Does the World Exist?: Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality (Analecta Husserliana)

D O E S T H E WO R L D E X I S T ?

A NA L E C TA H U S S E R L I A NA THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH VO L U M E L X X I X

Founder and Editor-in-Chief: A N NA - T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Hanover, New Hampshire

For sequel volumes see the end of this volume.

D O E S T H E WO R L D E X I S T ? PLURISIGNIFICANT CIPHERING OF REALITY

Edited by

A N NA - T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning A-T. Tymieniecka, President

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 1-4020-1517-8

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Printed on acid-free paper

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

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AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

Inaugural Lecture: Ontopoietic Ciphering and the Existential Vision of Reality

A N NA - T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A /

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SECTION I FRAMING THE ONTOPOIETIC VISION OF THE WORLD AND EXISTENCE / The Human Creative Condition Between Autopoiesis and Ontopoiesis in the Thought of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka C A R M E N C O Z M A / Ethical Remarks around the Specifically Human Existence in the Phenomenology of Life – M A I JA K UL E / The Role of Ciphering in Phenomenology of Life I R E N E A N G E L A B I A N C H I / “Man–World”; “Man–Nature”: Reflections on “Feeling” and Acting C A R L A C A N U L L O / Ekstasy of the World/Immanence of Life. Michel Henry, Reader of Husserl JA N S Z M Y D / Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Way through Philosophy, Science and Art DA N I E L A V E R D U C C I

3 21 41 51 67 87

SECTION II: TOWARD LIFTING OF THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY IDEALISM/REALISM / The Controversy about the Existence of the World in Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenological School: A. Reinach, R. Ingarden, H. Conrad-Martius, E. Stein K AT H L E E N H A N E Y / The Phenomenological Status of the World: Possibility and Actuality W L⁄ O D Z I M I E R Z PAW L I S Z Y N / The Advance of the Sense of the Controversy over the Existence of the World – Heideggerian Work as an Example. A metaphilosophical Experience ANGELA ALES BELLO

v

97 117

129

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/ Reality as “Life” and “Vitality”: The Idealism–Realism of Max Scheler DAV I D B RU BA K E R / The Problem of the World: Merleau-Ponty on Flesh, Soul and Place M I C H A E L S TAU D I G L / The Critique of the Phenomenological Concept of the World according to Michel Henry GIANFRANCO BOSIO

147 167 183

SECTION III: TRANSCENDENTALISM REVISITED / An Archeology of Beginnings: Phenomenology and the Space of the World M I C H A E L F. A N D R E W S / Edmund Husserl: Empathy and the Transcendental Constitution of the World B E ATA S TAWA R S K A / Worlds Apart? Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s Transition from Transcendental to Ontological Perspective on the Nature of the World S O N JA R I N O F N E R - K R E I D L / On “Enworlding” Transcendental Subjectivity: Rethinking a Misleading Metaphor R . K U R E N KOVA , E . P L E K H A N OV, Y. RO G AC H E VA / The Transcendental–Phenomenological Meaning of the Notion of “Experience” in the Philosophies of E. Husserl and J. Dewey WILLIAM D. MELANEY

201 217

239 259

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SECTION IV: CIPHERING THE PLURISIGNIFICANT SHARING OF EXISTENCE / Interhuman Communication beyond the Limits of Time (Gadamer) and the Temporality of Lonely Dasein (Heidegger) NATA L I A S M I R N OVA / A. Schutz’s Contribution to Phenomenological Theory of Intersubjectivity G E R A L D N Y E N H U I S / Ingarden and the Philologists RO B E RT D . S W E E N E Y / Narrative Self and World Z A I G A I K E R E / Ontopoiesis of Life and New Horizons in Humanitarian Education M A R I A G O L⁄ E B I E W S K A / Intentionality and the “Being-in-the-Language” of Michel Foucault W. N . A Ç E R Ó N / Outlooking: Notes and Drafts on Abstraction and Memory A L E K S A N D R A PAW L I S Z Y N

295 313 321 327 339 349 363

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S M I NA S E H D E V

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/ Dream and Myth: Cognitive and Ontological

Value

373

AU R E L I O R I Z Z AC A S A

/ Knowledge of the World or World of

Knowledge?

387

A N TO N I O D O M Í N G U E Z R E Y

/ Ontopoética del Significante:

El Palpo del Signo

393

SECTION V: THE CREATING CIPHERING OF REALITY BY ART PAT R I C I A T RU T T Y- C O O H I L L

/ The Wisdom of Michelangelo’s

Creation of Adam

421

Translated by: PA B L O G A R C Í A / Artistic and Aesthetic Values as the Ontological Foundation for the World of the Literary Work D I A N E G . S C I L L I A / A World of Art, Politics, Passion and Betrayal: Trotsky, Rivera and Breton and Manifesto: Towards A Free Revolutionary Art (1938) V I C TO R KO C AY / From Hegel to Ingarden: Aesthetic Objects and the “Creation” of the World V E L G A V E V E R E / Phenomenology of the Poetical GLORIA VERGARA,

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447 467 485

SECTION VI: THE WORLDS OF HUMAN INWARD-OUTWARD EXISTENTIAL RADIATION OF REALITY / Monade et Monde. Réflexions sur les “Méditations Cartesiennes” de E. Husserl A R I O N L . K E L K E L / L’ethique phénoménologique d’Edmund Husserl à Max Scheler J . J . V E N T E R / Human Dignity and the Objectification of the Human Being TA D E U S Z C Z A R N I K / Causality and Freedom in Roman Ingarden K A RO L TA R N OW S K I / The Promised Land, the Denied Land B I A N C A M A R I A D ’ I P P O L I TO

503 515 537 603 611

SECTION VII: THE CULTURAL CIPHERS OF THE WORLD A NATO LY F. Z OTOV

/ Phenomenology as a Fact of Cultural History

627

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/ A Heideggerian Defense of Phenomenology Against Adorno’s Negative Dialectical Critique DAV I D M A RT Í N E Z / The Gods of Time: Husserl, the Maya, and the Pre-scientific World M A RTA K U D E L S K A / How does the Snake Exist in the Rope? The Controversy about the Status of the Existence of the World in Classical Indian Throught A N NA I WO NA W Ó J C I K / Lifeworld: A Comparative Study of Some Aspects of Chinese and Husserlian Theory M A RT I N N K A F U N K E M N K I A / The World as an Eternal Entity and Vitalogical Living Reality M AO C H E N / Chinese Tales of Origin: A Hermeneutics of Narrative Discourse J O S H UA W I L L I A M RAYMAN

637 649

665 675 683 705

SECTION VIII: THE NEW CIPHERING OF THE CONSTANT COORDINATES OF THE WORLD AND EXISTENCE / Thinking with the Skin: The Problem of Space in Modern Philosophy: E. Husserl and A-T. Tymieniecka R I NA L D S Z E M BA H S / Temporalization of the Body within Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Manifestation L E S Z E K P Y R A / The Metaphysical Foundations of Environmental Philosophy G A RY BAC K H AU S / Toward a Phenomenological Grounding of the Geographical Conception of Therapeutic Landscapes E L L A BU C E N I E C E

719 729 739 745

SECTION IX: SOME CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION OF THE ORIGINS OF LIFE M A R G A R E T E D U R S T / Birth and Natality in Hannah Arendt FA B I O P E T R E L L I , RO B E RTO V E RO L I N I , L A R I S S A V E N T U R I

/ Psychopathologies and Cultural Factors: Some Neo-evolutionist Perspectives S I LVA NA P RO C AC C I / An Historical Approach to Ontopoiesis of Life and Mind. The Philosophy of J. C. Smuts M A R C E L L O S Á N C H E Z S O RO N D O / Science and Reality J U L I O E . RU B I O / Systems as Emergent Phenomena

777

799 809 821 835

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S E M ˙I H A A K I N C I

/ A Classification of the Approaches to the Ontology of Possible Worlds P Ì OT R M R Ó Z / Towards the Philosophical Swann

855 867

INDEX OF NAMES

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Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (seated) and Louis Tymieniecki-Houthakker (standing) visiting Alexander Schimmelpenninck and Maja de Keijzer at the headquarters of Kluwer, Dordrecht, February 2003

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

The present collection gathers the studies presented at our 51st International Congress of Phenomenology, which under the title “The Controversy About the Existence of the World; an Interdisciplinary Investigation” was held in Rome, Italy on June 26–30, 2001. We owe our sincere thanks to our hosts: Saint Thomas Aquinas University and the Accademia Polacca delle Scienze di Roma. The Reverend Rector Professor Dr. Edward Kaczynski, O. P., of Saint Thomas University and Professor Krzysztof Zaboklicki, Director of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Rome, hosted and participated actively at their respective institutions and we thank them most sincerely for having allowed us to carry out our inspiring scholarly sessions in these marvelous surroundings in the very heart of Rome. Our thanks go also to the administrator general of the University, Reverend Father Daniele Giovanni Cara, O. P., for the hospitality in the students’ “Convitto” with its flower and fruit gardens, where we enjoyed friendly discussions and evening breezes. We owe him most sincere thanks. First of all, however, thanks are due to Secretary General of the conference, Dr. Daniela Verducci, of our Center at the University of Macerata, for her most precious work in the preparation of this venture and carrying it out on site. My secretary, Jeffrey Hurlburt, and our copyeditor, Ryan Walther, deserve also our appreciation. A-T. T.

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The front entrance of the University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome.

A N NA - T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A

I NAU G U R A L L E C T U R E : O N TO P O I E T I C C I P H E R I N G A N D T H E E X I S T E N T I A L VISION OF REALITY

I N T RO D U C T I O N

There would have been no reason for our bringing out from oblivion the problem of the existence of the world (which in its modern sharpened realism versus idealism formulation has long been abandoned) were it not that in its underpinnings this problem extends through all the sectors of classical and contemporary phenomenology and attracts our attention at the beginning of this millennium. 1. In reintroducing the problem I have had two things in mind. First, this great issue, which in its ramifications tacitly runs through all the great systems of philosophy from Parmenides through Kant to the Ingarden–Husserl controversy, has been lifted in contemporary thought owing to the rejection of the speculative nature of systems. That has meant a turning away from the problems that provided their framework and the taking up of sidewise inquiries into scholarly and scientific innovations that promise concrete solutions. But the problem of the existence of the world is not thereby satisfactorily resolved. In part it has lost its significance on account of new insights that have given it numerous reformulations. The great philosophical queries have stooped to the scrutiny of marginal questions, in light of which the tenets of the classical formulations dissolve. However, on being disabused of the universal and speculative and turning to the concrete, the inquirer becomes like a chick picking grains in its courtyard unaware of anything that extends beyond, or like a mole digging a tunnel in the earth and lost in its darkness unless it comes out to the light. Just so, the acquired findings of today’s philosophy lack universal significance because it is still necessary to verify them as being part and parcel of the vast context to which they belong and in which they find grounding. Second, this same diversification and abandonment of the search for the deeper interlinkage of questions is strikingly visible in what has remained of phenomenology. In their self-enclosed peripheral fields of inquiry, today’s phenomenological investigations certainly innovate and enrich the common good, yet they remain without interlinkage, interconnection with the great xiii A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, xiii–xxx. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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lines projected by classical phenomenology/philosophy. That means that they are simply afloat. Is the interpretive insertion of particular results of inquiries into this vast schema of questions not indispensable to checking and establishing their validity? If confronted with all the findings made along these great lines of inquiry, these particular results may prove to be correct but also in need of correction, transformation, or may be disqualified altogether. We witness this need for correction and transformation in the very progress of Husserl’s own investigations. To conclude, I refer to Parmenides, here quoted with quite a different aim than Heidegger had in quoting him, “To know one singular thing we have to know all things.” 2. Now that phenomenological inquiry seems to have made her tour of the philosophical horizon within larger perspectives than those of the classical thinkers and has pursued a greater variety of specialized inquiries, it is time that we make “un tour d’orizon” and plunge into the depths of the great enigmatic questions that have prompted and directed the other great Occidental philosophies. It is just such a retour to the original philosophical inspiration and its great enigmas that we propose. Our phenomenology of life has been addressing them in its specific ways already, as is evident in the conference proceedings and other volumes that we have published. Now with this gathering we are going beyond its specific themes and toward the very heart of philosophy as such, and along the great lines of probing projected by classical phenomenology. 3. Proposing the question of the existence of the world has the aim of returning to the great foundation of phenomenological metaphysics, for that matter, of all metaphysics of Occidental inspiration. Here is the reflection that underlies not only strictly Husserlian thought but, as we may see, all the major phenomenological attempts at grasping the great conundrum of beingness. Even such concrete seekers as Merleau-Ponty navigates toward the notion of “wild being” as the source of his worldview, grounding it existentially. Without a grounding in necessary existential factors, there cannot be a metaphysical vision of beingness since all the rest will remain but the pieces of a puzzle waiting to be put properly put in place. In their self-enclosed, peripheral fields of inquiry, which focus mainly on human relations within the lifeworld, phenomenological investigations today innovate and greatly enrich our common culture. Yet when it comes to our philosophical probing into the real, they float unattached to the great lines of phenomenological inquiry.

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The time seems ripe to pick up again the great aspirations of phenomenology as philosophia prima in a quest animated by the vigorous breath of our new phenomenology of life. There is no fundamental question that will spur us more in this direction than that of the existence of the world. It is upon the turf of the phenomenology of life that we propose this retour to the great metaphysical aspirations of all philosophy. Phenomenology of life has been dealing with the great questions of beingness from its incipient phase. However, with the present investigation we aim beyond phenomenology of life’s own orientation toward the very heart of metaphysical querying as such, going in a direction that has not thus far been pursued in phenomenology of life but which, as it happens, was the focus of particular attention at the start of the Husserlian enterprise. I hope we may retrieve for philosophy/phenomenology its authentic metaphysical dimension and do so upon its own ground. 4. I am very gratified to see how our colleagues have followed the intention of this congress and applied their talents to treat many of the questions pertaining to this great metaphysical controversy for it involves all philosophicophenomenological problems. We may expect a rich harvest of contributions to a phenomenological metaphysics that will interconnect all the pertinent issues. As for myself, I will, of course, formulate the issue of the existence of the world on the plane of the ontopoiesis of life, and I will do so while following in a direct line the controversy between my master Roman Ingarden and Husserl, if only because I drank it in with my mother’s milk, as it were, when studying with Ingarden in the forties and was in this way introduced to phenomenology per se. I have already dealt with this controversy in an earlier work.1 For myself. I would consider the issue closed, but I find it instructive to come back to it. First, no thinker in the history of Western philosophy has to my knowledge made so great a case for this issue as did Ingarden, who developed an entire foundation for its formulation and then ultimately failed to solve the riddle he had himself set up. To what effect had he elaborated a complete, or nearly complete, philosophical edifice? If he did not solve the riddle, his effort nevertheless points to its fresh formulation at several important points.

PA RT O N E : T H E I N G A R D E N – H U S S E R L C O N T ROV E R S Y

To begin with, let us see what the controversy was really about. Ingarden saw his disagreement with Husserl as falling along the lines of an opposition

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between the epistemological and the ontological approaches. What was meant by that? The revolt of Husserl’s students of the Gottingen school is commonly seen against the background of a turn in Husserl’s quest for the foundation of the world order or of the entire field of certain cognition away from the ontological structures of things and beings – so firm in their clarity, being abstract and universal and apprehended as residing within the concrete – and toward the investigation of the way in which these are formed in human consciousness. This turn, qualified as Husserl’s “transcendental” turn, was brandmarked as “idealism.” It is this seeming identification of things and beings with the processes and structural rules of intentional consciousness – as it were reducing their existential status to that origin – that Ingarden objected to, setting in radical contrast to this “intentional subjectivism” an “objective ontological” outlook. Thus, by sharpening Husserl’s seemingly epistemological dilemma, he proposed for the investigation of the fundamental status of reality the ideal structures of things, beings, world, consciousness, specifying their status of ideal structures as mere possibles. If we look at the matter closely, however, this account of the idealism/realism issue and of the contrast between the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl and the approach of Ingarden might not be accurate. The argument in the Ingarden–Husserl controversy was over the actual existence of the world and of “reality” as such and not about existence’s actual or ideal modalities. More precisely, at stake was the possibility and legitimacy of making any statement of actual existence that would convey certainty in the modality of the statement and necessity as to its content. Sharpening these postulates in the very groundwork for his inquiry, Ingarden formulated the conditions for such a statement of actual existence in the following manner. First of all, he – like Husserl – assumed the world and consciousness and divided the entire realm of investigation into ontology and metaphysics. He then described the ontological level of inquiry into the nature of reality as the level of the ideal structures of all objects of inquiry, with there being the absolute possibility of certain and necessary articulations and interconnections. This ontological investigation would by its nature split into three sectors – formal, existential, and material. While formal and existential ontology deal with the abstract, eidetic structures of objects as such and work out possible necessary, that is, abstract, eidetic interconnections among their structural elements as pure possibles of objects should they really exist, material ontology deals with the soul and the body as they are experienced as well as in their being eidetically graspable, with the mind with its intentional system

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of the stream of consciousness, acts, etc. being the skeleton of the soul. Formal ontology entails the essential analysis of the innermost structural constitution of objects at their core according to their types of beingness, and formal-existential ontology is the analysis of these objective structures as to their actio and passio. All this, however, is approached in the modality of possibility. The ontology of ideal objects does not entail absolutely any indication of their actual existence. Although the ideal structural endowment of an object indicates the necessity of possible moments and modes of existence, the statement of the actual existence of an object is reserved to metaphysics, which as a special type of inquiry yields access to the actual existence of the above-distinguished structural objects in a sui generis experience in accord with formal and existential ontological prescriptions. This experience would allow for an existential statement of fact. In other words, while the ideal structures of ontology would guarantee the certainty and necessity of the articulations and interconnectedness of reality, there has to be found another special and not ideal ontological insight into the nature of objects, a sui generis experience that would guarantee their actual existence. On the whole, Ingarden’s material ontology, which is meant to expand Husserl’s transcendental realm, actually corresponds to Husserl’s distinguishing of body, soul, etc. in Ideas II, and so incarnates, it would seem, consciousness as seen by Husserl in its structures. In this material incarnation of consciousness Ingarden could expect to overcome the existential gap between pure consciousness, the soul, and the body. Nonetheless the interconnections between the possible eidetic structures of objects and their possible ideal concatenations in Ingarden’s universal schema failed to emerge out of the labyrinth of the objective ontological network even when Ingarden in the second (and German) edition of his Controversy About the Existence of the World placed the work of art, the created object, at the center. This purely intentional object meant to bring together the various objective realms and incarnated consciousness did not open the gate to a realm in which an existential act of connectedness could be apprehended. There was no breakthrough allowing for a statement of actual existence. The expected metaphysical statement of actual existence remained out of sight. Husserl, who believed in the feasibility of encircling the entire existential spread of reality in the clarified critically treated certainty of the transcendental genesis, attempted in his later thinking to establish a continuous line that would descend from the absolute certitude of pure consciousness through the genesis of the constitutive processes down to the bodily and even

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physiological dimensions of experience. Still the gap between empirical experience and the final eidetic object could not be bridged. Husserl never doubted the actual existence of reality but failed to grasp it in its passage from the empirical to the intentional or vice versa. For the transcendental point of departure, Husserl followed the genetic line and pursued constitutive acts through their entire course down into the kinesthetic, and in his unedited or posthumous work down to the very primordial levels of the constituted lifeworld. However, on accessing the empirical level on his transcendental course, he lost the necessity and certainty of eidetic connectedness and did not replace it with any other necessity and certainty. His last effort at founding the entire constitutive course turned to absolute belief in the lifeworld as being there as the foundation of all, “belief” that Husserl had at the outset suspended. Within the Ingardenian eidetic perspective, the necessary structural homogeneity was on the whole maintained throughout. Not unlike Husserl, Ingarden ventured as close as possible to this enigmatic issue by covering analytically the entire realm, first in his material ontology, which brought in the empirical realm of the body, the soul, constitutive consciousness, the spirit in their ideal concatenations; second, by bringing in the causal principle as establishing the ontologico-existential network among physical real objects; and lastly by referring to human acts involving responsibility and created works, which bring together the human and the material. However, there remained for him the problem of methexis. He attempted to resolve that problem in an essay he wrote in response to my own attempt at a statement of actual existence.2 After these attempts by Husserl and Ingarden, we could see that neither a transcendentally founded method (not even if expanded into far-reaching regions of nature) nor an eidetically grounded approach (not even one encompassing in the same field the ideal structures of objects and drawing into its schema the material region of consciousness, causal interconnectedness in the real world and transcendental consciousness with all its tentacles in experience and in the body) yield the unified continuity of necessary interconnectedness that would allow us to ascertain actual existence. It comes to the fore that the first condition for a statement of actual existence hangs on there being a continuity of some sort among the elements of the web of beingness. This involves segments and elements of the objective possibilities of things and beings that are distributed among the various realms, on the one hand, and the necessary interlinkage, within the subjective

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genetic structuration too, of an intentional constitution of the same objectivity running in a streamlike progress through the same realms, on the other. The existence of the world or of actual reality is not put in doubt by either mode of continuity. When Husserl put faith in the necessity of the transcendental networks of constitutive unfolding proceeding from experience to judgement, and Ingarden, in contrast, put faith in the necessary interconnections between the ideal structural elements of the possible, these thinkers in actuality followed parallel quests, seeking a path encompassing the entire web of things and beings in reality, the entire network of known beingness, a quest ultimately to find along the way the exit from the labyrinth to the actual existence of this web. It is the declaration of necessary actual existence that is at stake in either case. Both covered the same territory: types of objects, the realms of body, soul, consciousness, the spirit, the world. And at the point at which the crucial step toward actual existence in nature, physiology, etc. had to be made, in both cases the necessity of the interconnectedness of the web had to be given up. No statement of the actual existence of things, beings, relations, genesis, etc. having inward necessity, proceeding from either an idea or an intention, could be made. Yet these two initially contrasted positions came very close to some essential points in their unfolding. Giving priority to the transcendental approach, Husserl never rejected the prerogatives of a structuration overseeing intentionality, a rationale of constitutive acts. Ingarden came close to recognizing the primordial role in the world order of subjective, constitutive intentionality, placing the work of art, a purely intentional product of human consciousness at the center of his ontological world order in the second edition of the Controversy. Finding an integral place for consciousness within the objective universe has not, however, opened a passage out of its closed labyrinth. Husserl sought rescue from losing his certainty of the necessity of pure conscious structuring by loosening the ties between objects within the lifeworld in its totality, by transposing the truth of things from their singular status to their consistency with the states of the whole, and ultimately by referring for their certainty and evidence to belief in the world’s existence, belief that he had initially suspended as lacking certainty. Thus, not only did both of these thinkers fail to maintain the necessity and certainty they divined in the continuity of their progressing research, but statement of the actual existence of things and beings and of specific types of experience that would allow it to be made also remains out of sight.

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1. Lifting the Realism/Idealism Postulates We are at present leaving aside the formal linguistic aspect of any statement of the reality of something and will focus our quest on the rationale of its content and its foundational evidence. From our foregoing investigation we retain the Husserlian/Ingardenian postulates of necessity and certainly, but it is now clear that the way in which each master formulates his postulates is limited by his respective assumptions. When the transcendental approach reaches down to its source, certainty is diminished, and when the ontology of possible structures with their certain connections expands into the empirical, experiential realm, it does not reach the intrinsic interconnective networks of any continuity: the possible does not reach the springs of the actual. In our investigation it comes out that the statement of actual existence calls for first having experiential evidence that is capable of yielding a rationale rooted with certainty in necessary ties within the web of all beingness. Second, the question presents itself of whether we can find any experiential evidence that yields with certainty a cognitive content in which the strength of a necessary connectedness among its elements is such that we may traverse the gap between various types of rationalities in their respective modes of participation in the actual existence of beingness. In denouncing the inadequacy of the initial assumptions that determine these respective levels of inquiry, we point out the indispensable need to find another level, but with that there would, of course, also be different formulations of the ontological modality of necessity and of the gnoseological modality of certainty. The question here is how to understand “necessity.” Lot us repeat that in Ingarden’s approach necessity is understood as the necessity of eidetic, structural interconnections – with autonomy and originarity proceeding out of itself. In the initial phase of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology the necessity of the constitutive progress was ultimately guaranteed by the rules of pure consciousness. Then in the phase in which the lifeworld came to fore in his thought, that necessity was ultimately guaranteed by the consistency of singular events and the intentional network of the total overall world situation. This is an altogether weak position when we consider that it is precisely the world that is being put in question.

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2. The New Assumptions of the Great Inquiry that Proceeds From Insight into the Dynamic Stream of Becoming that Carries the Manifestation of Reality Kant stated that the existence – actual existence – of anything is not its predicate, that is, that each being reaches so far above its intrinsic endowment and its ramifications that we can predicate all that is in that reach as also belonging to its nature. Indeed, when we want to affirm that something is, actually is, at this instant, we cannot limit ourselves to focusing on it at this very present moment, as it were fixing it as a static form, an item cut off from the network of interrelations that it maintains as it moves ahead in existence, ignoring its motion in order to capture an instant of “empirical” sensory perception. This fixation of ours proceeds from the capacity of our mind to “objectify” or to project an instantaneous manifestation of reality as a perduring picture even amid change. And yet we know that at every instant this reality is undergoing transformation, metamorphosis. Each instant of this transformation is pregnant with innumerable moments of innumerable circuits of becoming, at the cross section of which it occurs. The “objective form” with which our mind endows it is never closed, complete in itself, nor is it in itself lasting; on the contrary, it perdures within the flux of its transformations, which manifest it to our mind as reality. A being is a concatenation of its accomplished phases with their virtual moments opening toward further unfolding, of its ontopoietic evolutive virtualities, of the copresent conditions for its unfolding in the existential network of which it is part and parcel, and lastly of the world with its life system. So much for empirical existence. As for beings in the ideal mode of mathematics, geometry, although they remain motionless, their own interdependencies bind and determine the singular status of each, for without them they would remain meaningless. And works of art, science, etc., while lacking empirical conditions, gain complexity in imagination and, though seemingly “fixed” in nature, are immersed in the variations of human existence. It is thus obvious why neither the apprehension of eidetic structures, however much they may correspond rationally to the interconnections of their elements, nor the apprehension of the constitutive laws and rationale of human consciousness as it attempt to grasp the ways in which the human mind arrives at its fix on things and beings in their manifestation as reality can declare on the existence of objects or can only tangentially advert to it. And what about this dynamic drive that carries the flux of becoming, what about the forces that impel its ramifications, shaping it? What about the world

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that is shaped by them even as it provides their groundwork and basic conditions? What about their cosmic and biotic directives? In the first place, being is a playground of forces. 3. The World Completing this new insight into both reality as manifestation and its existential underpinnings leads us to the question of the world. What is the world we talk about? Of the two authors being critically discussed here, it is Husserl with his conception of the “lifeworld” who here comes into consideration. The world is for Husserl a domain of life. Within it is grounded the human subject constituting the manifestation of reality, as I call it. Husserl believes that we may reach it in its primal state before the constitutive process enters into play. Yet, as Elisabeth Stroeker rightly observed, even at its most elementary stage constitution could not yield anything without already lending it some of its own form and matter. (The nowadays so vividly evoked notion of “hyle” as the import of the preconstitutive expresses the constitutive powers themselves and not anything that is absolutely prior to its activity.) But in our new insight into the underpinnings of reality, into the world as the groundwork of the “manifestation of reality,” the question arises of how the prompting and shaping forces emerge. Where do they come from in their seminal nature, how do they organize themselves? In short, how does the world become a lifeworld, how does it become a world? The genesis of the lifeworld in and through our constitutive consciousness does not answer any of the above questions. On the contrary, it raises the question of how this very consciousness emerged within the web of the lifeworld. What seems clear, and what Husserl overlooked, is that the interdependency of world and life is not unidirectional but reversible. On the one hand, we may not consider a living being outside of its world. It is not only that every living being by its very life itinerary constructs “its” world, but also that it does so in tandem with laws and structural and dynamic forces. A living being makes (traces) its existence along with the manifestation of its or his or her world. The world as it appears to us in approximate completeness is manifested with respect to our faculties; first, with respect to – as a response to – living beings’ needs for existence and expansion within their existential life-sustaining concatenations. And so the world’s forces and shaping in turn express, manifest the existential dynamic spread of individualizing life. Furthermore, this manifestation assumes a specific dimension progressively

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as a strategy of the logos of life, forwarding the unfurling of more complex faculties. It is through the living being’s progressively unfurling life incarnation and involvement that we move from “blind” absorption in our project to a “visible” manifested shape that surrounds us but of which we are the projector at the center. And then, mesmerized by our seemingly originary powers, these special faculties, we overlook our existential depth. On the other hand, the world is indeed the groundwork of living reality. But conversely each living reality is an essential factor of the world. We can not consider a living being completely outside of the world, outside of a world. Could we consider a planet without life, e.g., Mars or Venus, to be a world? Life is a factor of the world just as much as the world at every stage, however different its prerogatives, is the groundwork for each living beingness with its network of dynamic conditions. The actual existence of each being is involved in innumerable circuits of concomitant strivings, drives, playing of forces at each transformatory turn, at each instant of its unfolding. They form both each beingness and its world. To ask after the actual existence of anything is to ask after a world of life and beyond that, not after after the laws and proceedings of constitutive human consciousness but after principles and regulations and rationale – after the Logos of life, which bring that world about together with individualizing life. We may venture to say that legitimating statements about the simplest matters of fact in our “natural attitude” are most complex and call to be grounded in the network of the all. All said and done, this boils down to the “natural fact” that no living human being (and for that matter no living being) in his right mind may doubt either his own existence or that of the world in which he lives. But I submit that to establish philosophically the validity of this existential, “natural” common sense of originary conviction calls for an entire philosophy. To ask after the actual existence of something requires an entire philosophy to answer the question. Pursuing that, we will reach to the foundational level of the great philosophical issues of modernity as they have emerged from Cartesian, Kantian, and Husserlian assumptions, a level that has come to be pushed to the margins of contemporary thought. PA RT T H R E E . T H E O N TO P O I E T I C OV E RT U R N I N G O F T H E C O N S T I T U T I V E G I V E N N E S S A P P ROAC H TO B E C O M I N G

The new approach to all these issues undertaken by our ontopoietic phenomenology of life on the plane of the ontopoiesis/phenomenology of life,

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while building on the insights into the world and existence thus far discussed, offers us an alternative formulation of the problem and alternative solutions. It offers us the cornerstones of life’s becoming as the lciffaden for a new formulation of the questions of necessity and metaphysical originarity and offers as well existential preconstitutive certitude of the reality of facts. In my treatise Logos and Life and concomitant studies, I first presented three basic insights from the formulation of which there surges a vision of the complete expanse of the metapoietic underpinnings of manifested reality, which vision overturns the intentional vision of Husserl as well as the ontological vision of Ingarden. Let us here succinctly explicate these three insights. (1) The soul is to be understood as the center of transformation within the self-individualizing process of life. (a) We assume the primordiality of the soul, as the field of the vital transformations of the living being in particular, the primordiality of the human soul, which is the territory of creative transformation as the crystallization of the “human creative condition,” It is from the soul that consciousness, the intentional human apparatus, and the faculties of the human mind emerge. Not consciousness, nor possible cidetic reference to the intellective powers of man, but the cluster of the soul occupies the central and strategic position for the ontopoietic vision of metaphysics. The soul is understood in the Aristotelian, Husserlian, Ingardenian fashion as a cluster of corporeal/physical, intellective, and spiritual functions sustaining the individualizing process of life. However, this cluster of meaning-giving life functions should not be restricted to our usual view of it. We have to uncover it in the crucial part it plays in the becoming and evolutive progess of living species: life itself reveals the metaphysical center that, in extending the ontopoietic profile of life, brings forth faculties and agencies from the intergenerative phase of the creative virtualities accompanying the vital functioning of vegetal and animal life. It is there that the specific rational filter of the human mind with the advanced intentional system that it owes to its intellective powers is established in the line of the impetus toward self-individualization of the Logos of Life. Hence it is not by way of the sidewise route of giving priority to one or other of the faculties so established, but through the creative route underlying them and carrying them that we are brought onto the crucial path of the selfindividualizing progress of life in the very experience of our own route. This access to the unfolding of life allows us to reach in its exfoliation a fullfledged metaphysical conception of beingness in becoming.

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(b) The crystallization of the human condition is to be understood as the specifically human center of transformation. Leaving aside the objectifying transconstitutive operation that takes subjective focus as the source of cognition, on the one hand, and the eidetic universe of possible structures of possible objects whether of the world, the body, consciousness, or the mind, on the other, we delve with the creative act into the making and functioning of the specifically human soul or of the living soul as it becomes specifically human. The creative act surges within the soul with a set of creative virtualities. These inform the soul’s vital forces and dynamisms and in continuing the individualizing vital progress transform its functions into a specific apparatus for ciphering in significance the givenness of preexperience – here is the creative forge of the human condition, source of the human mind and the full intentionality of consciousness. (c) It follows that priority is to be attributed to the human creative act over all the intentional/constitutive/objectifying acts of either the transcendental intuition held to be primary by Husserl or the eidetic intuition held to be primary by Ingarden. (d) Instead of looking for the origins of manifested reality by following the genesis of our intentional/constitutive acts in the processes of constitutive consciousness (as Husserl proposed in his “genetic phase”), we isolate and follow the human creative act as it introduces us to the self-individualizing progress of life. (2) Self-individualization is the thread leading on to the existential underpinnings of life and reality. (a) Self-individualization, though autodirected from within, draws on the interdependent web of life, not on other beingnesses as such but on a logoic system of life with its multiple interdependencies. It acquires an existential autonomy not of structure but of self-projection and self-directing propulsion. (b) There is effected through all the spheres of beingness – organic, physical psychic, body, soul, spirit, social life, artistic life, etc. – an ontopoietic continuity in transformation. Each of these participates in the ontopoietic spread of the logos of life, following a common outline. We may trace intuitively its phases of transformation, generation, intergeneration, etc. from the least to the most complex living beingness as science does in evolutionary research. We may trace in a parallel nonempirical but ontopoietic way the entire schema of the generative unfolding of life on earth within the system of the Logos of life wherein it is enclosed.

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With reference to this system we may speak of the absolute necessity of the ontopoietic self-individualization of life as well as of life’s definition/restriction by the system of the Logos of life. We leave the ultimate query beyond that to the primeval logos and its mysteries, which surpass the intellective founding of phenomenology and of metaphysics as well. The ontopoieitic progress that follows the logoic deployment of life on a plane formerly covered over by intentional concatenations has now come to light. (3) Ontopoietic necessity and originality. (a) Each surging of self-individualization carries in itself a relative necessity, a dependency on circumambient conditions. Should these occur, so necessarily life will occur. Thus the question emerges of whether beyond this relative ontopoietic necessity there lies a necessary condition for this outburst into beingness that is originary in the absolute sense. It is obvious that the entelechial setup, as I call it, is not the absolute origin, but that, on the contrary, there is a generative stage from which it emerges endowed with selfsufficiency. That means that we cannot speak of its “origination from its essence” since that essence itself carries a preceding pregenerative phase. I have argued that the relative necessity of the self-individualizing becoming of life simply reverts from the individual/condition level to that of the logoic system of life that carries it. With respect to that system, we may consider it an absolute ontopoietic necessity. (b) I have argued also that each ontopoietic design surging from a preceding phase of self-individualizing beingness in a transformation is itself capable of transmitting its ontopoietic import to further deployments of life, with the import subject to transformations leading from advances in individuals to those in types. That means that the originarily of the ontopoietic design recedes with the unfolding of the logos of life for each phase is preceded by another. This originarity, however, not being itself grounded in its spontaneous emergence within its essence, is sidewise relative and sidewise absolute. To summarize the results: I. Ontopoietic necessity and originarity is grounded in the ontopoietic selfindividualization of life from virtualities carried with itself and according to the intrinsic directions of the universal life constructivism. It diversifies into a relative necessity with reference to circumambiant conditions and an absolute necessity with reference to the logoic system of life.

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II. Originarity. (a) The originarity of a beingness emerges when the being is unfolding from within its own essence but is relative to the logoic life project unfolded with the being’s spontaneous impetus. (b) The being’s originarity is absolute in relation to the entire logoic system of life. (c) The discrete continuity through the spheres of reality – displayed in the logoic unfolding (with the necessity of spontaneous surging and subsequent metamorphosis) in the continuity of the ontopoietic sequence of the selfindividualization of life – makes a network of the entire spread of the spheres of the logos of life. We here make not just one more phenomenological proposal but one that gives phenomenology at large the hitherto missing metaphysico-existential foundation of the web of beingness. Phenomenology of life completes the great project of Husserl. PA RT F O U R . O N TO P O I E T I C C E RT I T U D E F O R T H E S TAT E M E N T O F M E TA P H Y S I C A L AC T UA L I T Y

1. In Search of a Mediating Link between Being and Cognition In our inquiry into the ontopoietic spread of the existential web of becoming that runs through the ontopoiesis of life, we have established the basis for the necessary links between and among singular segments of reality manifested in their various spheres. Returning to our concern with the possibility of an adequately founded declaration of the actual existence of this reality, we still need to find a mediating evidential link, a “prototype of experience.” To avoid the epistemological pitfalls of cognition of any type, be it empirical, eidetic, transcendental, etc., this evidential mediating instance would have to traverse all the realms of beingness without identifying with any and to pertain of necessity to each in its innermost being. More, it would have to rely on the interconnectedness of this innermost with the entire radiation of each beingness in existential exchange with the rest of beingness. And more, it would have to touch each junction of individualizing progress with its existential ontopoietic prerequisites and their entire network of past and future unfolding in beingness. I will now propose how the ontopoiesis of life may fulfill these demands in its traversing the levels of beingness throughout. I come back to Husserl, with whom I maintain an endless conversation. It is most noteworthy that in Erfahrung und Urteil and probably other places in subsequent writings, having outlined the entire course of the constitutive

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process of sensory experience down to the empiria, he brings forth as the ultimate foundation of the constitutive process not any ingredient of experience as such but what he calls the absolute belief.3 In my discussion of Husserl’s analytic treatment of this process, I argued that what he is really aiming at is not the lifeworld but life itself. However, his descent to this level – of belief – even if it were in life, does not sustain either certainty or ultimate founding. The nature of the world would still be intentional and so its ultimate status remains rationally unjustifiable. In my most recent essay, on ontopoiesis of truth, I argued that, in fact, there is a point in Husserl’s final resort to belief, but gave it an interpretation within the field of the ontopoiesis of life. It is instructive that Ortega y Gasset, in opposing Descartes’ dictum declaring the actuality of existence, “I think, therefore I am,” argued that thought cannot be the measure of existence, and argued for a unique experience of life. In my discussion of Ortega I have denied that there is such an experience for reasons similar to those for which I reject Husserl’s belief, for it does not yield a proof of well-foundedness and thus certainty. I have discoursed on the experience of the “thrill of life,” but as with the proposals of Husserl and Ortega that experience does not make manifest the necessity of life nor offer ground for a statement of its certainty. If these would flow from experience, it would have to be framed in such a way as to yield a unique kind of cognition from which necessity and certainty could be derived. Coming back to Husserl’s belief – now belief in life and not in the lifeworld – I will subject it to a new analysis that moves in that direction. While there may not be absolutely reliable experience of life or existence, through the ontopoietic system of becoming we may establish an instance of “cognition” that would fulfill the metaphysical demands for a statement of actual existence. 2. Existential Trust Not an experience and yet traversing our entire experiential network, “existential trust” binds in a special net of ties our entire experiential system, situates our living, changeable, constantly metamorphosing beingness in its existential conundrum as if securing its position as our very own. Like ideal, e.g., mathematical certitude, existential trust partakes of the modus of necessity in its entire system – the system of the individual unfolding life with its corollaries in the system of life as such terrestrial conditions and cosmic laws.

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Yet these systems are not rigid in their static modalities but caught in an open-ended becoming. The certitude of existential trust in founded in the already accomplished which projects with its inward laws and regulations toward what is to be expected to follow. The existential trust that is the groundwork reference point of our confidence in life is not an impromptu occurrence. Neither does it appear “in addition” within our field of experience, or appear as something surprising and questionable. On the contrary, it bears the stamp of necessity, unquestionable necessity. As such it is a web, a synthesizing moment of sedimentations involving the entire genetic line of the ontopoiesis of life as the outcome of the self-individualization of beingness in becoming, a synthesis that carries the stamp of necessity, ontopoietic necessity. It is within this existential web of the ontopoietic unfolding life that we will seek first the concatenations without hiatus between and among the entire spread of beingness through its multiple rationalities and then the cornerstones of the necessity of life’s becoming/unfolding within the ontopoietic manifestation of the Logos. Existential trust is the basic factor of life. It sustains life from its first stages of self-individualization in the least developed of beings. It belongs already to the simplest forms of awareness and self-awareness without which life could not unfold. Thus, it does not inhere to the level of experience. It precedes experience in the line of degrees of awareness, but then it takes experience into account. We may approximatively consider it an “existential awareness,” which focusing on a given singular beingness situates it within its existential orbit. From thence it draws its certitude. Existential trust ingrains the living self-aware individual into his world of life for it is embedded in the vast web/net of a significant ever changeable, intergenerative life that projects itself streamlike and yet constantly maintains what I would call an “existential profile” that projects ever anew its identity and sameness. This identity/sameness is not that of a rigid structural skeleton – it being neither entelechy, nor “essence,” nor “constitutive nature” – but one of a functional schema, a bundle of forces that springs forth with its own predetermined set of directions to carry out according to available conditions. Springing forth already informed as to its constructive virtualities (not potentialities, but energetic material), it flows on with these virtualities adjusting to available conditions yet self-empowered and self-directed as well as carrying within itself the design of its virtual unfolding: the “ontopoietic design” of beingness. In these intrinsic virtualities for self-individualization, directives and conditions for transformations and metamorphosis, the self-individualizing

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living being carries its own intrinsic necessity of unfolding; the necessity of being qua beingness-in-becoming. Cognitively, in observing this state of things we refer to its intellective eidetic aspect as well as to the transcendental subjective laws of cognitive constitution/objectification, but we grasp and follow its constructive course by a unique delving into a tertium quid that is subjacent, hidden, in play. CONCLUSION

We have succintly shown how the question of the metaphysical affirmation of the actual existence of the world involves the great philosophical questions and calls for their thorough reexamination. Navigating between the Scylla and Charybdis on which the projects of two of our great predecessors foundered, we sail within the vision of the all-encompassing ontopoiesis of me. We have reached this solution through neither eidetic nor transcendental constitution, but leave them both to the side by delving into the creative act of the human being, which actually extends through the entire run of the selfindividualizing process of life. With each step of the constructive progress of ontopoiesis, its significance with respect to the individualizing project as well as to the grand project of life is being ciphered. With the unfolding of the ciphering of the life sap in the fullness of the Human Condition there emerges the specifically human life significance. There a human being’s consciousness presents to the human being his/her own self as the product of an existential course of unfolding being in which the individual and his world are projected, with himself/herself as its center as if it were “given.” It is the manifested reality that takes on the appearance of “givenness.” Its core metaphysical certitude and necessity reside in the existential ontopoietic progress of becoming. N OT E S 1. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Beyond Ingarden’s Idealism/Realism Controversy with Husserl: The New Contextual Phase of Phenomenology”, in Ingardeniana, a Spectrum of Studies Establishing the Field of Research, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana IV (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976). 2. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Existence vindicated or the Hundred Real Dollars,” The Personalist, 1965 and “Eidos, Idea and Participation” Kantstudien, issue 52, 1960–61 3. cf. Anne-Teresa Tymieniecka

A group of the participants.

Krzyszto Zaboklicki giving the opening address at the Polish Academy of Science, Rome.

