Husserl and Foucault on the Subject: the Companions Harry Nethery IV
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Duquesne University: Digital Commons Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2013 Husserl and Foucault on the Subject: The Companions Harry Nethery IV Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Nethery, H. (2013). Husserl and Foucault on the Subject: The ompC anions (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/974 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HUSSERL AND FOUCAULT ON THE SUBJECT: THE COMPANIONS A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College & Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Harry A. Nethery IV August 2013 Copyright by Harry A. Nethery IV 2013 HUSSERL AND FOUCAULT ON THE SUBJECT: THE COMPANIONS By Harry A. Nethery IV Approved July 11th, 2013 ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Lanei Rodemeyer Dr. Leonard Lawlor Assistant Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Fred Evans Dr. Daniel Selcer Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Member) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. James Swindal Dr. Ronald Polansky Dean, McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Chair, Department of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy iii ABSTRACT HUSSERL AND FOUCAULT ON THE SUBJECT: THE COMPANIONS By Harry A. Nethery August 2013 Dissertation supervised by Dr. Lanei Rodemeyer In this text, I argue for the revision of Husserlian phenomenology through a dialogue with the work of Michel Foucault. Specifically, I argue that Foucault‟s critical project, in which we isolate the contingent limits of thought so as to pass beyond them, and thus think new ways of being, can be filled out by the work of Edmund Husserl and differentiated into two lines of inquiry: a critical ontology and a critical phenomenology. This is accomplished by bringing these two philosophers, commonly held to be diametrically opposed, into dialogue such that together they say something that neither could say on their own. iv DEDICATION For my parents, Mary L. Nethery and Harry A. Nethery III. Thank you. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This text was completed as a doctoral dissertation from the Philosophy Department at Duquesne University, who supported my final year of research with a Dissertation Completion Fellowship. As such, I would like to thank the Philosophy Department for their support. I would like to thank Dr. Lanei Rodemeyer for her tireless and unending support of both myself and this project. Her mentorship and friendship have been pivotal in helping me to develop the line of thought in this text. For everything that she has done for me, I am eternally grateful. I would like to thank Dr. Leonard Lawlor for his mentorship and his help in developing this text. His work and mentorship have been pivotal for my readings of Foucault in particular, and of 20th century French philosophy in general. I would like to thank Dr. Fred Evans and Dr. Dan Selcer for their invaluable feedback on this project. Their insightful comments and questions were pivotal for developing some of the finer points of this text. I would like to thank the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center at Duquesne University for their support. Dr. Jeff McCurry, the director of the Phenomenology Center, allowed me the use of the Center‟s materials and was always willing to discuss Husserl with me. Angelle Pryor was instrumental in helping me locate the texts that I needed for this project. I would like to thank my Eureka and Pittsburgh families, without whom I would have gone mad ages ago. From Eureka I would like to thank Stacie, Ray, Jesse, Jessica vi and Todd, and from Pittsburgh I would like to thank Nate, Andrea, Aaron, Kim, Paul, John, Jim, Taine, Ashley, and Ryan. I would like to thank my Anita and Jim for their unwavering support throughout my graduate career. I would like to thank all of the graduate students at Duquesne University for putting up with my incessant talk and questions about Husserl and Foucault. Finally, I would like to thank Brittany Duncan for her brilliance, her love, and her support. There are not the words in this language, or any other, to express my love, admiration, and appreciation for her. Thank you Brittany. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION ............................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................... x Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 §1. The Companions (Les compagnons) ...................................................................... 1 PART ONE – THE SUBJECT ...................................................................................... 5 Chapter One – Foucault and the Subject ..................................................................... 5 §2. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 5 §3. Foucault‟s General Project: The Critical Ontology of the Present ........................... 6 a) Critique and Ontology ....................................................................................... 10 §4. Foucault‟s General Project and his Resistance to the Phenomenological Subject .. 16 §5. Foucault‟s Critique of Subject-Oriented Philosophy ............................................. 20 §6. Foucault‟s Reversal of the Phenomenological Reduction ..................................... 24 a) Husserl‟s Phenomenological Reduction ............................................................. 25 §7. The Motivation for the Reduction in Foucault ...................................................... 27 §8. The Exclusion of the Subject (1966): “The Thought of the Outside” and “Les suivantes” .................................................................................................................. 29 §9. The Suspension of the Subject (1969): The Archaeology of Knowledge and “What is an Author?” ........................................................................................................... 33 §10. The Reduction in Later Works ........................................................................... 41 §11. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 42 Chapter Two – Husserl and the Subject ..................................................................... 43 §12. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 43 §13. “The Theory of Consciousness is a Theory of Apperceptions” ........................... 44 §14. Apperception ..................................................................................................... 45 §15. Apperception and Internal Time Consciousness ................................................. 48 a) The Present ........................................................................................................ 53 b) Far and Near Retention ...................................................................................... 55 c) Far and Near Protention ..................................................................................... 62 §16. Apperception and Passive Synthesis................................................................... 66 §17. “Radiating Back” and the Openness of Consciousness ....................................... 72 viii §18. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 78 PART TWO – THE LIMIT ........................................................................................ 79 Chapter Three – Husserl at the Limit ........................................................................ 79 §19. Apperception and History .................................................................................. 79 §20. The Constitution of the Cultural World: Husserl‟s 5th Cartesian Meditation ....... 81 a) Strata, Static and Genetic Phenomenology ........................................................ 82 §21. First Stratum: the Sphere of Ownness ................................................................ 85 §22. Second Stratum: Empathy .................................................................................. 89 §23. Third Stratum: The Constitution of the Objective World (Space and Time) ........ 94 §24. Fourth Stratum: The Constitution of the Social World ........................................ 98 a) The Two Correlates of Intersubjectivity ............................................................. 99 §25.