. For Boeder has learned from Heidegger (as was noted above), but he has also learned from metaphysics. Given that his interest is in the whole, any critique of Heidegger—or of any other thinker, for that matter—does not stem from Boeder’s wish to assert himself, it is not a matter of idiosyncrasy, but the result of his intention to build the whole of thought. All critique is engaged in solely for the sake of distinction. It is meant to draw the limits of Heidegger’s thought (or of any position) in order to show the integrity of that thought and its necessity to the whole. But it is also meant to open our view to the integrity of other positions in the whole—and thus to —————— 9. Aristotle, Poetics 1451a33 ff. 10. For examples of Boeder’s advances over and corresponding modifications of the tectonic first constructed in his Topologie der Metaphysik, compare it with the essays, “Eine Bewegung der mundanen Vernunft,” Abhandlungen der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftli- chen Gesellschaft 47 (1996), 221–50, and “Der geschichtliche Ort Macchiavellis – eine unzeit- gemäße Würdigung,” in Reinhold Mokrosch and Elk Franke, eds., Wertethik und Werterziehung. Festschrift für Arnim Regenbogen (Osnabrück: V&R unipress, 2004), 267–80. 270 MARCUS BRAINARD avoid viewing other positions with Heidegger-tinted glasses, as it were. It is the same interest in the whole that has kept Boeder from entering into what is called the “philosophical discussion” or “debate.” For the logotectonic, the only discussion that is fruitful is that which has the interest of and in the whole at heart. Again, it is within the whole of the logotectonic that the epoch gains its proper sense. Boeder’s attention to the whole, and thus to completion, is inseparable from his intention to honor reason, in is historical, mundane, and linguistic manifestations. Such talk already implies a distinction of reason, and in fact one that reason itself demands, for it has shown itself differently in metaphysics, in modernity, and in submodernity—despite the prevailing habit of viewing reason as somehow continuous, as having had a uniform character extending from some indeterminate “prehistoric” origin down to the present day. First, regarding its historical manifestations: in each epoch philosophical reason depended on the givenness of a divine reason for its actuality—even in the Final Epoch, in which the divinity was not a god but rather nature. In modernity, however, this principle, this ground, was effaced and thus the departedness of philosophical reason was sealed. As a result, reason could no longer be the faculty of principles but only the shadow of its former self, namely thinking. The groundlessness of modern reason and its consequent indeterminacy has been deepened in submodernity, where reason is rejected because it is considered to be the source of dominance and terror. Due to the passing of reason in its philosophical sense, which is confirmed by modernity’s rejection of reason, Boeder has translated “what has been regarded philosophically as ‘reason’ into a ratio terminorum.”11 Bypassing the prevailing habit of confounding reason with thinking, the approach to reason operative here is one based on the acknowledgment first of the departedness of its historical manifestations and then of the fading of its modern transformations; reason regains its determinacy and thus its dignity via the attention to the difference it has made. In fact it was only the renewal of Heidegger’s question “What is metaphysics?” and the thematization of the totality it enabled that gave rise to this acknowledgment and, as a consequence, to the aforementioned translation. How so? In his investigation of the totality of metaphysics, the former science of pure reason, Boeder found it to be the history of the works of reason, of its philosophical accomplishments. Out of its groundlessness, reason has regained its solidity as the ratio terminorum and thus has taken on a purely technical significance within the frame of the logotectonic: “Such a ratio, as it is realized in the work, is the only one we can experience and from which we can learn pure reason.”12 Hence, on Boeder’s understanding reason is the result of both a recovery and a construction—for reason is not something that is already there waiting to be found, but must be elicited, demonstrated, or more precisely: built. —————— 11. “Veritas seditiosa,” in Seditions, 3–16, here 11. 12. “On Reason’s Interest in Language,” in Seditions, 213–25, here 217. EPOCHÉ AND EPOCH IN LOGOTECTONIC THOUGHT 271

In logotectonic thought the ratio forms the basis of such building. Here it responds to Heidegger’s call for a “poetizing thinking” (dichtendes Denken) first by transforming the sense of Dichten into a Verdichten, a compression, condensation. Boeder’s is a poetizing in the sense of a building, and in fact of a refined logotectonic out of integral rational positions. Each of these positions is explicated as a ratio, a word whose usage capitalizes on its twofold sense: as ratio and as proportion. Due to the aforementioned translation, reason is freed from its vague association with an innate human faculty and is now nothing but the ratio—“reason is a mere fiction at the point where it cannot realize itself in a basic and objective ratio”13—and rationality inheres in the practice of explicating it and its place within an architectonic built of such ratios, but also in that architectonic itself, that is, the logotectonic. The