SECTION I F R A M I N G T H E O N TO P O I E T I C V I S I O N O F T H E WO R L D AND EXISTENCE

DA N I E L A V E R D U C C I

T H E H U M A N C R E AT I V E C O N D I T I O N B E T W E E N AU TO P O I E S I S A N D O N TO P O I E S I S I N T H E T H O U G H T O F A N NA - T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A

1. THE BEGINNINGS

The appearance of the first two volumes of the book series Analecta Husserliana, in 1971 and 1972 respectively, did not evoke particular sensation in the philosophical academy: it seemed that they simply sought to fulfill the need of numerous afficionados of the Husserlian method of philosophy to find a stable place for communication and discussion, since the historical Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung had been out of print for forty years. In reality, the outlook of the founder and editor, Anna-Teresa Tyminiecka, was much wider and more radical. In fact, in her mind, the recent history of phenomenology demonstrated a series of exigencies and opportunities that could not be left unaddressed, without dissipating and ending the new philosophical vitality that had matured. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s winning proposal was to not limit the book series to gathering the ideas of post-Husserlian phenomenologists, but to press beyond the theories, setting itself at the center of the experience that supported the phenomenological movement and from which the founder himself had drawn the propulsive energy to give life to a project that was not only of philosophia prima, but also of scientia universalis. As Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka expressed it: We may now try to pierce intuitively, philosophically par excellence, the maze of phenomenological doctrines, approaches, theories, textual analyses and interpretations back to Husserl’s own philosophical battle field. In this way we may question Husserl no longer as the proponent of a new approach but as a thinker fighting with perennial puzzles presented to us by the universe and man.1

The entire movement which had branched out from Husserl, including its founder in the complexity of its evolutionary process, was thus considered a living phenomenon in expansion to inquire into phenomenology in regard to its original propulsive energy and the best use of it. We may undertake the reflection of phenomenology upon itself, probing from within the phenomenological horizon of accomplishments into adequacy with which they come to grips with the evolving universe of cognition.2 3 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 3–20. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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The radical and original question that Tymieniecka finds herself facing, taking on the Husserlian inheritance, is whether one can proceed beyond the absoluteness of the constituent transcendental consciousness, even while conserving in it those absolutely necessary critical gains that had enabled classic phenomenological thought to unmask the disguises and astuteness of a reason,3 like that developed from modernity to our days, pervaded by pressures towards theoretical self-sufficiency and heedless of the drift gradually closer to nihilism.4 Having identified the two principal fulcrum-points for the absoluteness of the Husserlian transcendental consciousness, on the one hand, in assuming that corporeity is the zero-point (Nullpunkt) of the constitution of the worldof-life and, on the other hand, in considering lived experience exclusively in its regularity, Tymieniecka observes that there have been notable developments of the natural sciences from the era of Brentano and Husserl to today. They even led to the overturning of the first basic assertion of the transcendental constitution of the world-of-life, showing that conscious experience (das Bewusste) was rooted in the “corporeal-natural” experience (in dem “Leiblich-naturlichen”). Consciousness, in fact, possesses a peculiar modality of “being-body” (Verleibung), gradual and respectful of its autonomy, that manifests itself in the “conscious-corporeal” experience (das “Leiblich-bewusste”) where, through the lived experiences of the psychic processes in general (their succession, interweaving, motivation), it enters into contact with the entire compages of nature (Naturgefüge), in its turn understood as autonomous.5 That is: at the origin of the conscious experience there is no corporeity-limit, undecipherable for consciousness and thus to be considered a zero-point. Instead, it should be acknowledged that there also is a transcription in the conscious experience of the “corporeal” experience and that, in addition, through this original way-of-being, the consciousness can branch out into the sphere of nature. Indeed, if one truly wants to get to the bottom of the objective-or-lived conscious experience (Gegenständlichenoder-Erlebnisbewusste) phenomenologically, it is necessary to establish a genetic-physiological study and understand the progress of the results of natural sciences as an indispensable source of cognition, which philosophy cannot ignore: there is, in fact, a corporeal-conscious experience that precedes and sustains the constituting consciousness, together de-absolutizing it and placing it in an intimate relationship with the world-of-life.6

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For that matter, from its privileged observation point embracing the psycho-physical and spiritual aspects of man, phenomenological psychiatry in its most recent developments has confirmed that in certain cases of irregularity and pathology of the processes related to external perception, not even the noematic relationship, which according to classic phenomenology should encompass them genetically, remains unchanged. Instead, the noematic relationship itself is invested with alterations not reducible to the regularly constituting perception: in fact, the specific pathological transformation that breaks into the current field of consciousness regards the person’s way-of-living and is carried exclusively by individual corporeal lived experiences that by principle, as it has been seen, are excluded from the area of the constitution operated by the absolute transcendental consciousness, nor do they let themselves be integrated there. Similar results also flow from the studies of phenomenological psychiatry on the deconstruction of the field of consciousness and on the oniric-confusional states.7 Thus, observes Tymieniecka, so little does constituent transcendental consciousness manifest itself as absolute, that it rather finds profitable integration in the formative spontaneity (bildende Spontanität) of conscious living, which develops itself outside the system of constitution. This spontaneity, with the typical elementary formations of the collective imagination, proposes itself as the necessary system of reference (Bezugsystem) to the functions that individualize constituent consciousness, while the reciprocal breaking of one into the other of the two consciousness registers pushes phenomenological analysis again into the search for a further and more original talent/disposition of consciousness (Uranlage des Bewusstsein).8 In short, with a renewed phenomenological inquiry, that is, once again freed from the prejudices of natural and scientific cognition, algid constituent transcendental consciousness is also alive, or at least connected and compatible with life. From this phenomenologically gained discovery flows the philosophy of Tymieniecka: this thinker works on it, like an Archimedean point, to reform classic phenomenology and set it out to proceed beyond itself, towards the new phenomenology of life that she prepares herself to realize. In fact, it is not a matter of distancing herself from Husserl and his disciples, but of re-establishing contact with the vital foundation of a reflection that grasped principally the dynamic-relational aspects of consciouness, but then bridled them so rigidly as to lose sight of possible further developments.9 In pursuing such a revitalization of theory, Tymieniecka can find precursors among the classic phenomenologists of the realistic trend, both of the first generation, such as Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Hedwig

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Conrad-Martius, and of the second, such as Merleau-Ponty: however, none of them developed the intention to proceed beyond the essential givenness of the genesis constituting objectivity, in search of its inner workings as the locus whence eidos and fact simultaneously spring. That amounts to saying that not constitutive intentionality but the constructive advance of life which carries it may alone reveal to us the first principles of all things.10

3 . T H E O N TO P O I E T I C C R E AT I V I T Y I N T H E H U M A N C O N D I T I O N

In 1986, in volume XXI of Analecta Husserliana, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka published a Tractatus Brevis in which – perhaps on the lines of Spinoza’s first work, lost and then recovered, Tractatus de deo et de homine eiusque felicitates, then summarized in Tractatus Brevis (Korte Verhandeling) – she enunciates the first principles of a metaphysics of life, on an anthropological basis.11 This is a new phenomenology, following upon the preceding discovery of the vitality that innervates the capacity of constitution of the same precious Husserlian transcendental consciousness, therefore rendering it no longer absolute but also living. Such a philosophical outlook is centered on the human condition understood in the “cosmological”12 sense, that is, as that place of the relationships between human being and nature, that is the object of study of the human sciences. Here, it is shown that the livinghuman-being knows how to recognize, select and bring to realization the virtualities of his very being, managing creatively the functions and the psycho-physical automatisms, his and those of the environment surrounding him, human and animate as well as inanimate. According to Tymieniecka, that is, reaching the level of the human condition, life achieves a degree of individualization by which it becomes conscious of itself and unfolds as capacity of auto- and ethero-plasmation.13 It is in this new realm of the human condition, since the times of Montaigne grasped as man’s specific way of being14 and in the 20th century privileged also by the inquiry of Simone Weil,15 that consciousness has been able to settle itself, once its constitutive dimension was de-absolutized and recontextualized in the flow of the “natural” life, through the renewed consideration of the “corporeal conscious experience.” The vision that is opened by this position does not at all contemplate at its beginning the human being as demiurge, on the same level as the transcendental-structural conception of classic phenomenology. Rather, in it, [man] appears caught up in the turmoil of a generating progress, and thus as one of innumerable moments of the immensurable stream of life.16

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The human level of the vital flow, however, is not identified with one of the segments of the other reciprocally subordinated sequences: in fact, it rises from the tangled mass of the vital networks as the “vortex” in which all the networks of the various orders of life meet, their “knot,” “the vortex of the universal sense.” The man-source of classic phenomenology becomes here man-vortex, having been resituated within a wider ontological field of inquiry, that of life: philosophical vision bears at its junctures its own points of query.17

In order to describe more rigorously the new positioning she has reached, Tymieniecka uses geometrical terminology: the field of the human condition crosses the “phenomenology of life” perpendicularly, because it is proceeding in the description of the flow of natural life, understood as the evolutive genesis of ever more complex and individualized forms, that arrives at the phase in which the human condition of man configures itself. In fact, it is characterized by the presence of original, creative virtualities that, departing from themselves, that is, horizontally and on their own plane, open the vast reign constituted by the “projectuality” of the human being and emanating exclusively from the creative powers of the latter.18 There is an evident consonance of these “creative virtualities” precisely of the human condition and directed to produce the new, with the motive of “initiating,” central to the anthropology of Hannah Arendt.19 However it should be underlined that that which in Arendt represents the consequential development of happy intuitions, in Tymieniecka is corroborated also by rigorous phenomenological work. And it is in virtue of the work of phenomenological renewal carried ahead with determination in the World Phenomenological Institute that Tymieniecka has been able not only to grasp the most original dynamism of the human living being, that of creator, but also to lead it to conscious manifestation in its foundational power, subverting the traditional hierarchy of human types, because at this point: le poéte devient le créateur de l’homme et le philosophe le témoin.20

Opening itself to the outlook of the human condition as creator, in fact, consciousness, which in turn has discovered itself to be alive and vital, finds itself witnessing the very gush of life and together being involved in it. A new context, therefore, is delineated for philosophical inquiry: exorbitant both in respect to the ancient vision of a cosmos ordered by being, the only ultimate principle, present always and everywhere and persisting in any condition of stasis or flow; and in terms of the conception of the moderns, who draw the

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final principles of the existent (of-what-there-is) from the “constitutiveenvisioning” power of the human mind and its transcendental circuit of functioning. On the other hand, not even the entry into play of being and becoming together is able by now to exhaust the metaphysical question that has reached a degree of extreme profundity. In fact, the one who proposes it is not a living being among others, but is the living being who knows that the expansion of his life is the fruit of existential individualization and thus does not exhaust himself in the execution of anonymous automatisms, but intends to mould significantly his life by the symbolic, theoretical and practical productions, which he can and wants to give play. As Tymieniecka will explain: the creative function guided by its own telos, generates Imaginatio Creatrix in man, as the means, par excellence, of specific human freedom: that is, freedom to go beyond the framework of the life-world, the freedom of man to surpass himself.21

For this reason, man is the bearer of the most radical metaphysical exigency: because he needs to find the reasons for “beingness,” if he wants to orient his own creative acts in the sense of the positive realization of the virtualities in his possession. From one side, then, the human being with his creative activity is to be included, according to Tymieniecka, in the process of poiesis that is precisely of life, which, unfolding itself in the way of a progressive “constructivity,” confers, instant by instant, relative stability to that which exists. Every living existence that exercises its vital functions, in fact, operates the individualization and concretisation of life’s process of unfolding, introducing into it vectors of interiorization/exteriorization, succession/duration, advancement/regression. But, on the other hand, the evolutive progression of the types of individual living beings reaches the zenith of advancement in the phase of the human condition. In man the vectors of interiorization/exteriorization of life take on unique breadth and meaning, so much so that they allow him “to survey from within the without” and to raise the ultimate metaphysical question: what are the definitive ontopoietic factors of life’s individualizing progress? And what are the first elementary factors that preside over the establishment and the subsistence of life?22 Starting from the human condition, therefore, a new current of life grafts itself onto the flow of natural life, supplying it with unheard of potentialities, such as the power to know and decide about oneself. In fact, man, who knows how to exercise imaginative and symbolic activity, transfigures the whole reality cognitively: he can thus relate himself to it not in a deterministic way, but innovatively, animating the productive dynamic of life, biologically understood, with the ontopoietic waft of free creativity that appertains to him

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and that is regulated by the principle of being: this is at the origin of the scale of existential formation and of the criteria of our mind. It is on the strength of such ontological calibre that human poiesis results existentially constructive: it allows man’s creative acts to confer on his creations that indispensable character of humanly adequate “objective” form, that alone can maintain itself in the course of becoming of individual subjects, who, living, continually become, precisely, that which they are no longer. Thus Tymieniecka concludes: I call it [the becoming of life], going back to Aristotle’s Poetics a “poietic” process: onto-poietic. In brief, the self-individualization of life is an ontopoietic process.23

Life, therefore, incessantly produces ever more individualized forms in virtue of a poiesis that is in conformity with being. But of this vital-natural process, only starting from the freely creative human condition, can one recognize the construction power, because exclusively on the human level it posits the exigency to orient towards being the productive virtualities that can also lead to reductive and even nihilistic outcomes. Thus our authoress expresses herself in this regard: The creative act … emerges within the human-being-in-conflict, in man rebelling against the interpretation of the Real that the present phase of the constituted world gives us.24

In addition: Thus, man’s elementary condition – the same one which Husserl and Ingarden have attempted in vain to break through to, by stretching the expanse of his intentional bonds as well as by having recourse to pre-reduced scientific data – appears to be one of blind nature’s elements, and yet at the same time, this element shows itself to have virtualities for individualization at the vital level and, what is more, for a specifically human individualization. These latter virtualities we could label the “subliminal spontaneity”.25

4 . T H E H U M A N C R E AT I V E AC T: F RO M AU TO P O I E S I S TO O N TO P O I E S I S

Strangely, in the very same years of the 1970s when Tymieniecka moved along the new phase of phenomenology, developing her philosophy of life, two Chilean neurophysiologists, Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, were exploring an analogous reflective dynamic. In 1973, in fact, they wrote in an interesting essay of elevated heuristic value for philosophy as well, that the entire organization of each individual living being could be traced, in its genesis as much as in its development, to a unique procedure, designated, with a term of their invention, as “autopoiesis.” This discovery met the acutely felt need, especially in biology, to free the individual from

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subordination to the species, the society or humanity: from now on, in fact, each living system was considered the only depository and beneficiary of the autoproductive dynamism that presides over its development, conserving its identity homeostatically, even in the variation of external circumstances. In addition, since the knowledge of the specific “autopoiesis” of a living being enabled forseeing with a high degree of certainty its response to environmental challenges, each autopoietic unit also had multiple opportunities to defend/improve life. 26 In the 1990s Varela described the autopoietic dynamics of the living being as the necessary and sufficient base for interpreting and bringing to adequate realizational accomplishment the behaviours of the living human being. In fact, in the West, he is restless and far from interior peace precisely because, still ensnared in the entanglements of intellectualisms and philosophical moralisms of long ago ages, he pines away in the search for know-what, pursuing intentional cognition or rational judgements that he holds to be indispensable for ethical conduct. He could instead trust himself to his own autopoietic dynamics and favor behaviours that, holding to the immediacy of the correlation between perception and action, exhibited by know how or by savoir faire, are “spontaneously” adequate to the situation. Analysis of experience demonstrates, for that matter, that most of our life “we operate in some type of immediacy of a given situation,” that is we do not send cognitive information along the reflective-deliberative channel, but we use it directly in “enactive” sense: we put-it-in-action without reflecting, trusting ourselves to the sensorimotor correspondence that each living system inasmuch as it is autopoietic implies and that assures also the best homeostatic relationship with environmental circumstances. For this reason Varela advises us to dedicate ourselves to perfect that natural ethical ability that has been cultivated for centuries by Eastern wisdom and especially Buddhism, abandoning the classic phenomenological philosophy of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty which, together with the psychoanalytic schools, has failed to attain the goal of intercepting experience, the goal for which it was initiated.27 What emerges from comparison of Varela’s and Tymieniecka’s reflective itineraries is the similarity of their paths and yet the differences of their outcomes. Certainly a difficulty in communication blocked placement of biological autopoiesis, theorized by both, into the richer process of ontopoietic individualizing production that manifests itself on the level of the human condition as, instead, only Tymieniecka had observed. In fact, according to Varela as well, a scientific-philosophical elucidation of life is

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needed to avoid its reduction to matter: and, above all, he himself was not able to avoid turning to an ontopoietic level, even without theorizing it, when he braved the territory of ethics. Proposing that Western man reduces knowwhat behaviour to the advantage of know how/savoir faire, he had to proceed argumentatively: he adopted some reasons and turned to the reflection of his listeners, as if, at least in this case, he did not want to settle for the immediate autopoietic enaction, or he felt it was inadequate.28 Once again, a confirmation of the accuracy of Max Scheler’s observation about the insufficiency of every position of thought that seeks to reduce the living human being to mere biological life: in fact, already only to propose such a hypothesis, one must consider us as carriers of something like a “knowledge about the object” and, thus, located on a higher and richer level than the one where the impulse-reaction dynamics takes place, with which plants and animals respond adequately and typically to environmental impulses.29 Tymieniecka also considers, from her point of view, the hypothesis of human arrangement on natural life. In fact, taking up a position on the human condition in its givenness, seeking the unity, the interconnectedness and the harmony of the surrounding all, from the primordial to the divine, rather than giving play theoretically and practically to the virtualities of the creative imagination, is certainly one of the pursuable styles of life and seems to promise the human being an ultimate self-satisfaction and an equilibrium that defends him from involvement with the menacing pulsation of life: man feels himself a weak, vain and cowardly creature and if “he needs fictitious universes it is to drown the gist of life there.” But limiting oneself to a similar stabilization means impeding participation in what Tymieniecka calls “the unique GLORY of life,” that is, in the glowing gush of the incessant formative vital productivity, using the speculative and symbolic instruments with which only man is gifted, not to live with greater intensity that is allowed only to him, but to build defenses and protections from life, just as silkworms, butterflies and mollusks do. For like a silkworm he [the human being] spins around himself an incomparably complex cocoon, within which he is caught immobilized, enclosed, a butterfly in his chrysalis, a pearl in its shell. Not enlightened by exposure to the vast span of rays of the sun, but blinded by his own anguish, incapacities, fear of life, nostalgia – unfitness to delve into the gushing stream of existence.30

On the other hand, paradoxically, even while man stays on this evasive and defensive path, the act of life occurs and each time draws attention to itself with a “thrill,” as happens when one fears an incalculable risk.31 Why not then push the human being to acknowledge that, even if he uses his energies to

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preserve himself from life, he is already inside it, he is a living being and he represents that original modality of life that with heroic fervor knows how to forge ever new channels for survival, to the point of exhausting all his strengths, in the noble task of creating a nest on the battlefield of life? Why not invite him to seek himself not in the strategies he has formed (ideals, dreams, desires for fulfilment) but in the game of existence in which he is caught? From that turbine within which your hand follows your eyes, your leg follows your desire to move: all your vital vibrations fall into an operational pattern and canvass a stupendously rich and cogent fabric: you open your eyelids and a universe surrounds you.32

The level of regional ontologies is insufficient for describing the synthetic point we have reached, because now we have nothing to do with a “constituted” being, foreseeable noematic pole of a similarly foreseeable noematic intentionality. The autopoietic circularity of biological life is equally inadequate. The human condition offers us the access key to being in its living “weft,” which is continually becoming, producing ever more complex and diversified forms, run through with thrills. Upon this, ontological regionalization places representational frameworks, functional for the human being’s mere defensive survival, until the latter becomes aware of the individual form of life that he is, and accepts it responsibly, ceding to the “EKSTASIS OF THE ULTIMATE SURRENDER,” to the fact that he is a living being-creator. Man, in fact, not only follows the spontaneous or already laid-out frameworks of universal life, but invents and produces new ones. Incessantly, he creates life-devices, products of work, works of art, exalting and transfiguring the thrill of existence into the throb of creation. He is submersed in the influx of substances, ideas and values, but suspending the processuality of instinctive reaction by “truce, for a while,” turns everything to his advantage of being “a distinctive, self-enclosed beingness with the bastion of assumed stability within [himself].” In this way the intimate sense of the creative activity of man reveals itself in transforming the struggle of life into an expression of human existence: Human creation ties the final knot of the universal communion of everything-there-is-alive; the axis around which the life and the social world evolve is incarnated in the maxim: everyone his due!33

Therefore, life releases an evolutive and problematic dynamics that finds in the human condition not only voice and expression, but also and above all, free creative development, that is, uncommon and unforeseeable progress: this is the innovative fact of Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life,

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which in the first three volumes of her systematic exposition, delineates the nexuses between logos and life, starting from the proposition by which, in respect to all the other givennesses, that of man within his world is not simply equatable to a “process-like nature,” but expresses a specific type of “CONSTRUCTIVISM.”34 Exploration of the area of givenness had already been addressed by classic phenomenology, with a monumental contribution to knowledge of the modalities through which it constitutes itself, in respect to transcendental subjectivity. This study culminated in Husserl’s unsurpassable attempt “to bring together” the constitution of “reality,” composing the theory of objectivity and of logic – ontology – with that of consciousness/cognition or of the constituent organization of experience. However, to find the key to the vast, apparently dispersed even though interconnected, macrocosm of the human universe that flows, we cannot count on an ever more precise scrutiny of the cognitive constructivism of the constitution, nor on the progressive emergence of the rational nuclei of the “ontic” organizations of objectivity. If we presume that “reality” in its “womb” corresponds to a jigsaw puzzle, the parts of which we can discover separately, with the certainty that they will finally go to their place, then, observes Tymieniecka, we also, like classic phenomenologists will lose the game of reconstruction that engages the speculative mind without rest. Instead, it is necessary to operate a radical conversion of the phenomenological perspective35 and strike at the heart of “givenness-in-becoming,” aiming at the point where “starting from the virtual powers,” the differentiation of everything begins. The constructivism that strays from human givenness, in fact, does not reduce itself to how much it develops itself during life, nor does the human being operate only as “meaning-bestowing-agent” and produce his world-of-life, as Husserl proposed. Long before man begins to “create according to being” (=ontopoiesis) because: … his [man’s] very life in itself is the effect of his self-individualization in existence through inventive self-interpretation of his most intimate moves of life.36

This natural human auto-constructivism through invention and creativity, on the other hand, does not at all close the possibilities of life, as, according to Tymieniecka, Scheler held; rather, it expands them to worlds of possible life.37 In fact, it is in the creative act, which renders the human being “human,” that the differential factors of the macrocosm of life distinguish themselves: it thus represents the privileged access route for an inquiry that wants to reach the sources of life, the place where the universal logos differentiates itself,38 once

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the origin of forms and order and the unity of consciousness and praxis are verified within the human being. Cognition and the intentional network of its most elevated manifestations cannot lead us to discover the origin of the order that man prescribes to the world-of-life and his social world, if they are not integrated with the essential modalities with which the human being delineates the “enactment” of the course of life and “enacts” it. The guiding factor of the progress of life lies, in fact, in its enactment: by this “enaction” also cognition is projected and, actually, the principles of the same cognitive emersion and of its nature are functionalized in its performance. In the reality of experience, for that matter, there is no solution of continuity between the two operative series and while he determines the course of his life, formulating and enacting reactions, deliberations, selections, choices, imaginative inventions, planning, etc., the human individual realizes his auto-interpretation-in-existence, mixing the use of the apparatus of enactment and that of cognition, for the one goal of accomplishing his essential work: establishing in life a meaning, “in the essential work of life–meaning establishment.” 39 Thus it is revealed that man’s creative act is the prototype of the action capable of setting off the progress of life: as in a crucial device, the enactment of life roots itself there as much as the cognitive function of the human being and the entire span of man’s questioning emerges in its full extent with a pristine appearance in which all the lines of life’s assumed progress gather in order to receive their significance. 40

Therefore, if the first two volumes of the treatise Logos and Life are laid out in three tableaux of one trytych, rather than according to a framework of temporal continuity and succession which we are more accustomed to reading and knowing, this depends on the fact that they must bring to manifestation the workings of the creative condition of man.41 in the course of which “numerous significant threads” hold together and interconnect the themes, entreaties, analytic complexes and levels. The problem that is thus posed, of exhibiting philosophically, and thus according to a unitary line, different spheres of life, is resolved according to an artistic logic that inspires the composition of the medieval retables. In the nativity scenes they often represent, in fact, the central figure of the baby in the manger can function best, transmitting both the sense of a historical situation and a supernatural message, only in virtue of the synergy that develops through the presence, on the one side, of the scene of the shepherds who go towards Bethlehem to make their discovery, and on the other side, of that of the Magi who have come from the East to pay homage. In the same way, Tymieniecka wants to

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place the greatest emphasis on that which reality itself, delineating itself in its sense, puts forward. In fact, the exposition on a single figurative plane, avoiding the introduction of forced connections or dubious unifying speculative networks,42 also confers on the human faculties a new order, by which the supreme role passes from the intellect to the creative imagination (Imaginatio Creatrix), and the primacy of sensible perception passes to the “will.”43 The reach of the inquiry that starts out from here is not limited thus to the ray of man’s cognitive-constituent powers or of his apparatuses of functioning and action, but emanating from the existential self-individualization of the human creative act, extends to the multiple forms of rationality through which “manthe-creator” institutes his authentic sphere of “existence” and his specific “beingness” in the precisely human expression “significance” of life.44 5 . T H E C R E AT I V E H U M A N C O N D I T I O N I N I T S M O S T R E C E N T D E V E L O P M E N T S : TOWA R D S M E TAO N TO P O I E S I S

In the year 2000, marking the passage of both a century and a millennium, there also appeared volume IV of the Logos and Life series. In over 600 pages, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka delineates a philosophical outlook in which logos and life, which manifest themselves by now as inter-penetrated, in the alternation between “impetus” and “equipoise,” put into action the “life-strategies of reason.”45 The work thus qualifies as a metaphysic, that in the identification of a single and total logos describes “the ultimate vision of things.” And yet here neither Heraclitus nor the Stoics nor the “heroism of the mind” of Husserl46 are repeated, because the approach is no longer merely speculative: the logos is not postulated in relation to the innumerable questions that the world, the cosmos, the enigmatic nature of the human being propose, as an answer that hides all concrete answers, jumping on the wings of the human mind as it flies to its limit.

Rather, the speculative gaze of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka expresses, step after step, conjectures about the way that led us to the logos’ being within the gigantic framework of the dynamic reality, where it is placed. (= our mode of “speculation” is to conjecture step by step what led to the logos’ being posited within the gigantic scheme of dynamic reality). After the expositions of the first three books of the treatise Logos and Life, we no longer need search for logos beyond life, but we are able to grasp in the experience of our own conjecturing the upwelling of “a logoic instance”

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that anticipates the logoic destination of the real, as a response to our conjectures. (In the conjecture itself is contained an essential element of the foothold of its surging, a logoic instance, as well as anticipation of an answer point of logoic destination).47 The ontopoeitic “firstness” of life thus emerges in its metaphysical heft, in the ways of human functional involvement in the sphere of life. “Givenness” remains the direct objective of our knowing/constituting, but it now manifests itself likewise as “the inward givenness of the life progress common to all living beings as such”: therefore it is only in a direct, immediate insight into the constructivism of life and its coincidence with our own creative constructivism that we may expect to disentangle and grasp life’s patterns.48

More precisely: the investigative intention of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka is turned to grasping the logos first in its constructive impetus and then in the unfolding of its vehicle, the auto-individuation of life, that receives the impact of the impetus as the measure of a constructive equilibrium.49 At the conclusion of the exposition of Book IV of Logos and Life, logos shows itself in life and acts there as “choragus”: it does not imitate, it brings with itself its models, improvises each figure in the dance, its rhythm and tempo, guides the dance and announces it. Here “our transcendental, that is, human logos of interrogation” reaches the limit: we are surrounded by the spectacle and by its mirror, participating in both and other infinite perspectives. Thus the volume closes: This meta-ontopoietic marveling at the enigmas of the Logos, answer to All, might call for a still different key in which to unravel its mysteries.50

University of Macerata Translated by Sheila Beatty N OT E S 1 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “From the Editor,” in Analecta Husserliana. The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, vol. I (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1971), p. vi. 2 Ibid., pp. vi–vii. 3 Cfr.: Id., “La condizione umana all’interno dell’unità-di-tutto-ciò-che-è-vivente” (Ital. trans. by A. Ales Bello), in Dialogo di Filosofia, n. 11, (Rome: Herder Università Lateranense, 1994), p. 442. 4 Cfr.: Marlies Kronegger, “Les Passions de I’Âme et l’Ontopoeisie de la Vie. L’Eveil de la Vie,” in Phenomenological Inquiry, 21 (1997), p. 15: “Tymieniecka ignore ce triste substitut que le modernists ont inventé pour couvrir leur stérilité: la théorie.”

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5 Of note is the importance in the difference in terminology that separates Tymieniecka from Husserl in treating the topic of “corporeity.” Husserl, in fact, in both Ideen II and III, and in Méditations Cartésiennes, formalizes the phenomenological use of the noun Leib (=own-livingbody), distinguishing it from the Körper of the physical sciences. Tymieniecka instead holds that she can press deeper in the description of the experience of corporeity and uses the corporeal conscious lived experience as a means for the experience of the body. 6 Tymieniecka, “Die Phänomenologische Selstbesinnung” (I), in Analecta Husserliana, I, op. cit. pp. 2–3. 7 Tymieniecka refers to the following texts: H. Azima, Problèmes biophysique de la conscience, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1954; H. Ey, La Conscience, P.U.F., Paris, 1963; G. Lanteri-Laura, Les probèmes de I’inconscient et la phénoménologique in H. Azima, Problémes biophysique de la conscience, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1954; and CI. Blanc, Conscience et inconscient dans la pensée neurobiologique actuelle, in: L’inconscient, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1966. In the phenomenological vein of psychiatry one can refer to E.W. Straus, Phenomenological Psychology (partial English translation by E. Eng) (New York: Basic Books, 1966); M. Rossi Monti, Psichiatria e Fenomenologia, Loescher, Torino, 1978. In addition: E. Eng, “Constitution and Intentionality in Psychosis,” in Analecta Husserliana, III (1974), pp. 279–289; B. Callieri, “The Experience of Sexual ‘Liebe’ in the Toxicomaniac. Phenomenological Premises,” in Analecta Husserliana, XVI (1983), pp. 211–216. Today one could perhaps use the documentation from neuroscience. Some texts of this kind, just out in Italy, confirm the importance of the corporeal dimension for the development of conscious thought: G. M. Edelman, G. Tononi, A universe of consciousness: how matter becomes imagination, Basic Books, New York, 2000 and A. Damasio, The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1999. Cfr. also: J. Pigeaud, La maladie de l’âme, Paris, 1981; H. Gardner, The Mind’s New Science, Basic Books, New York, 1985; J. Kristeva, Les nouvelles maladies de l’âme, Fayard, Paris, 1993; D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books, New York, 1995. 8 Tymieniecka, “Die Phänomenologische Selstbesinnung,” op. cit., pp. 4–7, § I. Das Selbstgegebene. 9 On the occasion of the First World Congress of Phenomenology, held in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) from October 26 through November 1, 1988, Tymieniecka, among the protagonists of the Husserlian celebration, assesses the activity of the World Phenomenology Institute 50 years after the death of Husserl, underlining the character of continuity, but also of profound innovation, of the phenomenological thought she promoted in respect to the Husserlian legacy. Cfr.: Id., “World-Wide Phenomenology Fulfilling Husserl’s Project: An Introduction,” in Analecta Husserliana, “Phenomenology in the World Fifty Years after the Death of Edmund Husserl,” Book I, “The Turning Point of the New Phenomenological Era. Husserl Research – Drawing upon the Full Extent of His Development,” XXXIV (1991), pp. xi–xix; Id., “Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of Reason: from Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition,” ibid., pp. 3–15. Contextually, R. Wise and J. C. Couceiro Bueno comment on the state of phenomenology of Husserlian heritage in the contribution: “Phenomenology in the World Fifty Years after the Death of Edmund Husserl: A Report,” ibid., pp. xxi–xxxiv. 10 A.-T. Tymieniecka, “Tractatus Brevis. First Principles of the Metaphysics of Life Charting the Human Condition: Man’s Creative Act and the Origin of Rationalities,” in Analecta Husserliana, XXI (1986), p. 3.

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Ibid., pp. 1–73. Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason,” Book 1, Analecta Husserliana, XXIV (1988), p. 20. 13 In the series of Analecta Husserliana the volumes that are particularly dedicated to the topic of the “human condition” are: XIV (1981), The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition and XVII (1984), Phenomenology of Life and of Human Condition, in a Dialogue between Occidental and Chinese Philosophies. The particular angle from which Tymieniecka grasps the human condition should be underlined: the latter depends rigorously on the recovery of the “natural corporeal lived experience” by consciousness, and thus expresses above all the very close and inseparable nexus that in man unites consciousness to the psycho-physical functions and automatisms of the body. The human condition represents, in the reflection of Tymieniecka, the most advanced level of the phenomenology of life and should not be identified by referring to the elements of the cosmology of the ancients, as does Arendt, following Heidegger, when she says: “The earth is the true quintessence of the human condition, and terrestrial nature, for as much as we know, is the only one in the universe that can provide human being with a habitat to move and breathe in without strain and without artifice.” (Arendt, The Human Condition, The University of Chicago, U.S.A., 1958. Ital. trans. by S. Finzi, Vita activa. La condizione umana, Bompiani, Milan, 1998, p. 2. Cfr. also the introduction by A. Dal Lago, La città perduta: p. xxv and note (62) of p. xxxii). 14 Cfr.: L. Grünberg, “From Phenomenology to an Axio-Centric Ontology of the Human Condition,” in Analecta Husserliana, XXI (1996), p. 249. 15 Cfr: S. Weil, Cahiers, I, Plon, Paris, 1970. Here the writer, rather than inquiring theoretically into the human condition, prefers describing the task that she sees before the men of her time. She asks for an inventory or a critique of our civilization but does not know what it means. She will try to clarify precisely the trap that has made man the slave of his own creations. How has unconsciousness filtered into methodical thought and action. Evasion in wild living is a lazy solution. Find the original pact between the spirit and the world through the civilization itself in which we live. 16 Tymieniecka, “Tractatus Brevis,” op. cit., p. 10. 17 Ibid., p. 11. The motive of the “vortex” immediately recalls that species of Wirbeltheorie that Scheler articulates in a few lines of Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (Gesammelte Werke, 7, p. 240 in order to attempt to overcome the Husserlian egological solipsism, which to Scheler’s mind is incapable of explaining the reality of the other in general (ibid., pp. 221–222). In addition, the motif “vortex” connects to a long and rich tradition, being a topos common to both the more recent personalism (Maine de Biran, Renouvier, Blondel, Mounier) and ancient physics (Anassagore, Democritus, Epicurus) and to modern metaphysics (Descartes, Principia philosophiae). Teilhard de Chardin as well, in his 1925 essay L’hominisation, in explaining the rise of the human level of evolution, uses the image of the vortex as a geometric analogy of the generation of the solid figure of the cone by the rotation of a right-angled triangle around a cathetus. Cfr.: D. Verducci, “Il percorso dell’analisi dell’ intersoggettività in Max Scheler,” in: Figure dell’intersoggettività, ed. by G. Ferretti, Quaderni di ricerca e didattica del Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Umane dell’Università di Macerata, X (1994), pp. 27–46. 18 Tymieniecka, “Tractatus Brevis,” op. cit., pp. vii–viii. 19 Cfr.: Arendt, The Human Condition, op. cit. Here she says about men that since they are initium, newcomers and initiators thanks to birth, they take initiative, are ready for action. 20 Tymieniecka, Eros et Logos. Esquisse de phénoménologie de l’intériorité créatrice, illustrée par le textes poétiques de Paul Valéry (Louvain, Paris: Nauwelaerts, 1972), p. 112. 12

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Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experiences and the Critique of Reason,” op. cit., pp. 25–26. Id., Logos and Life: the Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Onto-poiesis of Culture, Book 3, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1990, pp. 9–10. The text also appears as “Tractatus Brevis” in Analecta Husserliana, XXVIII (1990). 23 M. Kronegger and A.-T. Tymieniecka (eds.), “Life. The Human Quest for an Ideal,” in Analecta Husserliana, XLIX (1996), p. 15. Here is how the text sounds: “ ‘Onto-’ refers here to the ‘firstness’ of this process with respect to the scale of existential formation. Before this schema’s articulations there is no beingness that we may ascertain with the criteria of our minds – which are attuned precisely to this and no other reality. ‘Onto-’ here also means the indispensable and universal character of whatever there could be in the ‘objective’ form proper to human reality in the sense of the classical metaphysics of ‘onto-’ logos, that is, ontology. However, and this is of crucial significance for the understanding of our vision, this indispensable essential factor of all beingness does not concern beingness in its finished, formed, established or stabilized state; it is the intrinsic factor of the constructive process of individual becoming. The individual remains always in the process of becoming. It acquires form and transforms it. ‘Becoming’ is ‘becoming something that is not yet.’ Becoming is a process in its own advance, in qualification.” 24 Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason,” op. cit., p. 26. 25 Ibid., p. 28. 26 Cfr.: H.R. Maturana F.J. Varela, Autopoiesis and cognition. The realization of living, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1980. 27 F.J. Varela, Un know-how per l’etica, Ital. trans. by M. Mondini and A. de Lachenal, Laterza, Bari, 1992, pp. 11–12. For these observations, the author refers to the volume written in collaboration with H.R. Maturana, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: New Science Library/Shambhala, 1992. The Italian translation, L’albero della conoscenza, Garzanti, Milano, 1987, was done from a previous edition. 28 Cfr.: F. Varela, J-P. Dupuis, “Understanding Origins: an Introduction,” in Understanding Origins (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992). Cited by A.-T. Tymieniecka, “Origin of Life and the New Critique of Reason. The Primogenital Generative Matrix,” in Analecta Husserliana, LXVI (2000), p. 4. 29 Cfr.: M. Scheler, Erkenntnis und Arbeit, in: Gesammelte Werke 8, 1980, pp. 228–229. 30 Tymieniecka, “Tractatus Brevis,” op. cit., p. 11. 31 Ibid., p. 12. 32 Ibid., p. 13. 33 Ibid., p. 17. 34 The system of thought of Tymieniecka, in its organic exposition, occupies for now three volumes of Analecta Husserliana: Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason,” Book 1, Analecta Husserliana, XXIV (1988); Id., “Logos and Life: The Three Movements of the Soul,” Book 2, Analecta Husserliana, XXV (1988); Id., “Logos and Life: The Passions of Soul and the Elements in the Onto-Poiesis of Culture,” Book 3, Analecta Husserliana, XXVIII (1990). A new work of notable size has been completed and published in 2000. 35 Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason,” cit., p. 3. 36 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 37 Ibid., pp. 5–6. We permit ourselves to dissent from Tymieniecka’s interpretation of Scheler, which perhaps depends on an inexact reception of the Schelerian text Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Gesammelte Werke, 9, 1975) which also in Italy has been misunderstood. A 22

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particular source of misunderstanding is the diagram illustrating the man-environment relationship, graphically representing the human capacity of Weltoffenheit, absent in animals. In fact, while the animal-environment relationship is defined by a closed reciprocity: A  E, for the man-world relationship there is an open reciprocity: M  W   . Weltoffenheit is not thus only “openness-to-the-world” as R. Padellaro and M. T. Pansera understand, in their translations (respectively: Fabbri, Milano, 1970 and Armando, Roma, 1997); nor is it enough to add the meaning of “openness-in-the-world” as G. Cusinato rightly does (in: Katharsis. La morte dell’ego e il divino come apertura al mondo nella prospettiva di Max Scheler; ESI, Salerno, 1999, note 5 of p. 23), pointing out the second movement of reciprocity, by which, in the Selbstgegebenheit, the world also opens to the person. It is still necessary to explain the meaning of the arrows that branch off from the world in succession, and thus, a third meaning of Weltoffenheit, should be introduced, beyond the relationship of reciprocity: that of further “openness-of-the-world,” this time on the part of man, who, exercising ideation, continually produces new “visions-of-the-world.” 38 Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason,” cit., p. 6. 39 Also R. Eucken exhorted his contemporaries to struggle for the goal of giving meaning of life, cfr.: R. Eucken, Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, Leipzig, 1899, but his appeal remained almost entirely ignored. Only Max Scheler, his student in Jena, declared that he drew from that work the idea for his 1899 essay, Arbeit und Ethik (Gesammelte Werke 1, “Frühe Schriften,” 1971, pp. 161–197; Ital. trans. by D. Verducci, Lavoro ed Etica. Saggio di Filosofia Pratica, Città Nuova Editrice, Roma 1997), from whence his reflection on work begins. 40 Id., “Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason,” op. cit., p. 7. 41 Ibid., p. 8. 42 Ibid., p. 9. 43 Id., “Logos and Life: The Three Movements of the Soul,” op. cit., p. xvii. 44 Ibid. 45 Id., Logos and Life. Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. viii–xxxvii, 1–684. 46 Ibid., p xxxiii and p. xxix. 47 Ibid., p. xxxiv. 48 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 49 Ibid., p. 6. 50 Ibid., p. 664.

