Sleeping Thing-In-Itself – Nancy’S Challenge to Phenomenology
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A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Phenomenology and Sleep Patrick Simon Moffett Levy PhD Philosophy University of Sussex November 2016 University of Sussex Patrick Simon Moffett Levy PhD Philosophy Phenomenology and Sleep Abstract This thesis identifies, in Nancy’s The Fall of Sleep, a crucial critique of phenomenology. A criticism that demarcates, or limits, phenomenology in declaring: “There is no phenomenology of sleep”. Taking-up this challenge, we consider a number of ways that phenomenologists have, and could, approach sleep. Our thesis, however, does not simply offer possible responses to the problem but also finds, in these answers, important insights into the essence of the charge itself. Sleep and phenomenology are found to be mutually de-limiting – each binds the other, whilst offering foundational insights into its counter- part. Fundamentally, we bring phenomenologies of sleep, as opposed to simply phenomenology, into dialogue with this, Nancean, critique of phenomenology and with Nancy’s account of sleep itself. We describe the distinctly different slumbering interpretations of sleep present, and conspicuously absent, in the work of: Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas. Part I, after initially elaborating the challenge, presents a direct Husserlian counter, via a recent reconstituting of Husserl’s late notes on sleep. The strengths and weaknesses of this phenomenological investigation sharpens the problem of sleep and leads us to pull back from consciousness-centred accounts. Part II, in contrast, develops our own hypothetical Heideggerian answer. This Part, the longest, uses Heidegger’s existential and comparative analytics to ask ‘Does Dasein sleep?’ This question reveals internal ambiguities of sleep – positioned between existence, life, and death. Part III withdraws from Heideggerian thinking through Levinas’s incisive, and early, interpretation of sleep. This Levinasian retracting opens the possibility of returning to Nancy’s challenge and corresponding description of sleep. Now this radical account is located in relation to, and in communication with, the somnological-phenomenological findings we have awakened in our thesis. The thesis ends by indicating a possible, future, return back from sleep to phenomenology – a dream, still hazy from sleep, of a somnolent phenomenology. Contents Dedication ............................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgements ............................................................................... 2 Part I: A Somnolent Challenge and a Husserlian Reply ......... 4 Chapter 1: Introduction – (Re)awakening the Question of Sleep ........................................................................................ 5 I: Sleep, Phenomenology, and the ‘Somnolent Turn’ ................... 5 II: Noumenology, Self, and the Sleeping Thing-in-itself – Nancy’s Challenge to Phenomenology ..................................................... 10 III: One step forward in two steps back ...................................... 13 IV: Outline of the thesis .............................................................. 17 Chapter 2: ‘The Inner Night’ or ‘Dissolution of the Self’? A Critical Reading of Nicolas de Warren’s ‘The Inner Night: Towards a Phenomenology of (Dreamless) Sleep’ ............... 19 I: Introduction ............................................................................. 19 II: Excursus: Limitations or Omissions ...................................... 23 III: Time-Consciousness and the Metaphor of Sleep .................. 26 IV: Affectivity, Imagination, and Sleep ...................................... 32 V: “No one puts himself to sleep: sleep comes from elsewhere”39 Part II: Does Dasein Sleep? .................................................. 47 Introduction ........................................................................... 48 Chapter 3: ‘How did you sleep?’ Moods, Sleep, and the Existential Analytic .............................................................. 59 I: Sleeping Attunements and Attunements of Sleep ................... 59 II: Disposition, Moods and Sleep ............................................... 66 III: Sleep and the Existential Unity of Dasein ............................ 71 IV: Corey Anton and the Dream of a Heideggerian Account of Dreamless Sleep .......................................................................... 79 Chapter 4: Sleep, World Poverty and the Animal (Sleeping) Within ................................................................................... 93 I: The Animal’s Somnolent Trail ................................................ 93 II: Transposition ........................................................................ 104 III: Captivation [Benommenheit] .............................................. 112 IV: Openness, Elimination and the Animal’s Disinhibiting Ring [Enthemmungsring] .................................................................. 124 V: Conclusions, Self-Objections and Incomplete Analyses ..... 134 VI: Conclusions and Controversies .......................................... 151 Part III: Falling from Phenomenology to Sleep and Back Again ............................................................................................. 166 Chapter 5: Levinas, Nancy, and the Dream of a Somnolent Phenomenology ................................................................... 167 I: Introduction ........................................................................... 167 II: From Sleep to the Existent – Levinas, Sleep, and the Promise of Escape ................................................................................... 170 III: “…but there will be a reawakening.” ................................. 178 IV: Before the Fall .................................................................... 181 V: Falling .................................................................................. 183 VI: Lost in the World of Night: Dreaming from a Somnolent World ........................................................................................ 187 VII: From Insomnia to a World without Sleep ......................... 194 VIII: Experiencing, Ex-isting, Entering and Leaving Sleep ..... 200 IX: The Blind Spot [Tache] of Sleep, or Notes Towards a Somnolent Phenomenology ...................................................... 208 Bibliography .................................................................................. 213 1 Dedicated to Cai ap Leslie (1989 – 2007), Alan L. Small (1937 – 2012), and Hugh (David) Prysor-Jones (1949 – 2015) 2 Acknowledgements Roughly 1,530 “sleeps” have contributed to this thesis. Yet, if this thesis shows anything it should show that this arbitrary number can do no justice to the debt we owe our sleep. I, most of all, must acknowledge this debt. One, I am certain, I will never finish repaying. However, the waking have also contributed so much to this thesis and none more so than my supervisors Paul Davies and Tanja Staehler. They have welcomed, encouraged, questioned, pushed, and supported me through the good times and the bad. Upon by arrival at Sussex after telling a fellow graduate student who my new supervisors were they responded – ‘Oh! You got the dream team!’ This has stayed with me over the years and it accurately summarises how I lucky I have been. Thank you both! My experience at Sussex was shaped, not only by my excellent supervisors, but also by the great community which welcomed me so well and have shaped so many of my ideas, beliefs and experiences over these last four years. In particular, I would like to thank: Gabriel Martin, Dimitri Kladiskakis, Tim Carter, Ezra Cohen, Gavin Osbourne, Richard Weir, Christos Hadjioannou, Jana Elsen, Murat Celic, Phil Homburg, Robb Dunphy, Jacob Berkson, Huw Rees, David Martinez Rojas, Mike Lewis, Arthur Willemse, Alex Elliott, Mahon O’Brien, Elaine Finbarr O’ Connell, Tony Booth, Gordon Finlayson, Will Rees, Alexandra Popescu, and Jakub Kowalewski. Better friends, drinking and debating companions could not be wished for! Life is not only philosophy and I have been fortunate to live, in Brighton, with some of the best and most supportive housemates and, I hope, life-long friends that anyone could wish for. Thanks and more go to: Maxine Sherman, Gemma Anderson, Alex Stell, James Waterfield, Tali Morelos-Juárez, and Huw Rees (again)! I would also like to thank the philosophy faculty at the University of Dundee for making me so welcome in the last few months of the writing of this thesis and for the great opportunity of teaching with them. In particular, thank you: Dominic Smith, Ashley Woodward, and Oisín Keohane. 3 I am extremely lucky to have many great friends who have never stopped supporting me, believing in me and this thesis, and, most importantly, distracting me when I needed to forget about philosophy, sleep and research for just a moment. Thank you: Jamie