latter is an articulated totality, which is a three-tiered hierarchy of wholes. As for metaphysics, which is paradigmatic for Boeder’s building, it is a totality made up of three epochs, each of which consists of three types of reason. Each type manifests itself as a figure, which is the combination of three positions that are unified by a common task. As the smallest whole within this edifice,14 the ratio provides the means of laying out the structure of each position, that is, of what is necessary to that position, as well as making explicit how each fits together with its complementary positions into that figure. The ratio itself is a proportion built out of three terms, which derive from the dissolution of Heidegger’s phrase “die Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens” (the destiny of the topic of thinking, though Maßgabe [standard]15 is used now instead of Bestimmung [destiny]). Here we cannot pursue the “logotectonic calculus” but only indicate the notation employed in building: A (standard), B (topic), and C (thinking). Deter- minative of the structure of a rational figure is which of these three terms begins its incipient ratio. Thus the first ratio of natural reason begins with thinking; the first of mundane reason, with the topic; and the first ratio of conceptual reason, with the standard. These are the most superficial features of the ratios built by logotectonic thought. To get to the heart of the matter, finally, it is necessary to take up the relation of philosophy to wisdom. Though it was touched on in passing above, it was not given its due. Indeed, it was Boeder’s discovery of this rela- —————— 13. “Reason in Modern Thought,” in Seditions, 133–48, here 146. 14. In view of Boeder’s most recent work, this claim marks a simplification. For each ratio itself proves to be a ratio of ratios: each of the major terms of a given ratio (standard, topic, thinking) within history, e.g., is articulated by means of three subterms, which derive from the Kantian table of categories. Within modernity and submodernity, however, the subterms echo the three totalities of philosophy which make up the logotectonic: history, world, and speech. 15. The gift (Gabe) in the Maßgabe is not captured by ‘standard’. It is in fact a given standard or measure. ‘Canon’ in the sense of ‘established principle’ would perhaps be preferable to ‘standard’, but the term’s accompanying ecclesiastical sense is misleading and thus unde- sirable. ‘Standard’ is used here because it is more neutral. 272 MARCUS BRAINARD tion, and in fact of philosophy’s dependence on a preceding wisdom, that not only unlocked the history of philosophy for him but has also provided the key to articulating the tectonics of modernity and submodernity. Each con- sofiva figuration of wisdom (Weisheitsgestalt) or brings into view a directive that teaches mutatis mutandis that “to be man is a destiny for men which they fulfill only in their distinction from themselves and not just in their distinction from other animals.”16 The aim of each epochally distinguished teaching comes into view by way of the presentations of the knowledge: of the Muses in Homer, Hesiod, and Solon; of the Christian doctrine in the Synoptics, Paul, and John; and of the civil consciousness in Rousseau, Schiller, and Hölderlin— each configuration presents an autonomous vision of the distinguished man as hero, as saint, and as citizen, respectively. It is these configurations of wisdom that give each epoch its principle, and it is with respect to these principles that the history of philosophy proves to be the history of the crises of principles. The dependence of philosophy is either negative or positive: natural and mundane reason reject wisdom, whereas conceptual reason affirms it. This affirmation consists in the sheltering of the truth of a configuration of wisdom in a logic and thereby investing it with the persuasiveness truth always needs in order to win anyone over. Upon the accomplishment of the tasks set for the three figures of philosophical reason, an epoch is concluded, which makes way for the appearance of a new configuration of wisdom and its corresponding kinds of philosophical reason. However, following Hegel’s accomplishment of his task, no wisdom follows. Rather, wisdom is drawn along in the wake of philosophy’s departure. What follows is not another epoch, but the sense-explication (Besinnung) of modernity, which, under the weight of the absence of wisdom, turns to Being as its principle. Nor is submodernity an epoch, for it has even lost the experience of the loss of wisdom. The epoch had its vitality only in history, where it manifested itself as an epoch of philosophy and, pri- or to that, an epoch of wisdom. One suspects that with its rescue of wisdom from oblivion, logotectonic thought itself may be epoch-making. In building, logotectonic thought has reached the present. By bringing the epochs of wisdom into view for the first time as such, a dwelling has become possible, that is, a distinguishing thinking that takes its bearings by the words of wisdom. Here we can say: verbum sat sapienti. The word is enough for the wise man, for one who has championed the thought of distinction, ultimately the thought of the distinction of man from itself. This Heribert Boeder has done, to borrow a phrase from Heidegger, in “einem unablässigen herzhaften Denken.”

—————— 16. “Access to the Wisdom of the First Epoch,” in Seditions, 293–318, here 293. This page intentionally left blank