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E T H I C A L R E M A R K S A RO U N D T H E S P E C I F I C A L LY HUMAN EXISTENCE IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE

Aroused by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s philosophy concerning the phenomenological interpretation process, we will proceed here to profile the relevance of ethics regarding the opportunities for “self-cognition,” “self-explication,” and “self-understanding” that man has in the horizon of inscribing the human in the life-world. In his inner depths, in his beingness, and also in the context of his relations with Nature and the Cosmos and with others – individuals and persons, the “other selves,” the “basic levels” of self-explication or self-interpretation through which part of the meaningful web of existence is brought into light – man appears to be striving to disclose the human. It is the greatest attempt for man to try to instill himself in a meaningful design of existence, within the complex play of potentialization-actualization, through “sameness as well as distinctiveness” with respect to everything–there–is–alive. The author of this Phenomenology of Life develops ample philosophical discourse embracing phenomenological hermeneutics, which permits her to track out existence on the most profound levels. We enjoy an original vision, enriched by a variety of determinants coming from the “poietical” area – especially from literature – which proves much more enlightening in the effort to understand the “human becoming.” According to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s conception of self-explication and self-interpretation assuming the form of “reconstruction” in terms of a phenomenological approach, we have to acknowledge the value of the human through the culminating phase of man’s endeavor to exhibit himself in his own progressive development in the world: namely, creativity. For us, creativity is the peculiar sign which brings into light the uniqueness of the human condition to ascend into the power of a continuous potentializationactualization, introducing him (the human) into the universe. At the same time, this creativity fulfills the virtue of revealing a part of the ultimate reality in the whole of the experience of life. Creativity interests us as a way to differentiate the human in the given world, as a route of forming the meaningful web of man’s existence: the “creative self” is able to grasp his becoming within the life-world, and to

21 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 21–40. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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decipher his essential modus of interpretation, too, being in communication with the whole world-context. Focusing on the significance of ethical reference – as the most complex and the highest dimension in which the human is revealed, even in the perspective of creativity – we will try to synthesize some values and directory lines suggested by the Phenomenology of Life elaborated by Tymieniecka. A real ethics evolves from here; it strengthens the theoretical foundation and increases the functioning of the phenomenological attempt, disclosing the profound ethical meanings of the “human condition” in the orbit of creativity in the “unity–of–everything–there–is–alive.” More precisely, the nucleus of our present attempt consists in the following concepts: the human, creativity, and the moral personality as selfcreator – key concepts in adequately tackling man’s singularity in the world. In our vision, there is an ethics through which the hermeneutic approach discloses in a better way the meaning of “human existence” at the highest level: as “self-creation.” Of essential value, the human represents all that confers remarkable individuality to man – all that ennobles man. It is of complexly defining value and merit for man to be aware of and to live, effectively, at the spiritual potentiality implanted in him. We relate this concept with the ancient Greek àreté (␣␳⑀␶␩) – man’s merit or excellency, an intrinsic value transfigured after the transcendental model within the work of humanization, the ability to fulfill the essential function for which man exists. This opens up to us an important area of values and principles guiding the meaning of “human well being” in the life-world. In fact, major categories have been posited for the fulfillment and flourishing of man: wisdom and temperance, love and communion, a sense of duty and justice, pleasure and happiness; simplicity and the rule of moderation, the norm of good reason, the Golden Rule, the Divine Commands, the principle of “life in harmony with nature” – a principle of Stoicism and, no less, Environmental Ethics – and, finally, the Categorical Imperative – “respect for persons,” and for life in general.9 All of these values and principles count, to the highest degree, toward the enlightening and understanding of the “human being” as a noble character imbued with dignity and freedom – as “potentialization-actualization” in the “T state,” according to Stéphane Lupasco;11 in fact, as a unique being able to act toward “self-creation.” The synthesis of this axiological-normative approach guides us to the plenary “human existence,” to the granting and embracing of the “meaning of life,” to that which we’ve called “human excellency.”4 In our vision, this

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concept designs the practical ideal for the development of personality, an ideal “which establishes a certain unfolding of man’s action; the man being interested not only about his material, but also about his spiritual welfare.”5 The human – as a key to “character” (in a plenary sense) – includes a fundamental series of values: “order, tranquillity, wisdom, love, goodness, justice, fairness, discipline, spirit of cooperation and solidarity, trust in the strength of man to transform the existence into Good, into light, into creation, a continuous victory over the evil, over the brutality, over the instinct of pulverization or destruction.”6 In discussion there is the “human way,” which engages in the infinite endeavor of man to regenerate through “equilibrium, measure, decency, truth and simplicity, privilege of reason and moderation, authority for the general utility, thirst of knowledge, appreciation of the culture, aspiration toward the existence of Beauty, a kind of inventive heroism;”7 and finally through the will to instill man’s virtue of beingness in the world not merely like any other creature, but like a little creator, following the supreme example of the Divine Creator. As ideal, the human settles into the life of the “Logos-harmony.” This activates a “life in harmony,” of man within himself and of man relating with everything–there–is–alive. Certainly, the activation of the human presupposes any number of trials, of restlessnesses, of tensions, stumbles, dangers, sufferings, failures, defeats; but, above anything, it presupposes a recovery into optimism, into the positive face of the conception of life – avoidance of evil’s temptations or exploitation of evil’s potential to transform itself into Good – for the optimization and protection of life. We think this is so because the activation of the human is authentically a factor of challenge, of maintenance, of entrenchment and of increase of the creativity that man is capable of. Relating the concept of the human with the aforementioned concept of àreté, the former is shown to be the genre’s very own treasure; it comprises man’s art-of-beingness. We insist on this notion considering its ethical meaning especially. Thus, we could call the “human” or “royal” man – the man of moral sovereignty – the “best” possible; in other words, he whom the Ancient Greeks used to call äristos (␣␳␫␴␶␱␵), remembering the most complete learning promoted by Socrates and Plato, that is the learning (␮␣␪␩␮␣) of order and harmony (␶␣␰␫␵ ␬␣␫ ␬␱␴␮␱␵), of Beauty and Good (␬␣␭␭␱␬␣␥␣␪␫␣) – a proportional joining of theory and action (␭␱␥␱␵ ␬␣␫ ⑀␳␥␱␯). Actually, that would be the learning of the “most precious thing”:

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“virtue,” àreté (␣␳⑀␶␩);13 the culminating “purpose,” télos (␶⑀␭␱␵) for man being to become “noble and good,” àristerós (␣␳␫␴␶⑀␳␱␵) – exactly that which we find to cover the “human’s significance.” Phrónesis (␸␳␱␯␩␴␫␵) and sophía (␴␱␸␫␣), sophros´yne (␴␻␸␳␱␴␷␯␩), déon (␦⑀␱␯) and dikaios´yne (␦␫␬␣␫␱␴␷␯␩), ëros (⑀␳␻␵), philía (␸␫␭␫␣) and àgápe (␣␥␣␲␩), hedoné (␩␦␱␯␩) and eùdaimonía (⑀␷␦␣␫␮␱␯␫␣) – briefly, àreté (␣␳⑀␶␩) – here is the human, that which man can build as an autonomous personality, and, respectively, that which Immanuel Kant has considered to be the possibility of “man-as-end-in-himself.” We really do believe that it lies within man’s power to follow an ascending way, to rise to an elevated level – which needs to be manifest and developed – within himself: the human – the purpose of our own progress, of our effort to attain perfection. Concerning the specifically “human sphere of existence” in the manner of Tymieniecka’s “phenomenology of life,” we discover the qualitative singularity of man, his exceptional position within the universe, through the power of his creativity. At this point, a clearer metaphysical theory – with which, indirectly, the Phenomenology of Life is meeting – is offered to us by Lucian Blaga, the author of the “philosophy of mystery.” As we can understand from the Trilogies, man disposes of two modes of existence: biological, within the given, concrete world, and strictly ontological, as “an accomplished human being,” “in the horizon of mystery and towards its revelation.” Regarding this “ontological mutation”: “the existence into mystery and revelation is a preeminently human mode of being,”1 from which the “creator destiny” is drawing. It enlightens the “uniquely human situation” in this world, the essential creative nature of man. As far as his “existence within mystery” is concerned, man attains his fulfillment through his creative destiny; it is true that this destiny may be only a potentiality, but it can actually manifest itself through cultural representations, which are revealing attempts at “mystery.” The appearance, the outburst of the “horizon of mysteries” within man is the result of the “ontological shift” – a qualitative leap from the order of nature to that of the “human being.” Metaphysics – of the cultural creations – can be justified as part of man’s existence not in the horizon of the concrete world, but “in the horizon of mystery, whose revelation man feels an overwhelming need to attain to”;2 maybe that’s why “a metaphysical recreation has never been declared in history,” says Blaga; “without metaphysics, either professed or latent, man cannot exist. … Man’s very ontological mode usually responds in metaphysics.”3

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Why have we mentioned this conception? Because we discover in it some necessary light for our approach grounded on the human, on creativity, and on the personality-as-self-creation, in the order of the ethical referential; and possibly to comprehend our approach more easily by considering this “ontological” threshold made by man on his route of self-becoming toward perfection. Through art, metaphysics, science, myth, etc., man finds himself in his uniqueness as creator, grounded in his endeavor to build his way towards the essence of existence “in the horizon of mystery.” For Lucian Blaga, man’s singularity-in-the-world lies in his being a creator of culture and history. This presupposes an effort of self-creation, which deserves to be pointed out even in the horizon of the ethical significance for the “specifically human condition”, connected with the idea of man-as-creative-self. We think that the very human mode of existence, the fulfillment of humanness, is embodied in the creative striving unfolded by man within himself toward his becoming as moral personality. We used the example of metaphysics as a kind of creative work for man. But, also, we can resort to “art” – perhaps the most obvious mode of creativity through which man is revealing in his insights, communicating much more about his humanity. Not accidentally, Tymieniecka confers a special place to the “poietic” mode, within which man is closer to the philosophizing aim: to seek and to convey something of the ultimate reality, the “mystery”, in its elements, and to strike as well at its unity and harmony. Consenting with the position expressed by the Spanish thinkers Miguel de Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset about the value of poietic discourse as “the best way to frame and communicate the profound experience of life,”14 Tymieniecka insists on the importance of the “artistic work” – this complex articulation which penetrates the depths of the “human process of becoming” – emphasizing it as a much more meaningful mode of expression for the lifepulsation instinct of man, whose purpose, like that of an architect, is to introduce his proper creation into the given order, taking “a constructive part in reality.” In fact, this kind of phenomenological approach, appealing to the “poietic way,” leads us to a closer experience of the profoundness of life. Here, we’re coming to observe that – concerning the “human-as-the-mostelevated-expression-of-man-in-the-world” – the poietic mode is completing with the “ethical” one. The most clear aspect of creativity, the “artistic work” is neither the only one nor the most plenary. Exploring the semantics of the classical Greek kalokagatheia as the ideal for the “human being,” the “intellectual”, the

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“poietic” and also the “moral” senses interweave into that which we’ve already mentioned through the notion of äristos, the “royal man” (of Plato and Aristotle): the “man of virtue” who prefers moral beauty. So, starting from Tymieniecka’s appreciation of “the poietic fullness of the human experience of life,” we think that it gains much more in the horizon of significance when it is incorporating the “ethical dimension” of creativity, too. We seek the embodiment of creativity not only in artistic achievement, but in self-achievement, self-fulfillment: the personality in its humanity as the greatest creation of man, the accomplishment of man’s mission to self-create through freedom and dignity. Somehow, we are reminded also of the conception of George Edward Moore of the “ideal goods” in an innermost connection with art, with artistically creative activities: the “aesthetic pleasures” celebrated in Principia Ethica as “belongings which people deserve to have purely for themselves,” under the Art’s Ideal as criteria of the social progress and as the “ultimate rational aim for our actions.”12 Focusing on “artistic work”, Tymieniecka develops her theory about “the creative process as the ciphering of a text.”15 She deals with the “creative vision” – an interpreting process unfolded by the writer, artist, scientist, and philosopher. Thus, she arrives at the problem of communication: the accomplishment of instilling meaning in existence, a “promise of a new life, new self and new world.”16 Completing the “intellectual” discourse with the poietical type of cognition, Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life offers a more adequate mode to seek and explain the profoundness of life with its particular experiences. Avoiding the traps of the mind, the artistic way opens much more into our permanent attempt to reveal the “truth,” the “reality,” the act of life; and, at the same time, it opens into the onto-ethical view of the “order”, “harmony”, and “unity in variety,” into the depth and the dynamism, and also into the discrete articulations between phenomenal elements of our existence’s course. In fact, Tymieniecka proposes an integrated philosophical vision, associating the “poietical” with the established ontological, metaphysical, epistemological, and anthropological directions. This supports the main themes of her Phenomenology of Life; namely: “(1) the self-individualization of life circumscribing the context of phenomenological investigation, (2) the creative act of the human being which brings into the center from which the human mind draws all the rays of order, and (3) the human condition which grounds the creative act as man’s foothold within the unchartable schema of life.”17 Granting to these “three conceptions” the opportunity to give “the

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basic guidelines for all of our philosophical and scientific research,”18 our main concern regarding the ethical marks hinted at by the Phenomenology of Life finds, again, support. Man’s self-interpretation-in-existence, and, especially, creativity and the human condition allow us to advance such a scrutiny. As the “Archimedean point for the phenomenology of life,” enlarging even the philosophical thematization and inquiries in the upsurge to reach the “fact of life”, creativity yields the “unique human course” of life; it represents the dimension which marks man’s distinctiveness in the “texture” of world. This great reservoir of life – in its rich network of individual, societal and natural conditions – actuates man’s life to give him a full experience of reality. “Man’s creative act not only reveals itself to be decisive for specifically human existence, but it participates as well, in an essential way, in all of the life-transactions which carry on the life-enacting course of our self-individualization. Thus, in the creative act we have a royal access to all the experiences and processes which carry on human existence, first within nature, and then within our societal framework. Lastly, the creative act of the human being brings us to man’s foundational basis within the universal lifeprocess of nature, the human condition.”19 Creativity ensures “man’s route as forming the meaningful web of his existence,” “man’s self-inscription within the texture of the world,” that is, man’s power to integrate his own development (at the “organic, psychic, and social” levels20) in the world-context. In terms of the phenomenology of life, we can proceed to the “constructive interpretation” which enlightens the meaningfulness of the existence’s “text” in its elements, as well as in its unity, containing the “human experience” under the auspices of the peculiar significance of man-as-creative-subject-inthe-world. For Tymieniecka, “the creative-self” is a part of man’s self-interpretation as “reconstruction” in the discourse about the deciphering of the human pattern at three successive stages: “that of the individual, the person, and of the creative-self, … with reference to the radical otherness, the other self, or the irrespective other.”21 Man appears like the agent molding himself, projecting a “schema” of being which is both similar and distinct; he establishes correspondences with everything–there–is–alive, but as well he transcends these, developing a pattern of meanings “by inventing also an other than the constitutive perspective of self-interpretation.” Man “inscribes himself thereby into the universal scheme work of the Cosmos, working himself out of the texture of Nature.”22 It is the situation of man to experience

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the “biological mode” of being, without remaining in it, but transcending – completing – it with the “ontological mode,” searching the “mystery” – according to Lucian Blaga, searching the “hidden and virtual, … the inaccessible and enigmatic” – which, according to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, can’t be avoided in the perspective of “self-interpretation.” 23 The concept of creativity is an essential one in finding the top level of the “reasons,” of the “orchestrations” of self-explication in existence, which are not only possible but indispensable for man. As a dynamic contradiction, “sameness – alterity” in the world-context, the living individual is able to approach the integration of all the elements of his interplay with Nature, with others, in the process of “identification – differentiation,” emerging through his progressive self-projected pattern (or “text”). And, this is possibly owing to man’s creative power, which confers upon him the status to mark the whole existence by bringing the “human life’s meaning” into the world-context. As a virtue of man, creativity makes from him an agent of a “selfproposed, self-devised unfolding”; it is the key to understanding the value of the “human course of existence,” of the own form of beingness, disclosing the entire mode of being “with respect to the laws of Nature and of the Cosmos, but especially with respect to the specific ultimate significance of his existence.”24 What else could be more important in the framework of our attempt than creativity’s activation as “self-creation”? It seems to be – as Mircea Eliade has conceived it – a major, eloquent principle for the “human meaning of life.”8 Integrating all the levels of “self-explication” or “self-interpretation” – speaking in the language of Phenomenology of Life – or reaching the “dynamic equilibrium of antagonisms” – speaking in terms of “energetist philosophy,” founded by Stéphane Lupasco – experimenting in the plane of our own ideas, concerns, feelings, emotions, reasons, interests, desires, longings, needs, aims, ideals, actions, facts, etc., in the plane of interconnections with “others” (individuals and persons), in the social play of inclinations, tendencies, attitudes, deeds, events, life-situations, etc., on the one hand, and with Nature and the Cosmos, on the other hand, we converge to the ethical resonance of creativity for the human in its plenitude, discovering the accomplishment of the vision of “order,” “harmony,” and “equilibrium.” Finally, we discover the principle of “order with meaning” which leads to our “cosmicization” – in a way, the Greek “kosmiotés,” with its idea about the unity “ethos-lógos-kósmos.”

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Seeking meaningfulness even in our natural flowering course of existence, we have to disclose the significance of an old principle, re-activated in our present times: “to live in harmony with Nature,” as the Stoics have acknowledged through “␱␮␱␭␱␥␱␷␮⑀␯␻␵ ␶␩ ␸␷␴⑀␫ ␨␩␯,”10 must be re considered in its value, as it has been in the last years by environmental ethics. We can follow some ethical suggestions in Tymieniecka’s phenomenological vision throughout her discourse about “man’s self-interpretation within the perspective of his personal existence.”25 Our author dwells on the perspective of man’s self-explication as an individual – not as a passive and automated one, but, beyond a certain natural cycle which works through us, as an active conscious one, evolving a specific mode, comparative to the “schema of Nature.” This implies the effort of self-awareness and of the discovery of the “self” like an “other,” the recognition of the “other,” deliberation regarding the facts of life, selection and choice among opportunities and alternatives, responsibility for everything–there–is–alive, will to instill values, freedom to project and to construct an interpretative pattern. As an interpretation, “our self” and the “other self” must simultaneously be equally as important for disclosing the hidden meaning of life; the play of “sameness–alterity” is similar in its ethical relevance. Even in the process of “deciphering” the intimate human essence – the personal, the unique inwardness in man’s great enterprise of self-explication and selfinterpretation – this duality does reveal ethics’ mark into fundamental “learning” about a pleasant and useful life. Projecting and weaving his own “text” into the world through the “constructive process,” man instills and sustains communication – “a factor in the overall process of man’s self-explication with respect to others in the complexity and total spread of his existence.”26 Outlining her original vision about communication – an axis for man’s self-interpretation – Tymieniecka touches on the issue of moral values (dignity, responsibility, etc.); also, she tackles in part the psycho-moral mechanisms of the person (the will to self-inscription within the order of existence, deliberation, selection, choice, decision, etc.), searching the project of self-explication and self-interpretation for the horizon of finding “lifesignificance,” the fulfillment of personality. There is a set of notions in Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life through which we can detect and pursue the ethical challenge of her interesting theory, focusing on the total and essential significance of human. We entirely agree with her consideration of the human as the most expressive modality for “man’s progressive development in existence,” 27

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emphasizing the terms of “self-explication” and “self-interpretation” through which we recognize the “man-as-creator,” revealing his unique meaning in the functional warp of “reconstruction” and “active construction.” Extending this vision, we overtake creativity as self-molding on “man’s route of self-fulfillment.” For Tymieniecka, creativity means “interpretation par excellence.”28 It supposes a kind of transfiguration which man experiences, instilling a new “texture,” introducing a “meaningful schema” into the existential context. As a “third perspective of man’s self-explication,” creativity is one of the human conditions (beside those of the individual and the personal); actually, it is the culminating phase of man’s progress to conquer, to elucidate and to communicate something about his singular existence. Creativity – a kind of “embodiment” accomplished in the process of communication – implies the tension, the conflict lived by the subject within himself and in his relations with others and, not less, with Nature. Simultaneously, man is able to balance this contradictory situation on the point of necessary equilibrium – that “third,” “middle term,” that state equidistant to the extremes – the “T state,” as the Lupascian investigation offers in decoding the real and appraising existence.11 Thus, we can remark on ethics’ relevance to the topics of communication and creativity, following the “self-creative process” in respect to the “fulfillment of the moral personality.” Passing beyond the conflict, man can also discover the culminating state of equilibrium grounded in the affirmative values of life: order, harmony, and unity by differentiation with all of existence, putting himself in accord with that. The “deciphering” of life-world-textures means self-incarnation as a form of interpretation, communicability, revelation of message – all of these comport an ethical reference, since action is the upsurge of man to disclose his own self and every otherness existing in the same universal frame of life. Furthermore, in action is man’s capacity to disclose himself as self-creator in range of the achievement of becoming as moral personality – the climax of his potentialization-actualization’s proper energies. We allow the meaning of the “creator” – considered by Tymieniecka in her profile of social status as the “artist,” “writer,” “scientist,” “metaphysician,” “prophet” – to be extended to include that meaning of “Man” in a complete perspective which culminates with the human’s dimension. So, we are interested in “Man” at the highest level of his general development, being conscious of his own very unique role in activating all his potentialities – among which, the ethical is a major one.

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Self-creation as moral personality represents a serious ground for a flourished existence, independently of profession or social status. We view “Man” as a performer on the steps of his ethical evolution, which leads us to discover the importance of wisdom, temperance, love, duty, pleasure, happiness, etc., in a universe of order and equilibrium. Working from the Phenomenology of Life, we must observe that the ethical persists in the “progressive ciphering of man’s creative work.” We find man to have sensibility and intelligence, will and motivation, attitude and action-reaction; projecting an ideal and crystallizing concrete aims; and activating self-explication and self-interpretation. Like the artistic work, as with any created work of man, the ethical work – as a ceaseless self-becoming/self-creation – can be considered a “creative interpretation,” a bilateral one belonging to both producer and receiver, containing the “pivotal specifically human function.”29 Tymieniecka deals effectively with ethics when – speaking about the artistic work – she notices: “The selection of the structural form below it and of the specific material medium which command it … is in the service of the more fundamental choice of feelings, moral convictions, ideals, general views upon life and the world, and ultimately, of the basic ciphers in which the intimate and unique vision of the creator is supposed to be captured and revealed.”30 Another aspect evident in the “creative text of the literary work of art” in regard to the analysis of the process of communication, hinted at by the author of the Phenomenology of Life, is the possibility of correspondence between the established “text” and the intended subject. In a similar point of view, in the ethical approach we may question the accord between the source of moral facts, the intended recipients, and the result in which moral evolution is finalized. With “ciphering and the idea of the creative self,” Tymieniecka makes most obvious the ethical referent. Introducing man as explicating himself as creator, her discourse is passing from “man’s self-explication as a person” to the stage of “man’s personality.” Again, creativity appears to be the “uniquely, specifically human self-explication in existence.”31 In fact, in the upsurge of transcending the acquired experience of life, and of discovering the human in a new, richer and deeper means, man demonstrates a continuous effort, also in terms of self-interpretation, to construct new experiences and a “new self” – emerging from the individual and the personal, using his responsibility as an architect who reformulates meaningfulness in respect to Nature, others, and himself.

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It is the “creative orchestration” that is activated only by man as the center for an “inner-radiating personal self-explication,” in the “creative endeavor” into understanding the “meaning of life.” The “creative urge” remains a permanent challenge for man. The man, as “self-creator” – in the ethical conception – is the subject of this creative urge to transform his whole life toward the direction of the “ideal: human well being.” We can’t decipher the meaningfulness of our lives without scrutinizing the ethical referential at the level of communication – as “ciphering and deciphering” – for which the creative self-interpretation is, essentially, its “vehicle.” The human is shown as “construction-reconstruction,” “creationrecreation,” “interpretation-reinterpretation” of a “text,” a meaningful pattern, needing confrontation; but, simultaneously, needing conciliation between the self and the other; unfolding as sameness, but also as differentiation or distinctiveness in the texture of life. And creativity is shown as a complex experience of integration in reality, not in any possible way, but in a very significant way: man manifesting himself as a participant at the construction and the revealing of reality, the world. Ethically, the self-creation – as man’s fulfillment, as “human well being” – represents, for us, the central point of attention. Creativity’s potentializationactualization expresses, in our opinion, the essential mode of human functioning. In fact, we come to “the ‘text’ of man’s unique humanity,” revealing, through the “deciphering,” something of his pattern at the moral level; that is, revealing something of the meaningfulness of man’s existential web within the given world, at all the stages of his self-explication and self-interpretation – as “individual”, as “person”, as “creative self.” Thus, the human – as the very own stature and level of accomplishment, as actualization of man’s virtues in his growth “toward a maximal development which is uniquely its own,”32 as the meaningful nucleus which needs to be explicated for the complete understanding of the singularity of man, as result of man’s self-creation – represents the most elevated distinctive mode of being, correlated with all man’s capacities, especially with the rational one. The phenomenological analysis proposed by Tymieniecka is a very adequate organon to discover the various elements, and at the same time the dynamic unity of them, by composing a peculiar identity, through the process of self-explication or self-interpretation “running throughout the scale of

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reconstructive as well as constructive (vital, personal, creative) selfexplication,” underlining the “creative self” as the “self culminating” for that.33 Although Tymieniecka doesn’t deal with the ethical feature of the “subject-in-the-world,” some interesting aspects of her Phenomenology of Life lead us to the field of ethics. The concept of “life” – such an important parameter in Tymieniecka’s orientation – presents importance for our comprehension of the place and the role of man in the “gigantic life schema”; that is, to investigate the human in its proper dimension and the life-course in connection with the entire natural and social existential context in which the human condition is embedded. There is “proto-ontological evidence” delineated by our author – that “life means individualization.”34 A significant notion used by Tymieniecka for understanding the process of differentiation in the perspective of “man’s invention/creation” is the notion of “Source Experience”: “a new phenomenon within the progressively graduated steps of life.”35 This guides us to an enlightening of the crystallization process of the human, on the order of the “creative orchestration of the entire human functioning” as rooted in the “source-experience,” and above all of the awareness – culminating in the self-awareness – as governing the “schema of life.” This notion intervenes in the “imaginatio creatrix,” which has a great role in endowing with significance all the movements of man through the “poietic/aesthetic sense,” which is one of the “three factors of the human significance of life,” or “the three meaning-giving factors that human condition introduces into life-schema,” together with “the intelligible sense” and “the moral sense.”36 This triadic configuration – outlined in the Phenomenology of Life – eloquently speaks to the power of man to show himself to be in a unique position in the world: as a being connected with the total life existence, as well as a being distinct from any other being, but, owing to his knot-place among everything–there–is–alive, as a being who, also, has a responsibility toward all. The “aesthetic/poietic sense” allows and sustains “the receptivity, assimilation, and endowment with a voice” of nature’s life, giving utterance to a typically conscious sphere of life. Through the “poietic” sense, man manifests his participation in the process of universal life “through a conscious receptivity with a voice that reverberates throughout his entire frame. Lastly, it prolongs this sphere of the natural life into all of the spheres

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which man himself creates by bringing it in full, and enlarged a thousandfold through the aesthetic expansion of experience.”37 Tymieniecka does introduce the ethical reference when she speaks about “the moral sense” which – beside the “poietic” and the “intelligible” – “is another unique factor which surges as a virtue of the human condition and is operative particularly in the emergence and expansion of the specifically human sphere of existence.”38 While “with the aesthetic/poietic sense we see the human experience prompted in psychic acts,” and “the intelligible sense installs the ‘objectifying’ axis of the sphere of existence,” with its functioning man gains all the necessary insights for further progress and a uniquely human role, to assume that “the moral sense brings in the ‘subjectifying’ axis of the specifically human significance through which the human being expands within his self-projected orbit.”39 Tymieniecka considers the “moral sense” as the way to introduce into the individual line of behaviour “the Sentiment of Benevolence toward other living creatures, toward oneself, and toward life in general.” And, at the same time, a new system of appreciation enters the living arena: “that of moral valuation.”40 “Moral valuation” leads to the balance between objectivity and subjectivity within the entire schema of life, engaging the rapport of man with others, with the societal and the natural spheres, with himself. At this point, we come to the completion of Tymieniecka’s theory, which tells that the moral way could be explored – as a system of valuation – not merely through the “benevolent sentiment” and utilitarianism’s offer, but also through many other values and principles, as well as doctrines of ethics – even at a psycho-moral level, feelings, interests, inclinations, reasons, attitudes, etc. are possibly to be considered – and including finally, the entire field of accord, passing through the tensioned balance between the contradictor states that man is able to attend in his effort toward progress, relating with himself, with others, and with the world of living beings. We can seek and pursue the value of the Greek “àreté” as summa and of the knotconcept in ethics, and of the classical principles, like “the good/right measure,” “harmony with Nature”, “the greatest happiness principle”, the Golden Rule, the Universal Law, etc. Each of these enlightens much more the significance of the ethical reference as the “highest midst way.” Actually, Tymieniecka tells us something very important – referring to that which she calls “moral sense”: “Indeed, with the human condition being placed deep in the midst of the unity–of–everything–there–is–alive, the unity

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which the moral sense contributed to the recognition of man is brought to recognize the interdependencies in existential ties and conditions among all living beingness.”41 Thus, considering the function of “moral sense” to prompt us into a rational action to redress wrongs, to avoid perils, to transcend obstacles, to experience the evil, danger, sufferance, etc.; and to not remain prisoners of that, but to try, continuously, to construct the order of existence, to remake the existential unity within the human microcosms and the macrocosms, too; and lastly to give harmony the chance to become the governmental frame for the world. That is the fact in which rests the awareness of man of viewing his duty and responsibility to build (and not to pull down) his life with dignity and in liberty, as an authentic “self-creator” in the dimensions of the “moral personality.” That is, maybe, the reason for which Tymieniecka herself emphasizes the idea that “the moral sense makes the human being custodian of everything–there–is–alive”.42 That is just a part of the value of the phenomenology of life to challenge man, again and again, to wonder, to think, to recognize and to act on the basis of his creative potential, which confers to him uniqueness in this world, comprehending himself as a center within the unity–of–everything–there–is–alive. Through the concept of “moral sense” – among other things – an ethics evolves from the Phenomenology of Life, strengthening its theoretical substance and growing its functioning mode. An ethics more efficient in the order of existence can be revealed. Within the gradual advance in complexity, variety and richness, in flexibility, selectiveness and choice, “human existence” consists, at the culminating point in “life’s self-individualization,” in differentiating from the living network, but, at the same time, not isolating from the rest of the universe, remaining instead “within the unity–of–everything–there–is–alive.”43 Creativity distinguishes man from all other living beings; it marks his uniqueness in the world; it reveals, most significantly, man’s capacity to project and to construct his grasp of the inward functioning of the “selfindividualization of life”; it characterizes man’s condition to mould himself in an inventive horizon through that virtue designated by Tymieniecka as “imaginatio creatrix.”44 Beyond all, creativity is highlighted as a specifically human function, through which man takes a constructive part in reality, and in its revealing as well. According to the author of the Phenomenology of Life, “existential progress in self-individualizing life” means “a differentiation of the Logos of Life into ever new rationalities”,45 that is, selectiveness and choice.

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We have these notions with a significant ethical charge, speaking about the peculiar type of human unfolding on the route marked, also, by values and principles, directing man’s conduct in passing through progressive phases in his effort of self-accomplishment of personality: in freedom, with dignity, seeing that he is able to activate his very own power: creativity. Actually, we discover something about this complex advance, in an ascendant constructive line of existence, through a differentiating in which the individualizing process has its roots. Conceived in these terms, even the “human becoming” makes obvious the ethical reference which it comports: the progressive phases carry on the inward aim, man’s tendency to perfection of the supreme télos: the human. Eventually, ethics leads us to the idea of “man-as-self-creator”. Action is the moral achievement, the purpose of self-fulfillment as human – the climax of his progressive becoming through knowledge, explication-interpretation, understanding, will, selectiveness, choice, decision, which he duly aspires after. The “human” refers to the plenitude of the values of: wisdom, satisfaction, utility, courage, communion, love, happiness, order, harmony, accord with others and with Nature’s laws – briefly, that which we find to be the crux of the Greek “àreté” – an eloquent concept for the excellency that man is able to attain during his life. In our ethical point of view, the human refers to man’s “own stature and level of accomplishment”46 – the middle-highest-place touchable amidst the tension of the antagonist dynamism that characterize the life of man. With the given terminological apparatus, the differentiation of the rationality of life proceeds in an inventive way. Man, this self-individualizing agent, “turns into a self-interpreting being: one who projects himself the significance of his existence.” He projects “the world” – “the entirely novel sphere of circumambiant situation” – “within and above the bounds of Nature”; and, through the world, “he himself as the counterpart of his lifeworld comes to embody the great spontaneity of the Logos of Life.”47 This self-projection as a “self-interpreting being” is one made through man’s creativity in the horizon of the human. The merit of Tymieniecka lies in her unfolding of an integrative approach to man’s unique specificity of life within the complex and deep network of interconnections with the whole existential context. Only in this way, using the phenomenological vision, can we understand the “human life” as individualization within its own potentialization-actualization of self-project and self-fulfillment in the given world.

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Summarizing, the concept of “human condition” hints at the correspondence with the “human” as a concept full of onto-ethical meaning: the “human” in its great significance in instilling even the “Meaning of Life”: the “human” as optimal equilibrium, as the “T state” of Stéphane Lupasco’s contradictory dynamic ethics. In an intimate tie with the human, the concept of creativity – so celebrated by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka – contains an onto-ethical meaning in the perspective of man’s self-achievement on the trajectory of his “human progress,” mainly as an element of the qualitative singularity of man in the world. So conceived, creativity meets that principle of “cosmicization” asserted by Mircea Eliade: a principle which belongs to man’s aspiration to be in eternity.8 In fact, modulating the cosmicization is the most elevated form for the human (in our conception), like a setting in order, in harmony, in necessary equilibrium and constructive unity, beyond the antagonistic struggle intrinsic to existence, beyond the destructive tendencies and the energies of dispersion and atomization. The relevance of ethics comes through in the Phenomenology of Life even within the suggested urge to develop a “wisdom of life,” considering our duty to the whole of life; all the more so the man holds – at least, so he likes to believe – a central place in the world. Just in becoming aware of his virtue to be not only a creature-amongothers, but also a creator and above all, a self-creator, man proves his capacity to partake, with responsibility, in the entire existence of the alive, to entrench and to increase, ennobling the societal and natural environment, intervening in the horizon of utility and pleasure on the existential sphere. So, our life has meaning; it has a future – in the language of a “practical longterm ethics.” University “Al.I.Cuza”, Jassy, Romania N OT E S 1 Lucian Blaga, The Cosmological Trilogy / Trilogia cosmologicˇa, in Works, volume 11, (Bucharest: Minerva, 1988), p. 59. Philosopher and poet, Lucian Blaga (1895–1961) is the author of a grandiose architectural system, his metaphysics focusing on the concept of “mystery” – a subtle means of access into the “truth” of existence and its revealing. Throughout his 4 Trilogies (of knowledge, of culture, of values, and the cosmological one), Blaga exposes his philosophy around the “mystery,” conceived as the “original horizon” of the “peculiar human mode to be.” He has introduced the idea of the “ontological mode” (in prolongation of the “biological” one) of the human being as

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“existence into mystery and toward its revelation,” which sustains man’s creativity, which confers to him singularity in the world. Through creation and historicity, man achieves his mission, which means, at the highest level, “self-creation”; that is, creation of the personality in nobleness and dignity, owing to the fact that man lives not (merely) in the horizon of the palpable and concrete world, but (especially) in that of the intelligible one, “the horizon of mystery,” which man feels an unabated need to reveal to himself. 2 Lucian Blaga, The Trilogy of Culture / Trilogia culturii, in Works, volume 9, (Bucharest: Ed. Minerva, 1985), p. 471. 3 Lucian Blaga, The Trilogy of Knowledge / Trilogia cunoas, terii, in Works, volume 8, (Bucharest: Ed.Minerva, 1983), p. 144. 4 Cf. Carmen Cozma, Introduction to Aretelogy / Introducere ˇın aretelogie, “Al. I. Cuza” (Jassy: University’s Publishing House, 2001). 5 Carmen Cozma, Studies of Philosophy Educating Humanity / Studii de filosofie a educa,tiei umanitˇa,tii (Jassy: Junimea Publishing House, 1997), p. 14. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 157. 8 Cf. Mircea Eliade, Romanian Prophetism / Profetism Românesc, Ed. Roza Vˇınturilor, (Bucharest, 1990). 9 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Romanian translation, (Bucharest: IRI, 1995). More formally, Kant presented the following universal law formulation of the Categorical Imperative: “Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Another formulation of the Categorical Imperative, requiring the respect for man regarded as a person that possesses dignity (an absolute inner worth), is the following: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.” 10 Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Doctrines of Eminent Philosophers, Romanian translation, (Bucharest: Academiei Române, 1963), p. 354. 11 Cf. Stéphane Lupasco, L’homme et ses trois éthiques (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1986). Romanian philosopher writing in French, Stéphane Lupasco (1900–1988) has developed an interesting ethics, deeply connected with his entire philosophy of the “three energies,” or “three matters” (as he called the physical, the biological, and the psychological forms in terms of the “dynamic logic of antagonism” applied to the comprehension of the world. Thus, the “T state” is the state equidistant to the two extremes in the matrix of potentialization-actualization, virtualization-achievement, “homogenization” (or identification) and “heterogenization” (or diversification), of “objectification” and “subjectification” – polarities between which the human existence is unfolded. 12 Cf. George Edward Moore, Principia Ethica (London: Cambridge University Press, 1903), Chapter VI, “The Ideal.” 13 Plato, Crito, in Works, volume I, Romanian translation (Bucharest: Scientific and Encyclopedic Publishing House, 1975), 53c. 14 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition, Analecta Husserliana, Volume XXIX, 1990, p. 3. 15 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Creative Self and the Other in Man’s Self-Interpretation, Analecta Husserliana, Volume VI, 1977, p. 173. 16 Ibid., p. 174.

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17 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition, loc. cit., p. 5. 18 Ibid., p. 7. 19 Ibid., pp. 6, 7. 20 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Creative Self and the Other in Man’s Self-Interpretation, loc. cit., p. 156. 21 Ibid., p. 154. 22 Ibid., pp. 157–158. 23 Dealing with the difficult issue of “meaning” – “the what it is really about of the text that we are attempting to discover and establish” – Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka notices that “the essential principle of meaningfulness remains inaccessible.” Cf. The Creative Self and the Other in Man’s Self-Interpretation, loc. cit., p. 167. 24 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Creative Self and the Other in Man’s Self-Interpretation, loc. cit., p. 161. 25 Ibid., pp. 161–167. 26 Ibid., pp. 163–164. 27 Ibid., p. 168. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. 177. 30 Ibid., p. 178. 31 Ibid., p. 189. 32 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition, loc. cit., p. 9. 33 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Creative Self and the Other in Man’s Self-Interpretation, loc. cit., p. 155. 34 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition, loc. cit., p. 9. 35 Ibid., p. 12. 36 Ibid., p. 13. 37 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 38 Ibid., p. 15. 39 Ibid., pp. 13, 15. 40 Ibid., p. 15. 41 Ibid., p. 16. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., p. 7. 44 Ibid., p. 12. 45 Ibid., p. 10. 46 Ibid., p. 9. 47 Ibid., p. 13.

The Latvian group: Velga Vivere in front; Ella Buceniece, Maija Ku¯le and Zaiga Ikere in the first row; Rinalds Zimbah, in the back row. Also Tymieniecka in the first row next to Ikere; Gary Backhouse and Jan Szmyd in the second row.

– LE M A I JA K U

T H E RO L E O F C I P H E R I N G I N P H E N O M E N O L O G Y O F L I F E

It is not philosophy itself but its longevity and value that depend on the form of philosophy. Schlegel, F.

Contemporary philosophy is inseparable from the general tendencies of spiritual life that have dominated over the past centuries. The ruling tendency of European-type philosophy has been the affirmation of a democratic life style, liberal values and human individuality and creative activity. The testimony to this is the proportional growth of the philosophy of subjectivism since modern times, the division of pure practical reason and reasoning into separate spheres to substantiate fundamental human abilities, to analyse the ways of grasping the world – such as cognition, understanding, intuition, deciphering, experience – and describe man’s correlation with beingness (cosmos). Epistemology blossomed to analyse human reason, while Kant’s teaching found its development in neo-Kantianism and in Husserl’s phenomenology to defend and substantiate logical and rational values. Man as a free, logically thinking, creative being in the world is the highest value of European-type philosophy over the past centuries. However, the philosophy of the past centuries is to a great extent characterized by singling out the special role of man in the world, by describing man’s reason and his purposeful activity as being superior compared with the rest of animate nature, by opposing man to other forms of animate nature. Characteristic is philosophy’s dissociation from natural sciences, its ever greater fascination with language problems, concept analysis and specific problems of human existence. At a time when cosmic space is being practically conquered with the help of technologies, philosophy is to a great extent silent about man’s place in cosmos. There have been only a few exceptions when human problems were being treated in a wider, more cosmic aspect. In this connection we can mention the American philosopher A. N. Whitehead, the French philosophers A. Bergson and T. de Chardin, the German philosopher M. Scheler and a few representatives of neo-Thomism. In any case, in contemporary philosophy the number of authors who analyse the problems of language, psychoanalyses, social and political philosophy, that is, the problems of “inner space,” of “cultural, social, man’s inner experience,” is by far greater than those who venture to view man in a universal dimension turning to that part of the processes of the world and outer space that functions without the participation of man. 41 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 41–50. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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The significance of the phenomenology of life worked out by A.–T. Tymieniecka lies in the fact that she takes philosophy into an unusual field, that is, following the logos through the labyrinth of life. In the phenomenology of life, philosophy is drawn nearer to the viewpoints of natural sciences confidently using in philosophical reasoning the verities of astronomy, biology, psychology. The time may indeed have come when we must bridge the gap that has been created over the centuries between philosophy and natural sciences, the gap that has been widened both by the conviction of such life philosophers as V. Dilthey and G. Simmel about the essential difference between the methods of mental and natural sciences and by the works of neo-Kantians on the differing objects of investigation in anthropological and natural sciences. Nowadays the contemporary widespread hermeneutical method taking root in classical phenomenology also accentuates a specific humanitarian way of understanding and truth that is based on man’s existence in history and in language. Besides, hermeneutics distrusts the feasibility of giving a universal, all-round interpretation. Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life is not based on a humanistic-type hermeneutics; it is not based on man’s being in history and language that allows constituting of sense within the framework of Lebenswelt, as there is no sense beyond human existence. In Tymieniecka’s philosophy, on the contrary, the central concept is logos, which permeates both cosmic and human procedures. Besides, in the description of the manifestations of logos the subject describing them is of no importance. (That is the essential difference in comparison with Husserl’s phenomenology, where the transcendental Ego describing the structures of his consciousness is the focal point of philosophy; just as in hermeneutics where the comprehending subject interpreting sense and meaning is the central figure; just as in M. Heidegger’s Dasein concept, which comprehends itself in the world, is the central one in his fundamental ontology.) The fact that in phenomenology of life the figure doing the description is not part of the description (in the phenomenology of life the question is only about the author of the book, article, conception: “we who are attempting to describe … our limited transcendental, intellective mind, which urges us to question”1) is an essential deviation from the principles of classical phenomenology. Tymieniecka speaks about the existence of cosmic forces (logoic forces) inconceivable to the human mind which she describes in the fourth part of her book Logos and Life in the chapter “The Manifestations of Life”: “there is the question of a generative matrix, womb for coming to be and passing

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away again into the transformational reservoir of the logos.”2 In this respect phenomenology of life really overcomes the limitations of classical phenomenology, which is only concerned with the world of man and his consciousness. The theme of intentionality that is central in phenomenology is replaced by the creative act that is inherent not only to man, but also to transformating logos. The question posed by Kant and phenomenology – how is subjective generality possible? – is transformed into a teaching on self-individualization in the stream of life. The theme of logos is expanded, introducing different characterizations of logos, for instance, Dionysian logos. (The human-self-in-the-world, the transformation station crowning the unfolding impetus of the logos, is the feeling heart of beingness. This felt modality, unprecedented in the unfolding of the logos, we call the Dionysian logos.3) Hence, attention is specifically drawn to subliminal passions, which is a fascinating theme against the background of contemporary philosophy, especially if it is not regarded from the point of view of psychoanalysis, but in a different way – as logoic synergies, as it is offered by Tymieniecka. Phenomenology of life claims to be universal and systemic as distinct from many contemporary philosophical conceptions that do not recognize the systemic and universality principles. In my opinion, the phenomenology concept is not exhaustive enough for the essence of Tymieniecka’s philosophical conception (though it has the concept of “life” attached to it, that is, the phenomenology of life). In my opinion, this philosophical system overcomes many of the principles of classical phenomenology, thus plainly going beyond the limits of traditional phenomenology. A more exact characterization might be creativistic phenomenology of life – in the first place, accentuating man’s involvement in everything-that-is-alive, viewing man as a component part of life processes and nature (logos, nature, life as the centre of philosophical interest), and secondly, creativistic – accentuating the central theme in Tymieniecka’s teaching: creative manifestation of life. That would make it clear that Tymieniecka is establishing a new philosophical viewpoint, not just developing the viewpoints of phenomenology (as testified by the term of her own choice “phenomenology of life”). Nowadays, the academic, systematized, epistemologically-centered philosophy does not exist any longer – that is the view of many radically thinking theorists. To a certain degree they are right because in contemporary philosophy epistemology as a separately singled out subdivision of philosophy takes up increasingly smaller space. Philosophical systems are exceptions and Tymieniecka’s system is one of the exceptions. The philosopher is sure that nowadays it is also possible to create complete

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systems (the phenomenology of life she has been creating for thirty years is a testimony to it). Characteristically, in contemporary philosophy the analysis of reason and the process of cognition as such is losing philosophical attraction. What remains is only and solely naturalistically and realistically orientated philosophy of mind that sees as its task not so much “going into consciousness” (which is what phenomenology tried to do, for instance), but rather “letting consciousness open up,” reading its structure and regularities through the manifestations of consciousness – actions, physiology, language, etc. Philosophical thought with regard to mind and consciousness has a tendency towards strictly–verified, even experimentally-tested models. If epistemology is developed, then we can see that the advocates of this branch tend “to open” epistemology in relation to other branches, to link it with philosophy of science, to synthesize it with linguistic or social philosophy, to involve it in information theories, yet new metaphysical ideas emerge in the context of epistemology as well. Tymieniecka shows knowledge and cognition in the self-individualizing progress of life. This approach may serve as a new, stimulating impulse to epistemologies as it shows cognition in wider interconnections of life processes. There isn’t much hope in contemporary European philosophy that philosophical methods will be a means of showing the right way for philosophical thought. Though we must agree with L. Wittgenstein, who once said that in a drop of method teaching there is an enormous concentration of philosophy, we must nevertheless conclude that contemporary philosophy does not concern itself with “drops,” nor even with “streams,” but with narrative floods, “fields,” extensions. This shift may have taken place as a result of the decreasing significance of the concept of reflection in philosophy, whereas revelation, highlighting, deciphering, comprehension, and narrative reading come to the foreground. Since the neo-Kantian hopes on the force of methodology at the dawn of the 20th century, since the triumph of the phenomenological method in the twenties-fifties, since the revival of neodialectics in the postwar philosophical works of T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, since J. P. Sartre’s interest in dialectics, elaboration of methods is no longer as convincing. It increasingly joins forces with contemporary science in elaborating combined methodology, provides basis for argumentation, but fails to generate impulsive forces for creating new philosophical approaches. The title of H. G. Gadamer’s most significant work, Truth and Method, bears, to a certain extent, an ironical tinge as his intention is far from trying to convince one of the triumph of method; it sooner attempts to restrict its

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significance by displaying that in the humanitarian sphere truth reveals itself in a way that is altogether different from the sphere of natural sciences that is permeated with multitudinous methods. Tymieniecka’s philosophy does not elaborate a philosophical method, either. However, in her works there appear concepts that include approaches connected with method, first of all the “conjectural influence” which appears throughout her work as a methodological device. There comes the notion of “ciphering.” The philosopher’s approach to this specific concept is very important: we can ask, to what extent does it work as a means of philosophizing, to what extent is it a metaphor, to what extent is it an essential part of the phenomenology of life? Tymieniecka stresses that ciphering is founding interpretation. Thus, the comparison may reveal to what extent the phenomenology of life itself claims to be hermeneutical. The author maintains that interpretation is linked with cognitive approach while ciphering is linked with creative approach prior to it. So, we must conclude that the concept of ciphering is vitally important in the phenomenology of life as a concept that characterizes the specific features of the approach, “a method” in a figurative, transferred meaning that is not hermeneutical. Distinguishing ciphering from interpretation, Tymieniecka stresses that she sees interpretation as connected with the comprehension of texts, thus, in reference to language, whereas ciphering has a wider field of application – in the whole development of logos. Life reveals itself as manifestation of the Logos. Manifestation, the philosopher explains, is connatural with the emergence, appearance of sign. With regard to the concept of deciphering it is essential that “manifestation of the Logos through life and its encompassing cosmic system comprises systems of signs through which we may discover the workings and the generic nature of rationality, reason, the Logos.”4 Thus, signs are ascribed artless, homogeneous, natural (see the word connatural!), superhuman status: they are not only and solely the meaningful signs created in the human world, they are the manifestations of the Logos. This viewpoint makes one wonder if there are any proofs or arguments to testify to the fact that the signs of the manifestation of the Logos do exist, that what we see are not just coincidences, happenstances, senseless processes, chaos and uncertainty to which a searching human mind tries to ascribe a certain form. Can chaotic, imbalanced processes be manifestations of signs? According to I. Prigogine’s school, the law for imbalanced thermodynamic systems has it that new structures can only emerge on the brink of chaos. It is this component of indeterminism that makes the life evolution scenario unpredictable in principle. Then how can we read signs in it? Isn’t one of the

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arguments for the manifestation of Logos only and solely such (possessing no force of evidence of itself) that the concept Logos is taken as the basis for the philosophical conception? – Logos in ancient Greek philosophy meaning law, word, reason, way of arrangement, thus suggesting the idea of the presence of reason, rationality in the processes of the emergence of cosmos and life. The word “logos” itself creates the conviction that cosmos and life are of logostype. This conviction may be regarded as an axiom of the phenomenology of life that lies at the very basis of the system and is self-evident, as it were. (The history of philosophy abounds in philosophical systems that are based on assumptions that the philosophers have never attempted to prove and justify, so Tymieniecka is not to be considered an exception to the rule. There are assumptions of the kind in her system as well.) However, as I have mentioned before, Tymieniecka’s philosophy is characterized by the philosopher’s attempts to draw her philosophy nearer to contemporary natural sciences. That is why dialogue with them is important and contradictions between the phenomenology of life and contemporary biology and other natural sciences are worthy of note. It must be acknowledged that in contemporary biology there are differing views on the development of animate nature in cosmos. Many a time it has been accented that chance and contingency combine with necessity, supplementing each other, the complementary principle (serving to complete) at work, and new forms of nature emerge in the determined chaos. Thus, for instance, Steven Gould is of the opinion that the intermittent evolution stereotype is erroneous.5 He analyses the frequency of the appearance of different organisms depending on the degree of their complexity. When chemical evolution has taken place, life emerges at the lowest degree of complexity required for life. Such are bacteria. It is peculiar, though, that bacteria over the span of three billion years have retained their division maximum and have grown in force (having made no progress at all as far as differentiation is concerned). In the course of evolution they have remained stable and have not “progressed,” have not turned into multicellular organisms of higher complexity. On the contrary, they have steadily with increasing intensity kept to their own niche. The frequency of the appearance of multicellular organisms – animals – decreases with the increase of the degree of complexity. Thus, according to the biologist, the appearance of organisms of high degree of complexity must be regarded as an evolutionary wonder rather than progress of life. What has given rise to it – summing up of chance happenings over a course of time or some teleological purposeful force that materializes through

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the principles of self-organization of organic systems? Contemporary biology does not answer the question. Tymieniecka, however, attempts to give an unequivocal answer – that it is the entelechial design of life in which she discerns a line of progress. It would be difficult to maintain that contemporary biologists could all subscribe to this metaphysical conclusion as the investigation of animate nature and cosmos is still going on. According to the latest views of microbiologists, formation of new species is determined not so much by accidental and chaotic mutation in the chains of DNA molecules as by the informational mass of microorganisms switching into the genetic system of higher multicellular organisms – that of man as well. Such a symbiotic “injection” of new, alien information into the host’s genome is capable of causing unexpected effects in evolution. That is why it is maintained that such a horizontal (man-virus) transfer of genetic information among cells might have a by far greater importance in the formation of new forms in evolution processes than was deemed in the past. The Latvian physicist E. Silin, sˇ writes, “Thus, the formation of new – more complex and adaptive life forms is to a great extent determined by the flow of genetic information in the conditions of receptiveness.”6 From the point of view of contemporary physics and biology Tymieniecka’s universal principle of self-individualization as the main condition for the development of life is to a great extent controversial. This individualization principle cannot be denied, of course, especially in organisms of a higher degree of development and in the process of the formation of man’s personality. However, a most essential principle at work in inanimate and animate nature is the principle of autosimilarity. It is no less important than self-individualization. In the first place autosimilarity can be seen in the fractals geometry worked out in 1970s by Benoi Mandelbrot, geometry that serves as a wonderful contemporary complement to Euclid’s geometry. Fractals display the intermittent process of autosimilarity seen both in quantum physics and at the gene level in microbiology; in geography, in the jagged sea shorelines, and in botany, in cauliflowers, flowers, branches, and trees; in physiology and medicine, in the vascular network, in the diseased cancer cells and in neurophysiology; both in man’s brain and in works of art and linguistics. Autosimilarity or an intermittent generation of something similar to or identical with oneself materializes as a universal element of symmetry of cosmos. It establishes a certain order both in inanimate and animate nature. Autosimilarity is counteraction to chaos and uncertainty. It is possible that the motive force of evolution consists exactly

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in the mutual complementariness of difference and similarity that create a state which could be termed deterministic chaos. Tymieniecka’s vision is to a much greater extent teleologically directed, as preferring the principle of self-individualization she does not pay so much attention to autosimilarity. Life, in her opinion, is directed by logos (that, certainly, is only and solely a philosophically perceived concept). In the creation of a philosophical system this Logos is necessary as a guarantee of order and meaning because a unilateral accentuation of the principle of selfindividualization (failing to lay stress on autosimilarity) would unmistakably bring about so many never-ending differences in the process of life that it would lead to chaos. However, what is Logos? The answer about the existence of Logos and its manifestation in signs (and further – on ciphering these signs) could be related to theological dogmas if Logos were compared to God. In my opinion, an exterior, functional similarity is discernible because the existence of Logos is to a greater extent postulated than proved. It may well be that it cannot be proved at all, which would be why the concept used in the phenomenology of life is not cognition of Logos, but ciphering. Tymieniecka in her philosophy does not use the concept of God, yet she examines: “The Quest for the Absolute,” “Communication in the Sacred,” “Divine Love in the Soul” and other themes that have always been examined in religious philosophy. The author’s relations with religious philosophy could be a subject of separate investigation. The theme of ciphering in contemporary philosophy occurs now and again. At present in contemporary philosophy it outgrows the borders delineated by phenomenology. New concepts strengthen (event, simulacrum, traces), philosophy aspires to be ready for more than just description: for deconstruction, deciphering, interpretation. K. Jaspers wrote on the discovery of the ciphers of existence. The thought of deciphering appears in Bultmann’s teaching on demythologizing; similar to it is Derrida’s teaching on deconstruction and other teachings. What is the specific character of ciphering in the phenomenology of life? Ciphering in the phenomenology of life functions in a number of aspects: 1. 2. 3.

creative ciphering of the original life significance, deciphering and ciphering of the original significance of the work, ciphering of inward sacredness.

Ciphering is connected with creative experience and attaching signification to the valuable. From the multiform creative process on the preconscious level

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the most significant is singled out that in the sphere of Human Condition acquires the meaning of a new cipher. In the first volume of Logos and Life the creation of a new cipher is mainly connected with the creation of works of art and literature. In this aspect it is similar to the teaching of hermeneutics on the interpretation of a work of art. However, in the fourth book of Logos and Life ciphering is used in a wider sense. Tymieniecka stresses that the creative function differs from the cognitive function, and that is why it is necessary to speak about creative ciphering. “We do not proceed by deciphering already ciphered scripts.”7 Creative ciphering is not limited to the sphere of culture, it applies to the logos of life. “It is then through the ciphering of the logos itself, … that the creative function of the human condition reveals the logos in its own manifestations.”8 The philosopher explains that ciphering and interpretation, the way she sees it, differ essentially. Interpretation implies delving into the sedimentation of meaning. Ciphering, in its turn, implies transition from the most complicated forms of life to the search for the simplest forms and laws, to the primeval logos. However, creative ciphering does not stop there, but ascribes them to the whole field of investigation, thus, coming to philosophy as a metaphysical vision of beingness. Thus, we must admit that Tymieniecka has chosen as the basis of her philosophy concepts that are essentially related: logos and ciphering. It is in them that I see the axiomatic bases from which, as from assumptions, spring the teaching about life, self–individualization and creative experience. In her opinion, logos of life cannot be reached in the usual ways of scholarly investigation, semantic analysis or hermeneutical interpretation. It can only be grasped in creative ciphering. Thus, all of her work as a philosopher should be regarded as creative ciphering for the comprehension of which no criteria of other methods or ways could be adjusted. Though the phenomenology of life does not claim to be a teaching of method, in my opinion, the development of the trend might reach an interesting stage when more thorough attention is paid to how the assumption of the existence of the logos of life appears and how creative ciphering is manifested in the texts about Logos and Life. Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia, R-ıga N OT E S 1 2

Analecta Husserliana, vol. LXX, p. 644. Ibid, p. 121.

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– LE M A I JA K U Ibid, p. 370. Ibid, p. 13. S. J. Gould, “The Evolution of Life on the Earth” Scientific American, October, 1994, p. 63. Silin, sˇ , E. Lielo paties-ıbu meklejumi. R-ıga, 1999, p. 163. Analecta Husserliana, vol. LXX, p. 19. Ibid.

IRENE ANGELA BIANCHI

“ M A N – WO R L D ” ; “ M A N – NAT U R E ” : R E F L E C T I O N S O N “ F E E L I N G ” A N D AC T I N G

1. ON LIVING AND THE “LIVING BEING”

Generally when we approach the difficult subject of the relationship between man and the world, and also between man and nature, a whole host of problems arise, and we should therefore do well to concentrate on just some of these problems. The world in fact presents itself as a complex of interacting material entities. Some of these entities are inanimate and others are animate. Among these latter ones there are complex organisms that have different notions about the surrounding world and behave as if they had aims and a certain awareness of the consequences of their actions, and among these organisms there are the human beings. The term “man” itself contains a fundamental problem, if only because he is able to engage in independent activity that is sustained over time, so heralding a whole series of “problems,” such as the ability to judge, know, act and thus be the “protagonist” in a sphere of reality governed by principles not reducible to “mere” nature. We can never think of man as an isolated “fact,” but in a continuous way constituting himself in relationships. Man is, for us, a “living being,” i.e. he who lives, and living in this case also entails intending ideal and real objectivities, and also moving, individualising and above all maintaining himself in a continuous and indissoluble contact with the world itself, even if the contact with other “living beings” is more urgent and more vital and primarily possible than contact with things. This exceptional dialectic of living, or rather the act of life, is for us an “Erlebniss,” an act of experience and also an effective totality; an act of consciousness and at the same time a biological act. The simple use of the above term, that is, the Erlebniss, already puts us on guard to the fact that he who lives, the living thing, is among the most complex forms of life, given that he gives rise to a number of problems that tend to be referred to as “mind-body,” “external world and interior world,” and so on, where above all, and with the predominance of scientific investigation, the realm of sentiment, of inner personal and private feeling, seems unable to enter, unless marginally, with regard to questions about man in relation to the world, to society, to history and so forth. We shall however see, even if only briefly, that feelings, or rather emotional states, not only 51 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 51–65. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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determine but actually constitute the origin of intentionality insofar as they are an opening that reveals the being of the world and that this also in no way implies having to abandon, for example, a transcendental perspective (that we intend phenomenologically as the opposite of “worldly,” “constitutive” and not opposed, in a Kantian sense, to the empirical), but, on the contrary permits its radicalisation and a widening of its overall philosophical scope.1 In the words of Fink: “the fundamental question of phenomenology can be formulated as the question of the origin of the world”2; its task consists in intentionally explicating the sense of the world and what allows it to be manifest; from which follows that asking about emotional states from this point of view is to ask what kind of relationship there is between the appearance of the world and the emotional states themselves. In effect, our daily behaviour in the world has, above all, an emotionallypractically oriented aspect. Feeling is an act, an “act of feeling,” and as such constitutes, overlying the layers of sensorial predicates, a specific affective layer; the layer of the cheering, for example, of the objective and objectively “sad,” of the beautiful and the ugly. This affectivity is revelatory insofar as it shows this object layer of the world. “Predicates,” writes Husserl, “are predicates determining objects.”3 These affective predicates that are objectively constituted defer to a founding affectivity and it is in this sense that we can affirm, once again with Husserl, that they can also style themselves as “subjective” insofar as they are predicates that defer to evaluating subjects and their acts of evaluation. The founding affectivity is thus the intentional activity constituted by axiological predicates. The fact is that we attribute to all lived intentional acts, including to the lived events of feelings, a certain objectivity, in relation to which they lose something of their position as feelings, i.e. as objects that can be put under the heading of value objects, practical objects and so forth; and in any case it appears evident to us that our daily “life–world” is a cultural world and not a world of “mere” natural objects. What we call “things” are in effect paintings, statues, tools, houses and so on, as objects for use, but also objects of value, that are not scientific, natural objects.4 All those things in one way or another we thus include under a single heading, i.e. that of “culture,” that is at once bound and connected to a sphere of creation that can only be understood as the correlate of consciousness of value and the “practically formative.” What then is the character of the affective itself, of the experienced feeling? Husserl describes it, as we know, by referring by analogy to the “noetic-noematic” relationship. An intentionality necessarily precedes the lived feeling, such that it comes to “fill it,” that is, to give itself to it, exactly like the intuitive content of

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perception fills the perceptive intentionality. Feeling is itself an intuitive content. 2 . “ M I N D – B O DY ” A N D E P I S T E M O L O G I C A L R E F L E C T I O N

In our time it seems that much relevance at the epistemological level is invested in the problem of the relationship, that for the sake of simplicity we can say is to be found within the “mind body” issue, intending this relationship to be a relationship between mental functions or states and neurophysiological states.5 Despite all the years that have passed we have not moved much further beyond Hume’s considerations on the matter, or even earlier, those of Galileo: the prevalent tendency for a very long time, and one that still does not easily change, has been to extend the empirical method to the whole human world in an attempt to bring mental and social phenomena under non–teleological and mathematically formulable laws, while the Galilean application of mathematics to nature has appeared to be an irreversible process unaffected both by the crises that have from time to time afflicted the development of new fields of research, such as atomic theory, relativity and quantum theory, and by the only probable character that according to Heisenberg’s “indeterminism theory” should be attributed to the laws of physics.6 But until not so long ago these considerations were perfectly legitimate given the need for modern science to explicate, investigate and determine certain “measurable” values, relating to certain entities, and not only physical but also mental entities. The predominance of this particular scientific model needs now to be wholly re-examined. By limiting itself to the study of the quantified observable, science now tends to become an arid exercise in only one direction, leaving aside any other possible methods of investigation. Equally important is the purely philosophical (perhaps metaphysical) dimension that warns us of the impossibility of reduction of the relational problem, of whatever type it may be, regarding the human being on a purely epistemological plane. My thought thus returns to Husserl (and to Brentano before him) as a living example of the impossibility of the principle of identifying the reported propositions of science with the “subjective” propositions of an individual who “describes” his own mental states, associating to these the observed events of neurophysiology, such as, for example, in the classic experiments of psychophysiology. This is also because the two ambits follow two different and incommensurable languages and logics. This incommensurability also renders the position of the “theoreticians of identity” between mental states and physical states inconsistent. As an

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example we could take H. Fiegl’s writings at the end of the fifties. Furthermore, the fiercest supporters of the identity theory are undoubtedly those belonging to the so-called “Australian school,” though the roots of this thought are undoubtedly to be found in the anti-psychologistic vision of Frege, effectively the father of contemporary logic, and his classic distinction between “Sinn” and “Bedeutung” in, for example, the problem of synonymy, that is the interchangability of terms like “same” and “object” in this case understood as a neural event.7 3 . T H E “ T R A N S C E N D E N TA L ” NAT U R E O F T H E E M OT I O N S

In many of his works, Husserl expressly indicates and claims the intentional character of feelings.8 Feelings must not in fact be understood as “mere” mental states that accompany certain representations and that owe their reference to an object due to the fact only that they are interwoven with these. If they were only thus feelings would have no transcendental function, that is, would not have any role in what we may call the “origin of the world.” That the relationship is intentional means for us just what Husserl himself says in his words: “we do not have pure and simple representation to which the feeling is then attached as something that, in itself and for itself, has no reference to the thing and is connected to it purely by “association”: pleasure and displeasure “address” the object represented, and without this “addressing” they could not be at all.”9 The representation is thus not the cause of the intentional feeling but its condition of possibility. As Husserl notes again in his Logical Investigations, the structure of the founding representation and the founded representation is not, that is to say, a matter of chance, but is intentional, since it is unthinkable, for example, for there to be a pleasure without something that is pleasant.10 The acts of feelings, insofar as they are intentional, are also a revealing of the world. The affectivity of things is revealed; it thus permits the affectivity of things to become phenomenon, to “become world.” Intentional feelings thus open the possibility of living in a “human” world in which the living being “lives insofar as it is living,” and as it is human. Furthermore, without these, no “habitable” world for man would appear; it is in fact in the emotional state that the object reveals itself to be odious, attractive, dangerous or lovable, etc. The emotional life in this sense has thus a transcendental aspect given that, as Costa says, “only insofar as it has feelings can a subject live in a world of values and senses, it is only this characteristic that makes a human world possible.”11 The transcendental aspect of

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phenomenology thus leads to an acknowledgement, by reflecting on ourselves, that the world that is for us, that in its being and is “our” world, takes on its sense of being exclusively from our intentional life. The difficulty that arises here, if we will, is that of thinking of phenomenology as detached from the idealistic point of view of classical idealism, and this we can do at the moment we say that it is the intentional feeling and intentionality that have a “revelatory” and not creative character, and also when we say that the world manifesting itself is not merely thought, and therefore it is not the product of a spontaneous action. This all lies within phenomenology, and the reference is particularly to the most advanced of Husserl’s thought; the nucleus of maximum radicality is constituted by “passivity,” and by the noting of passive intention, and this concept of passive intentionality comes from a wholly particular way, on Husserl’s part, of intending another important concept, namely that of “affection.” It is of importance the way the complex development of the term affection, which for reasons of space can be little more than mentioned here, is associated with a different configuration of intentional acts, so that these are in fact no longer acts that confer “form” and “sense” on a “formless” matter but that reveal to the subject the sense of being of things.12 We can say only that the decisive point of these analyses, which breaks down the dominion of the cogito, turns out to be that the appearing of the world does not coincide with the explicit consciousness of the subject. That is, according to Husserl, within appearing we have to distinguish a foreground that emerges, and imposes itself to the ego, that is explicitly experienced, and a background that remains not sensed; but this does not mean it does not produce any “affection,” but only that it is a “structured” element that, within the various affective tendencies, does not succeed in imposing itself upon the ego. That is, what remains in the background is already given (but is not constituted independently of the ego and that only afterwards exercises an affection on the ego itself), but the ego does not grasp it explicitly. It should be said that what stays in the “foreground” imposes itself on the ego because it has, so to speak, “won” in the struggle against the other affections that were in their turn seeking to impose themselves upon the ego. We thus find ourselves, as Husserl himself affirms, in a sort of “relativism” of the affecive tendencies.13 From what is passively constituted thus follow tendencies, passive intentions, an affection that is anterior to the “cogito” itself. This means that the sense of the world is delineated before the ego actively directs itself towards the appearing. This directing of the ego, or rather truly intentional acts, must thus be understood as being egological acts that come forward as a kind of response to the affections of being. 14

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The acts exist therefore as a “response” to something that contacts the subject – a decisive vision of the problem that will tell Husserl that the acts can thus be understood as a “being attracted” and a “paying attention” that is also a responding. Thus the common intentional feeling is requested in a sense by its content, which is “re-awakened” and determined by the object insofar as it is in a certain way joined with it. The force of the step is seen in relation to the different manner of intending of the “cogito” that is no longer the only point of departure but rather a secondary effect and derived and represents only an awareness of something that is pre-egologically constituted that has imposed itself on the ego.15 We can therefore say that a tendency reaches out towards the ego that reacts by directing itself, allowing itself to be “pulled” in the direction of the objects that strike it; the ego is receptive. Perceiving thus as receptivity, “the same,” writes Husserl, “is true for the perception of values, the feelings that ‘colour’ the data of sensation already in the background exercise an affection, the subject as an emotional being exercises acts of emotional receptivity: it pays attention in feeling. Living the emotion it adheres to the object … The same goes for missing something and the receptive will.”16 What we wish in the end to underline is that this receptivity cannot be determined as a purely passive layer, and still less as a layer constituted from a chaotic massing of materials that are yet to be sensed and are, so to speak, waiting to be given form by the subject. If understanding is above all the appearing itself of an object, the representation of a “sense,” a datum that in the objectivity of the object “expresses” the real movement and makes it possible for it the object to present itself, the appearing of the object is in the final analysis the unreflected comprehension of the lived sense, and so also of the movement itself, in the only way in which it is immediately possible, that is, with the execution of the movement and the representation of the object that the execution of the movement itself determines. The object representing itself is at the same time the “moving itself” and the selfmovement is at the same time the object’s representation. Their unity is the biological act, given that the biological initiative is characterised by the fact that a movement is “expressed,” and at the same time conceals itself, in an object of perception. Therefore if the plane of perception is the plane of consciousness, we can affirm that the plane of the movement is the “unconscious,” naturally in a Husserlian sense and so in no way enigmatic, where this unity is thus immediate comprehension, where living is in itself experience and thus praxis. At this level of comprehension, experience and also praxis are characteristics of any animate being, and supposed as already

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given in the individual participation in the community of the species and, through this, the individual’s living in communion with the environment. And so when we say that there are already syntheses in the passive layer, and there is thus intentionality, that means that there exist no non-intentional feelings, and so where there is an affective feeling, of any type and at any level, there is life. A life that is “variable” in the varying of reality itself, in that “flow” in which it seems that everything seems to be changing but in which there remains something unchanging that in a sense “never breaks into fragments,” that is the essence of life itself. Thus life that is variable, at the same time or in any case through its very variations, never ceases to be life, or rather life itself is at once the feeling of itself that never ceases to feel itself to be and to be “absolutely itself,” as a single entity in itself. That which is unchanging is the “impressional life,” even though it never actually ceases to be subject to new impressions and feelings. It remains in a state where a new impression can always appear, so that each new impression to come will itself also be an impression and so on. That which is always there, before it sey, and that remains after it off, that which is effectively required for its von becoming. It is not the empty form, therefore, of the “I think,” or the ecstatic stare of the future happening, but the radical selfaffirmation of life in its phenomenological effectivity and of which each “new impression” is only a modalisation insofar as, for Husserl, there is not and never will be in our life any absolute “now” falling back into the initially totally unconscious past to then become a posteriori conscious; consciousness is necessarily a “being conscious” in each of its phases.17 For this reason, in the words of Henry: “we are not a Punchinella with one foot in being and the other in nothingness.”18 What therefore remains is not an immutable substance in the midst of the universal flow, but the eternal coming into being of life, and as this becoming never ceases to “happen,” what persists is in effect the changing and the entirety of the growth. The growth is the movement of life that takes place within it on account of what it is, its subjectivity. Husserl considered the movement of life and, in the opinion of the authors, did so in quite exceptional terms. In his lectures on time he writes: “Consciousness awakes, life awakens, it is a living experience that meets, from that moment, that comes up against the new ‘now’ … that is something original.”19 It is a thrust to this meeting, a life tension, that is manifest in even the smallest and minimal form of consciousness. We may conclude this first very brief reflection by quoting an emblematic manuscript of Husserl. The phenomenologist writes: “The human life … it

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hangs on the threshold of success and failure, is thus always in danger and in care, and in this sense it is justified in designating life, with regard to its emotional tonality (Stimmung), as a life taking care of (Lebenssorge).”20 4 . T H E “ I N V E N T I V E ” C H A R AC T E R I N T H E B I O L O G I C A L AC T

Earlier we said that we were regarding the biological act as an “Erlebniss.” From Husserl’s reflections on the kinesthetic problem, as the grounding for a wider consideration of perception, we can also think of that act by seeing it above all as “movement,” or also “self-movement.” In such a way, however, we get beyond the principle of a blind determinism of physical processuality, and also a “mere” belonging to an unconscious dimension, even if the unconscious tends to be, on one side, the plane of movement just as consciousness is for perception. It is a movement that has within itself an intentionality and a representation and can be understood as the dynamic centrifugality of its unity with perception itself, thus bringing with it a recognition and with this an active initiative. Perception and representation are interwoven both with the initiation of the act itself and with its own dynamic, but also perception and movement, as singularity and invention, or rather as possible improvisation. When we speak of “improvisation,” or even of “creation,” with reference to the biological act, we have, however, to add that the use of these terms stems from the fact that every biological act that inheres to the living being is inserted with it in an environment, a sort of order, that in the arising of this “new thing,” or recreation, as described by Weizsaecker, in its turn “gives back,” or rather creates, a new order.21 The act, insofar as it is activity, thus brings about a sort of “crisis” but also brings order, where it is the inventive character of the act itself that determines this particular state, where the concrete world lived, the really existing phenomenon is the locus of this relationship. It is a relationship between the organism and the environment that the perceptive motory dialectic of the biological act thus tends each time to re-establish where the rising up of the innovativeness of the act itself creates a “crisis,” and it does so by constituting itself as consciousness. In the continuous changing both of the environment and of the organism, understood as areas of natural processes, the living being however retains its objectivity by virtue of this very acting, or, as Masullo says in this fine image: “Like an acrobat, who seems immobile in his balance that he reconquers moment by moment through small adjustments to compensate for the crisis of equilibrium, just so does the living being maintain its balance, its objectivity, through ever new initiatives,”22 each one

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of which we can think of as being a biological act. What therefore emerges is the stability of the intentional relationship “consciousness–the world,” a stability, a coherence also given by the action that ensures intentional motory continuity even in the discontinuity of the physical situations of the mere space-time processuality. This is a creative response to a situation, a response given and at the same time inscribed in two ambits of the living that are essential but as different as memory and “perspective,” or rather “opening.” All this is so because in effect the order of the concrete individual is the lived situation and thus, as Husserl tells us, the whole “field” made up both of memory and perspective. What is it, though, that we intend in this case when we speak about creativity rather than improvisation? Each one of us reacts to a disturbance and to stresses or stimuli as does the whole of nature and the environment as a whole; primarily the stimulus is interiorised and stratified, but given the constitutive impossibility of “mere” indifference to stimuli the reaction of the living being loses its sort of mechanicalness of response; the mechanism of conservation and motory habit that is firmly integrated in its being tends to maintain itself as such, at the same time that in this conservation the subject of life erupts, the human being, that is also its motoriety, its singular perceiving-motory activity, and with it the habitual motory stratification and thus memory, where here it is not only a fact of dynamic synthesis, of stability outside the equilibrium, as a stratification made of various founding and fundamental levels is transcended by an act of consciousness, opening itself to further possibilities – the possibility of permitting a higher order that in its continuous raising upwards rings with it higher levels of consciousness, of creativity and of awareness. The plane of passivity, to which we refer when we speak of stratification, or layering, can no longer be understood as a sort of inertia; it belongs to a “hyletic” dimension that from the outset already brings with it “dynamis” without which there would not even be activity, and every activity in its small way, while subject to the law of the becoming possible and the possible, is a creative invention. Even the simplest and most artless “representation,” insofar as it always represents something, emerging from mere sensorial chaos, has its objectivity.23 If its intentional side is also like this, its, even minimal, consciousness, like every act of life as a dialectic unity of perception and movement, and therefore as “praxis,” however simple, originates in an invention, even if exclusively “biological.” In Husserlian terms we could affirm that if the a priori material, in this case intended as the qualification of an originary dimension that has its sense represented, is the

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originariety of the content, even though we do, however, have to admit that in the Husserlian analysis it seems to lose itself in a sense mainly ideal rather than effective, in the light of the coexistent nature of the effective movement with the intentionality given by the improvisation of the biological act; this very a priori material, as objectivity of the object brought back to its concreteness in the indivisible unity with consciousness, reveals itself to be the originariety of the effective content presenting itself. The way in which the movement “expresses” itself as real is in its no less originary singularity: “The a priori material is … emergence on the intentional representative plane of the sense of a biological act”24 – in short, the sense lived. What we would like to emphasise is how the “sense lived” of any object, its being for me, is defined, it is true, through a noematic-noetic relationship, but also, and for this very reason, through possibility that is “felt” and “lived”, in the conduct, even if sketched out (at times even inhibited, or not conscious) of objective data.25 Each one of these steps, even those movements that are only “sketched out” or “unconscious,” is for me essential. It is there to represent something to me and at the same time move me and is also selfmovement and representation of objectivity; I know and at the same time I live, just as the biological act is immediate comprehension, so that living is in itself a relationship of experience and praxis. The act of living even in the most modest of animal species is thus most certainly invention given the continuously varying situations, even it if is also certainly a relatively limited invention with its range of possibility that is, on the one hand, determined by the law of continuity of the species – a kind of series of packages delivered and utilisable in the development of the relationship between the organism and the environment to form, and also to “re-form” the concrete individual. This operational continuity that we can call instinct, does however reveal some singular lines of conduct – that is, a well determined motory capacity that, to return to the dialectic we spoke about between perception and movement, constitutes a perceptive capacity and, albeit limited, cognitive capacity – and at the same time, and this is essential, participative, sensitive and affective capacity, that becomes ever greater as we rise through the various classes of living things and to the ascent of the fullness of consciousness. 5 . T H E H U M A N S U B J E C T, T H E B I O L O G I C A L S U B J E C T

Not acknowledging that even the most simple conduct has a sense and depends on the vital significance of the situation, biological science thus restricts itself

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so that it has no possibility of conceiving of such instances of conduct as “things in themselves” with an “extra” parte existence, in the nervous system and in the body, or in the words of Merleau–Ponty: “it sees in those incarnate dialectics that we radiate into an environment that is to them immanent: It is not a matter of returning some form or other of vitalism or animism, but simply one of recognising that the object of biology is unthinkable without the unity of meaning that a consciousness finds there and sees unfolding.”26 The physical language thus speaking of “structure” in a formal sense (and we could think here of Russell) and its content sees it coincident with the formal meaning not being space-time but a system of mathematically describable relationships, so that the concrete living of the experience in which those relationships are incarnated are left out and excluded. The language of biology, as Fasullo says, is “a language with which a subject seeks to determine the sense only of what a sense can being, that is the movement of the subjects.”27 The structure tends to consider the whole, every whole, whose parts are organised in it and for it, according to a sense that expresses the unitary value of the multiplicity of the parts themselves. It is a problem that is more current than ever in view of the ambitious objective of analysing the constituent parts of the living being in its entirety. Even that which seems to present itself as a sort of “reading” of sequences dictated by the coding of the human genome (DNA) has shown itself, in the light of the most recent discoveries, to be mistaken. It has in fact been discovered that genomes are not in fact simple codified sequences, but possess a dynamic organisation where the function of a specified gene depends on the spatiotemporal context of expression. The problem of the inability to look in a different way at the research in this field is shown by the fact that it tends to follow a strategy that continues to be based on a monocausal thought, or rather a linear and mechanistic view, that in this case sees a univocal relationship between genes, proteins and functions and maintains that this exhausts our understanding of biological organisation, and its dynamic transformations, through the collection, the grouping and the classification of empirical data. The work carried out by such researchers has, however, been worthwhile and has produced a great quantity of data that have become the subject of a new discipline in biology, i.e. genomics, to which have been attached a number of other sciences, not mere neologisms – such as protenomics, which studies the whole complex of the proteins present in a cell in a given moment. Whatever “post-genome” science there may be it will have to reckon with the ontological problems that regard these data bases and the types of representation of the gene function.28 Furthermore, in addition to the

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ontological problems there are those problems relating to comprehending the organisational principles that govern the biochemical networks within the cell, given that fairly frequently the lack in an organism of genes that are considered “critical” (induced or natural) is often of no phenotypical consequence. This means that the behaviour of the regulatory protein network as a whole cannot be foreseen or predicted starting out from knowledge of their individual interactions, and not for “metaphysical” reasons, but because the signalling paths within the cell are degenerating, that is, the result may be obtained by following different paths and using different components. There are also a whole range of physical, mechanical and structural, as well as physico-chemical, aspects of cell organisation that are not taken into consideration by the molecular biology that further define the level of control by genetic information. It is quite likely therefore that there are still as yet unknown relational dynamics that express themselves at different levels of the organisation of the cell. We must therefore also lower our expectations in relation to disease and the promise of such sciences that would finally become the object of true scientific classification, where the detailed description of causes at the molecular level would thus have put medicine in a position to be able to develop preventive techniques and more precise therapies. In truth the gaze must be opened up to take in a whole that is correlated with the environmental content, as with a whole series of individual variations, as the irreducible characteristic of both the biological and pathological reality. A new concept of disease will probably only emerge from integration of the molecular with the genetico-evolutionistic perspective,29 and from this model individual varation will also emerge as the irreducible connotation of both normal and pathological biology. It follows that each individual is a unique manifestation of the pathology that afflicts him and whose treatment needs are equally unique. It goes without saying that science has to face other kinds of problems, including the updating of its own epistemological rules in the sense of framing its approach to diverse pathologies primarily considering the person, and therefore the complex and individual conditions that present themselves on levels quite other than those considered up to now. The question “why do we get ill” should be replaced with the notion of which forms of disease an individual can contract and which particular individuals are more likely to become sick with those diseases. This involves having to interact with individuals who have quite individual histories that make them unique in the way they present themselves to the world and thus also manifest a disease. The subject is in fact in a constant struggle with his own individuality. Without taking into account the fact that the genetics of complex

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diseases have ethical and legal aspects for the various social figures that may be interested in the information acquired through much more serious forms of genetic investigation, working relationships, and also family relationships, risk running up against social discrimination, where there are evaluations and judgments made that are relevant on the ethical and moral planes to the defence of the dignity of the individual – as such unique and irreplaceable – opening new challenges from a legislative viewpoint, as well as changes and existential matters that present themselves to our current society, which is certainly not equipped to deal with them. In the constant reenactment of this struggle the individual also breaks with the absolutism of a mere spatio-temporal structure; the biological structure cannot coincide only with a mere physical structure, since while without contradicting it, it fills it with a content that profoundly alters its sense. Insofar as it is a structure, the biological being also indicates a system of relationships between the whole and its parts while the properties of the parts depend on those of the whole, i.e. the system of relationships. The biological subject cannot in fact be considered isolated from a larger organisation, from a system of relationships in which it is a part of the environment, i.e. the world, understood as the “concrete” environment of the subject, the “Umwelt.” The structure thus becomes the whole “environment-individual,” where the individual represents a part whose properties depend upon the properties of the whole itself. On the other hand, however, the individual is in his turn also a whole, a whole whose properties depend on the properties of its parts. In a constant correlation between the environment and the individual, the worldnature-man, are thus wholes and parts in a joining together that is both constant and vital. It is a paradox that is resolved in the individual that “feels,” a “Fuehlen,” in relation to himself, the role of the whole. The sensation, from the simplest to the most complex forms, is an apprehension of the role that the organism-environment, subject and world, have at the same time. The whole is thus assumed by the part as its own function and the sense of this function is expressed in the sensation.30 Biological language and psychological language, through their notions of “structure” and “sense,” notions that are indispensably linked, thus tend to cross over, where the exemplary derivations are the terms of sense and significance. A BRIEF CONCLUSION

What interests us at the end of this reflection is to return to a strictly philosophical level, to underline the notion of sense that conceptually translates

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the experience of subjectivity, as characterising the living being, that is, the “animate living being” – he who is self-organised on the basis of spontaneity. This is the sense, therefore, of the form taken by the subject organising itself, or rather the subjectivity in its objective being, even if the awareness of the sense of the vital processes cannot be immediate. We return once again to Merleau–Ponty, who, on the subject of the structure of behaviour, writes: “the vital acts have a sense … Every organism … is a melody that sings alone of itself. This is not to say that it knows this melody as it strives to realise it. It just means that it is a significant ensemble for a consciousness that knows it, not a thing that resides within it.”31 Man in fact reaches awareness of the sense through a long and tortuous effort of cognitive work, and together also with scientific research. Every subject is thus a consciousness, but must not only be understood as consciousness of the sense of its vital process – much more, it is the sense itself of its vital processes, just as his feeling and his affectivity; that is the point.32 University of Verona, Italy N OT E S 1

Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, 1918–1926 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), Hua XI, p. 150 et seq. where Husserl expressly says that the feeling is not the “lacquer” on the representation, not only are there no “pure” representations, that is, free from an affective “halo,” but the affective halo or aura contributes to determining the appearance of the representation itself. See also V. Costa, L’estetica trascendentale fenomenologica. Sensibilità e razionalità nella filosofia di Edmund Husserl (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1999). 2 Eugen Fink, Studien zur Phaenomenologie. 1930–1939 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 101. 3 E. Husserl, Idee per una fenomenologia pura e per una filosofia fenomenologica (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), Vol. II, p. 414. 4 E. Husserl, Idee II, op. cit., p. 27. 5 Emilio Boncinelli, Il Cervello, la mente e l’anima (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2000). 6 Wiezel Heisenberg, Fisica e filosofia (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1994). 7 H. Fiegl, Concepts, Theories and M. B. P. (Mental-Body-Problem) (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1958), pp. 370–497; and G. Basti, Il rapporto mente corpo nella filosofia e nella scienza (Bologna: ESD, 1991). 8 Think, for example, of Va Ricerca Logica and the comparison with Brentano. Refer to E. Husserl, Ricerche Logiche, II (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1988). 9 E. Husserl, Ricerche logiche, II, op. cit., p. 178. 10 Ibid., p. 177. 11 Vincenzo Costa, “Vita emozionale e analisi trascendentale,” in AA.VV. I luoghi del comprendere (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2000), p. 107.

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For the complex problem of the passive synthesis with reference to all its aspects, refer to Rolf Kuehn, Husserls Begriff der Passivitaet. Zur Kritik der passiven Syntesis in der Genetischen Phaenomenologie (Munich: Karl Albert Vrlg., 1998). 13 E. Husserl, Lezioni sulla sintesi passiva (Milan: Guerrini Ass., 1993), p. 206 e ssg. 14 We must admit that a certain amount is owed to Scheler in these reflections of Husserl at the end of the twenties, if only for the “emotionaler Antwortsreaktion” that Scheler speaks about in his “Formalismus.” Refer to Max Scheler, Der formalismuns in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (Bern und Munich: Franke Vrlg., 1980). 15 All the complex problems behind these simple reflections of ours are in reality very much part of a whole body of work of which the greater part is unpublished. There is a whole series of manuscripts by Husserl that investigate consciousness in the light of the will, feelings etc., and represent a turning point in phenomenology towards a transcendental and also genetic dimension that will change the sense itself of phenomenological investigation in the matter. 16 Refer to a manuscript by Husserl from the twenties, Ms. AVI30/64b. 17 Edmund Husserl, Per la fenomenologia della coscienza interna del tempo (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1981), p. 144. 18 See also Michael Henry, Fenomenologia materiale (Milan: Guerrini Associati, 2000), p. 101. 19 E. Husserl, Per la fenomenologia della coscienza interna del tempo, op. cit., p. 131. 20 Refer to Manuscripts, Ms. AVI34/22b. 21 Vincent von Weizsaecker, Der Gestaltkreis, Stuttgart 1950. Here he, through an analysis of movement and perception, draws out the concept of “intrication” (Verschraenkung) of the one in the other; so in the moment in which I move I make a perception appear and in the moment I perceive a movement is manifest. The perception finally becomes “self-movement.” See pp. 19–21. 22 Aldo Masullo, Struttura, soggetto, prassi (Milan: EDI, 1994), p. 284. 23 Just “seeing” a thing is in effect an act of “understanding,” i.e. the sense that is of the objective aspect, though limited to a certain level, that does not leave the sense at higher levels unprejudiced. 24 A. Masullo, Struttura, soggetto, prassi, op. cit., 289. 25 Tran Duc Tao, Phénoménologie et Matérialisme di alectique (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), p. 244. 26 Maurice Merleau–Ponty, La structure du comportement (Paris: Puf, 1942), p. 186 e sgg. 27 Aldo Masullo, Struttura, soggetto, prassi (Napoli: EDI, 1994), p. 39. 28 See B. Childs, Genetic Medicine. A Logic of Disease (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press., 1999); and G. Corbellini (P. Donghi), La medicina di Darvin (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1998), pp. 85–127. 29 “Genetic evolutionistic” medicine considers disease to be an expression of the individual’s limited ability to adapt to his environment, due to some variation in the genes that control single paths of a variety of homeostatic devices. Needless to say another science that appears in this particular panorama is that of “pharmacogenomics” seeking to provide more specific, targeted and effective drugs. See B. Childs, Genetic Medicine. A Logic of Disease, op. cit. and also an article by W. Sadée, called “Pharmacogenomics,” in the British Medical Journal no. 319, 1999, pp. 196–98. 30 A. de Waelhens, Phénoménologie et vérité, Puf, Paris 1953, p. 85. 31 M. Merleau–Ponty, La structure du comportement, op. cit., p. 36. 32 Naturally we can say that the sense implies the knowing subject that such sense reveals, but not less the structure implies the natural subject whose acts are interpretable in terms of sense. It is not our intention to go further into this question here. On the subject see Dario Sacchetti, L’uomo antibiologico, Milan 1990.

CARLA CANULLO

E K S TA S Y O F T H E WO R L D / I M M A N E N C E O F L I F E M I C H E L H E N RY, R E A D E R O F H U S S E R L

Material phenomenology, phenomenology of the invisible, of Life, and of the flesh: these are four expressions that can well seal the philosophy of Michel Henry – work in which originality emerges from the continuous confrontation with the foundational texts of phenomenology, in particular with those by Husserl, to whom our author does not stop going back. And this is because, if Husserl’s motto of “going to the things themselves” can be intended as the inextinguishable utopia of drawing out the phenomena in their authentic and genuine giving, it is true that the possibility of thinking about the originality of their donation in the same advent of the things never ceases to stimulate interrogatives and provocations. So Henry’s reading of Husserl is a reading that will be reduced to the thematic points of the ekstasis (of the world) and the immanence (of Life), themes under which light the confrontation with the historic phenomenology moves, and it is an investigation in which, from its overcoming, Life, that is to say the essence of manifestation, stands out. 1 . H E N RY E N TA N T QU E P H É N O M É N O L O G U E

L’essence de la manifestation1 and Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps,2 the works that marked the philosophical beginning of Henry,3 are phenomenological in a sui generis way: it is difficult to find explicit references towards the work of Husserl, and the philosopher voluntarily leaves off the confrontation with the phenomenological school born by Husserl. In the first two works what interests him is ontology, not scientificity or the strictness of the method. Moreover, any return to the method or its interpretations is absent, up to rendering legitimate the doubting interrogative about the fact that it is possible to speak about phenomenology without speaking about the problems raised by Husserl, and in particular without speaking about the phenomenological method. The problem, of course, is rightly noticed by Henry, who in a text recently issued in the documents of the Colloque devoted to him by the cultural centre of Cerisy (1996), affirms that phenomenology can be intended as “une méthod” which “application” gives to the same phenomenology the occasion for revealing “sa fécondité en tant que discipline 67 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 67–86. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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originelle, déployant des moyens qui lui sont propres,” as far as “a été suivie par Husserl dès les années charnières de 1900.”4 But this is only one of the possible ways that opens to phenomenology. Or better, just because of the fact that it put into being a proper method, better said, from the “mise en oeuvre de cette méthode propre,” it was obliged to “une prise de conscience radicale de soi.”5 This prise de conscience opened a way that today co-exists with that need that made of phenomenology a method for a “philosophy as a strict science.” From that way the phenomenological path strictu sensu of Henry was born, as he never stops confirming. It is the way that was opened by Heidegger first among all, who, in the famous § 7 of Sein und Zeit – a kind of leitmotiv of the work by Henry – affirms: “Phenomenology means ␣␲␱␾␣␫␯⑀␴␪␣␫ ␶␣ ␾␣␫␯␱␮⑀␯␣, it lets us see by itself what shows, as it shows itself … The meaning of the formal and ordinary concept of phenomenon, considered formally, authorises us to call phenomenological each exhibition of the being as it shows in itself.”6 We know what is shown, what is manifested, that is to say those phenomena whose etymology is in the word ␸␻␨, light. It is what appears, what shows itself, what makes itself a phenomenon. But how does this showing happen? What is the way of such a showing? Here is the matter that interests Henry and makes him a reader of Husserl more than of Heidegger, to whom he recognises the merit of having moved the axis of the question from the method to the showing of the phenomenon; it is an original reading and disputable, of course, but he is always unequivocally wary of the fact that “going to the things themselves” means drawing the phenomena as a union of apparent and apparition, according to what Husserl himself expresses in Die Idee der Phänomenologie.7 This is a matter that, anyway, can be revived in the metamorphosis that, in the texts by Henry, such a matter undergoes: “What appears and how does it appear?” This matter is the Archimedean point of Henry’s phenomenology, the point starting from which he overturns the thesis of the historic phenomenology by putting the search for the pure phenomenon before the one for the presence of the phenomenon; it is a search for their matter, one that we identify as a kind of contiguity between the right and the reverse “of the”/“in their” appearing. In this language that oscillates between “l’extrême technicité et la limpidité absolue,”8 such a contiguity can be seen in the phénoménalisation de la phénoménalité pure, in the becoming phenomenon of the phenomenality. It is this idea of phenomenality that the indivisible concept of ekstasis/immanence, more or less explicitly, subtends.

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2 . E K S TAT I C I T Y A N D T H E OV E RT U R N I N G O F P H E N O M E N O L O G Y ‘La question de la phénoménologie, celle-là seule qui confère à la philosophie un objet propre, faisant d’elle une discipline autonome, la discipline fondamentale du savoir, … cette question ne concerne plus les phénomènes mais le mode de leur donation, leur phénoménalité – non ce qui apparaˆıt mais leur apparaˆıtre … Car c’est I’illusion du sens commun, des sciences et de la philosophie du passé que de comprendre partout et toujours ce qui fait du phénomène ce qu’il est comme une première mise à distance, la venue d’un Dehors où, dans la lumière de ce Dehors, toute chose devient visible, ‘phénomène.’9

The idea that guides the reading of Western thought that Henry proposes has formulated an ekstatic definition of the phenomenon; or, in other words, from Descartes to Husserl the phenomenon is thought of not only as what appears in the world, but most of all as what has in this out-side, in this ekstasis, its light. The condition of every appearing is the appearing in an external dimension. It is clear that the ekstaticity described here does not refer to the dimension of the personal mystical ekstasy, but to being collocated outside as a condition of every manifestation. What is visible gets to its visibility only for an outside that is its absolute presupposition. The appearing is in this way linked to the ekstaticity as its privileged dimension. Now, to assume such an ekstaticity, as a reading key of the interpretation that Henry gives to the thought of Husserl, is surely not the only way possible. However, we think that it is the one that, by making the peculiarity of the position of Henry from one side emerge, marks also its limits. Going back to our problem we wonder where Henry finds, in the work of Husserl, the starting dimension of such ekstaticity. This latter, even before that in the world intended as a horizon of the manifestation of the phenomenon, is – according to us – to be found in the Gegebenheit, which, with a choice that has given birth to many discussions, Henry, like J.-L. Marion,10 translates with the word donation, Givenness. Now, it is in the original Givenness, or better, in the meaning given by Husserl, that according to Henry there is the first coming out from itself of the phenomenon, its first ekstaticity. Let’s follow the texts by Husserl quoted by our author: “Wie immer ich wahenehme, vorstelle, urteile, schlieβe … im Hinblick auf das Wahrnehmen ist es absolut klar und gewiβ, daβ ich und das wahrnehme, im Hinblick auf das Urteil, daβ ich das und das urteil”;11 “Jedes intellektive Erlebnis und jedes Erlebnis überhaupt, indem es vollzogen wird, kann zum Gegenstand eines reinen Schauens und Fassens gemacht werden, und in diesem Schauen

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ist es absolute Gegebenheit.”12 What happens in this and in other paradigmatic extracts? The operation made by Husserl leads to a reading of the phenomenon under the light of a dimension that is another thing from the phenomenon itself. As a matter of fact, in the texts quoted, it is not difficult to notice how the moment lived by the intellect is reduced to the object of a pure watching, in which it constitutes absolute Givenness: “Dans les deux textes nous observons d’entrées de jeu un déplacement qui conduit de la cogitatio réelle – de la perception réelle, de la représentation réelle, du jugement réel – à un regard porté sur eux, lequel est une vue pure, c’est-à-dire dans laquelle on s’en tient strictement à ce qui est vu. Or c’est sous ce regard, dans cette vue pure, que la cogitatio devient une donnée absolue.”13 Every single cogitatio is pure data, the sight of which is pure Givenness. This watching constitutes, in Henry’s eyes, a problematic point, and the probity with which he reads the text by Husserl concerns such a point: the cogitatio becomes absolute essence only for a sliding towards the sight. The initiative and the being of the own apparition, for certain ways, are subtracted: “La cogitatio n’est une donnée en personne, une donnée absolue qu’au terme d’un devenir, pour autant que, venant dans la vue qui se porte sur elle, elle se change de cette façon en un phénomène pur.”14 In this “changing” there is the ekstatic dimension of the original Givenness, or, and it is the same, such ekstaticity is in the same division of the Gegebenheit in given/Givenness, a division recomposed by the French word donation, that indicates both the given and the giving one. The problem comes back in the definitions of transcendency and immanence. In the second lesson of the Die Idee der Phänomenologie by Husserl we can read: “Diese Transzendenz freilich doppelsinnig. Es kann entweder gemeint sein das im Erkenntnisakt Nicht-reell-enthaltensein des Erkenntnisgegestandes, so daβ unter dem im ‘wahren Sinne gegeben’ order ‘immanent gegeben’ das reelle Enthaltensein verstanden wäre … Immanent heiβt hier also im Erkentniserlebnis reell immanent.”15 But, Husserl continues, “Es gibt aber noch eine andere Transzendenz, deren Gegenteil eine ganz andere Immanenz ist, nämlich absolute und klare Gegebenheit, Selbstgegebenheit im absoluten Sinn. Dieses Gegebensein, das jeden sinnvollen Zweifel ausschlieβt, ein schlechthin unmitterlbares Schauen und Fassen der gemeiten Gegenständlichkeit selbst und so wie sie ist, macht den prägnanten Begriff der Evidenz aus, und zwar verstanden als unmittelbare Evidenz. Alle nicht evidente, das Gegenständliche zwar meinende oder setzende, aber nicht selbst schauende Erkenntnis ist im zweiten Sinn transzendent. In ihr gehen wir über das jeweils im wahern Sinne Gegebene, über

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das direkt zu Schauende und zu Fassende hinaus.”16 Now, according to Henry, even this second sense of immanence is transcendent because – although directly – the sight must catch the evidence and the cogitatio becomes “objet de connaissance vers lequel le regard de la pensée se dépasse afin de le saisir dans sa vue pure.”17 We see the same problem stated above: if the cogitatio, to be pure Givenness, must be looked at by a pure sight anyway, the initiative is taken away from it in a sense; the cogitatio, the pure act of every thought, the first being – to which anyway Husserl recognised an autonomous reality – doesn’t appear alone in itself, but gives itself to and for an immanence of a sight. The ekstaticity is, then, the dimension that accompanies, by making it inevitable, this up-turning of the immanence in the transcendence, according to what happens in the transcendence of the cogitatio in looking for which it is absolute Givenness. The real reasons for such a refusal of the ekstaticity would stay for certain senses extrinsecate or in-explicate, if we would not go back to the origin of such a criticism formulated for the first time in L’essence de la manifestation, where Henry, en tant que phénoménologue, by individuating in such an essence the ontological structure, gets from the relationship of transcendence and immanence the key point of the reading of the real – a key point that is such because the two words considered are phenomenologically overturned. “L’essence de la manifestation se manifeste en elle-même et par ellemême.”18 But where is the possibility of such a manifestation? – the possibility that, as the horizon in which it happens, the manifestation is not ekstatic, external, must be original. The matter is played on the fact that a manifestation – that to be such must assume the going out from oneself – makes itself objective by becoming external to itself, without it having to proceed towards an horizon that doesn’t belong to it. Here is, then, the research for a pure horizon that is the horizon of the being. The successive analyses that Henry devoted to Life do not differ much from the terms posed here: the key point is to think of the being in terms of a reverse whose possibility (of giving and being known) lays in its appearing, manifest – itself, give-itself. On the contrary ekstaticity has been – starting from the Greek thought – the dimension on which base the manifestation of things has been thought which “are” because they give themselves to us in a background where they become representable and known. Is it possible to overturn this thought, and to “think” such a background transcendent by itself in respect to the “single things” as it is transcendent only because immanent to the same ones? Henry’s phenomenological attempt goes towards this direction, in the

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direction, that is to say, of a “thought” that tries to clarify the essence on its visible side because it came from its invisible side.”19 That this is the real point of the matter, seems to be clear when Henry affirms that “à l’essence … il ne suffit pas, pour être réelle, de s’opposer ainsi l’horizon dans lequel s’objective,”20 of opposing an horizon such as transcendent to itself. Such a horizon is put by the essence because of the fact that it shows as Parousia, advented as such as an ontologically privileged way. But supposing that the essence is “able” to oppose to itself a horizon, how will a horizon stay at its side, as a possibility of every manifestation? How can such a horizon stay linked to the ontologic possibility (and for this reason phenomenological) of the showing? It is possible because the essence of the fundament – borrowing from Heidegger – is unity of opposition (of the manifested horizon) and receptivity (réception): “La possibilité ontologique réside dans le pouvoir phénoménologique du fondement. Dans l’unité indissoluble de l’opposition et de la réception de l’horizon apparaˆıt le caractère fondamental de la réception qui assure en fait la possibilité de cette unité. Être reçu, cela veut dire, se donne à, apparaˆıtre, se manifester.”21 The possibility of showing is strictly linked to the one of receiving – itself, of receiving the ontological horizon, idem et alter of the essence. The horizon where something shows itself, in the first place proceeds from the essence itself that shows itself, it is the first pure ontological data; in the second place, it isn’t an ekstatic transcendence of the being, provided that the movement of this latter is contemporary with the reception of the movement itself. Such contemporariety allows a path to be made diametrically opposed to the one by Husserl and an overturning of the transcendence into the immanence, by making the latter the essence of the former. From the point of view of such overturning it is possible to read § 32 of L’essence de la manifestation, a paragraph where long analyses on the double nature of the essence as transcendent horizon and receptivity are made to flow together. The horizon, to be really like it is, cannot be, as we see it, totally altered from the essence. It is “unity indivisible of opposition and reception”; such a unity cannot be read as duality united in one ontological background. If we interpret it like this we would be oriented towards an understanding of the essence (that later will be comprehension of Life) as com-presence of terms. Reception, receptivity aren’t neutral words: they imply a re-falling on the essence itself; or to locate this concept in the phenomenological horizon of the manifestation, we will say, by way of the title of the work by Henry, that manifestation is not a possibility that could not give itself: it belongs – for right and for fact – to the essence. The essence is

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not only “of the manifestation” but also “how (en tant que) manifestation.” The possibility is in the neverending giving of itself in its neverending making. But every making states its ontological-phenomenological possibility. It conjugates the reverse, by showing in the real the phenomenality as what for, which it is. Now, in this “essence as manifestation,” the determinant role is played by a dimension purely passive, l’affection.22 The possibility of the essence being modified for the giving-itself of its manifestation is its privileged ontologic way, and it is in the concept of affection itself that the re-definition of the words transcendency and immanence is played out. The principle of the affection, purely immanent, implies in a way a difference between what it modifies (we translate like this the word that – in order to avoid misunderstanding – we make poorer from the rich French nuances) and what is modified, where the first element states a transcendency that causes the modification, and the second is the receptive immanent structure that makes it possible and that, for the same reason, cannot be transcendent but is the immanent possibility of receptivity. This internal structure of the immanence, then, excludes in itself every transcendency and, moreover, as each possible affection is only made true by it, such réception will be that being for which every manifestation is possible. Each activity is turned upside down in its possibility, that is, its passivity. The reverse of the activity is, then, its infinite possibility as immanent reception. Henry speaks about subordination, to state the priority of the immanence in respect to the transcendence as the effectivity of the affection (trascendency) depends on the primacy of the possibility of being affected, modified: “La subordination de la réalité à ce pouvoir originaire de réceptivité signifie la possibilité d’une réalité ontologique pure qui ne se trouve plus définie en son essence par I’extériorité, la possibilité d’une réalité autre que I’horizon, la possibilité ontologique originaire de la transcendance même.”23 However thinking about such possibility not as overturning of priority (as the concept of subordination could be read) but as overturning of the effectivity, explains better – according to us – what it means that “l’immanence est I’essence de la transcendance,” that is, that immanence is the being of the transcendency. And if it is just the locative paradox of the ekstaticity that Henry wants to overcome, the two words, according this reading, can be elected as contiguity rather than in opposition, like the two sides (manifested and invisible) of a single phenomenality. The essence of the transcendence is not in the ekstatic eccentricity of the externality, as here is effectively said, but such “being” has its principle in the immanence of receptivity: the latest fundament of each manifestation is in

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such immanence and not au dehors, according to what Henry will support with insistence in C’est moi la vérité. Now, this ontological phenomenality is the reason for which the phenomena are given. The coming back to Husserl, on the wave of this latter observation, is imposed now upon the heart of such phenomenology. 3 . T H E E K S TAT I C I T Y O F T H E C O N S C I O U S O F H U S S E R L

Originally the donor, according to the famous lesson of § 24 of the Ideen I,24 is, Husserl says, the intuition; it is a donor because it doesn’t concern the single object but the possibility itself that something can give itself: “Daβ jede originär gebende Anschauung eine Rechtsquelle der Erkenntnis sei, daβ alles, was sich uns in der ‘Intuition’ originär, (sozusagen in seiner leibhaften Wirklichkeit) darbietet, einfach hinzunehmen sei, als was es sich gibt, aber auch nur in den Schranken, in denen es sich da gibt.” But what makes the intuition be at the origin of each appearing? Only the intentional conscience, the intentionality. It is at the intentionality that the intuition owns its phenomenological power: the conscience is always conscience of. In that “of,” however, there is the ekstatic dimension of the conscience itself, the paradox of its immanence that – intrinsically – is transcended, even if its “object” is the noema and not the object factively transcendent. But we have just seen that the definition by Husserl of transcendency and immanence is spoiled – at the eyes of the “reader” Henry – in its same phenomenological formulation, as the starting point of the matter is, according to him, ontological. This is matter on which, however, we can only indirectly question Husserl, for whom, as it is known, “dann verfallen der Reduktion … alle Ontologie.”25 It is, maybe, just about the matter of the ontology that the decisive act of the separation between a phenomenology intended as method and a phenomenology seen as a field of the originary advent of the phenomenality is consumed. That is because the separation as differing that sans doute does not pretend to being excluding, is just in the matter of the giving itself of the reality: the phenomenality gives itself not to an indifferent spectator, but to a “subject” of the same that could never “reduce” that being in the fact (advent) from which receives also its own being. And this receiving is ontologically funded in the being “of the / as” manifestation as immanence. What is manifested has in itself the flesh of its manifestation, its reverse, in which the giving-itself of every phenomenon consists. Keeping at this kind of reading, neither would the world of the cogitationes be really immanent as it does not have in itself the condition of its

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showing. Let’s follow Husserl in §§ 7–8 of the Cartesianische Meditationen. It is thanks to the epoché that the world “statt schlechtin seiend, das ist uns in natülicher Weise im Seinsglauben der Erfahrung geltend, ist sie uns nur ein blo␤er Seinsanspruch.”26 This is a phenomenon of being and not being that, however, is not a nothing. It is the epoché to lead to the discovery of the cogitationes and “die Welt ist für mich überhaupt gar nichts anderes als die in solchem cogito bewu␤t seiende und mir geltende. Ihren ganzen, ihren universalen und spezialen Sinn uns ihre Seinsgeltung hat sie ausschlie␤lich aus solchen cogitationes. In ihnen verläuft mein ganzes Weltleben … . Ich kann in keine andere Welt hineinleben, hineinerfahren, hineindenken, hineinwerten und – handeln als die in mir und aus mir selbst Sinn und Geltung hat. Stelle ich mich über dieses ganze Leben und enthalte ich mich jedes Vollzuges irgendeines Seinsglaubens, der geradehin die Welt als seiende nimmt – richte ich ausschlie␤lich meinen Blick auf dieses Leben selbst, als Bewu␤tsein von der Welt, so gewinne ich mich als das reine ego mit reinen Strom meiner cogitationes. So geht also in der Tat dem natürlichen Sein der Welt … voran als an sich früheres Sein das reinen ego und seiner cogitationes. Der natürlicher Seinsboden ist in seiner Seinsgeltung sekundär, er setzt beständig den transzendentalen epoché, sofern sie auf ihn zurückleitet, hei␤t daher transzendental-phänomenologische Reduktion.”27 Why, however, do we insist, isn’t this world immanent? Don’t we run the risk of arbitrarily and extrinsically looking for, in Husserl, a concept of immanence that cannot be found there, flowing into a reading that looks for confirmations instead of proceeding in its path? Or why, in other words, cannot it be a simple juxtaposition of two visions, both of authentic immanence? Henry, as a matter of fact doesn’t want to question the originality and geniality of the phenomenological change by Husserl, and he indicates in the phenomenology that “I’idéalisme allemande est au XIXe, I’empirisme au XVIIIe, le cartesianisme au XVIIe, Tommas d’Aquin ou Duns Scoto à la Scolastique, Platon et Aristote à I’Antiquité.”28 And more, “le ‘retour à Husserl’ est celui d’une puissance d’intelligibilité qui tient à I’invention d’une méthode et d’abord d’une question ou se laisse reconnaˆıtre I’essence de la philosophie.”29 What is questioned then to Husserl, to the point of constantly distorting the terms? It is just one of the essential ideas of the work by the phenomenologician, an idea destined to distort both the European consciencialism and the spiritualism, that is to say the intentionality, the referring to – in the terminology by Henry, the most immanent and thin form of ekstaticity. And it is not because such dimension doesn’t lead to the discovery of a sphere of an absolute immanence of the conscience (world of

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cogitationes) but because this same sphere is a condition (ekstatic) where something is known and the world gives itself. It is an intentionality that Henry questions in this way: “Mais ce ‘se rapporter à’, comment se rapportet-il non plus à tout objet possible, à tout être ‘transcendant’ mais à lui-même? L’intentionnalité qui révèle toute chose, comment se révèle-t-elle à ellemême? Est-ce en se dirigeant sur elle-même une nouvelle intentionnalité?.”30 And more, “la phénoménologie peut-elle échapper à l’amer destin de la philosophie classique de la conscience, entraˆınée dans une régression sans fin, obligée de placer une seconde conscience derrière celle qui connaˆıt – en l’occurrence une seconde intentionnalité derrière celle qu’il s’agit d’arracher à la nuit? Ou bien existe-t-il un autre mode de révélation que le faire voir de I’intentionnalité – une révélation dont la phénoménalité ne serait plus celle du ‘dehors,’ de cet avant-plan de lumière qu’est le monde?”31 And to be called world is not only the “transcendent” one put in brackets by the epoché but especially the one of the cogitationes and of the cogitata as the “referring to” of the intentionality, even if discovers the “to,” does not question the “referring,” the first act of the cogitatio. Now, “se rapporter-à, phénoménologiquement, c’est voir,”32 seeing that, since in its Cartesian genealogy – inherited by Husserl – it was distinguished by a duplicity that was at the same time immanent and ekstatic. It is in the definition of seeing that Henry focuses on the birth of the concept of ekstaticity, sprung from the separation of the cogito in immediacy of the thinking and in its concept. Of the Cartesian cogito, the phenomenologician underlines the vitality of the act: “‘Chose pensante’ désigne plutôt ce qui se montre dans le se montre en tant que ce qui se montre n’est pas quelque chose mais le se montrer lui-mˆeme. Le quelque chose de la substance, la ‘chose’ n’est que l’apparition de I’apparaˆıtre et sa luisance.”33 Descartes refers the idea of the “thing (chose)” to the “chose qui pense”; now, “chose” translates as res, distinguished from cogitans and extensa, that is to say the finished substances. How is the substance known? It is founded exclusively on the chose qui pense, putting the base for a phénoménologie matérielle ante litteram in which “ce n’est plus le fait d’apparaˆıtre qui est considéré pour lui-même dans sa différence radicale à l’égard de ce qui apparaˆıt, c’est son contenu, comme contenu ontologique et phénoménologique pur toutefois, qui est explicitement et exclusivement pris en compte.”34 And more, “c’est là ce que signifie initialement I’idée de res cogitans, pour autant qu’elle est une chose dont toute I’essence est de penser, c’est-à-dire dont la substantialité et la matérialité de la phénoménalité pure comme telle, et rien d’autre.”35 Now such a concept of the cogito is expressed

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extremely well in one of the formulas with which Descartes worries about clarifying his discovery, that is to say videre videor. The phenomenological declination of nature is famous for the res cogitans: “Sed quid igitur sum? Res cogitans. Quid est hoc? Menpe dubitans, intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens, imaginans quoque, & sentiens.”36 Now, concerning the nature of feeling Descartes explains: “Idem denique ego sum qui sentio, sive qui res corporeas tanquam per sensus animadverto: videlicet jam lucem video, strepitum audio, calorem sentio. Falsa haec sunt, dormio enim. At certe videre videor, audire calescere. Hoc falsum esse non potest; hoc est proprie quod in me sentire appellatur.”37 But we shouldn’t forget all the Prima Meditatio that is devoted to the deceptiveness of the seeing, carefully crumbled by the epoché of the world. At certe videre videor: but I am certain that I see, that is to say certain of my act, of the fact that I see, of the presence to itself of my act even before seeing something in the ekstatic light of the world. Videor, in this we can follow and paraphrase Henry’s proposed reading, it doesn’t indicate the ekstatic seeing of something but it states the vision as it proposes itself, it gives itself to us originally. In the videre videor we do not have the immediacy of the thing seen but the immediate and originary phenomenologising of the same act of seeing; moreover, in it the immediate immediacy of the act of the thought is given: “L’apparence primitive qui traverse le videre et fait de lui un ‘phénomène absolu’ est-elle et doit-elle être structurellement hétérogène à cette apparence qu’est le voir lui-même dans l’ek-stasis.”38 But let’s remember, the problem of “feeling” is posed by Descartes in the attempt at explaining what a “chose qui pense” is. The feeling, in other words, in its most originary point, lays in the first phenomenological manifestation of thinking, leading us to think differently of our idea of conscience and thought, and by reelaborating on these words in the light of the immediacy with which these acts pose themselves. But the showing by itself, the appearing by itself, is the origin (at the same time supposed and looked for) of the phénoménologie matérielle, of a “phénoménologie qui a affaire non a des contenus de connaissance, à des ‘phénomènes,’ se demandant notamment lesquels sont susceptibles d’être posés en vertu du mode privilégié selon lequel ils se donnent à nous, avec un degré de validité exemplaire et, à la limite, indubitable.”39 It is as a matter of fact “de ce mode de donation lui-même qu’il est question exclusivement,”40 the reason for which “la phénoménologie matérielle n’a d’autre dessein que de lire dans cette phénoménalité accomplie la structure de son mode d’accomplissement, structure qui s’épuise dans la matérialité de cette phénoménalité effective et concrète.”41

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This Cartesian tournure, introduced as a starting point of the program, (much wider) of the généalogie de la psychanalyse, will lead our path to a further goal in the definition, up to now kept silent, of Life, the center of a material phenomenology that is the search for the originary giving-itself of the things, of the pure appearing and, as it is like this, without ekstatic presuppositions. But before getting to this matter, it is probably necessary to make again clear the summarising terms of the immanence that in the phénoménologie matérielle shows itself, and the ekstaticity presupposed by any other appearing. In Descartes, in the separation between the ekstatic videre of the world – submitted to the epoché in the Prima meditazione – and the videor as immediate feeling-oneself of the originariety of an act that is thought, the two poles of immediacy of the Self-Givenness to oneself and of the ekstaticity coexist – two poles whose opposition will be come more and more marked, with the famous prevailing of the second on the first. But the fact that this immediacy to one of the seeing is thought and possible induces not the annulment of the instances of the thought but a re-thinking of the same one and its categories. Another passage puts Descartes at the beginning of this history of the material phenomenology. Moreover, about the seeing, Henry states: “Il n’y a voir que si, de façon inaperçue, le voir est plus que lui-même. Toujours agit en lui une puissance autre que la sienne, puissance en laquelle il s’auto-affecte de telle façon que nous devons dire non pas ‘nous voyons’ – videmus – mais, comme Descartes, sentimus nos videre. Cette auto-affection est la phénomenalité originelle, la donation originelle en tant que l’autodonation, par exemple l’autodonation du voir à lui-même.”42 This selfGivenness is a radical immanence for which the feeling of everything, the feeling of the same “seeing,” is the phenomenality, looked for by Henry since L’essence de la manifestation. It is radical immanence because it is the pure phenomenological materiality, it is invisible, and it is Life. 4. THE IMMANENCE OF LIFE

The phenomenology of Life represented, starting from Généalogie de la psychanalyse until C’est moi la vérité, the main interest of the phenomenology of Henry: the essence of manifestation is given precisely as Life, as continuous self-generation that generates each life, according to that redefinition of transcendency and immancence stated above.”43 But our interest is in the phenomenological “reader” of Husserl and, as arrived at here, a matter is raised for a “nearly” natural way: does not Henry,

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by overturning Husserl’s phenomenology, intending not the method but the giving-itself of the manifestation, eliminate in a hasty way the matters raised about the transcendental conscience, without distinguishing between the lights and shadows of Life, and putting back to an unconscious immanentism? The answer that we state, being negative, will keep us busy in the following pages, and this is most of all because – we remember – the quaestio of the present phenomenology is in the possibility of receiving the matter of the phenomenon in its Self-Givenness, matter that is and stays invisible even in the exchange with the visibility. Now, matter is equal to, according to Henry, the essence, and the essence for which the phenomena give-themselves is Life. And that the conscience should receive them, that only for a conscience the immanence of Life has meaning and sense, is a point that we constantly read in the works by Henry. Moreover, we cannot understand how it would be possible to read that peculiar généalogie de la psychanalyse that he, as a phenomenologist, outlines. The immediacy of the affection, to recuperate one of the terms met in L’essence de la manifestation, is the thought as Life: it isn’t surely the thought of adapting oneself between intention and intuition or of the indisputable evidence, but the thought of the immanence that gives-itself, and in giving of the phenomenality is summoned by the phenomenality of the “phenomena.” It isn’t difficult to grasp how an ekstatic separation between thought and Life is here untenable. The description of Life seems to be, in some senses, tautological:44 Life is what doesn’t appear in the ekstasies of the world, what can be grasped only from within, in the experience of self-affection as Self-Givenness; it is feeling itself immediately and before any seeing. It is an originary feeling that finds its end only in its s’ipséiser, being oneself totally immanent. In the texts by Henry, the roads to “get” Life are different. The privilege is surely for the one analysed in C’est moi la vérité, that is, Life in its relationship with Christianism and as truth of the same Christianism. Or further, in the comparison with Schopenauer and Nietzsche developed in Généalogie de la psychanalyse. Or going back to Husserl, a road that will be privileged here, by following the comparison with the hyletic phenomenology, to which Henry, for the strong consonance of the terms, couldn’t compare himself.45 In the first volume of Ideen, § 85 tells us that there are Erlebnisse indicated, since the Logischen Untersuchungen, as prime content and intentional Erlebnisse. The first are hyletic – material, sensual and without intentionality. Now, “wir finden dergleichen konkrete Erlebnisdaten als Komponenten in umfassenderen konkreten Erlebnissen, die als Ganze

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intentionale sind, und zwar so, da␤ über jenen sensuellen Momenten eine gleichsam ‘beseelende,’ sinngebende (bzw. Sinngebung wesentlich implizierende) Schicht liegt, eine Schicht, durch die aus dem Sensuellen, das in sich nichts von Intentionalität hat, eben das konkrete intentionale Erlebnis zustande kommt.” What transforms the “matters” in intentional Erlebnisse is the conscience moment, or better, its moment noetic or, for short, noesi. The paragraph ends with these affirmations: “Wir bleiben also bei dem Wort noetisch und sagen: Der Strom des phänomenologischen Seins hat eine stoffliche und eine noetische Schicht. Phänomenologische Betrachtungen und Analysen, die speziell auf das Stoffliche gehen, können hyletischphänomenologische genannt werden, wie andererseits die auf noetische Momente bezüglichen noetisch-phänomenologische. Die unvergleichlich wichtigeren und reicheren Analysen liegen auf seiten des Noetischen.”46 The road followed by Henry in the reading of § 85 of Ideen I overturns once again the assumptions in which the phenomenological project by Husserl is made concrete. Such overturning is proposed in the afore mentioned question about the intentionality: how does the intentionality that reveals everything reveal to itself? Such self-revelation is possible because the conscience is impressive (impressionnelle). That is to say, “la conscience s’impressionnerait elle-même de telle façon que ce serait cette autoimpression originaire qui la révélerait à elle-même, rendant possible se propre révélation. En ce cas, la distinction inscrite par Husserl dans la réalité même de la conscience entre un élément impressionnel non intentionnel et l’élément intentionnel serait surmontée, et cela au profit de l’impression. Ce ne serait pas seulement la couche ‘hylétique,’ matérielle, de la conscience qui serait composée d’impressions: l’élément ‘noétique’ intentionnel, serait ultimement de même nature.”47 By following the privilege of the impression on the intentionality, we see that the noetic moment is, in reality, a hyletic moment, as both have an unsurpassed couche that allows preservation of the dullest data, not-overcome in its brighter moment. But it allows also a proceeding towards the phenomenology of Life, going “further” than Husserl. The impression, not overflown in its noetic moment, that a hyletic moment has to be such, is an impression that is self-modified, that touches itself only; it is an original feeling, that first way of the thought. Henry arrives at the original feeling by getting it through the path of the hyletic moments of the conscience, assumed as moments individualising tout-court the conscience itself. The impression has to be caught in its original phenomenomenic moment and “origine, en phénoménologie, désigne l’origine de l’être, son principe, ce qui le fait être et être ce qu’il est. L’origine de l’être, c’est

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l’apparaˆıtre. L’origine de l’impression, c’est son apparaˆıtre tel que tout ce qui se révèle en lui advient comme fragment ou moment toujours présent et toujours réel de la chair impressionnelle dont nous parlons. C’est ne pas l’apparaˆıtre du monde dont le ‘hors de soi’ exclut a priori la possibilité intérieure de toute impression concevable, mais l’apparaˆıtre de la Vie, qui est la Vie elle-même en sa phénoménalisation originarie.”48 What makes possible every originary impression of the conscience and so the conscience itself? Only Life, that is say what “s’éprouve soi-même sans différer de soi, en sorte que cette épreuve est une épreuve de soi et non d’autre chose, une auto-révélation en un sens radicale … . La vie s’éprouve soi-même dans un pathos; c’est une Affectivité originaire et pure, une Affectivité que nous appelons transcendentale parce que c’est elle en effect qui rend possible le s’éprouver soi-même sans distance dans le subir inexorable et la passivité insurmontable d’une passion … . L’Affectivité originaire est la matière phénoménologique de l’auto-révélation qui constitute l’essence de la vie.”49 Life is the term that states the invisible that gives itself in the manifestation, it is the flesh of the phenomenon, it is phenomenality, for which the phenomena are such and give-themselves to us. It is the phenomenological matter for which any initiative of the manifestation is exclusive to the phenomenality as it is, a priori transcendental that a posteriori is caught just by the impressive conscience. In addition, between Life and thought there is a discrepancy only apparent as such of making the criticism – often made to Henry – of proposing a phenomenology where there isn’t a consciencial moment: the Immanence of Life implies, on the contrary, that thought and conscience are overturned in their immanent flesh; thought and conscience are the immanent appearing of Life. So Life is the reverse, the flesh of the real and what is made phenomenon doesn’t bring back to it as a background from which it stands out; it is the giving of reality in the phenomenological meeting possible for its appearing, to make possible its own meeting, its “knowledge.” Life is total immanence to itself and doesn’t suppose anything else apart from its own movement and rhythm to pose itself; it is the proper selfaffection, it is its original feeling-itself, and like this it is thought, conscience. But even if from the advent of the phenomenality as Life we earn the flesh of phenomenon – their phenomenality – can we be satisfied from the surrounding of the conscience to its exclusively impressive moment? Its material moment is for sure made more powerful in a fascinating way and taken to its higher expression, as it is true that the feeling-oneself is the voice of subjectivity. In addition it is true that this phenomenological apex of the

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immanence does not de-legitimize the problem of subjectivity: it allows this latter to be traced according to different lines in respect to the transcendental one (by Husserl). Life has its own movement of generation, that in selfgenerating, generates the Self self-generating. The Self as pathetic absolute subjectivity is the point around which this phenomenology of Life rotates. The subjectivity is not “eliminated,” but its origin is noticed in a feelingoneself, in the privilege of the passive aspect in respect to the active one, differently from Life that would seem to be beyond the stigmatisation of activity-passivity. Having stated this, it is still true that the difficulties of a phenomenology so radical of the immanence are not so simple, in particular where the process a posteriori is not other from the manifestation of the a priori – and that in a circularity that, even if it isn’t tautological, has an inevitable fall on itself. The fact that a priori the legitimacy of the process is strong is something beyond any doubt. However, and we go back to the question posed above, how is a conscience exclusively immanent and impressive possible? We could say that in every single feeling the feeling-oneself of Life is generated, but don’t we run the risk in this way of finding again that vicious circularity that would make vain any effort at “going to the things themselves,” at this point possible to be described as être affecté of the phenomenality? A category strictly linked to Life and subjectivity, which makes facing this problem possible, is the birth. Being born to Life means first of all that Life can experience itself not outside the world but in the immanence of a life that is born because it auto-épreuve. For certain ways the same Henry puts into a game this problem when he says that the birth of Ipseity, of the Self, is the condition because Life itself is. But isn’t the birth destined anyway to produce a separation within Life?50 Being born means being opened to the possibility, for Life, of s’èprouver, but, reciprocally, Life itself is selfaffection. The scholars facing this thematic knot, led by Henry and FrançoisDavid Sebbah, spoke about the real impossibility of a birth that, actually, is self-generation of Life just for the constant refusal of every ekstatic dimension. The scholar then, just to try to disclose this difficulty, tries to focus, within Henry’s texts, on a difference between Life and the life of the subjectivities, the ones that actually were born. The difference, the birth as first dis-ferre from oneself of Life, would be played in a second level of subjectivity and not the “first” of Life,51 that, by eliminating the distance, poses the accent on an “other” brought in itself by Life and made concrete in every single life.

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But it seems that it is still difficult to understand how it is possible to leave off – a posteriori – the ekstatic dimension. Certainly Life is immanent for itself and for this immanence is a Self. And more, following the reading of Sebbah, it is possible to think of two different levels of Life. We are still of the opinion that in self-affection of life, that is to say in an originally transcendental passion of every pathos of the conscience, there is a kind of fracture produced by the self for which – only – Life is such. And if this phenomenality renders justice to the flesh and matter of the phenomenon, to the flesh of conscience, of which it represents the transcendental moment – if in this pathos a priori there is the answer for the attempt of “going to the things themselves,” how can we come back concretely “from the things themselves”? To summarise, the abandoning of the afore mentioned noetic moment, even if it comes back to open an infinite credit to the infinite “pathos” of the flesh, would seem to orientates towards the end of every questioning on the recuperation of the world, of a spaciality that – as it is ekstatic – would seem condemned and possible to be condemned to its immanent overcoming against not a reflective moment, but a concrete moment that fixes conditions of possibility “others” from those of the immanence self-posing but not for this untrue. A birth takes place anyway in a space “other” from the one of the immanence; and if for Henry, in particular for the reader of the Lectures for the Phenomenology of the Internal Consciousness of Time by Husserl, time is ekstatic because it is a condition “other” from phenomenon, it would be more every idea of space. Or, and it is even more interesting, of speciality. Once the phenomenon is freed from “consciousness,” isn’t it determining perhaps to think back a spaciality that belongs to the same phenomenality, that is born together with it? Thinking to the ekstatic dimension as the condition of the world is what is further from the phenomenological proposal that we have outlined here. But we wonder, the advent of the phenomenality, for being really such, if from one side must be thought without every transcendental a priori that comes from the subject, how can it allow to think about its effective giving, its finite happening that, to be such has to be external in some way? There isn’t any reversal if not in the contiguity with the proper “right” side that is not certainly condition of the appearing (in that sense it would be again an ekstatic dimension) but it is condition with which every manifestation is given, in a contiguity between the two “sides” that is still to be investigated. The transcendental overturned by the conscience in Life does not cease, at the end of reanimating the matters around a passion that to be totally such, receives its own condition in a birth that it isn’t only self-generation but also

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characterisation of a spaciality.52 Here is that ekstatic dimension, leitmotiv of Henry’s criticism to Husserl, that comes back as a powerful question mark at the heart of Life itself and its immanence, infinite admonition to the infinite pretension of every absolute. University of Macerata N OT E S 1

M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation (Paris: Puf, 1963, 19872 (=EM)); the quotations referred to are from the second edition. 2 Henry, Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps. Essai sur l’ontologie biranienne (Paris: Puf, 1965, 19872 (=PC)); the quotations referred to are from remember the second edition. 3 Near the philosophical start we the literary one. Henry is an author of novels, some of which were awarded the critics. The first one, Le jeune officier, appeared in 1954 c/o the publisher Gallimard, preceding for some years the publishing of his first two philosophical works. 4 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle et langage, in A. David, J. Greisch (eds.), Michel Henry, l’épreuve de la Vie, Paris: éd. du Cerf, 2001, pp. 15–37; the quotation is at p. 15. On the matter of the phenomenological method see Phénoménologie matérielle (Paris: Puf, 1990), pp. 61–135. 5 Ibid. 6 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1927), § 7. 7 E. Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie (Haag: Nijhoff, 1958), p. 11. 8 Cfr. F. Khosrokhavar, Michel Henry ou l’intériorité radicale, in Michel Henry, l’épreuve de la Vie, pp. 57–77; the quotation is at p. 57. 9 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 6. 10 Cfr. J.-L. Marion, Étant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation, Paris: Puf, 1998, pp. 90 following. 11 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, p. 30. 12 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, p. 31. 13 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 64. 14 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 71. 15 Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie, p. 35. 16 Ibid. 17 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 76. 18 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 207. 19 It is at this point inevitable, for the consonance of the words and the matters dealt at least a quick mention of Merleau-Ponty, whose relationships with Henry have still to be clarified. We will keep at the circumscribed pointing out of the matter of phenomenality: the formulation by Merleau-Ponty of flesh and the invisible, to the eyes of Henry, is certainly ekstatic, as – even if the intention seems to draw other conclusions – the phenomenologist does not proceed from and move towards a horizon exclusively immanent. 20 Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 207. 21 Ibid. 22 Affection, in French comes from the latin verb afficere, which means being modified by something that causes the modification itself.

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Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 308; italics is by the author. E. Husserl, Ideen zur einen reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie I (= Ideen I) (Haag: Nijhoff, 1950). 25 Husserl, Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie III (= Ideen III) (Haag: Nijhoff, Haag 1952), § 13, p. 76. 26 Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Haag: Nijhoff, 1963), p. 58. 27 Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen, p. 61. 28 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 5. 29 Ibid. 30 Henry, Incarnation, Seuil, Paris, 2000, p. 54. 31 Ibid. 32 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 110. 33 Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse (Paris: Puf, 1985), p. 20. Commenting on this passage, X. Tilliette points out that “l’impression de tautologie et de pléonasme est erronée, elle émane d’une lecture paresseuse … . La forme répétitive n’est nullement gratuite, sans elle l’idée mal agrippée s’échapperait. Mais ce genre de formules est devenu moins fréquent après L’essence de la manifestation où le combat avec l’écriture s’acharnait,” Tilliette, “Michel Henry: la philosophie de la vie,” Philosophie, 15 (1987), pp. 3–20; the quotation is at p. 4. We chose to write such a judgement here as it is clear to explain the language used by Henry. We will see how just about life the writing seems to groove in sterile tautology. It is in reality an attempt at creating language which is not ekstatic for the purpose of saying that in the history of Western thought we have never been able to really grasp: the appearing in itself of the apparent, the phenomenalising of the phenomenality. 34 Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, p. 21. 35 Ibid. The interest of the actual French phenomenology is for Descartes not only testified by these passages by Henry. It is suitable to recall also the famous trilogy by Marion dedicated to the French philosopher: Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1975); Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris: Puf, 1981); Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes (Paris: Puf, 1986), where a careful philological and theorically sharp reading of Descartes texts is proposed. 36 Renatus des Cartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, édité par G. Rodis-Lewis (Paris: Vrin, 1978), p. 29. 37 Renatus des Cartes, Meditatione de prima philosophia, p. 30. 38 Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, p. 28. 39 Henry, Généalogie de la psychanalyse, p. 35. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, p. 110. 43 Tilliette points out very cleverly that “L’essence de la manifestation faisait fond plutôt sur l’être. La quête ardente, difficile, de la subjectivité ultime de l’Ego avait lieu en termes ontologiques” (Tilliette, op. cit., p. 5). It is not a mutation of terminology or of interests but since 1966, as we hope has emerged in this path, the formulation of the being, the essence was thought in terms of self-position, of motility that is because it shows and doesn’t show because it is. Such essence couldn’t be other than Life, after such premises, a guest that was waited for in the whole duration of the research by the French phenomenologist. 44 For that purpose see supra, remark n. 33. 45 In a remark of the first version of the text Phénoménologie hylétique et phénoménologie matérielle (today in Phénoménologie matérielle, pp. 13–59, but appearing originally in 24

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Philosophie, 15 (1987), the edition to which we will refer), Henry explains the starting l’intentio of his studying: “Je tente de répondre ici à l’une de questions qui m’ont été transmises par la rédaction de Philosophie: ‘Comment la phénoménologie matérielle qui intitule votre projet se distingue-t-elle de ce que Husserl nomme la phénoménologie hylétique?’” (Henry, Phénoménologie hylétique et phénoménologie matérielle, p. 55). 46 Husserl, Ideen I, pp. 207–213. Reading these passages Angela Ales Bello pointed out how such a sentence, “possa essere messa in crisi … dallo studio degli Erlebnisse, presenti nelle culture ‘altre’ rispetto a quella occidentale, sia quelle arcaiche che contemporanee, che possono essere definiti ‘elementari.’ Infatti, utilizzando il rapporto noetica-hyletica, si può constatare che il momento hyletico, da intendersi come noema di una noetica non egocentrata – al contrario di ciò che accade nella mentalità occidentale in cui la noetica è egocentrata – e quindi impersonale in quanto vissuto collettivamente, ha una funzione ‘attrattiva’ straordinaria” (A. Ales Bello, “L’incarnazione nella prospettiva della hyletica fenomenologica,” in Archivio di Filosofia, LXVII [1999], pp. 105–113, p. 106). The aim of Ales Bello is to propose two different ways of intending the hyle, that is to say a “connesso con la visione occidentale, quella che è definibile come categoriale, fondata essenzialmente su un processo di obiettivazione e di idealizzazione anche se la materia si delinea non solo come qualcosa di spazialmente esteso, passivo, inerte, ma come energia vitale … e l’altro da intendersi come noema di una noesi non egocentrata, cioè come nucleo strettamente connesso con un’intenzionalità che consente la manifestatività stessa della noesi” (Ales bello, op. cit., p. 109). 47 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 70–71. 48 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 83–84. 49 Henry, Incarnation, pp. 89–90. 50 The problem is well outlined by François-David Sebbah in the text Naˆıtre à la Vie, naˆıtre à soi-même. À propos de la notion de naissance chez Michel Henry in Michel Henry, l’épreuve de la vie, pp. 95–116, re-taken in Sebbah, L’épreuve de la limite. Derrida, Henry, Levinas et la phénoménologie (Paris: Bibliothèque du Collèque Internationale de Philosophie, 2001), pp. 189–210. 51 We summarise like this – and for sure in a very quick way – the central thesis of the text by Sebbah. 52 In this sense neither the focusing (that Sebbah cares not to omit) that every life is “indissociabile dell’ événement du Premier Vivant” (Sebbah, op. cit., p. 109) according to the spirit of phenomenology proposed in C’est moi la vérité, is subtracted to this problem, concerning the flesh of phenomenon; a phenomenality that, enriched by a thought that in its advent catches in itself the reverse of its flesh and the contiguity of the appearance of the phenomenon, it can’t long subtract – itself again to the idea of spaciality. The great risk that we see is that it is implied a dis-knowledge of the real “other” of every happening. Birth and world are an example: the total immanence that explains the flesh of the phenomenality, how does it lead to think the “other” of the birth that not only happens for the self-affection a priori but it is also given a posteriori? And the world, that cannot be the ekstatic horizon of the Givenness of the phenomenon, shouldn’t be even recuperated as spaciality at the same time of the advent of phenomenality?

JA N S Z M Y D

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In the year 2000 the fourth volume of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s monumental work appeared, entitled: “Logos and Life” (Tymieniecka, 2000). This great creative achievement is not only the fruit of more than 20 years of the Author’s philosophical search and quest, but the crowning achievement of her entire, impressively rich and creative career (Szmyd, 2000, pp. 378–384). The appearance of such a great and unusual work provokes again the question about Tymieniecka’s creative way, which led her to such a fundamental and deep creative achievement – an achievement unifying in cohesive synthesis essential research achievements from all the stages of the “way through philosophy, science and art.” This question is very much of immediate interest now, as a result of the fact that this very difficult and unique way, demanding both Herculean effort and Promethean devotion, proved very revelational and fruitful and has not been properly examined and explained by philosophy historians so far. But much has happened with this way, and it has led to a quite impressive point of destination (or perhaps it is only a point of passage), i.e. the aforementioned work “Logos and Life.” Without closer examination of this way it is difficult to understand the character of the work of the person who has covered most of its stages, and who is still energetically travelling along it. Without closer examination of this way it is also impossible to understand what this person wandering along it contributes to the general heritage of the world of philosophy. Tymieniecka’s philosophy may be defined as a specific “philosophical quest,” an incessant peregrination in the world of the philosophy of the European cultural environment. And that is why this philosophy is genuinely authentic: the core of philosophy is not only a love of knowledge and wisdom, but – just as is the case with this thinker – incessant search, discovery and development, never finalized till the end and never bringing final satisfaction.

87 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 87–94. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Let us begin with a few remarks of a more general nature. a) This is a way which leads mainly through philosophy, science and contemporary art, with numerous references to the earlier, ancient and modern works of those fields of study. This way leads not only through the fields of philosophizing by E. Husserl, R. Ingarden, J. M. Boche´n ski, J. Wahl, J. P. Sartre, S. de Beauvoir, A. N. Whitehead, S. Alexander, M. Heidegger, N. Hartman, L. Lavell, H. Bergson, A. Tarski, R. Carnap, E. Levinas, A. Malreaux, J. Piaget, T. Kotarbi´nski, K. Da ¶browski and other philosophers and modern scholars; and from the artists, through the works of T. S. Eliot, R. M. Rilke, P. Cezanne, V. Van Gogh, and especially through P. Valery’s poetry; but also through the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, and the works of Leonardo da Vinci, J. Dunne and others. In this long-lasting, searching passage through numerous fields from the circle of the most essential currents of philosophical, scientific and literary thoughts, the subjects of interest and critical analysis and discerning judgement are not second-rate or incidental facts and events, but the crucial and most vital issues: the main ontological (metaphysical), epistemological and anthropological problems, and therefore the classical philosophical problems. Nevertheless the Author – the daring and critical wanderer on the historical trails of these problems – does not stop at the critical penetration of these problems and at an attempt at verification of the way they are put, and likewise at showing their meaning and sense, but – most often – after recognizing their at least partial correctness, undertakes the effort of independent explanation of and even solution to these problems; boldly and without any inferiority complex, she stands in her effort next to the greatest thinkers: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Husserl, Ingarden and others. b) The researcher does not stop at explaining and critically reevaluating the key philosophical problems put by her great predecessors in the main currents of European philosophy and the humanities and by many outstanding contemporary thinkers. Thus not only does she critically and originally reconstruct both the classical and the more recent philosophical problems, but she creatively and revelatingly puts forward new philosophical problems and questions, problems with great cognitive and heuristic meaning; she develops her own often very radical, even revolutionary concepts and thought structures. So not only does she reconstruct the most meaningful threads of philosophical tradition, but with great verve and the great dynamic of her

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uncommon intellect and great imagination she constructs, she builds on her philosophical way new segments of a philosophical building, not stopping at any one of them, not considering the building finished at any stage of its construction, with every new segment requiring constant improvement and completion. The most important segments, being built for a long time into the construction of imposing greatness and avantgarde novelty of Tymieniecka’s philosophy, include: – the concept of “First philosophy” (philosopiae prima), understood as “mathesis universalis” of the most principal fields of human knowledge and the question of the relation of philosophy (phenomenology) to science (“Phenomenology and Science in Contemporary European Thought,” 1962); – the concept of the human creative act, expanded after some time with the theory of creativity of the universe in general, the so – called cosmotic creation (Why is There Something Rather than Nothing – Prolegomena to the Phenomenology of Cosmic Creation, 1966; Eros and Logos, 1972); – the phenomenology of life and human condition, expanded as a result of further research with the theory of life as such (Logos and Life, 1988–2000). 3

The most important and at the same time the longest part of Tymieniecka’s philosophical way was the route leading through phenomenology. It led through the whole history of this philosophy, especially through that which is linked with the works of Husserl and Ingarden. It was characterized by both bold critical remarks relating to such and other concepts of main phenomenology representatives, and by her own often radically different interpretation of fundamental elements of phenomenology, and by her own revelating philosophical concepts. Characterized for her “passage” through the vast, but well-known and personally the closest field of phenomenology, the wandering thinker notices new cognitive horizons and new problems, new perspectives and possibilities of philosophical penetration of objective reality and the reality of humans. And it happens as such not only as a result of the great merits of her philosophical intellect, but as a result of an appeal not only to the act of cognition both intellectual and intuitive, and rational and conceptual, but to the poetical and esthetic, and even metaphysical and visional as well (successfully breaking free from the tight frame of the rational thinking paradigm of her masters, Husserl and Ingarden). This

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critical and at the same time creative passage of Tymieniecka through history and the main fields of phenomenology may be presented in short in the following way: Since the time of her Freiburg studies (the early fifties of the twentieth century) the main goal of her “philosophical quest” has been established, namely the creation of the basis of philosophy understood as the mathesis universalis of the principal fields of human knowledge; finding and articulating what Husserl and Ingarden or M. Merleau-Ponty failed to find and articulate, namely the “point of Archimedes, where from philosophy might be related to all scholarly disciplines” (Tymieniecka, 1989). And after an almost thirty–year quest of intensive research, and gradual passage from one level to another in a new paradigm of thought, this point has been – according to the conviction of the researcher – found and philosophically articulated (in the early eighties). “On my plan of journey,” writes Tymieniecka, “I found this point of Archimedes in the human creative act, where theoresis, poiesis and praxis meet” (Tymieniecka, 1989). Philosophy, which this reliable point of support finds and expresses, the specific philosopiae prima, was named “The Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition” (full name: “The Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition in the Unity-of-Everything-There-Is-in-Life”). “In this philosophy” – writes the Author further – all branches of knowledge find common soil and are able to establish authentic, mutual, interdisciplinary communication” (Tymieniecka, 1989). To the “Philosophy of Life and the Human Condition,” and therefore to a certain destination, perhaps not final, of her long lasting research and quest, Tymieniecka has been coming gradually, passing through several stages along the way. The first one was the rejection of the eidetic and transcendental ontology of both Husserl and Ingarden; this is an ontology of ideal existence (Husserl) and possible existence (Ingarden) in favour of a concept defined as “creative experience” and “a creative act of man.” Defined by these notions, anthropological qualities were recognized not only as “the essential factors of conscience” but as the acts “of creative doing of things and existence” (Eros et Logos, “Esquisse a la phenomenologie de l’interiorite creatice,” 1972). of the empirical and realistic positions, and in opposition to her masters, Tymieniecka claims that an “ontology of ideal and possible stuctures can never deliver a philosophy of adequate assumptions,” and therefore “eidos cannot be a factor of the absolutely certain cognition” (“Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science,” 1965). She did not, however, reject many elements of classical phenomenology, for example the Husserian understanding of philosophy as the basis of all konwledge, as mathesis universalis

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or as philosophiae prima, laying (or able to lay) foundations of entire science, especially for humanities and culture studies. She did not negate the usefulness of Ingarden’s esthetics to his art research (“Phenomenology and Science in Contemporary European Thought,” 1960). The subsequent stage of Tymieniecka’s “philosophical way”: Winning over the “transcendental horizon of Husserl’s philosophy and the ontology of Ingarden’s possible existence led the scholar to the threshold of unique cosmology and enabled her – as she admits – to reach the ‘heart of the matter’ and to find ‘filum Ariadne’ for understanding the primal creativity, lifting the Universe into ‘self-realizing becoming’ (Why is There Something Rather than Nothing – Prolegomena to the Phenomenology of Cosmic Creation, 1966). The Author found partial confirmation for the concept of “creative activity towards the universal becoming of Everything,” among others, in Leibniz’s metaphysics, rejecting though his notion of “universal harmony” and introducing in its place the category of “creative constitution.” A subsequent stage on the way to creating her own system was enrichment of the concept of “primal creativity” with additional ontological categories: the “initial spontaneity” and “inner workings” of the Universe, including the inner workings of humanity, his conscious life filled with the activity humanizing him most, that is, creativity (“Poetica nova,” 1982; “The Moral Sense, the Human Person, and the Communal Significance of Life,” 1986). Towards the end of the eighties Tymieniecka completed the building of her philosophical system with its most characteristic and significant segment, that is, with the philosophy of human existence in the process of shaping existential sense and humanity (Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Book 2, 1988). The evolutive genesis of the “human animal” within the system of life and the creative function in the human condition have become the main issues of this philosophy. Also put forward has been the issue of shaping the moral and poetic sense in the process of human existence, this being in the opinion of the creator of this system the main determinant of human spirituality and humanity (Moral Sense, 1986). And finally the latest stage: developing the philosophical theory of life and the human condition (“The Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition”). This theory, in the opinion of its creator, enables the “establishment of the place of a human in unity with everything alive” and “grasping the creative factor in the human existence and its ‘primogenital significance,’” showing itself in art, science and philosophy. (Logos and Life: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life Strategies of Reason, Book 4, 2000).

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This theory differs from both G. Simmel’s and W. Dilthey’s classical philosophies of life and Whitehead’s philosophy of process and reality, and also from certain attempts at phenomenology of biology (Jonas). It is different from them mainly in that: – it refers to life in the whole variety of its signs of existence, from the most primitive to the most organized, including highly shaped “creativity of the Human Spirit” expressed as social life, culture and art; – it shows the possibility of finding an answer to the fundamental question of how “Cosmos, bios and culture reveal their ontopoietic junctures within a common interplay of life”; an answer which allows us to avoid “the simplified reductionism which natural sciences fall into and allows us to notice more fully the specifics of each segment of reality juxtaposed against the background of its other segments”; – it contains a new explanation of the “self-individualisation of life” and the issue and variety of living beings as such; – it determines the programme of further philosophical research. In its horizon of thought there may be, as it seems, nearly all classical ontological and anthropological problems undertaken anew and further explanation and development may be achieved. 4

Let us proceed to the other characteristics of the discussed philosophical way. a) This is a search for cognitive philosophy in the contact area between intellectual, rational and notional discourse (the researcher’s dialogue with science and outstanding representatives of various areas of science has been constantly present since the very beginning of her many years of philosophizing) and art, literature, and especially poetry. This philosophy may, in her opinion, achieve more fully its cognitive goals only when analysis and rational and notional research (philosophical and scientific) shall be skillfully enriched with a direct, intuitive insight into the object of cognition, with a non-discoursive experience which makes every kind of art possible, especially poetry (frequent appeal to the arts, especially to poetry, is a constant characteristic of the researcher’s philosophical activity). This situation of philosophy in the contact area of science and art does not only distinguish Tymieniecka from the rationalistic current in the history of classical phenomenology (Husserl, Ingarden and others) and testify to her better understanding of the essence of philosophy as such (this is neither a

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kind of science nor a kind of art, although it unites both domains of intellectual culture of a human). This union of the cognitive acts of philosophy of both science and culture elements, rationality and irrationality, intellectualism and poetry, gives it more cognitive power, wider horizontalism of problems and greater creative dynamism. However, this joining in the acts of philosophizing such seemingly antynomic and mutually exclusive elements and tendencies may give rise – and it really does – to many fears and stipulations, critical evaluations and question marks. And so, for example, there are voicings that this is not an exact philosophy, in this or another way scientified and academically entitled, but rather it is visionary, too poetic, methodologically undisciplined, linguistically overfree in its spirit, chracteristically romantic, expressing attributes characteristic for the romantic attitude and mentality (spiritualism, irrationalism, visionalism, missionarism, creativity, etc). b) With such an evaluation of the philosophy being of interest to us, the question about the basic functions of philosophy and its place in the entirety of intellectual culture returns, especially the question of whether its basic task is cognitive reconstruction of being, the world and humanity, and the development of the main epistemological and methodological principles of this reconstruction, or whether the main task of philosophy is – as Tymieniecka understands it, along with some philosophers and people of arts – construction of reality and the human world, creating – regardless of whether it fits into the convention of traditional academism or not – new options and perspectives on the visions of being and of humanity; new, albeit unfinished models and examples of human existence; new orders of values and ideas; new shapes of the human world; and new but incessantly enriched forms of collective and individual existence. In short, in the case of Tymieniecka’s philosophy the question arises as to whether the task of philosophy is only to develop and to give interested persons defined knowledge about the world and about themselves, or rather point out ways and possibilities of gaining this knowledge? And whether the task of philosophy is only “showing,” presenting a defined image of the world and humanity, or – perhaps first and foremost – its co-creation? (The world in itself is, as Tymieniecka proves, creative, and a human and his activity in art and philosophy can and should co-create this world.) Let us notice that at the mention of stipulation and question the answer is simply given by the history of philosophy and the character of the greatest philosophical systems created in it. As it is, every great system, maximalist in its subject and problematic horizon and in cognitive and practical tasks –

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beginning with the system of Plato and Aristotle and ending with the philosophical structures of Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin or Jung, in its very nature it contains not only a defined notional and rational discourse, but the elements of the unique poetry, visionarism, intuitiveness and creative inventiveness as well. Otherwise these systems, like Tymieniecka’s system, would not achieve such verve, such dynamism and ability of discovery. Besides, they would not climb to the same level of fertile philosophical creativity. They would not be able to put forward their fundamental metaphysical, epistemological and anthropological problems so boldly and originally, and explain them so deeply and discerningly. In other words, they would not be able to give philosophy a broader perspective, a deeper “breath,” greater cognitive sagacity and creative inventiveness. This way of practising philosophy and its significant, however not obviously undisputable results, which we have been following for years along the “way” of Tymieniecka’s philosophizing, and especially on the stages of this way, which are measured by such works as Logos and Eros (1972) and Logos and Life (1988–2000), reconfirm this truth of the essence of authentic philosophy. Kraköw, Poland BIBLIOGRAPHY Tymieniecka, A.-T. Why is There Something rather than Nothing? Prolegomena to the Phenomenology of Cosmic Creation (Royal Van Gorcum Press, 1966). Tymieniecka, A.-T. Eros et Logos (Louvain: Nauwele arts Publ, 1972). Tymieniecka, A.-T. Moral Sense in the Social World (Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XX, 1986). Tymieniecka, A.-T. (Zare¶ba), “Self-prezentation,” (American Phenomenology 1989, pp. 180–190). Tymieniecka, A.-T. Logos and Life: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, Book 4 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000). Grillo, E., Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.) Logos and Life: Phenomenology of Life as the Starting Point of Philosophy, Book 3, Analecta Husserliana, Vol.L. 25th Anniversary Publication (In: Phenomenological Inquiry. A Review of Philosophical Ideas and Trends, Vol. 22, October, 1998). Migo´n, M.P. Poje¶cie czl⁄ owiecze´nstwa w my´sli antropologicznej A. Schelera H. Plessnero A-T. Tymienieckiej (In: Proceedings of The Third International Congress on Phenomenology of Life and Sciences of Life Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland, September 13–16, 1999). Ostrowski, J. “Creativity Versus Intentionality: Apropos of Eros et Logos.” (Paper, 1974). Szmyd, J. Wizerunki filozofów i humanistów polskich. Wiek XX (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Edukacyjne, 2000, pp. 378–384).

SECTION II TOWA R D L I F T I N G O F T H E C L A S S I C A L C O N T ROV E R S Y IDEALISM/REALISM

ANGELA ALES BELLO

T H E C O N T ROV E R S Y A B O U T T H E E X I S T E N C E O F T H E WO R L D I N E D M U N D H U S S E R L’ S P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L S C H O O L : A . R E I NAC H , R . I N G A R D E N , H . C O N R A D - M A RT I U S , E . S T E I N

I . BAC K G RO U N D

The discussion of the theme of the existence of the world, raised in particular by the objections that Roman Ingarden had moved against Husserl and subsequently expressed more organically in his Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt,1 involved a number of disciples or scholars who revolved around Husserl at Göttingen and later at Freiburg and raised a question of great theoretical importance connected from the historical point of view with the significance of the turning point reached by modern philosophy regarding the role of subjectivity. It therefore brought to the fore theoretical disputes of great importance, especially the contrast between realism and idealism, that involved the significance of the transcendental in both the Kantian and the Husserlian perspective. And there began to take shape a further problematical node represented by the relationship between gnoseology and ontology. It is well known that for Husserl the time that elapsed between the first two Logische Untersuchugen (1900–1901) and the first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (1913) represented the consolidation of his position along a line that he himself defined as phenomenologico-transcendental and was to assume an idealistic and transcendental trend. It is also known that a difficulty that stands in the way of a proper understanding of his thought is represented by the vocabulary he used, which does and does not maintain links with the philosophical tradition, so that each term he uses has to be examined within the particular problem context in which it is employed. This certainly does not prevent one from taking position after an appropriate reconnaissance of his intentions. And that is exactly what some of his disciples did after working on two fundamental questions: the relationship between essence and existence and the examination of subjectivity. It seems to me that this corresponds to the two reductions that Husserl proposed in Ideen, namely the eidetic reduction and the phenomenologico-transcendental reduction. 97 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 97–115. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Somewhat summarily, one may underscore that in Husserl the relationship between essence and existence is posed in a manner altogether different from tradition and, more particularly, the metaphysical tradition. Husserl understands existence as factuality, as the given fact or facts that positivism considered as incontrovertible and basic for rendering knowledge possible. Husserl, on the other hand, is interested in the essence, the theme of what it is, taking for granted or simply not discussing (and therefore placing in parentheses) the question regarding existence. Secondly, among all the phenomena that attract theoretical interest, Husserl concentrates his attention on the dimension of the subjectivity of whoever performs the operation of highlighting the essence and the question that he asks himself is therefore what is it?, which clearly becomes what am I? As far as the first aspect is concerned, i.e. detecting the essential moment, this can be considered a distinctive aspect of all disciples who call themselves phenomenologists and accept the eidetic reduction, the exponents of what one may call realistic phenomenology, a term that groups together Adolf Reinach, Jean Hering, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Max Scheler, to name only a few of the best known. It was Husserl’s transcendental turn that prevented many of them from continuing to adhere to his ideas. But let us briefly examine this matter in greater detail. The first text I should like to consider is Reinach’s Über Phänomenologie (1914),2 in which he first confirms his adhesion to the phenomenological method, but then expressly declares that it was not a question of dwelling on the problem of existence, but rather on the problem of essence, and then continues by accepting also that this essential analysis should have as its terrain consciousness with its lived experiences. And the Wesenserschauung is essential if one wants to grasp the significance of other disciplines, especially mathematics. According to Reinach, nevertheless, essential analysis is not the end, but only a means, a means for arriving at laws that are valid for all the facts and for all the interconnections of which we are made aware by sense perception, and the validity of these laws is due to their having to be thus, to the impossibility of their being different. The task of philosophy is precisely that of highlighting these essential connections that are given a priori and are not connections of thought, but connections of being, independent of the human subject, who could also not be there,3 indeed, they are Seinsverhältnisse. The question therefore is how can we come to know them? There is immediate evidence of the a priori in contrast with the non-evidence of the empirical. Reinach agrees that there is no evidence of the existence of things, but, seeing

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that empirical judgments are involved, their validity cannot be called into question; for example, the judgment “I see a house” cannot be doubted, while “a house exists there” can be called into question.4 For Reinach Sein and Existenz are not really connected; when one speaks of Sein, one is referring to a state of things in essential rather than existential terms. The validity of a priori legality enables Reinach to obtain two results: to continue to keep existence between parentheses – a Husserlian theme – and to hold that the essential connections are not the work of thought, but rather of intuiting the essential structure of being – a motive that in his opinion leads away from Husserl’s position, since he seems to hold that the a priori for Husserl is a necessity of thought and not a necessity of being. One may note that even Husserl speaks of a supratemporality of the essences,5 thereby showing that he considers consciousness to be a place of reception and not production. We shall come back to Husserl’s position further on; in any case, it is precisely this critique, which Reinach put forward above all with reference to the analysis of consciousness proposed by Husserl in Ideen as place for essential analysis, that led to the school being split into two currents that were referred to as, respectively, realist and idealist. When we compare Reinach’s position with that of Ingarden, we note that the contrast between objectivity and existence that the latter reads into Husserl’s analysis becomes more acute. Ingarden links the question of the existence of the world with the realistidealist question and makes a strong distinction between the problem of being and that of existence. Though he reproaches Conrad-Martius with not having made this distinction, in the letter he wrote to Husserl in 19186 he shares the concern she had expressed in connection with the question of the relationship between noesis and noema, holding that the duplicity of the two moments indicated by Husserl within the lived experience completely absorbs the external object into interiority and calls into question the theme of transcendence so dear to Husserl. Ingarden recognizes that Husserl’s intention in Ideen is not idealist, this in the sense that he does not want to sustain the dependence of the world on consciousness, but comments that the distinction between noesis and noema nevertheless leads Husserl to idealism, because it all ends up in the noema constructed by consciousness.7 And he continues along this line in Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, where he sustains that when everything is traced back to intentional objectivity, everything will remain heteronomous, i.e. dependent on consciousness. In his opinion, therefore, Husserl runs the risk of affirming a presumed or feigned existence, the kind of existence that

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effectively characterizes artistic productions, the only ones to which Ingarden deems intentionality to be applicable. Ingarden therefore makes radical distinction between the ambit of consciousness and that of the real world.8 On the other hand, he holds that the eidetic reduction produces the annulment of individuality and therefore also of everything that really exists.9 He objects even more strongly to the position that Husserl sustained in the discussion he ideally opened with Descartes, as proposed in Ideen, I, §36 et seq. As we know, Husserl held that it is not in our power to doubt the existence of the world; all we can do is to put the existence of the world in parentheses, this in the sense that the existence is not denied, but simply becomes a potential thesis. The potentiality of this thesis – and this is Ingarden’s objection – is equivalent to a mental illness, psychoastenia, which consists of a loss of the sense of reality. He therefore declares that one has to start rather from ontology.10 Ingarden’s approach and that of Husserl are therefore at loggerheads precisely as regards the question of the relationship between gnoseology and ontology and the primacy that one must have with respect to the other. Insisting on the preeminence of ontology, it is clear that, just like Heidegger, albeit in a somewhat attenuated and more problematical manner, he calls into question the very validity of the reductions and, what is more, not just the validity of the transcendental reduction, but also of the eidetic one, as he stressed in his lectures on Probleme der Husserlschen Reduktion.11 As we shall see, this position distinguishes him from both Reinach and Conrad-Martius. It is my intention to continue with a brief examination of the contributions made by the two most important women members of the school, ConradMartius and Stein, since these enable us to get a better understanding of Husserl’s own position. II. THE DISCUSSION

1. The Question of the Existence of the World According to Hedwig Conrad-Martius The Phaenomenologica series marked the centenary of Husserl’s birth with a volume dedicated to him. Conrad-Martius made her contribution to this commemoration with an essay entitled Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie12 in which she very acutely outlined the currents of thought that developed from him, and took the opportunity also of indicating what are the links between transcendental phenomenology and its ontological counterpart.

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Basing herself on her personal experience, Conrad-Martius therefore reviewed the events of the Göttingen period: the delusion of the disciples on the occasion of the publication of Ideen caused by an inquiry that had promised a great deal, but had not maintained the approach of Logische Untersuchungen – the second volume already foreshadowed what was to happen: an “incomprehensible return” to transcendentalism, to subjectivism, if not altogether to psychologism.13 The accusations made by Conrad-Martius are undoubtedly very strong, especially if we try to see them from Husserl’s point of view, who certainly did not intend his inquiry to be transcendental like a subjectivism or, worse still, a psychologism. In any case, one can understand her critique when one bears in mind the marked trend towards pure objectivity that had characterized the Logische Untersuchungen; between the lines she makes us understand that a part of primary importance had been played by neoKantianism, the so-called critical idealism, represented by Paul Natorp, Heinrich Rickert and so on, who had greatly appreciated Husserl’s turn towards an erkenntniskritische Philosophie, that is to say, towards an inquiry that places the question of knowledge at the centre, even though they did not like the residues of ontologism and intuitionism that still remained – and fortunately so, as Conrad-Martius notes – in his position.14 She reaffirms that the question of the transcendental turn of phenomenology had been discussed in the Göttingen seminars; in any case, she holds that, notwithstanding the retreats regarding the object of the inquiry, ever more represented by the field of subjectivity, Husserl had never abandoned the research style that distinguishes “phenomenology” – no matter what adjective may accompany it; this style consists of not accepting anything that is not given by the evidence and avoiding every pure construction. a) The reality of the world One may therefore wonder as to the point of critical detachment that theoretically distinguishes Husserl’s phenomenology from that of ConradMartius. When one pursues this question assuming the stance of phenomenology, one notes that everything revolves around the reality of the world, die Wirklichkeit der Welt. Here there re-appears the radical question with which she had commenced her inquiry in Realontologie: Was ist überhaupt Realität? Conrad-Martius explicitly sustains that Husserl certainly never denied or doubted the reality of the world, of nature, and even of supernature; the problem is rather that of the validity of the cognitive question.

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Since the essential inquiry of consciousness highlights the intentional relationship between the noetic moment – for example, the noetic moment of “seeing” the book tends towards the book inasmuch as it is “seen” – one may ask oneself whether the world, understood in the noematic sense, is truly the real world (wirkliche Welt); are we here concerned with an assumption of the being of the world (Seinsvermeintheit) or with effective reality (wirkliche Wirklichkeit)?15 Conrad-Martius notes an ambiguity in Husserl, a lack of clarity; she concedes that it is not a question of the negation of the world – as she had already noted in connection with the relationship between Descartes and Husserl – but what has to be established is whether reality, Wirklichkeit, concerns the noematic moment as such as a correlate of the noetic moment, or whether the reality of the noematic real moment transcends consciousness. The discussion revolves around the theme of “reality”; it is a question of establishing what effective reality (wirkliche Wirklichkeit) is.16 It is true that Husserl often used this expression, but Conrad-Martius believes herself to understand what makes the difference between her position and that of Husserl. She stresses that for the maestro it was a question of equivalence of “noema” and “reality” and, since the noema is the correlate of consciousness, he did not take the further step that consists of affirming transcendental reality with respect to consciousness of the real noematic moment.17 One may comment that we here come face to face with a different way of considering the world and the relationship between the I and the world. Conrad-Martius asks herself: “Where does the world remain?” (Wo bleibt die Welt?);18 when put in these terms, the question does not concord with the phenomenological intentions of Husserl, according to whom it was rather a question of establishing what is the world that we speak of, what do we mean when we say that “world” is there. The world is the starting point that has to be analyzed, because it presents itself as a hard concretion that has to be broken down if it is to be understood; for him the problem is not that of guaranteeing the objectivity of the world, but of understanding how this objectivity comes to be constituted. In this sense Husserl does not fear idealism, but rather ingenuous realism, i.e. assuming the view-point of the subject for whom the world is world – this is the existential consideration from which Husserl moves; one therefore has to ask oneself what thinkingsaying world means – and I underscore the “thinking-saying,” because we are not concerned with a linguistic problem, but a cognitive one. Conrad-Martius holds that Husserl’s insistence on this problem makes us lose sight of the meta-physical question of the otherness of the world with respect to consciousness; her ultimate fear is the very opposite of Husserl’s,

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she is afraid of falling into idealism and therefore wants to stress the realistic moment, make sure that there is something other than the subject who speaks. Husserl – on the contrary – holds that one can never issue forth from the subject, because both at the level of common everyday experience and at the level of philosophical research everything is referred to the subject or the subjects; the problem is rather that of ascertaining whether the subject is speaking solely of himself or also of something other than himself. As far as Husserl is concerned, the two questions – i.e. “Who is speaking?”, “What is he speaking about” – have to be kept theoretically separate. The effort made by Husserl’s inquiry is that of establishing that the point of view of subjectivity is primary in a series and graduality of attitudes: the world is always a world for a subject or for subjects or for a collectivity, independently of whether this is or is not realized; it is philosophical reflection that brings this attitude to awareness. b) Idealism and realism If we want to understand the contrast between realism and idealism, we could utilize Husserl’s “image consciousness” (Bildbewusstsein) as proposed in the writings published in the Husserliana series under the title Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung (1898–1925), which contain the analysis that leads to the conclusion that we can assume the viewpoint of the subject or the viewpoint of the object, i.e. that the analyzed object is at all times immanent and transcendent, static and dynamic, so that it is possible to pass from one to the other by highlighting one or the other; but this awareness already constitutes the overcoming of the traditional contrast between realism and idealism and represents also awareness that it is we who perform this operation; and it is precisely this that – in the proper sense of the term – constitutes the transcendental idealism to which Husserl refers and which he considers to be a new event in philosophical research. Using this particular indication, drawn from Husserl’s own analyses, one might say that Conrad-Martius assumes the viewpoint of the object and yet does not want to remain in an ingenuous realism. This is brought out by her acceptance of the phenomenological perspective regarding two fundamental moments of the inquiry: the need for passing through the epoché and performing an essential analysis. One may sustain that the second of these moments, in particular, is the one that enables Husserl to affirm that he who speaks does not always speak in a private-subjective manner; rather, one has to recognize the capacity of grasping whatever is valid, essential, and this is accepted by Conrad-Martius. The accusation that she makes against Husserl

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is certainly not concerned with gnoseological relativism, but with his having neglected the moment of factuality as a result of his reduction, having set aside the gnoseological question regarding the correspondence of being in the noematic sense and factual being. One may however ask oneself whether Husserl did not answer even this question in his own particular way. Very acutely, Conard-Martius grasps the difference between Husserl’s position and that of Kant as far as the “transcendental” is concerned: for Husserl it is not a question of contraposing “empirical” and “transcendental,” as Kant had sustained, but of distinguishing “mundane” from “transcendental” and examining the relationship between “subjective” and “objective” in an altogether new manner; by means of the reduction (Reduktion) one undoubtedly highlights a subjectivity, though this is to be understood as place (locus) to which the unfolding of the world (Weltvor-gänglichkeit) is reduced, and therefore as a subjectivity that has to be understood in a new “metaphysical” sense, the “ego” to which one can trace every validity of being and sense of the world.19 According to Conrad-Martius, therefore, it is not just a question of putting all judgments about the being or non-being of the world in parentheses, but of considering the world as a world in which every position of being has been “reduced,” deeming it to be a “phenomenon,” considering all the determinations of being as hypothetical. And Conrad-Martius then lingers on the term “hypothetical” to counterpose her own position.20 Without denying the value of the epoché – and this is what constitutes the profound distinction between realistic phenomenology and Heidegger’s phenomenology – ConradMartius sustains that the objective of the epoché should be that of “hypothetically” placing in parentheses the real world, which nevertheless remains “the same” within its mode of universal givenness. The reduction performed by Husserl, on the other hand, considers the real being of the world in a “hypothetical” manner. Making this distinction between Husserl’s “reduction” and the epoché, she deems herself to have grasped everything that is “empirically” or “factually” given in a manner different from Husserl. In actual fact, however, ConradMartius’ fear, to which I have already referred in connection with her realistic choice, concerns the loss of the factual-empirical dimension, and this can be readily understood also when one bears in mind her interest in the study of nature. But at this point one can note also a short circuit between reality, existence and factuality, a short circuit that Husserl had sought to avoid. In fact, whereas the term existence is contraposed to non-existence, the term factual or empirical is contraposed to essential; one may note that theoretically

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Conrad-Marius recognizes this distinction but, referring to Husserl, she holds that his reduction – inasmuch as it is a placing in parentheses of the factual – is also a non-recognition of the existential moment. c) Factuality and existence As noted earlier on, Husserl never called the existence of the world into doubt. Rather, he granted Descartes the possibility of not discussing whether or not it existed, and this is duly recognized by Conrad-Martius; 21 but she holds that in Husserl there is a touch of something more (eine Nuance mehr), and this touch risks compromising every position of being and therefore every factuality. Firstly, one may note that Husserl speaks of the recognition of existence or non-existence as a mode of consciousness, this in the sense that this recognition – inasmuch as it is recognition rather than position of being or production of being – is an operation of consciousness; secondly, factuality is given, but one must not remain on the plane of factuality – rather, one has to overcome it if essentiality is to be grasped; in the last resort, therefore, we are here concerned with two different questions. To come back to the first, one may recall what Husserl sustains about the problem of the existence or nonexistence of an object in the third of his Cartesianische Meditationen. After underscoring that in the first of these meditations he had already highlighted the constitution of an intentional object, i.e. the correlation between the noesis and the noema, the cogito and the cogitatum, to use the Cartesian expression, he sustains that one has to proceed with treating and coming to grips with the distinction between existing and non-existing object and this distinction “is not by any means put out of the question by abstaining from the decision regarding the being or non-being of the world”; rather, this is “a universal theme of phenomenology.”22 One therefore has to establish the modes of confirmation and verification, of filling or otherwise, that make it possible to perform or not to perform the synthesis of the evident confirmation through evidence; this is the guiding thread for resolving the question of the “world” as “correlative idea of a concrete empirical evidence,”23 it is based on the external experience of objects that takes place through a multiform universe of anticipations (foretastes) that are not “filled,” but stand in need of filling, anticipations that refer us to potential evidences, and what appears in the mode of authenticity is precisely that which is filled. Consciousness of the world brings with it in an immanent manner something that is necessarily “transcendental,” i.e. the

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world as real and objective world, and brings with it the sense – and here we have the cognitive aspect – of a “world like the one that effectively exists.” 24 As far as factuality is concerned, one has to remember that the first book of Ideen begins with the distinction between factual data and essences and the need for going beyond the plane of factuality if their sense is to be grasped. Conrad-Martius, on the other hand, recognizes that one cannot remain on the plane of factuality when she sustains that the problem is precisely that of the essence of reality (das Wesen von Realität),25 but, rather, that what is needed is an examination of empirical nature to define its ontic structure,26 and this in line with the Husserlian approach; but even though she shows at times to grasp the sense of the contrast between Husserl and Descartes as regards the existence of the world, stressing repeatedly that Husserl never doubted the existence of the world,27 she nevertheless holds that Husserl’s frequent references to Descartes are a recognition of the fact that ontological objectivity springs from egological subjectivity. She then considers the reduction as proposed by Husserl in Ideen, interpreting the subjectivity to which Husserl refers not as place of the cognitive operations, but as source and fount of reality that in this sense, and according to her, annuls the autonomy of the existing world. The ontological phenomenology proposed by Conrad-Martius, unlike the one due to Husserl, which she deems – as I have sought to stress – to bear an idealistic imprint, sustains the otherness and the autonomy of the world with respect to the subject, basing itself also on the development of new natural sciences. One of the distinctive features of the position of ConradMartius is constituted by the importance she attaches to the new physics and the new biology and, since every scientific spirit is in the last resort a realist spirit, one may affirm that it is precisely the new scientificity of the experimental sciences that confers strength upon her anti-idealist polemic and constitutes the original connotation of her position. From this point of view she also believes herself to understand Husserl’s errors: for him the actual world was still given only empirically, and tracing it back to its origins was possible only by recuperating the transcendental dimension; but now new physics has opened the doors to further ambits of real-potential foundation, and thus there is need for new categories that are as yet without a name.28 Treating the theme of nature by making use of the sciences, but without forgetting the important role of the human being, rather, seeking to delve into the intimate relationship between man and this very nature, constitutes the originality of the proposal of Conrad-Martius, which therefore merits being

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taken into consideration on account of the attention it pays to understanding reality in its globality and its organic development. 2. The Question of the Existence of Nature According to Edith Stein On 3 February 1917 the young Edith Stein, then at Freiburg im Breisgau, wrote as follows to Roman Ingarden: “A philosophical walk we recently took together [her walking partner being Edmund Husserl] has given me new confidence. Among others, it has triggered a new passage within me. I now believe to know a little about what is constitution, but in breach with idealism. The conditions for the constitution of an evident nature seem to me not only an absolutely existing nature, but also a subjectivity with particular structures. I have not yet succeeded in confessing my heresies to the maestro. …”29 These words already delineate Edith Stein’s research programme that she was subsequently to set out in exemplary fashion in her Einführung in die Philosophie. The text in question is both introductive – for those who want to come to grips with the great themes analyzed by means of the phenomenological method – and conclusive, the latter inasmuch as it contains a summary of the speculative road covered by the author under the influence of Husserl and concluded at the beginning of the thirties; it thus contains a balance sheet that is very significant and useful in justification of the relationship between the human subject and the existence of the world. a) What is philosophy? This is the question with which Edith Stein commences her treatise, a very crucial one for those who want to dedicate themselves to the search. And she answers it in the first place in the spirit of Plato by recalling the motive of the eros, the tending towards “pure” knowledge, that is to say, knowledge not contaminated by anything other, above all, not contaminated by any interest of the practical type. In the spirit of Husserl she then goes on to specify that the subject who lives it theoretically does so with “his eyes wide open.” Here we have Husserl’s famous definition of the philosopher as a “disinterested” spectator, this in the sense that he has set aside all prejudices and all given knowledge to see “what things are like,” hence his famous motto zu den Sachen selbst, where the term Sache has the rather ample meaning of “thing” and is equivalent to the Latin expression res. Assuming this attitude, one enters the domain of knowledge; philosophy is not a private fact, a question of taste, but a science – according to Latin etymology it is derived from scire, a science, according to the Saxon root

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wissen, which has nothing to do with the positive sciences or with natural experience, but with knowledge of the essence, i.e. of the true being of things and – to return to Plato’s language – with the ontos on and is therefore configured as ontology. This is the reason why phenomenology as search for the essences coincides with the very concept of philosophy and, more specifically, presents itself as ontology. This brief exposition epitomizes the significance of Husserl’s search and, in his wake, the one carried out by Edith Stein. We are here concerned with the theory of knowledge or, to use a Kantian expression, the critique of reason that, contrary to what Kant sustained, leads to the essential description and therefore to the ontology not only of subjectivity, but also of the being transcendent with respect to knowledge, that is to say, of the ontology of nature. This is the overcoming of criticism and the explicitation of what Husserl himself had indicated, the first step towards a “realistic” phenomenology as completion of the phenomenology of subjectivity, that is to say, of Husserlian transcendental idealism that, in its turn, had already distinguished itself from the idealism of Kant or Fichte. And it is a crucial point of distinction vis-à-vis both the ingenuous realism of tradition and the particular idealism that, underscoring the centrality of the subject, considers reality to be dependent on the subject, an idealism initiated by Kant and brought to metaphysical completion by Fichte. Husserl’s transcendental idealism – and it will here be appropriate to recall that “idealism” can be used in many ways, i.e. the term has different meanings that have to be explicated in each particular case – here one need only think of Plato’s idealism and its altogether specific connotation – constitutes a bridge, a passage towards a new realism, the one that Husserl himself defines in his Cartesian Meditations as “transcendental realism.” We are not here concerned with a “wooden iron” – to use a term that Heidegger proposed for Christian philosophy – namely a bringing together of two incompatible concepts, but with discovering, as Edith Stein does, that “the essential difference of objects has its counterpart in the essential difference of the structure of consciousness” and therefore that the critique of reason and ontology are linked in a certain manner, so that the critique of reason is the condition of ontology. In the text here considered Edith Stein clearly and intentionally sets out the lines of the realistic phenomenology that is to be found also in Adolf Reinach and Hedwig Conrad-Martius 30 and does so in a convincing and original manner, maintaining an extraordinary “equilibrium” between subject and object, without unbalancing her analysis either on the side of the subject,

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as happened to Husserl, or on the side of the object, as was the case of her two colleagues. The two parts of Einfürhung in die Philosophie are the testimony of the point at which Edith Stein arrived autonomously within the phenomenological school and, more generally, her arrival point in the description of the relationship between immanence and transcendence, where the latter is to be understood as a transcendence in the “horizontal” sense. This should not cause surprise, because one has to bear in mind that, in Husserl’s understanding, the term “transcendent” can be applied to reality “other” than the subject and can therefore refer to the other human beings and nature, but can also be applied to the otherness of absolute being, i.e. to God.31 In the Einführung, possibly the last of Edith Stein’s fundamental phenomenological texts, she moves on the horizontal level, the passage to verticality takes place without contrasts – rather, in substantial continuity – in Endliches und ewiges Sein. b) Idealism and realism The problematics just outlined also comprise the most important discussion with which E. Stein’s Einführung comes to grips and places in a central position also from the formal point of view, namely the relationship between idealism and realism. It is treated at the moment when one asks oneself how knowledge of nature becomes possible from a philosophical point of view. It is there that Edith Stein commences her discussion, implicitly carried on with Husserl, explicitly with Kant. First of all, she is thoroughly familiar with Husserl’s position and knows also that he never denied the real consistency of nature; the problem is rather the one concerning the “conditions” that permit it to be experienced, and here Husserl seems to place himself in the wake of Kant, but it is also here that the two positions begin to diverge. Though the problem is the same, i.e. the knowability of nature, Husserl sought the “ideal” conditions for this knowledge in consciousness, for the human being – in other words: quoad nos – consciousness is indispensable, in this sense it is an “absolute” if knowledge of the world is to be achieved. Sharing this assumption, which leads to sustaining that for us there would be no world in the absence of consciousness,32 the author asks herself how this consciousness comes about. In the first place she uses a Husserlian line of argument to establish the existence of an external world known through the sensations, based on intersubjective confirmation. The overcoming of solipsism is necessary – this is one of the few occasions when Edith Stein takes the solipsist objection seriously, whereas Husserl had dedicated a great

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deal of space to it in the fifth of his Cartesianische Meditationen – and is obtained by means of the necessary recognition that to affirm solipsism we always need an interlocutor; in this way she deprives the solipsist objection of all significance. Having overcome this obstacle, we still have to establish whether our judgments about reality are valid. In the first place we have to recognize that there are two ambits of knowable objects, one of which is represented by the selfsame contents of consciousness, that is to say, by the lived experiences that constitute it – and this is also the element of distinction with respect to Kant – and the other by the objects of experience. According to Edith Stein, Kant’s error consists of not realizing that two types of objection are possible, the first of which is the subjective one that he adopted, high-lighting the functions of subjectivity that make it possible for objects to appear to our consciousness; but, since it does not follow that the being of the objects necessarily depends on the functions of subjectivity, one may proceed to a second deduction that is no longer subjective, but rather objective, on the basis of which there are highlighted the conditions of experiencing these very objects. It is at this point that realistic phenomenology becomes delineated: in § 11, para. c of Part I, dedicated to Object and State of Things, she proposes the pinpointing of two conditions of consciousness, one on the subjective side, the correctness of the form of the judgment, and the second on the objective side, namely the consistency of the state of things, which possesses a structure of its own that has to be grasped by the judgment. Both are “forms,” and therefore “categories,” independently of the actuality of existence, but indispensable as prerequisites for grasping existence itself. Another consideration is the one concerning knowledge of individuality, which does not stand in need of categories; the being of individual things – which also include individual lived experiences – is “graspable” but not “knowable”; if one attributes to these two terms the adjectives of, respectively, “irrational” and “rational,” one arrives at the conclusion that only what is general is rational, what is individual is irrational. But even the categories are “categorial intuitions,” so that, precisely because they make knowledge possible in its generality, knowledge must be paradoxically founded on what is irrational. In trying to establish the “confines of experience” at this point33 the discussion is becoming concentrated on a question that is extremely important from an epistemological point of view, namely the possibility of knowing things in their individuality and not only with respect to their general elements; both aspects have to be justified and distinguished and, if this is to be done, one has to make reference to intuition on the one hand and to its

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conceptual elaboration on the other. As one can note, intuition assumes a fundamental role and this characterizes the phenomenological approach, which tends to highlight the role of this cognitive instrument. Resuming the examination of idealism-realism relationship, one notes that our author is of the opinion according to which the “form” of nature, on the basis of which the sense material is ordered and the course of experience is regulated, is independent of the consciousness one experiences, in other words, with respect to Kant it is a question of establishing whether nature is to be understood as “apparition,” i.e. a phenomenon in the sense used by criticism, or, to keep using a Kantian expression, it is a “thing in itself.” This is not a way of denying the validity of idealism, it is simply a question of establishing in which of the many modes it can be said; the way proposed by Edith Stein34 at this point, and here she follows in the footsteps of Husserl, when, for example, he grasps an intrinsic and objective finality in things and in human actions,35 is not a “subjective” idealism that posits consciousness as being absolute and eternal, but an idealism that, even though it recognizes the presence of categories independent of consciousness on which objectivity is founded, holds that reality is also dependent on consciousness, because consciousness experiences it, remembers it, thinks it, and so on. “Realism” is not therefore excluded, but a distinction is made between a realism that with an ingenuous and acritical attitude accepts the existence of things – and this is something to be criticized – and a realism that recognizes that the world is given to us through the structures of subjectivity. The latter type of realism admits that real existence is also independent of the flowing of consciousness, but as far as the human being is concerned it is grasped by means of the human cognitive structures. It is not therefore a question of having to choose between idealism and realism, but rather of establishing their correlation after having indicated what is to be understood by the two terms. c) Nature Edith Stein then uses this theoretical baggage to come to grips with the analysis of nature. She knows only too well that ever since the birth of physics in the modern age, nature has been the object of scientific inquiry and therefore subjected to a process of mathematization that, as Husserl put it, superposed an ideal wrapping on what the human being had grasped at the perceptive level.36 The fundamental attitude of the phenomenological school, moving from the theses of the maestro, is precisely that of distinguishing the philosophical reading of nature from the scientific one and claiming the autonomous role of the former against the positivist pretense of considering

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the physical interpretation as the only valid one. As mentioned before, an important example in this direction is provided by Hedwig Conrad-Martius, who, notwithstanding her profound knowledge of contemporary biology and physics, re-proposes some Aristotelian concepts for a philosophical reading of nature. Well aware of the mechanistic approach to which nature is subjected in the scientific reading that privileges the quantitative criterion bound up with measurement and neglects the qualitative dimension, Edith Stein calls for the elaboration of an ontology of nature capable of grasping the essential tracts of all the natural phenomena without being obliged to sacrifice – as even Max Planck was well aware – the fullness and the multiplicity of the world that falls under our intuition. This does not mean absolutely denying the validity of physical science, but simply grasping its limits and proposing – as a preliminary step – a philosophico-phenomenological analysis that will bring into focus all aspects in their full complexity. Remaining within the furrow of the philosophical tradition of the modern age, one has to examine the fundamental concepts of time, space, movement, substance and causality in order to provide a theoretical support precisely for those who want to undertake the examination of nature, including its scientific examination. In the case of the natural sciences, as already in the case of the sciences of the spirit, there becomes delineated the phenomenological proposal of calling concepts into question and an essential reading of phenomena that are used acritically by those who elaborate the various sciences. As regards the world of objects in general, on the other hand, it is indispensable to make a distinction between what nature spontaneously produces – a bush, a tree, a torrent, rocks, etc. – and what is artifically constructed. This distinction assumes fundamental importance in view also of the finality of the natural world and the artificial world; indeed, if the things of nature have a finality in themselves or, as one could say more generally in a Husserlian sense, in a chain of the teleological type that characterizes life, whatever is constructed artifically is an instrument devoid of life and becomes animated only from time to time according to the use that is made of it. The artificial universe, which is the great product of Western civilization, thus presents itself as possessing a twofold significance: that of extending the power of the human being over nature itself and that of doing this at the cost of suffocating life if one fails to put confines to this power. The risk – and it is one that seems ever more present when we contemplate the ecological problem – is that of arousing powerful forces that, just as happens to Prospero in Shakespeare’s comedy The Tempest, we shall no longer be able to

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control. But if we want to grasp the significance of the life of nature, we have to have a philosophy of nature, for the natural sciences, which in their unilaterality reveal themselves in their turn to be conceptual “constructions” that cannot by themselves suffice. Recapitulation The above outline sought to show very briefly how the discussion about the existence of the world came into being within the phenomenological school. We noted that Husserl’s cited disciples are convinced that, as far as the maestro is concerned, the world – understood as external reality that comprises ourselves as human beings – does exist, but doubt that he succeeded in justifying this view moving from his theoretical assumptions. Nevertheless, the objections are more or less mellow and indistinct and all of them are made within the school, that is to say, within a common style of search. The great common terrain is constituted by essential analysis, which nobody wants to do without, but precisely because the philosophical tradition regards the theme of the essence as related to that of existence, there arises the fear that this latter aspect might be pushed into the background. Furthermore, because for Husserl essential analysis concentrates on subjectivity and opens the road to the transcendental perspective, what is feared is becoming enclosed in subjectivity and concentrating all of reality in it, as in the great lesson of German idealism. As can be seen, I have endeavored to defend Husserl against his own disciples, trying to delve into his profound intentions, re-balancing – wherever this proves possible – the results of his analysis, comforted in this by the observations of Edith Stein, who was probably closest to the maestro and therefore managed to grasp the principal lines of his position more accurately. The theoretical core always remains the relationship between idealism and realism, with respect to which Husserl’s attitude, at least in my opinion, is very balanced, notwithstanding its peculiarity. On the other hand, it is quite readily understandable that his disciples should have committed the “great parricide,” to use the expression that Plato used in connection with Parmenides; it may well be that without it one does not achieve theoretical autonomy. All the same, one also has to bear in mind a saying that once again involves Plato: amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas, which should help us understand the intentions of the other before we raise objections. Italian Center of Phenomenology, Rome Translated by Herbert Garrett

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1 R. Ingarden, Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt I, Existenzialontologie (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1964). 2 A. Reinach, Über Phänomenologie, in Sämtliche Werke, edited by K. Schuhmann and B. Smith, (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1980). 3 Ibid., p. 545. 4 Ibid., p. 546. 5 E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Husserliana, I, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963), § 48. 6 R. Ingarden, “Letter to Husserl about the VI Logical Investigation and ‘Idealism,’ ” Analecta Husserliana, IV, Ingardeniana edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976). 7 R. Ingarden, Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, op. cit., p. 82. 8 Ibid., p. 7. 9 Ibid., p. 9. 10 Ibid., p. 22. 11 R. Ingarden, Probleme der Husserlschen Reduktion. Lectures given at the University of Oslo, October/November 1967, in Analecta Husserliana, IV, op. cit. 12 H. Conrad-Martius, Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie, in Edmund Husserl 1859–1959, Phänomenologica 4 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959), republished in Schriften zur Philosophie, edited by E. Avé-Lallemant, Kösel Verlag, Munich 1965, which is also the source of the citations used in the text. 13 Ibid., p. 395. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 396. 16 H. Conrad-Martius, Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie, op. cit., p. 397. 17 Ibid. 18 H. Conrad-Martius, Phänomenologie und Spekulation, op. cit., p. 371. 19 H. Conrad-Martius, Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie, op. cit. p. 399. 20 Ibid., p.398. 21 Ibid., p.396. 22 E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen. Husserliana, I, p. 91. 23 Ibid., § 28. 24 Ibid., p. 97. 25 H. Conrad-Martius, Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie, op. cit. p. 397. 26 Ibid., p. 398. 27 Ibid., p. 401. 28 Ibid. 29 Letter of 20 February 1917, in Briefe an Roman Ingarden, Edith Steins Werke, Vol. XIV, (Freiburg: Herder, 1991). 30 I set out the essentials of the research of H. Conrad-Martius in my book Fenomenologia dell’essere umano – Lineamenti di una filosofia al femminile (Rome: Città Nuova, 1992). 31 I analyzed the various uses of the terms “absolute” and “transcendental” in my book Husserl – Il problema di Dio (Rome: Studium, 1985). 32 Cfr. Husserl, Ideen zur einer zeinen phänomenologie und phänomenologischen philosophie., I, § 48 and Edith Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie Werke, Vol. XIII (Herder, Freiburg: Br. 1991) I, c, 7.

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Ibid., I, c, 16. Ibid., I, c, 15. 35 This is the great theme of teleology, considered by Husserl as the “form of all forms” and is discovered as the guiding thread for knowledge of human and natural reality and as “demonstration” of the existence of God (for a further development of the argument, please refer to my article “Teleology as ‘Form of all Forms’ and the Inexhaustibility of Research,” in Analecta Husserliana, Vol. IX, 1979). As regards Husserl’s critique of subjective idealism, see what he writes in Ideen etc., I, § 55. 36 E. Husserl, “Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie,” Husserliana, VI; see paragraphs 8 and 9 dedicated to Galilei. 34

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The phenomenological method is particularly well-suited to address the theme of the 51st International Phenomenology Congress, “The Controversy over the Existence of the World,” since Edmund Husserl devised its method specifically to provide an account of the possibility of the experience of the world that we encounter in daily life. Husserl suggests a thought experiment at the beginning of phenomenologizing: imagine the destruction of the entire universe. The thinker sees that the experiment cannot be executed in its entirety since the acts of a conscious subject must remain as the source of the condition of the possibility of executing the experiment. This peculiar thought experiment, the transcendental phenomenological reduction, performs the service of releasing objects from a metaphysics of substance that presupposes the independence of objects from the subjects that experience them. The reduction reveals instead that subjects are more basic epistemologically than the objects that derive from subjects experience of them. Objects only become such since they are intended by a conscious subject; objects can be only for subjects. Consciousness is a necessary condition for meanings, including all that we mean when we wonder if this world is the real world. Yet, Husserl knows that thinking cannot make it so. Husserl’s phenomenological method discloses objects in a neutrality mode, their claim to exist derives from subjective experience of them, but subjects can have experience in dreams, hallucinations, misidentifications and so forth. The neutrality of reduced objects results from their modest description as correlates of the acts of consciousness that grasp them as such and such meanings. The child may try to grasp a ball in acts of running, reaching, jumping and so forth that discover the meaning of “ball” in its motion, in its temporality and spatiality. The ball becomes, for the child who throws and catches it, a constant object throughout its changes in position. The child may constitute the meaning of ball without yet having a word for it. The first balls a child turns towards appear and disappear. Eventually, they reappear. Reappearance, as “same again,” is the result of associations, over various sensory fields, over time, according to the phenomenological theory of constitution. 117 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 117–128. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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The phenomenological reduction moves towards foundational philosophy based on conscious self-reflection, examining meanings already bestowed in any ontological field. This conclusion may seem to imply a psychologistic idealism. Husserl himself condemned this metaphysical position as he did all naïve metaphysics of realism or idealism. To do so with phenomenologically warranted evidence, he must establish grounds for the experience of objects as independent of a consciousness that has correlated objects. In order for Husserl to achieve the rigor of transcendental philosophy with its indubitable self-evidence in conscious experience, while avoiding metaphysical assumptions as Descartes and Kant failed to do, Husserl aims to achieve a guarantee of objectivity in subjective experience that any other subjective consciousness can, in principle, share. Thus, Husserl must confront the notorious difficulties associated with the criticism that his philosophy is solipsistic, if his philosophy is to justify the meaning “real” as it is ordinarily granted to the experienced world. According to Husserl in his Preface that he wrote for the English translation of Ideas I in 1931, “Phenomenological idealism does not deny the positive existence of the real (realen) world and of Nature. … Its sole task and service is to clarify the meaning of this world.” 1 As Husserl himself admits, philosophy is an infinite task and he, himself, to the end of his life, was by his own judgment still a beginner.2 In 1913 in Ideas I, Husserl had first introduced phenomenology through the possibility of the experience of things as they are usually given in the natural attitude. From the level of everyday consciousness, in which we matter-of-factly take for granted the real existence of an external, substantial world transcendent to ourselves, we can turn to view the consciousness that is necessary for performing acts that take autonomous things for granted. These acts, bound to the meanings they bestow, are more basic than the objects of consciousness constituted by the acts. Objects, after all, turn out to be correlates of the acts that intend them, and thus dependent upon consciousness for their registration. The phenomenological reduction discloses subjective consciousness to be the necessary condition for the experience of things. So, phenomenological method begins in reflection on the subject’s experiences of making meanings. Meanings, of course, need have no particular metaphysical substance or ontological status necessarily associated with them. The meant can be meant as counter-factual or imaginative or emotional as well as real and so forth. What meanings must share is their conscious grasp as intentional objects. Meanings, insofar as they are meant, are meant in a mode of possibility (even the impossible is a species of possible meaning). Thus, “Possibility may function as a common

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denominator for all experience.”3 This claim need not be empty, however. For instance, even if all meanings must be possible as meanings, they may not all be compossible. Dallas need not be north of Houston. Yet, if Dallas is north of Houston, Dallas cannot be south of Houston. As Jorge Borges laments, “The world, alas, is real; I, alas, am Borges.4 Such is the experience we have of the world as real, however, such experience does not settle the controversy over the existence of the world. More is required. Husserl’s Ideen, Volume I, introduces phenomenology in the first figure of the phenomenological reduction. From the level of everyday consciousness, in which we matter-of-factly take the real existence of an external, substantial world transcendent to ourselves for granted, we can turn to view that consciousness. Acts of consciousness, bound to the meanings they bestow, are more basic than the objects of consciousness constituted by the acts. Objects, after all, turn out to be correlates of the acts that intend them, and thus dependent upon consciousness for their registration. So much for Ideas I. Husserl did not fulfill his original plan to publish the second volume of the Ideas immediately after volume one or even after Edith Stein finished editing the manuscripts. In Ideas II, the guiding thread of the analysis is no longer the thing in the doxic attitude of everyday opinion, but the constitution of the spiritual world in a personalistic attitude. In static analysis at the beginning of the phenomenological journey, the possibility of reflection on the constituting that occurs in other mental lives does not need be considered. Perhaps, Husserl had to await the later reflections that became the Cartesian Meditations before he considered himself philosophically entitled to the analyses of Ideas II. The question cannot be postponed indefinitely, however. What are the necessary conditions for the possibility of the existence of a conscious subject other than the originary consciousness within its own consciousness? Some phenomenologists, among them even Maurice Merleau-Ponty, have held that the transcendental phenomenological reduction cannot be complete since disembodied consciousness is not available to the phenomenologist for description. Likewise, there are no disembodied phenomenologists around to perform the descriptions. If there is experience of a world, consciousness of it is a function of perception and so forth. The reduction introduced in Ideas I, the reduction to the experience of a thing as phenomenon is necessarily richer than its initial introduction suggests. The experience of a thing as existing requires some conscious awareness of it as its necessary correlate and even mental awareness seems to require an incarnate existence as the seat of its possibility. After all, what experience can we have of purely mental

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awareness? Consciousness, as it unfolds in volume two of Ideas, becomes affiliated with psyche incarnated in the spatio/world. The transcendentally necessary condition for the possibility of consciousness, as a philosopher can experience it anyway, must be embodiment. Ideas II supplements Ideas I in an essential fashion, although, according to Fred Kersten, “Both meanings – the one presented originaliter in the naturalistic and the other in the personalistic attitude comprising the general positing that belongs to the naturalness of the natural attitude – are perfectly valid theoretically.…”5 Husserl, however, comes to recognize body as the condition for the possibility of sentient consciousness. In addition, the body of the other allows the I to come to itself through mirroring its body and its meanings. Through empathy and the shared interpretations and constructions that empathy makes available,6 the I constitutes physical things with others, but these constituted physical things essentially involve a dimension of spiritual meaning. The doxic-theoretical attitude that assumes objectivity must be founded upon the personalistic attitude since others are prerequisite for the meaning of objectivity. Husserl writes, “but for all that also only is as possibly appearing in such appearances (to manifold egos), therefore able to be legitimated as Objective truth only through empathy.”7 Things are independent objects, objects for others as well as the solitary constituting consciousness, if and only if they are, in principle, available for other consciousness as well. This is the path that Husserl’s escape from solipsism and subjectivism takes towards the reality of the world. The virtue of this path is that a subject can follow it to meanings beyond itself. If the necessary condition for the possibility of an objective world and of truth is empathy, and if empathy requires embodied subjects, then the possibility of the experience of the world as real rests on the bodily actuality of the constituting original and its others. Only actual bodies can make psyches known or knowable. The two kinds of phenomenological attitudes, the doxic and personalistic, thus, do more than supplement each other. The doxic level of everyday living must be founded on a personal stratum of experience which is the pre-condition for any theoretical consciousness. The world is dependent upon physicalistic nature, but the idea of the world is a spiritual meaning. The natural sciences illustrate the ideal quality that nature can be given through acts of theorizing. Husserl’s famous “Origin of Geometry” traces the progression of nature as surrounding world to the nature that the modern sciences distill mathematically and geometrically, eventually providing a new understanding of being in the world. The more immediate significance of Natura is the shared bodily nature that permits the possibility

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of pairing associations that instruct consciousness in the ways of selfconsciousness. To reduce world or nature to fact or to idea is to deny either its necessary possibility in the I’s own body and other bodies or the experienced meanings of nature that always include spiritual production (despite the natural sciences claims to an objectivity that phenomenologists find naïve). Post-Kantian philosophy, especially phenomenology, discloses worlds as meanings, products for and of actual spatio/temporal subjects. The other, in the fifth of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, serves as the necessary condition for the possibility of the real world, in principle available to all to be shared. If the emphasis of the reduction be placed on the realm of being it discloses rather than upon the ego who is the one-sided source of being for it, then a world is real because it is shared. The real world is not mine alone, as are my private experiences such as my dreams and my experiences of pain. If we explore phenomenological suggestions a bit further, we find that private or immanent experiences are related to the I’s consciousness and in principle not immediately available to any other consciousness. We experience others with the familiarity and frequency that we do independent objects, nonetheless. And, insofar as the I can communicate its memories or its dreams, it must do so in a language that it shares with others, perhaps in its “mother tongue.” Language and the common experience of the world that language enables, is, as shared, based on a consciousness of others that the I carries within itself. The I can become aware of others only if they fulfill the necessary condition of incarnation, even if in painting, writing and so forth. The pairing process that permits the association of ego moves from immanent experience to shared experienced through the intermediary of reciprocal meaning-making and recognition that the meaning of the pair can only result from the mutual overlapping of two meaning-makers, both bodily presented. The clout of pairing, the separation of the meaning into two separate meaning-making consciousness, comes about through the felt absence of the experience of one of the members whose embodiment only partially displays the meaning it devolves in its meaning-making. A subject, even on the most primal levels of consciousness, can achieve a paired meaning with another since their bodies share similarities. Yet, each can only feel his own experience of meaning-making. Each member of the pair knows the meaning that pairing makes possible and its own part in the meaning. The pair requires two to generate its meaning, but each has access only to the experience that it brings to the pair. Think here of pairs of consciousnesses such as mother/child or lover/beloved. Each singular consciousness can experience

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within itself the acts of meaning-making that reciprocate each own, but each can feel only itself as presence. The inner experience of the other is necessarily implied in the pairing process, while nevertheless not present as the immediate experience of both members of the pair. Thus, Husserl shows that consciousness is necessary for the experience of the world, but that a world-experiencing consciousness can know more than the efforts spawned in its own acts. That the world is real means for phenomenology that the world is intersubjective. Consciousness must include that which is other than itself in order to experience a shared world of common objects in a language that can convey the experience. A unitary consciousness transcends solipsism through pairing with others who can enter into pairing relations if they share bodies, common Natura that allows them to fit together reciprocally. In the first instances, the infant becomes the mother’s child, a human child, through reciprocally taking on the meanings that she presents to him, as the nursling feeds at her breast. Extensions of this pairing lead the infant to speak her language, to dwell in a family with his father and siblings, to share their community and culture. In short, through pairing the infant becomes a human person, one among others with direct access to his own feelings and empathic access to others. Dreams are private experiences within its own sleep in the home and the world he shares with others. Meanings, even those he will inscribe as “objective,” result from conscious acts, but not all acts of consciousness must originate in him to be the subject’s own. Consciousness can know consciousness other than itself not directly, as it feels its own feelings, but as also affectively conscious. Demonstrating the constitution of intersubjectivity takes place within the still larger and even more basic phenomenological theme, the fundamental problem of possibility. The controversy over the existence of the world and in particular of the world of others is the crucible of phenomenology. Husserl’s avowed attempt was to provide an account of the experience of the world as it gives itself – real for others as well as for my own consciousness. We must wonder immediately, though, “how can my consciousness include others as part of itself?” Then the problem of showing the constitution of the intersubjectivity clearly would concern the possibility of constituting others within the I’s consciousness as other than its consciousness. How is experiencing others and a shared world possible? The question for phenomenology is not whether or not the world exists, but how is it possible to experience the world as existing? The questions that the phenomenological method incites coincide with questions concerning the controversy over the existence of the world since phenomenology results in the demand for an account of the possibility of experiencing others and the

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shared world, not the “reality” of others. Others in their functioning, after all, comprise necessary conditions for the possibility of the reduction in the acts of the transcendental ego. After all, the actual (not open) possibility of being for a transcendental ego rests in prior, ongoing animate existence, the I’s own and its others’ own, as we learn in Ideas II and the Cartesian Mediations. All possibility Husserl can account for must be traced back to its source in incarnate subjects. The I’s body, as Husserl explains in the 5th of his Cartesian Meditations, can join with another’s body in a pair of overlapping meanings. Each is an other since each body harbors “private” experiences and acts that one-sidedly generate these experiences. When Husserl accounts for the everyday experience of someone else, he returns to actual bodies and the shared nature that allows them to unite in shared meanings, alleviating their separation. Yet, separateness must remain. If the separation between conscious subjects is absolutely overcome, there can be no account of the ordinary experience such as loving the other since the other has been absorbed into the I. “If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love is obviously impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himself but he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must be a monotonous courtship.”8 The phenomenological possibility for the experience of the world as real is the real bodily being of meaning-bestowing beings. In sum, the possibility of experience of an actual world, indeed the possibility of experience at all requires consciousness. Consciousness requires embodiment, as its transcendentally necessary condition, for without shared bodily nature there can be no access to experience of the other. So, the actual (not open) possibility of being for a transcendental ego rests in prior, ongoing animate existence. As we have seen, all possibility Husserl can account for must be traced back to its source in incarnate subjects. “Transcendental phenomenological method, through the reduction, opens up the region of possibility, but insofar as the reduction performs the functions of setting aide the question of the basis (in a specified metaphysical substance) of phenomenal experience, the arena of transcendental phenomenology is possible or phenomenal existence, which may be either real or irreal (ideal).”9 Husserl’s claims to foundational philosophy rest on his analysis of the possibility of constitution of a shared world.10 Not only space and time as Kant held, but other formal conditions accrue to possibility as the possibility of such and such a possibility. Scott Buchanan, following Kant, defines possibility as “That which agrees in intuitions and concepts with the formal conditions of experience.” He

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introduces the term “parameters,” the “elementary constituents” of method, to include Kant’s theoretical formalisms enlarged by subject matters “amenable to treatment in Aristotlean and mathematical logic, as well as in the methods of the various sciences and arts which have contributed to our intellectual culture.”11 An examination of possibility in various arenas discloses a distinction between actual possibility, determined in part by what has come before it and open possibility. If Husserl is to account for the ordinary experience of the world as real, as there for everyone, he must return to the prior experience that the I has of bodies that is the necessary condition for the possibility of shared meanings. Not only are the world and others, but all intersubjective products including language prior conditions so that the world is not an open possibility in Buchanan’s sense. Transcendental logic, too, points to the necessity of real others. Logical meanings and the study of logic result from acts that produce these insights within flowing consciousness. This abstractionist argument takes on the same divisions of earlier formulations: it splits into object and subject. Logic is as such the intentional product of a flowing consciousness. Logic is not reducible to any particular incarnate consciousness, although actual reflection on the possibility of logical acts requires besouled bodies, since acts of logic garb themselves in symbolic language, which is the gift of others. Insofar as the sciences employ eidetic method and logic, the interwoven participation of meanings and world is commonplace. Even natural essences point to many similar phenomena. Knowing how to care for roses eliminates black spot from many rose bushes. The logical notion of possibility is predicated upon actual embodiment in the phenomenological account. As we have seen, experience of actuality, thus, precedes its possibility according to phenomenology. Actuality becomes a necessary condition for real possibility. Logic, however, is not reducible to any particular incarnate consciousness. Essences, be they natural or transcendental, result from actual experiences via free variation for Husserl or abstraction according to traditional philosophy. In both tellings, logic requires embodiment, although concepts cannot be reduced to the material Thus, the logical notion of possibility is always predicated upon actual incarnation, including the necessity for the logician’s embodiment. Actuality must precede possibility to function as its necessary condition. To elaborate on this new theme, I shall leave the recognized phenomenological tradition aside to turn to G. K. Chesterton’s contribution to the discussion. Chesterton whole-heartedly agrees that the actual must be possible, but reminds us that the actual need not be as it is or even be, at all.

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We must return to this remarkable insight. Chesterton’s logic corresponds to Husserl’s division of consequent logic (the logic of noncontradiction) and truth logic (which corresponds to the case as it actually is). The logic of the imagination, what Husserl refers to as consequent logic, suspends natural and spatial categories as it approaches the transcendentals, but this logic has its lawfulness. Imagination makes up the play space of free possibility. For Chesterton, too, imagination, in its various musings, establishes the limits to possibility. The unimaginable, ipso facto, cannot be possible. Chesterton demonstrates transcendental logic, the logic of possibility, in his detective stories. For this, Borges heralds Chesterton as the Master of the Dectective Genre. Chesterton’s best-known protagonist, Father Brown, possesses a keen sense of the mysterious, which he seeks with a catholic openness and greets with joive de vivre. False beards and unlikely coincidences cannot detract from the logic of his solutions. Borges observes that “Chesterton always performs the tour de force of proposing a supernatural explanation and then replacing it, losing nothing, with another one from this world.”12 Chesterton’s stories satisfy us because their naturalistic conclusions are not ineluctable. Without giving anything away from the supernatural hypothesis, Chesterton allows both possibilities to maintain. Borges explains that …magic is not the contradiction of the law of cause and effect but its crown, or nightmare…All of the laws of nature as well as those of imagination govern it. To the superstitious mind, there is a necessary link not only between a gunshot and a corpse but between a corpse and a tortured image, or the prophetic smashing of a mirror, or spilled salt, or thirteen people ominously seated at the same table.13

The thematic presence of the real corpse as actualized possibility (whether due to a gunshot or to spilled salt) is opposed to undetermined possibility. This is more than a concession to the time worn metaphysics of realism. Rather, bodily being is a kind of mystery itself, implacable, and inexplicable. Its revelation is one of the indisputable achievements of 20th century phenomenological philosophy, but bodies abound when Chesterton guides the reading, too. The philosophy of consequent logic concerns entities about which existence claims are irrelevant. Logical entities are both ideal and real or neither, as phenomenologists say. Yet, even the fantastic, if it is to be believable, is limited by a stringent rationality which never violates the law against incompossibilities. Chesterton’s version of the logic that operates in Elfland and in all true fairy tales and fictions points to a realm of necessary relations which transcend ontological status. If the ugly stepsisters are older

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than Cinderella, she must be younger than they, in any world. If Jack is the miller’s son, Jack’s father must be the miller. The misidentifications that abound in fairy stories are finally adjudicated on the basis of truthful identification. The fantastic never violates logic. A reader’s uncanny feelings when confronting the fantastic result from her suspicion that the supernatural may be quite natural. The centrality of doubt for the success of a fantasy as well as for understanding the fantastic “cannot be stressed enough, even if…some narratives do not actually rely on it for their effect. Although the majority of readers do not believe that the laws of nature can be subverted, they enter, in the successful fantastic story, into a game with its author devised by the latter to make us suspend momentarily that belief in the impossibility of the supernatural to which we all so firmly subscribe in real life; to hesitate, in other words, between rejecting and accepting the possibility of the impossible. In the case of some exceptional texts, that uncertainty will transform itself into a doubt – a feeling more encompassing and of more lasting effects than the hesitation – that accompanies us after the narrative has ended.” 14 Chesterton’s own position is stronger still. “It is no argument for unalterable law…that we count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore an exception.”15 Chesterton’s literary universe expands to include magical exceptions, as long as they are not impossibilities such as Cinderella being older than her elder stepsisters or three magic beans and two magic beans making six. Chesterton is clear that the doubt that liberates and awakens is the possibility that the supernatural may not be impossible. When then exhausts the actual? The actual conforms to the parameters of all scientific knowing including knowledge of the natural world and natural essences as well as of the transcendentals. All essences require actual persons to enliven them as their own present meanings. The historical facticity of persons reveals them as temporal and contingent, although with a part of their reason that can envision the eternal. The actual is not the eternal; the actual, albeit perhaps a figure of the eternal, is precisely not eternal, but now. And, the now is as it is, but it need not be (or be so). The actual is possible; the actual gives possibility and parameters to the possible. The possible need not ever come to be, however. For Chesterton, it is possible that trees have golden apples, but no less wonderful that their apples are red. If actualized

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possibilities point to an actualizer even as stories point to a storyteller, this world in its height and depth is real. Chesterton’s insight is that the actual, although necessarily possible, need not be as it is. Indeed, this actual need not be, but remarkably, is. The actual world is the real world then, but what is this world? We need not subscribe to a substantial metaphysics. Indeed, we can maintain an appropriately philosophical agnosticism about the “substance” of the real world (and about the need for “substance,” as well). The analysis of the possibility of the experience of the world allows us to say with some authority that the world means a nexus of interconnected intentionalities generated by subjects acting in common. This actual world admits compossibilities, while excluding incompossibilities. The possibility of the actuality of a shared world with its time and its space is clear, as is its lack of necessity. We can say that we experience a real world with other persons (whose meaning is like my own, the development of her soul and its manifestation in the world). That the world is makes the question of fiction possible. Fictions are irreal events included in the history of the world, as quasi, counter-factuals, although not self-contradictions. Although it may not be possible to say quite what the world is, we can agree with Borges, it seems to me, that the I is, the world is and that we are in it together. A similar result obtains when Husserl’s account of the constitution of the other is spelled out. When we combine the two results, we see that the world we experience together is the real world that is necessarily predicated upon actualized possibility. Actual possibility, potentiality, differs from possibility per se insofar as actual possibility can be realized through the efforts of an agent. Nevertheless, actual possibility remains a species of possibility and need not be realized. The real world exhibits a necessary possibility that has been actualized and that in its actualization has generated a set of potentialities. Necessary possibility is not equivalent to necessity, however. The real world exists as an expression of freedom as well as necessity. Although the actual must be possible, the possible need not be actual. The real exists as an admixture of possibility and freedom, rejecting and accepting the possibility of the impossible. The impossibility for the natural sciences, the possibility that their sense of objectivity is but a courtesy that those who subscribe to the scientific method and the metaphysics of naturalism extend, shows itself in the necessary action of the subject in the realizing an actual world. The real world exists as a phenomenon if and only if its possibility is actual, and this due to the necessity for embodied consciousness to grasp the

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world in order for it to be experienced as actual. The actual possibility of the real world, however, points beyond itself to its origin in that which is not necessary. The actual must be possible, but the possible need not be. If the reality of the world is an actuality, the world that can be actually is because it necessarily includes freedom. And, because the world necessarily includes freedom among the conditions of its possibility, the world is as it is. The world exhibits real choice among potentialities that set up other possibilities. “This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one.”16 Yet. University of Houston, United States N OT E S 1

Edmund Husserl, Ideas, Tr. W. R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier Books, 1962), p. 14. Ideas, p. 28 Referring to himself, Husserl writes, “He could almost hope, were Methuselah’s span of days allotted him, to be still able to become a philosopher.” 3 Kathleen Haney, Intersubjectivity Revisited (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994), p. 154. 4 Jorge Luis Borges, Borges A Reader E. Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid (eds.) (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1981), p. 190. 5 Fred Kersten, Phenomenological Method: Theory and Practice (The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), p. 303. 6 Edmund Husserl, Ideas III, Tr. Ted E. Klein and William Pohl (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1980), p. 94. 7 Ideas III, p. 9 8 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, New York.: Image Books, 1959), p. 131. 9 Haney, p. 155. 10 Haney, p. 158. 11 Scott Buchanan, Possibility (Chicago: Midway Reprint, 1975), p. 16. 12 Borges A Reader, p. 71–73. 13 Borges A Reader, p. 37–38. 14 Julio Rodriguez-Luis, The Contemporary Praxis of the Fantastic Borges and Cortazar (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1991), p. 1. 15 Orthodoxy, 52–53. 16 Orthodoxy, p. 65. 2

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T H E A DVA N C E O F T H E S E N S E O F T H E C O N T ROV E R S Y OV E R T H E E X I S T E N C E O F T H E WO R L D – H E I D E G G E R I A N WO R K A S A N E X A M P L E . A M E TA P H I L O S O P H I C A L E X P E R I E N C E

Through metaphilosophical experience the proper philosophy happens… The controversy over the existence of the world is the greatest philosophical scandal. M. Heidegger

I would like to think over the sense of “the controversy over the existence of the world.” That sense is continually changing – less in an evolutionary way, more in a revolutionary one – and my intention is to learn about it from Heidegger’s philosophical achievements. From this metaphilosophical experience will follow, I suppose, that we learn a lesson about the matter of “the controversy over the existence of the world,” but also about the deepest matter… The scholastic (metaphysical) model of the world is, according to Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), not satisfying for his project of philosophy, not acceptable. He decides to transcend this model. He proposes the so-called early Heideggerian philosophy, which arises from phenomenology. But, as we know, this proposal is not true satisfaction for Heidegger. Around 1930 he changes his previous disposition toward philosophy and his view on things in the circle of “the controversy over the existence of the world” – now hermeneutic experience, poetic attitude, “listening intently for the voices of Being” decide the human world. But, in spite of that new way of describing the human situation in the world, Heidegger does not stop asking about the proper meaning of “the controversy over the existence of the world” [about the sense of existence, about being in the world, about existing (Dasein)]. What perspectives could one outline here? From Heideggerian thought I would like to read how the sense of the controversy over the existence of the world is changing. It seems important to notice that Heidegger himself called this controversy the greatest philosophical scandal. Precisely: the greatest philosophical sandal is, for Heidegger, 129 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 129–146. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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the fact of searching for a proof of the (outward, real) world’s existence! (For Immanuel Kant [1724–1804], as we remember, the philosophical scandal was a lack of this proof.) So, now with Heidegger, not: Does the world exist? But: How does it exist? What is the world? What does “being” mean? – Here is the fundamental task of Heideggerian attempts. Then also: What does the controversy over the existence of the world mean? Because: What is the world and the controversy about it? An academic lecture on the history of philosophy informs us that (European) philosophy began in 7 BC. The beginning of philosophy is an emancipation of human existence, human spirit, from mythological shape. In the mythical period people understood the world, their fortune, themselves according to prepared stories (myths); in myths people found prepared answers about the origin of the world, about reasons for world events, about aims in human life. At that time, to know meant to know the right “story” (myth) – tradition determined borders and shapes of the world. In the mythical epoch the human world was limited in that way, but it was, and it was obvious. About 7 BC the first Greek philosophers asked about the meaning of the traditional human world, the metaphysical-cognition power of the human. Certainty and evidence of a temporary world disappeared. Man lost prepared answers about the world, about himself. This lack of evidence and unity is a feature of a new part of the human spirit – people begin a new (philosophical) part of their history. People build now (only?) understanding of the world. Unfortunately people paid (and are paying nowadays) by losing unity, which was formerly guaranteed by tradition. This is the way; the academic lecture about the human spirit presents these events. The feature of philosophy is the searching for and creating of1 understanding of the world, and also the intention to assure lost certitude. It is contained in the word “philosophy”: liking (searching for) wisdom (understanding). (Pythagoras, a Greek in 7 BC, gave the study this name). Philosophical man is on the way to the world, to himself. Lack of certainty (removal of tradition, myth) brings uncertainty: existential lack of evidence, hunger, craving, etc. This is the way the academic lecture on the history of philosophy presents these events. When we look at this case again, this point of view appears to be uncertain, too. It becomes evident that division of the history of the spirit into a mythical epoch and a philosophical epoch is not steady. We can argue both for and against this division. There are even more arguments for the

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statement that man has always been philosophical. And then, “mythical” man was philosophical too. The academic opinion that philosophy began at a certain moment of history ends in this case (the opinion that philosophy began in Greece and replaced the myth). And then, from this description we can draw two conclusions: 1. 2.

Man has always been philosophical. Contemporary man still lives in the world of (metaphysical) myth, superstition and tradition.

From these two conclusions we can draw another one: Both webs (features of human nature), mythological and philosophical, tradition and rationalization, myth and learning, interweave with each other in the history of mankind – both are always together, and both are everyday. So, from ever and forever we are always between certainty and uncertainty; we are convinced, but we demand for ourselves (from ourselves?) assurance. Heidegger names the controversy over the existence of the world the greatest philosophical scandal – because the existence of the world is selfevident in the most fundamental evidence. But this is on one hand, as on the other hand Heidegger, a thinker for many decades, takes pains at the ways to reach the world: the most fundamental evidence calls for so much assurance! What magic circle (perpetual ascertaining of the world, its existence, our existence, and so on are evident) surrounds us here? Can someone transcend this circle? Perhaps we first try to look around, guided by Heidegger. (Heidegger says: To reason “a thing” in a philosophical way, to close in on “this thing,” to that which is, has its time when we foretell these important questions with important thinkers.) Thus, Heidegger asks: What is that which is? What does being mean (in this way: “world”)? Because in general, it is certain that it is something rather than nothing (pure, unexisting nothing)! But: How is…the world? How to clear up this question, how to bring it out, how to come near it, how to acquaint this question – so, how to recall what is called here in question (that is, the world)? Heidegger proposed a few “approaches” to (the question of) the world. First of all he rejected the idea of a created world, though in his biography we meet many “theological” features. For instance, his father was a sacristan in a Catholic Church, St. Martin. (Do his parents name him after the patron of this church?) Martin himself in 1903–1906 went to Jesuits College in the city of Constancy. In 1909–1913 he went to the University of Freiburg and he had

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studied theology systematically for his first two years. After 1911 he attended the lectures of Carl Braig (1853–1923). The aforementioned Braig, in 1896 published his treatise Vom Sein. Abriss der Ontologie.2 This work strongly influenced Heidegger, as to its substance, its form, and its literary, mental style. However, in spite of those “features,” in 1919 Heidegger finally broke not only with theology, but also with Catholicism. In this year he wrote to Engelbert Krebs (in 1916 Heidegger took over teaching philosophy from Krebs; he teaches philosophy as privat-docent at the University of Freiburg): “epistemological reflection, including also theory of historical cognition, caused that Catholic system to become problematic for me and I could not agree with it.” In one of his earlier texts (after die Kehre – his philosophical turn), in a lecture first delivered in 1938 and appearing in print in 1950 under the title Die Zeit des Weltbildes, Heidegger said: “In the Middle Ages an entity is ens creatum, created by the personal God – creator as the highest cause. To be an entity meant then: to stand on an always well-defined stage in the order of creation and as something caused by this way related to the cause of creation (analogia entis).”3 It seems to Heidegger that “the world” is not created and present, and it is not (as in a later modern, sublimated grasp of the world opposed to a human consciousness – subjectivity) an agglomerate of “things,” inside which a human is only (in spite of distinction otherwise) “a thing among things.” Anything could be said about it; we ought to admit that after 1919 Heidegger finally rejected the theological view on “the world’s” ontological, metaphysical affairs. And in general, according to Heidegger: What is that which is, from the Greek ␶ó óv (to on)? The difference of issue (a pivotal one) in Heidegger’s philosophy is the so–called ontological difference, in other words distinguishing between entity and being. Hitherto metaphysics – from Plato, through the paradigms of Descartes, Kant and Spinoza, till Nietzsche – was interested in that which is; and this means (as Heidegger says4) that it is not what really and factually is. Traditional metaphysics, with its modern sublimation leaning on mathematics, constituted a model of reality, a construction, which acquired significant autonomy in relation to reality itself. And just that project of reality was accepted by traditional metaphysics as to on, as that which is, as an entity. The point is not that metaphysics makes the model of reality, but that metaphysics replaces the world with a picture of the world. This is how the human lost direct relationship with factual reality, with factuality. The human lost this relationship, which means that this connection between human and occurring reality was in the past, as Heidegger says: in the

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premetaphysical epoch. After that epoch the human lost this relationship and at that time came the metaphysical epoch, staying to the present day. From the above clearly follow two ontologies: the traditional metaphysics and the Heideggerian ontology agree that reality exists. But, according to Heidegger, there is a difference between them: traditional metaphysics admits that reality is a theoretical construction, an abstract model, an abstraction of what is real, while his ontology returns (wants to return, is going to try) to the factual reality, happening now and here. As we remember, to express this difference, to designate to on of his ontology, Heidegger uses the German “das Sein” or in his later works “das Seyn” (in Polish “Bycie”5), and the German “das Seinde” (in Polish “Byt”) to designate to on of traditional metaphysics. It is obvious that to on in the traditional metaphysics and to on in the Heideggerian ontology (philosophy) are not the same. On the occasion of the handling of the human being question, Heidegger says openly, and he keeps in mind his initial difference (ontological difference), that every metaphysics asks about what “really” is, so about “reality,” about “the world.” So he says here: “plants and animals are harnessed in their environment and they have never been left to themselves in a clearance of Being [die Lichtung] (and only it is ‘the world’)” (my ital. – WP).6 The world, in other words, is what thoroughly is – the clearance of Being – while it is not what the traditional metaphysics names an entity, “a present thing”! In the traditional metaphysics a historical human is connected with an entity; so, this metaphysics confines his immersed, original essence among and above entities – this situation is a disease, a ruin for mankind. So, what is “the world”? What is that which really is? Being rather than only entity. Being (das Sein), being in general, through which only an entity (das Seiende) (in its being) becomes possible. Because what does “being” mean? So, just this really is; thus just “the world”? So, what of “the world” is? How is it possible? In the phenomenological phase of his philosophical proceedings Heidegger searches for the sense of just that which is, here: conditions of the possibility of understanding what is, what “being” means. This phase exists, as it is accepted, until the turn of Heidegger’s philosophy (die Kehre), that is until the lecture in 1930 entitled Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (About the essence of the truth), which appeared in print later in the volume Wegmarken. (For Heidegger, as we remember, there is no question that something is rather than nothing, and even he assumes that every controversy over the existence of the world is the greatest philosophical scandal). Thus, Heidegger asks (in the transcendental way) and he reaches the initial point of this asking, so for the

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analysis of the distinguishing entity, of the human, he initiates an analysis of Dasein (human consciousness, sphere of senses). In winter 1923/1924 in the Schwarzwald Mountains, in the village Todtnauberg near Freiburg, Martin Heidegger (born on the 26th of September 1889, dead on the 26th of May 1976) started to write his opus magnum – Sein und Zeit – the basal work for his entire philosophical creativity. This work in its primary intention was planned as follows: “To acquire the basic notion of ‘being’ and also, up to this notion, an initial sketch of an ontological notional system (with its necessary modifications), we ought to go in a specific way. The universality of the notional being does not exclude ‘a particular’ way of inquiries – that is, to penetrate this notion by means of an interpretation of a specific entity, namely the human being [Dasein – WP], in whom has to uncover the horizon of understanding and the possible explanation of Being. However this entity is ‘historical,’ so that to shine through its very own ontological shape is in an inevitable way ‘historical’ interpretation.” So, an elaboration of the question of Being is divided into two tasks; two parts of the treatise relate to them. Part one: An interpretation of the human being as to temporality, and explication of time as a transcendental horizon in the question of Being. Part two: The grounds of phenomenological destruction of ontological history; here the leitmotiv is the problem of temporality. Part one is separated into three further divisions: 1. 2. 3.

A preliminary fundamental analysis of the human being. The human being and temporality. Time and Being. Part two is also divided threefold:

1. 2. 3.

Kant’s theory of schematization and time as a preliminary stage of the temporality problem. The ontological foundation of Descartes’ “cogito sum” with reference to the mediaeval ontology by means of the problem of “res cogitans.” Aristotle’s treatise about time as representative of a phenomenological foundation and of the borders of ancient ontology.7

In spring 1927 Being and Time appeared in print for the first time, contemporaneously published by Husserl in “Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung,” vol. VIII, and separately. In this text Heidegger elaborated on only the first two divisions from part one (preliminary fundamental analysis of the human being), although its volume reached about

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thirty printed sheets. However, Heidegger has never elaborated on the next divisions, in accord with his initial intention. In 1962 he delivered the lecture Zeit und Sein (Time and Being).8 In 1929 the work Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik was published. This work is, as Heidegger says himself, “the explication of the fundamental ontology concept by means of an interpretation of pure reason critique as a basis of metaphysics.” It could be treated, to a certain degree, as a fragmentary realization of part two of the primary project of Being and Time, mostly of the first division of this part (Kant’s theory of schematization and time as a preliminary stage of the temporality problem). Also, Heidegger’s manuscript from 1922, for a long time recognized as missing, seems to be a sort of substitute for division three from part two (Aristotle’s treatise about time as representative of a phenomenological foundation and of the borders of ancient ontology). This script, Aristoteles – Einleitung, was found in Lower Saxon; it was a sketch of work, which had to be titled Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. This found manuscript was published in “Dilthey – Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften,” vol. VI, 1989. In this text Heidegger explained some of the webs, problems, and categories that would be amplified in his main work, Being and Time, published in 1927; so he explained them still before he started to work on Being and Time, in other words before winter 1923/1924. In the seventh edition (1953) of his main work – so, thirty years after taking the initial intention of his work – Heidegger says about the finiteness of Being and Time: “The notation ‘First volume’ [Part one? – WP], was removed which was in previous editions. After twenty-five years [from the date of publishing this work – WP] the second volume could not be added without working up again the first volume. However, the way presented there is necessary nowadays if the question of Being has to, in general, touch our being.” In that way unfinished, Heidegger’s text, Being and Time, became the great, foundational and essential work of contemporary, present philosophy, and not only in Europe. In 1940, Being and Time was for the first time translated into Japanese, and so far there are in this language already six translations. So we can say, with no great exaggeration, that Being and Time is the most important philosophical text in the 20th century, that is, in still present philosophy. It is also the most important work for Heidegger’s later philosophy. And all this means that there is nothing important in philosophy that has walked past Sein und Zeit (and also later Heideggerian works). At the same time this

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most-importance means that until now there has not been written a work in the place of Being and Time. So, let us look on this most important text of present philosophy from a short distance, and regard our matter. In Heidegger’s option the existence of the world is not questionable: there is something, that which is; there is that which is. But how is this “it” really – and to this order the truth of what is might appear to us! … Because, according to Heidegger, what really is could not be concealed before us. On the contrary, as Heidegger confirms, what really is can be done falsely to us. Then, what really is is concealed behind this falseness before us. The motto of Being and Time is Plato’s thought, recalled by Heidegger: “Because it stands to reason that for a long time you have known what ‘existing’ means. However we who once believed that we understood this word now fall into trouble.”9 And farther Heidegger himself states: “Are we able to answer the question: What does ‘existing’ really mean nowadays? In any case we are not. Therefore we ought to once again put forth the question about the sense of Being.”10 We, people of the 20th, and even now the 21st century, are, together with Heidegger, searching for what is concealed – what really is, that “being,” Sein. In the phenomenological phase of Heidegger’s searching (under the banner of Being and Time) he wants to track down a notional sense of what really is, the meaning of “being,” Sein. With what method and in what way could this task be realized? According to Heidegger, this method is phenomenology.11 And the way is to uncover (phenomenologically) a distinguished entity – a human being – that is distinguished from the essential point of view of: what does “being” mean? What of Being is? According to Heidegger, the way to understand the notional sense of Being in general is through an analysis of human be-ing (Dasein), in other words, of a sphere in the human sense of existence, of what is. Because, exactly at what does Heidegger takes pains here, in his phenomenological attempts? And so, these attempts here suppose to be, to see, and to understand the sense of the human world – in other words, to recognize such a (proper) optimum between the “thing” in itself – in Kant’s poetic – (which for Heidegger clearly is) and the “thing” for us (for the human being, for his ability to understand the sense of the “thing,” the sense of the world). Concisely: Sein is concerned with Dasein. That which is concerned with the one who is, is sensitive to that which is. So, the human being takes pains to penetrate the sense of what is. In Being and Time, Heidegger tries to grasp the meaning of “being” in an ontological,

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notional way. In the same way he tries to light up the human being (especially the sphere of human sensitiveness to existence). Because of this conversion, the analytic Dasein becomes key to the fundamental ontology: if we understand, elucidate the notion of Dasein, Sein will be notionally comprehensible. In this way we ought to bend our steps toward a sense of “being,” towards exactly what is and could be for us – what really is for us (should be), toward the meaning of “the world.” Here is the program of Heideggerian phenomenology under the banner of Being and Time, in outline. Every asking, Heidegger says, every scientific and philosophical inquiry is a human behavior, such as it has the way of the human being, of such an entity as a human.12 Whereas the human being, as Heidegger names it, is characterized by a factual reference towards his being, or towards Being in general. “To understand Being means to qualify the human being. The ontical specificity of the human being is based on what he is in an ontological way.”13 The human being is distinguishable by this in that he presages and understands Being. He refers (non-notionally) himself to Being, he has an intuition of Being, of ontical order. He also understands, in other words grasps, notionally, by notion – this is in the order of ontological meaning of Being.14 Anyway, an intelligibility of Being is possible only in front of the human being. Other entities factually are, but they do not understand this situation. Exactly this exclusivity of the human ability to understand Being is his priority – here it is suitable to say exclusivity – before any other entities, a priority about asking about Being, a priority in inquiries on the sense of Being. So, the human being is that entity from which one ought to start studying the sense of Being. To recognize the sense of Being in the proper way one ought to, on the one hand, start by analyzing the human.15 While, on the other hand, the proper answer to the question about this specific Sein property has to, for Heidegger, warrant also proper understanding of the world and the human position in the world.16 The fundamental question is, according to Heidegger, ancillary before proper metaphysics, whereas it is the destination of Heideggerian ethics, that is, human duty. So, there is in Heidegger’s philosophy the following schema: First, to put forth the fundamental question (What does “being” mean?). Next, to work out the answer to this fundamental question (through the analysis of the human being), more or less as he has done in Sein und Zeit. After that, to build the fundamental ontology (proper, as to Heidegger, metaphysicis), the theory of the world, the true reality – the fundamental ontology as completed (not only sought after) has never been done. And the last stage of Heidegger’s

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scheme is to appoint the proper human position in front of or in the world (in other words, to build the theory of human duty, ethics, which Heidegger did not describe clearly). According to Heidegger’s settlements, a progressive human, already for sure and first of all by means of science comes to know, as it seems, his surroundings, with its important aspects, manifestations; comes to know and shapes his world. But the condition of existence of this world is existence itself: it is Being, the condition of existence. This matter could be expressed as follows: the most deep essence of existence is Being itself. Therefore, there is no way to see the world, to know about the world, to thoroughly study the world, to explain first the sense of existence. Each science of existence is a partial look at existence, and is interested in such aspects of existence. In this precise range every affirmative science is connected in the same way with precise ontology. While the core, the essence, “the guiding principle,” of these affirmative ontologies (factual or possible), the condition of these possible affirmative ontologies is, after Heidegger, the negative ontology, not the ontology of entity, but of being, Being (ontology of nonentity, so of nothingness). This most deep ontology, which has to investigate what it means, being itself, and in general, this kind of metaphysics Heidegger will name the fundamental ontology.17 The human and the world (even everything) could be properly recognized only through Being. (Everything is comprehensible through existence!) The aim of the fundamental ontology is to uncover how the human and the world properly exist (from the very foundations and in the essence). Or, more precisely, the aim of the fundamental ontology is to give the proper metaphysical ground (base, foundation) to everything, to the human and to the world as dependent on a sense of understanding. Here is the aim of the fundamental ontology: to make everything comprehensible from the very foundation and in the proper sense. However, it turns out, according to settlements of the author of Being and Time that from the fact that in an ontic way Dasein is nearest to Being (Sein), one should not follow instructions for ontological inquires18 This is because “there is covered before the human being (Dasein) the specific constitution of his Being … He is ontically nearest to himself, ontologically the farthest, but preontologically after all familiar.”19 An ontical understanding, or the factual Dasein staying close by himself, is not an ontological understanding of the human being.20 Let us pay attention to this: The human factually existing is always in the situation of understanding existence (or staying close by himself and by the “world”).

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While the human is usually without ontological understanding of Being (to stay close by is not the same as to understand oneself and the world by notion). From these reasons, as always, secret, existential, essential structures must be uncovered, exposed. This is exactly the task for an existential analysis of the human being. In Sein und Zeit Heidegger reveals that the sense of the human being (Dasein) is temporality (Zeitlichkeit).21 But he also shows there that “the human being in general and in an indistinct way understands and shows [preontologically, factually, or being in a sense, in a nearness of existence – WP] that this something like Being is time. It should be cleared up and solidly comprehended as the horizon of understanding of every Being and its interpretation [my italics – WP]. In order to make it clear it is necessary to explain, in an essential way, time as the horizon of Being understanding on the base of temporality as a human being, who understands Being.”22 When we admit, Heidegger says, that Being is comprehensible through time (the temporality of the human being), then we admit that “of time” does not mean “only ‘existing in time.’ Also, what is ‘out of time’ and ‘beyond the limits of time’ is, according to their being, ‘of time.’ ”23 From these reasons, “primary and based on time definiteness of the sense of Being, its characters and modi we named of temporality. So, the fundamental ontological task of Being interpretation itself includes elaboration of Being temporality. Only exposition of the problems connected with an issue of temporality contains a definite answer on the question about the sense of Being [my italics – WP].”24 “Being is always able to be grasped only from the view of time [my italics – WP].”25 However, in spite of such an expanded investigation, and also in spite of the magnitude of considerations and analysis from Sein und Zeit, Heidegger says at the end of his fundamental work: “The question about the sense of Being in general is still not put forth and not clarified.”26 Heidegger says that a preliminary analysis of the human being uncovers and opens our eyes to this: that the human being, by his nature, ordinarily falls in his world, but he also has an inclination for understanding himself according to the present tradition. This also means that ontological understanding is adopted by the human being from tradition.27 But tradition, for Heidegger, makes “that which ‘comes down’ so difficult to access, that in fact tradition simply covers it. [my italics – WP]. That which tradition adopted is left at the mercy of evidence and it closes access to the real, original ‘sources’ from which were formed hereditary categories and notions. Tradition leads towards complete oblivion about this origin. [my

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italics – WP] … Finally the human being … stops to understand the most elementary conditions, which make possible the positive turn towards the past [my italics – WP].”28 As we used to say here with Heidegger, tradition “reaches” the human being also in his ontological understanding, in his interpretation of the sense of Being. Therefore one ought to “force through” the history of ontology and in that way step back until the ontological “sources.” “This task we comprehend as, in the horizon of the question of Being destruction, handing down by tradition the subjects of ancient ontology, in order to reach the experiences of the sources, which lead to the primary, dominant qualification of Being.” 29 In this way Heidegger makes it his business to destroy ontology’s history. At the same time, “destruction” does not mean here something negative; one “does not want to annihilate the past; it has a positive aim.”30 This destruction of ontology’s history is, according to Heidegger, a rootedness secure on the foundation (on the “experiences of sources”) of the ontological problems. This destruction is both a basis for the question of Being understanding in the properly read traditional metaphysics, and a restoration to traditional metaphysics its proper sense by the Being proper sense. It is also, and what here seems to be its most important achievement, a direction to the proper – according to Heideggerian measures – meeting of “the world,” to the proper experience of Being (Sein). The proper realization of this destruction of ontology’s history – under the leadership of the question of Being – will “naturally” restore the proper sense to the historical ontology. But the main aim of the task of destroying traditional ontology is to reach the sources of every ontology, to consider and understand them. The prime restoring of the proper sense to the ontological tradition comes while accomplishing the main aim of destruction, which is to gain those “experiences of sources, which lead to the prime, dominate qualification of Being.” In planning by Heidegger, the work Sein und Zeit, Part Two, would have realized the task of destroying ontology’s history, exactly in consideration of working out the question about the sense of Being “with reference to the fundamentally decisive stations of this history.”31 As we know, this part as such has never been done. This part would have to contain the three following “fundamental decisive station.” For the first: Kant’s theory of schematization and time as the preliminary stage of the temporality problem. For the second: the ontological foundation of Descartes’ “cogito sum” with referring to mediaeval ontology by means of the problem of “res cogitans.” And for the

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third: Aristotle’s treatise about time as representative of a phenomenological foundation and of the borders of ancient ontology. The task of the destruction of the traditional metaphysic history, like the above, Heidegger has never accomplished. At the end of § 6 in Sein und Zeit he wrote: “The question of Being has not been truly realized before in the course of the destruction of the ontological tradition.”32 So, now we know that the question about Being has never in this way and with Heidegger “been truly concretized.” On the 8th of April, 1926, Heidegger finished his basic work Sein und Zeit. The finished version appeared in print next year in Husserl’s philosophical annual “Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung,” Vol. VII. It remains “for all” in this version in spite of Heidegger’s other initial intentions. The original task under consideration was to work out the question of Being. In spite of the fundamental, attentive and extensive study on the question of Being in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, he finished this work with the statement that not only had interesting problems not been lit up, but even the question of Being had not been worked out enough. There is no certainty about whether temporality is the proper horizon for asking about the sense of Being. However, irrespective of such essential doubts on the author’s behalf – after Sein und Zeit was issued Heidegger became famous in the world of philosophy. But here in October of 1930 in Bremen, Heidegger announced his text Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (About the essence of the truth).33 This lecture was commonly received as the turn (die Kehre) in the philosophical work Heidegger had been doing up to the present, as the inauguration of the new Heideggerian philosophical thinking. Heidegger undertakes the same question about the sense of Being (searching for the proper world and the proper understanding of the world), but now he chooses a new way (different first of all from the Sein und Zeit way). Hitherto his way to the sense of Being was leading through Dasein; through his finiteness, the temporality of the human being. Now, the way to light up this question was to present the sense of Being on the horizon of the truth, the comprehensible truth recalled by Heidegger as ␣␭␩␪⑀␫␣ ´ (alétheia), unconcealment, while deep far down exactly concealment. (The text from 1949 [Einleitung zu “Was ist Metaphysik?”] already has a polemic character with objections to Heidegger’s early philosophy. In the final part of this text Heidegger explains: “The first page of the preface of Sein und Zeit ends with the sentences: The intention of the present treatise is to specifically describe the question about the sense of ‘Being.’ The

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temporary aim of it is to interpret ‘time’ as a possible horizon in the general understanding of Being.” Let us here notice the temporary and possible character of early Heideggerian philosophical proposals. From the beginning it is an awareness of a certain thought which has since then been turned.) This turn itself (die Kehre), as Heidegger wants, does not shatter previous “settlements” and thinking. During lectures about Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft in winter 1927/28 Heidegger states: “If it goes about a progress – it exists in the sphere outside of human existence. Philosophy does not develop by progress; on the contrary, it is an attempt at developing and elucidating the same few problems; philosophy is an independent, free, fundamental fight of the human being with surrounding darkness. And every illumination causes a new abyss to open.”34 So, philosophical thought, the essential thought of historical man proceeds merrily through turns and returns. Whereas this means that even this thought is sentenced to repetition, regeneration, and restoration. The repetition of the question of Being – when Heidegger put forth once more the question about Being, in the lecture Vom Wesen der Wahrheit – is also the rebirth of the previous thought. “That turn is not only any change of the attitude from Sein und Zeit; it is only through this turn that the attempt of thinking undertaken in Sein und Zeit acquires the level from which it came out – the experience came out of the fundamental experience of Being oblivion.”35 Thus, the turn in Heideggerian philosophy means a complementary repetition of the constant question. According to Heidegger’s words, his later (post–turn) considerations concerning this sphere of experience were based on consideration from Sein und Zeit. In other words, earlier Heideggerian philosophy creates grounds for the later philosophy. The later philosophy, as putting forth from the beginning the same problems, and primarily as a consideration of the earlier passed way, shows with reference to this first philosophy a sort of metareflection, a renewed wandering of thought, which, if you remember its previous wandering… We have been looking closely at the origins of the Heideggerian reaching of “the world.” It was Heidegger’s philosophy before the turn. As we have seen, how arduously the philosopher reaches the world. After a turn, the same task while in another mode would be done for many, many years; scores of essays, lectures, thousands of written pages36.… This philosopher does not doubt that the world is. What is here the problem for him? The problem is whether we participate in the proper world. Because the matter is that what really is could be concealed before us. So, the

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philosophical task is to consider the suitability of the proper world and our proper position in this world. Let us notice that the sense of that philosophical activity follows from the conviction that the human calling is for being nearest to that which really, truly is – also from the conviction that it is not true that the human is unworthy to be brought nearest to the true world, to trip against the world, to meet the world. One could say that the human is called for being in the truth. Just after the turn the task for Heidegger is to consider and to understand alétheia, unconcealment, the apparent world, the nakedness of the entity. The early Heidegger tried to inquire as to what the world is (so as to understand what it means, being) through developing the analysis of possible constitution of every sense, through examination of the human sphere of existential sensitivity by analysis of Dasein. And all the results of these investigations did not satisfy Heidegger. This means that it does not follow from his attempts that he has found what he has been searching for! He still has the irritating need to understand the properties of the world. And, as we said – unconcealment (alétheia) seemed to be a good new beginning (after the turn) for attempts to understand the essence of the world, its property and Being. When we look at the Heideggerian philosophy we can see there the power of the human mind, imagination sensitivity, etc. One ought to notice here the magnitude of works – but also one ought to ask, namely: What good will the works do for mankind? This trouble after all cannot, or need not be with results. What then is the result here? Heidegger has not obtained the answer, nothing has been resolved after so many years, so many written pages, hours of conversation – on this one question at least. This matter used to be put forth as follows: philosophy does not give finished questions, or completed dissolution (with obligation), although philosophy is not without results, without advantages; it is found to be useful in the human world. What is the result of philosophy, that obtainment, output (as miners say), that nectar (as beekeepers name the result of the bees work)? The inspiration in referring to the world (to everything) even if through windings of possibilities and impossibilities in our access to the world? Precise statements – of our thus understanding matters of the world, in this our position among entities (among that which is really real, what in fact is)? Perhaps creation (also) of our human world? Perhaps practice for the imagination, mind or thought, sensitivity? The meeting with philosophy, with Heideggerian representation certainly seems to assure that philosophical trouble is useful…

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At the beginning, our intention was to learn something37 from the Heideggerian changing in searching for the sense of the “world’s” matters. But during our attempts, our metaphilosophical experiences,38 the most general (highest) affair has revealed that Heidegger could not solve the question he had in hand. The fact that Heidegger could not find the answer to the question he was concerned with is the first, superior instruction for us, the instruction that follows here not only in the matter of the controversy over the existence of the world, but exactly after this matter. Proceeding instructions come from the lower level; also, instruction follows from the development of the meaning of the controversy over the existence of the world in Heideggerian work. The fact that Heidegger could not find the answer to the question he was interested in (the matter of the aforementioned controversy) is a very valuable discovery for us. One ought to consider this lack of an answer on the aspect of the entire philosophy of human existence in general. What is this philosophical lack of an answer? Does the philosophical man have the world or not? What, in that case, does it mean to have the world? And from where does the conviction follow that it is better to be in the philosophical way than in a traditional (mythical) way, in one constant story? To go deeply into the matter of the philosophical impossibility of finding that certain answer could (in my opinion, must) be very profitable. It is clear that in our situation here it is beyond our capabilities. But one day we will be worthy of considering this matter… Institute of Philosophy and Sociology University of Gda´nsk N OT E S 1

Perhaps better: looking for the creation of or creating the search for… C. Braig, Vom Sein. Abriss der Ontologie, (Freiburg, 1896). This work had to enter, as planned by Braig, a ten-volume elaboration entitled Grundzüge der Philosophie. Braig did not realize this elaboration as planned. 3 Heidegger titled this lecture Die Begründung des neuzeitlichen Weltbildes durch die Metaphysik. It was published for the first time in the volume Holzwege, (Frankfurt am Main, 1950). This quotation is from the fourth issue from 1962. 4 Compare here for instance M. Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik? This is the lecture delivered by Heidegger at the University in Freiburg in July 1929. It was published in Bonn in the same year. It also entered into the composition of Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main, 1967). 5 Earlier in Polish it was translated “das Sein” (also “das Seyn”) just like “das Seiende”, so like “byt” or “Byt” – so hushing up the Heideggerian ontological difference. 2

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6 M. Heidegger, Brief über den “Humanismus.” This was first a letter to Jean Beaufret, later published in Bern, 1947. It also entered into the composition of Wegmarken, op. cit. 7 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen, 1993), pp. 39–40. 8 This work appeared in print for the first time in Paris, 1968 in German and French. In the next year it entered into the volume of Heideggerian treatises Zur Sache des Denkens (Tübingen, 1969). 9 Plato, Sophist, 244 a [our translation is after the Polish translation by W. Witwicki placed in the Polish issue of Bycie i czas (Warsaw, 1994), p. 2.]. 10 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, the beginning of the work, op. cit. 11 On the matter of possibility – or rather, according to our settlements, endless impossibility – of Heideggerian phenomenology, see: W. Pawliszyn, “Is Phenomenology as a Science Possible? Reading Heidegger’s Viewpoint,” in Analecta Husserliana, LXVI, pp. 177–186. 12 Compare: M. Heidegger, op. cit., p. 5 and pp. 11–12. 13 Op. cit., p. 12. 14 In this matter compare op. cit., p. 12. 15 See for instance op. cit., the beginning of the first division (A preliminary analysis of the human being) and § 9, pp. 41–45. 16 See § 3, op. cit. 17 “Every ontology … has come to stay blind from the very foundations and it is perversion of the most specific intention of it, if first it does not light up enough the sense of Being, or when it comprehends this lighting up as its fundamental task.” (M. Heidegger, op. cit., p. 11.) 18 See op. cit., pp. 15–17. 19 Op. cit., p. 16. 20 “When we grasp the human being in an ontic way, he is not only nearer us or even nearest – we simply always [! – WP] are ourselves him. In spite of this … he is [himself, in his being. But though an explanation of the human being has to lead a path to understanding Being in general, the sense of Being, the path to building the fundamental ontology, and on its ground has to be attainable properly the understanding of everything – WP] ontologically the farthest.” (M. Heidegger, op. cit., p. 15.) 21 See for instance op. cit., p. 17. 22 Ibid. 23 Op. cit., p. 18. 24 Op. cit., p. 19. 25 Ibid. 26 Op. cit., p. 437, the last page of the work. 27 Compare op. cit., § 6. pp. 19–27, especially pp. 19–21. 28 Ibid., p. 21. 29 Op. cit., p. 22. 30 Compare ibid., p. 22–23; quotation p. 23. 31 Ibid., p. 23. 32 Op. cit., p. 26. 33 This text appeared in print not before 1943. 34 Quotation from F. de Towarnicki, Chronologie, “Magazine Littéraire,” 11/1986. 35 In this way Heidegger will repeat this matter for almost twenty years until his turn in the text Brief über den “Humanismus,” (op. cit.). 36 Publishers estimate Heidegger’s literary output as a whole at about eighty volumes! 37 This should be an instruction on the matter of the controversy over the existence of the world.

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38 A metaphilosophical experience – I name here both a meeting with philosophy, with its every aspect, section, way, and also the benefit that follows from this meeting…

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R E A L I T Y A S “ L I F E ” A N D “ V I TA L I T Y ” T H E IDEALISM–REALISM OF MAX SCHELER

I

In Scheler’s philosophical thought, the long article Idealismus-Realismus, which appeared for the first time in Philosophischer Anzeiger in 1927, occupies a position of some importance, despite the relative brevity of the work (50–60 pages). Scheler had intended to rework and extend the piece, particularly after reading Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, but did not live long enough to do so, dying on 19 May 1928. In volume IX of the works (“Späte Schriften,” Francke Vlg., 1976), edited by M. Frings, the excellent curator of the final unpublished works of the philosopher, the article reappears with an appendix consisting of two parts that were not included in the first draft. Part IV, entitled “Lehre vom Wesen und Wesenserkenntnis. Folgerungen fuer die phaenomenologichen Reduktion und die Ideenlehre,” is just 8 pages long but is well and organically structured. Longer and less organic is part V, which primarily provides us with Scheler’s observations on Heidegger’s book that had just come out and which he was one of the first people to read. This part is extremely interesting but space is not available to dedicate to it in this article, though occasional references to it will be made. We have written more on these observations of Scheler’s on Heidegger in a long article in Antropologia filosofica e metafisica dell’uomo, that has just been printed for the magazine journal “Magazzino di Filosofia.” II

The essay Idealismus-Realismus takes the problem of consciousness as its starting point. Our point of departure is the classic question of whether the world exists independently of the representations of it we have in our consciousness, or whether, on the contrary, outside of our conscious faculties there is no existent reality of any kind. The problem is thus proposed in its most general terms because within these two possible responses there are subdivisions and a variety of orientations whose differences should not be overlooked. The first response (the world and things exist independently of us and our acts of consciousness) is that of “realism,” the second (there is no world, body, nothing outside our conscious faculties) is that of “idealism.” 147 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 147–165. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Historically, in the modern period, the first illustrious idealistic response was that of Bishop G. Berkeley in his celebrated thesis “esse est percipi,” or being is being perceived. There is however a modified “idealism,” such as the “trascendental-formal” idealism of Kant, according to which consciousness is not at all responsible for producing reality but only orders it into structures and frameworks that are a priori to the cognitive functions of the I or ego. Even the modified idealism of Schopenhauer follows the path trodden by Kant. As is well known, Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, puts forward a “refutation of idealism” in which he affirms that it is a real scandal for philosophy that a convincing demonstration of the existence of the outside world beyond our own powers and cognitive powers has not been given.1 According, then, to Kant, the reality of the external world, as “material” that the I invests with “forms” for its cognition of it, is not put into existence by this “I” but must pre-exist it. Schopenhauer follows Kant closely in his general thesis but succeeds better than Kant in clarifying the concept of “reality.” It is no longer the simple “material” invested with the “form” of cognition. “Reality” lies on a different plane from that of pure and simple objectifying representation. Properly speaking this plane is that of the “effort,” of causal effective “energy” that is “lived” by the “subject” before being “represented,” thus assumed within the forms that confer on it the order and structure of a knowable “phenomenon” (The world as will and representation, Book II, spec. par. 19 et seq.). Reality is primarily resistance and effort. This is also the path followed by Scheler, who links himself directly to Schopenhauer, but also with the input of E. von Hartmann (Philosophie des Unbewussten, 1869), and through von Hartmann also to Schelling, the Schelling of 1809 and the following years. Scheler was a careful reader of Investigations into the essence of human freedom, of 1809. In a way rather different from that of Schopenhauer, but with results that in some ways are convergent, Schelling too comes to describe “realty” as “effort,” “energetic power,” longing and desire. The foundation in the “will” of the being of the real is the only and unique solution of the problem of what it is “to be real.” III

Idealismus-Realismus opens above all with the fundamental thesis that it is essential to address the capital questions of the theory of consciousness. In all that is we must distinguish between the two different levels and must always and clearly recognise their difference: the Da-sein (the being-there) and the So-sein (the being-thus) of every entity. The former is constituted by

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the plane of contingent material being given hic et munc, by the pure and simple fact that there is something independent of our will. The latter is, on the other hand, given by being known by us in this something, in whatever form or way that may be. Scheler writes that there is in the background a shared being between ontological realism and consciential idealism. “The erroneous assumption lies in this,” writes Scheler: “in the admission that we call being there or the reality of any object (interior world, external world, other person, living being, dead thing, etc.) and that we call its being-thus, … the being-thus contingent and respectively its ‘essence,’ are inseparable … Well then, one of my fundamental theses is this: every being-thus (‘contingent’) and ‘essence’ can be immanent to cognition and consciouness, and to be truly inherent to it just in the same way in which it is beyond consciousness and therefore not present to it through some ‘image’ that represents it, neither as a perception and representation, nor as any figurative thought …. On the other hand it can never come to knowing and consciousness ….”2 Therefore the being-thus is in mind, while the being-there is extra mentem, and is therefore transintelligible.3 Both idealism and realism, through the incapacity to take account of the need to make the distinction in question, reap opposite but equally unacceptable consequences from the same error. “Realism” finds itself unable to reply to the question, “How can it happen that something extraneous to us, independent and indifferent to our ego and our cognitive faculties, can enter and pass into us, becoming a ‘content’ of consciousness?” It is thus forced to invent absurd theories all founded on the assumption that there are in us “copies” and “images” of an original reality that is separate from consciousness. As for idealism, it is unable to reply to the legitimate and obvious question, “What becomes of the real that we are not currently perceiving; does it continue to exist or get reborn when it is perceived again and then die again when we are no longer perceiving it?” Nor may we overlook how often “idealism,” taken to its extreme consequences, ends up sheltering an absurd and irreplaceable phenomenism. If, however, it wishes to guarantee the objectivity and unity of consciousness, while maintaining the point of view and the principle according to which reality is invested in being by an “I,” by a “Spirit,” it is forced to propose the I as single and multiple consciousnesses as transient, inessential manifestations, and thus “appearances” of an I, of a Spirit, of a universal “Pure Act.” With the problem of idealism and realism broadly outlined, we shall proceed to outline the developments and framework of Scheler’s solutions to the questions that the theories of consciousness have raised, naturally very much in general terms.

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What exactly then is consciousness? Scheler responds: “Awareness is a peculiar relationship of a fundamental nature and is not deducible from others between two entities. I say, in fact, an entity A ‘knows’ of an entity B without this participation thus bringing about any changes in the essence or in the being of B.”4 The relationship of consciousness is a non-causal and nonmaterial relationship. It is a “participation,” and in Scheler’s phrase the most important words are those that say how such participation has nothing to do with real modifications in the one or the other of the two terms of the relationship. “The participation of which he speaks is never reducible to a causal relationship or to a relationship of likeness and likeness or yet to a relationship of symbol and symbolised, because it is an ultimate relationship of essents.”5 The modifications or changes are something “real” because they belong to the sphere of all that which is governed by the nexus of causality. Therefore the “being-there of B in the sense of modifications of reality never enters into a relationship of awareness, but is in a relationship with the real subject that constitutes the support of awareness only through a causal relation.”6 With all this, however, the central point of the question has not yet been grasped: even the relationship of causality, insofar as it is a relationship of functional dependence between two or more events, enters into the world of representation and reality represented by means of the objectifying functions of consciousness. Where can we find the boundary, the discriminating line between the “real” moment and the “ideal” moment in the relationship of “causality”? the idealistic objection by which if something is not objectively representable it can have no reality seems to take us back to propose itself as invincible. Yet, according to Scheler this place exists and can be recognised. All of his subsequent developments are aimed at this objective. Above all we must move from a recognition that the sphere of “awareness” is much wider than that of “consciousness.” He defines awareness (cognition) as being “ecstatic” because it is a consciousness that is still not yet objectifying: it is an awareness “that can quite clearly be found in animals, in primitive peoples, in children and also in certain pathological states and especially those of an abnormal and exceptional character (e.g. reawakening from narcosis).”7 There is therefore an awareness that lacks a “reflective relationship with itself.” It is this that is initiated and is established when “particular circumstances like obstacles, conflict and contradictions” arise, when a painful tension, that is perhaps only to be found in man, makes necessary “the emergent act of turning back upon itself reflectively, the actus re-flexivus in which the place of awareness of things is taken by an awareness

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of the manner of being aware.”8 The fact that “consciousness” is not grasped and does not itself know ab origine and ab initio, as tranquil and undisturbed possession, it is the daughter of suffering and of vital acts in which it is suffering both actual and possible, is undoubtedly implicit; it is also there where there is joy – in vital expansion there is always latent suffering because it is there as a “tension,” an ever reaching out beyond the instantaneous presence of that which is hic et nunc in space and time. “Reality” is not therefore to be identified sic et simpliciter with the “transcendence” of the object. “The problem of ‘reality’ is completely situated beyond the question of the transcendence of the object.”9 “Real” is not only that which is “outside” of us. There is also much “reality” in us, especially in all the turbulent flow of the soul and in the “passivity” of that which does not rise clearly to waking and vigilant consciousness. “Reality” is not characterised only either by “spatiality” or by categorical objectivisation as expressed in the “judgement of existence.”10 There is a “reality” of the most profound temporal flow of the life of the I, that we feel accelerating as we get older, on the strength of which the past, pressing on the present, makes us feel that for us the time that held the possibility of realising certain plans, of putting into effect particular intentions, etc., has passed.11 Yet this is a “reality” that is not specifically “spatial.” The moment of the “reality” of each entity falls neither within the sphere of “internal perception” nor within the sphere of “external perception.” We must not be led off course by residual prejudices, parted with reluctantly, of Cartesian subjectivism. The “external,” spatial world with its volumes, outlines and shapes may often be less “real” than the “interior” world, when the individual is dispossessed of his self in anguish, in phobias or neurotic compulsions. The “mirages,” the reflections of light and shadows are in space but are not truly “real” but exert causal efficacy as simple forms and figures.

V

“Reality” cannot be circumscribed or grasped, not even in one determined sphere of the world rather than another. The world of “physics” and the natural sciences is neither more nor less “real” than the world of life in its various and multiple forms. Why should the “astronomical” sun be more “real” than the sun of the common environmental vision of everyday life? Both the one and the other are quite different ways of seeing and encountering the sun.12 Indeed the natural and environmental day-to-day view is ontologically the point of departure for the construction and idealisation of

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the view of the sun by astrophysics as it is scientifically known. Neither can the judgement of existence, expressed in determining predication, constitute the real locus identifying the “moment of reality” of the things of the world. The “judgement of existence” adds “no new characteristic to the object but is the sum of all the characteristics that can be of the thing, that to which the predicate of being-there is attributed … The judgement of existence cannot explain unless one already knows in what consists the moment of the reality that confers the content of the predicate ‘being-there’ in the existential judgment.”13 Existential predication can be compared with movement “just as the factual movements of the body can be calculated once the changes in distance are given, when the originary phenomenon of movement is given, yet the movement is not deducible from the other, while it can clearly be deduced that there must be something real or there must be something that is determined, that there is a real datum, if another real entity is given; but the being of a real world, the moment of reality is never deducible.”14 VI

“The authentic problem of reality” is the title of part III of the brief tract. Scheler affirms that the first relationship with reality is beyond the sphere of cognition. It is extratheoretic. The background of reality is only given in the sphere of impulses and the will.15 “Space,” “time” and “causality” are the forms in which the experience of reality are structured. All that awareness of the So-sein encounters are “images” (Bilder), i.e. forms, and therefore the Sosein (contingent of “essences”). But space, time and causality are known, knowable and representable only because first one lives them. If we have together with and joined to their being “in mind”, an “extra-mentality” that is not at all to be thought of, (as it would be misleading), as extraneous to the “I.” This “transintelligible” extramentality is and may be thought of only as “life” and as “vitality.” Living involves movement, with changes in the self; it also means dealing with problematic situations where obstacles and resistances are encountered. What then is that which presents itself to us at the moment of reality in the being of the entity? Scheler answers with his idea that what is real is resistance, effort, the consumption of our energy. The encounter-clash of energy of I with the world, a relationship that cannot be reduced only to “categorical” structures, makes up “reality.” It is then evident that only that which is real has causal efficacy. In the cause and the experience of causing lie the

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greater force of revelation to self of reality. Is there, though, “effort” and “employment of energy” where there is no life, where there is no vital relationship? No. That is impossible. Space is the a priori (i.e. the horizon of the totality of all possibilities) of movement. Space equals that in which and for which I move, that which I can move through, the a priori of the distant and the near, of the reachable and the unreachable.16 Time equals the foundation of reality and the possibility of my changes to myself. The a priori of changes in myself, the order and the succession of plans for what I must and I wish to do; it is the single root of time that gives us this reference and from this root spring all the various ramifications of time, including the time of physics, that of history and calendars, social “public” time and so on.17 Causality is conceivable, above all, rather than as the identification of a succession of intelligible relationships obtained by way of determinant objectivisation, as the transmission and communication of energy. From the impact of one body upon another we expect by essence some transformation in their state because we realise that it is not all a question only of a succession of images and figures, but something more – an action in which there is movement and the production of effects that I too, with my corporeal organs, could myself provoke or be subject to. A wall that collapses and crashes into the ground could crush and squash me. I do not know this by force of some intellectually determined awareness, but above all because I too am a living body exposed to ruin and suffering. VII

These brief notes and this schematic summary has presented the main lines of the problem of “reality” and the “Idealism-Realism” conflict in Scheler. The consequences that the author derives from them are great from a speculative viewpoint: in the world “life” ontologically precedes the inanimate, even if this latter may phenomenologically come into being first. But to say life is also to say “history.” The life itself of the universe is “history” and not simple “becoming”: “Then certainly there would be for the world in its totality, birth, age and death … according to this conception there is no longer what the Greeks called a ‘cosmos’. The world does not therefore ‘have’ a history, but is itself a history.”18 The authentic problem of reality is not merely theoretical but is still more “emotional.” Each attempt to comprehend the opening to the world as being in its totality is like participating in all that is, is destined according to Scheler to fail if not undertaken in a perspective that rests above all upon the “vital” and on the “emotional.” Even Heidegger’s attempt, in

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“Sein und Zeit,” cannot for Scheler succeed, because it dis-emotionalises man and existence, resolving it for ever only into theoretic-transcendental structures. The only emotional realities that Heidegger is able to find are those negative emotions of “Angst” and “nihilism” of “being for death,” in a solipsistic perspective of incommunicability of all the human Dasein.19 The world of “Spirit” and of “essences” also has to encounter and measure itself against the sphere of the “vital” and the emotional, since, in its purity and logiconoetic self-sufficiency, the “spirit” is impotent. It is the celebrated doctrine of the “impotence of the spirit,” an analysis of which is not within the scope of this work.20 A mention only should be made of the theory of essence and of awareness of essences in part IV of the piece. Scheler states that without a “sublimation” of the passions and the emotions, and therefore without annulling the “resistance” of the “real,” the awareness of essence is unreachable and unobtainable. For him even Husserl’s doctrine of phenomenological “reduction” is insufficient; just suspending the judgement of existence is not enough unless it is completed in an overcoming of the moment of “force” and of “resistance.” This is because the eidos, the Wesen, the “essences” never present themselves ante res, as immutable and eternal exemplars, but as cum rebus, that is to say as ideal “virtualities,” terms of projects of idealisation of the energetic and potent flow of life. VIII

The article Idealismus-Realismus, together with those parts that were posthumously published, express the latest and most profound views of the philosopher in the final period of his thought. The first part of the article ends with the theory of “reality” in relation to “causality,” to “space” and to “time.” “Causality” is the category to which most page space has been given over in modern and contemporary thought. It is the dominant category in the mechanical-formal view of reality, a view that prevails absolutely in the natural sciences. This “category” however can only be understood most originally and most profoundly where the “mechanism” relates to “life”. “This mechanical-formal structure cannot be employed in an understanding of the properties of worldly beings independently of its relationship to the existence of living things … Even more obvious should be the fact that the structure so described will have no validity as regards the spiritual actions of persons. The structure of its configuration comes from the question: how would natural processes unfold if there were not subjects that are also vital

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centres of movement and if there were no free spiritual personalities capable of determining themselves according to their own law?”21 The highest form of the finite worldly being is the “spiritual person,” that is not a real part of the world, contained within it like any other entity. We are talking here of his “personalistic” philosophy. Certainly, it is a well known fact that the investigations of Scheler went through a more youthful phase, strongly attracted to a “theistic” form of “personalism,” as seen primarily in Formalismusbuch (Der Formalismus in der Ethik… etc., 1st Edition of the 1st part in the Husserl’s Jahrbuch, 1913, 2nd ed. with the 2nd part in 1916) and in Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1st ed. 1913, 2nd in 1923). From 1924 onwards, with the publication of Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens, there was a significant change in the general metaphysical orientation of Scheler. He then introduced into his system the celebrated doctrine of the “impotence of the spirit” (Ohnmacht des Geistes), most originally treated in Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos of 1927 (now vol. IX of Ges. Werke). According to this fascinating view, which we feel to have been foreshadowed more than by any other philosopher in E. von Hartmann’s Philosophie des Unbewussten of 1869, to be brought by Scheler to a higher level of clarity and to a more organic and systematic treatment. According to this perspective the Spirit is not originally creative and productive of reality nor has it, in other words, any causal effectiveness. The real productive force that causes and produces the concrete spatiotemporal becoming of the world does not belong to higher degrees and higher forms of being but only to the lower degrees, those least endowed with interiority, consciousness and intelligence. Inanimate nature thus has greater productive power than vegetable life, while animal life has less than vegetable life and still less causal effectiveness is found in the human being. The more a degree of being is dependent on lower degrees of being, the less strong and powerful it is. In the case of man, the being possessed of the attribute “spirit,” the dependence on lower degrees of being is at its highest and so the ability to produce causal effects through only its vital forces is at the lowest point. It is quite true that thanks to technology, economics, society and culture, man has far surpassed, in the course of his history and evolution, even those living species that were strongest and most feared by him, those which had continuously threatened his very survival as a species at every step. This thanks to the increase in “practical intelligence” and the mediation of the spiritual resources, being par excellence those of contemplation and creative ideas. The power that man has conquered and greatly imposed on nature is not original to his nature but due to the mediation of spiritual forces. It has been made possible by a lowering of the

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contemplative and idea-forming dimension of the spirit, bent under the primacy, and at times with some violence, of the practical, the technological and the “doing”, the primacy of the proliferation of comforts and consumer goods and the organisation and distribution of wealth and well-being. The aims and objectives of our age have caused us however to pay a high price indeed. Man’s power over nature threatens to turn against him and annihilate him. It is a power, and its eminently artificial roots show this, that it is by no means directed towards the conservation and enhancement of life, but rather in the opposite direction towards its disintegration and its destruction. The decadentism of L. Klages and all the extreme irrationalists that would have the “spirit” be a “disease of life,” could here be cited, taking up also some of the ideas of Nietzsche and Freud. In this stage in his thought Scheler also clearly dissociates himself from his previous “theism.” In Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos he resolutely denies God a “personality.” For Scheler God becomes an impersonal deitas that becomes person only on the attaining of that particular self-consciousness that is the finite spiritual person that is man. From this follows the need for the metaphysics of our time to pass through “philosophical anthropology” (an expression coined by the philosopher himself); i.e. the philosophy that reveals, recognises and discovers the peculiarity, eccentricity and metaphysically exceptional nature of man. According to Scheler there are two fundamental and original attributes of the being that he is, namely the “impulse” (Drang) and the “spirit” (Geist). The Drang is “life” itself and is the expression of the impulsive original energy of being. It is this “attribute” that has power and force. Power and force are strangers to rationality, teleology and morality, at very most being an unaware vital “teleocline.” For this reason the becoming of the real in power and force also brings with it pain, evil and disorder, the essential components of the becoming of all that is of which God himself suffers. The divinity, says Scheler in a tone that often brings to mind the latter Schelling (Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom 1809) is possessed of longing, desire and passion. The becoming of everything is not however exhausted in this attribute. The other attribute is that of the “spirit,” as “consciousness,” “personality,” and the capacities for “intelligence” and “ideas.” This is not to be understood only as pure intellect but also the force and capacity for emotion and love, especially spiritual love (“agape”). The “spirit” is thus the moment of liberation, the becoming clear and the making serene of that which in the deitas has been produced from the moment of “force” and “power.” Man is the vehicle, the way by which this path finds its way back to the deitas reconquering its real being, becoming truly God. In

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man the spirit is affirmed in his unlimited opening to the Whole of being that exists. It is not therefore causally productive power, but rather the moment of redemption of becoming through the knowing of the “forms,” “essences” and “realities,” and through the “love of the essentiality” of things, to use the words used in one of the fundamental theses Vom Wesen der Philosophie of 1917.22 The spirit is therefore the becoming clear and sublimation of life and its huge and unregulated power. The “spirit” cannot therefore create living forms and forces. It may however direct and guide life and its power in the direction of the aims of consciousness, towards the teleology of good, towards the overcoming and settling of conflicts that are generated at the heart of life. The spirit takes back into its self and sublimates emotion and passion, as elemental forces of life, unites with them to offer them new objectivity and new destinations. Without emotion and without passion the spirit would remain inactive; in its solitude it is in fact lifeless.23 For Scheler life and the force constitute, at the heart of the being of the entity, the moment of the Dasein, of the “being-there,” while the “spirit,” as an impulse to form, to determination, as the principle of delimitation of the indeterminateness of the Drang, of the “impulse,” is the moment of the Sosein, the “being-thus” of things, that opens us to the “essence,” to the “a priori.” It is through the participation and intrinsic community between the Bewusstsein (“consciousness”) and the Sosein in the being of the entity that awareness takes place, as we have seen in the opening pages of Idealismus-Realismus.24 This is surely the Schelerian interpretation of the “intentionality” of Husserl. Many pages of this work are therefore incomprehensible unless this metaphysical background is kept clearly in mind. IX

The parts of the work that were unpublished and still not ready for publication in 1927 reflect feverishly intense thought over the final years of the author’s life. Volumes XI and XII of Nachlass testify to this. “Life” as “attribute” of the divine is that which as impulse, outburst and desire, as has been seen, enables the real to be conceived of as creatrio continua, as unaware and not expressly “willed,” still less “planned” by the conscious understanding of a personal God.25 Parts IV and V of “Idealismus-Realismus” are grafted onto this basic idea. As mentioned above the fourth part is entitled Lehre vom Wesen und Wesenserkenntnis etc. Scheler, here also connecting up with the Husserlian doctrine of “consciousness of essence,” makes a strict

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distinction between the eidos as it should be most appropriately understood phenomenologically, from the ideae ante res of an ancient Platonic-Christian metaphysical exemplarism that can be seen today as quite unsustainable. The Wesen, the “essences,” the eide, the “forms” and the “ideas” are not at all ante res according to a dubious platonised exemplarism, nor even exactly cum rebus (in an Aristotelian perspective), but rather cum rebus.26 That is to say, ideas are possible projects of becoming of the world, virtuality half perceived by the mind, by the spirit through the becoming; not, on the other hand eternal models under which the real would effectively be produced under the presupposition of an eternal nous poietikos, that chooses the best from an infinite range of possibles.27 According to Scheler, “The realizer principle always operates within the limits of ideas and the connections between ideas, but rejects a part of its elements that are not realizable.”28 In their turn the contingent and factual realities are never univocally determinable through the “essences.”29 For Scheler the “essence” is the result that can be obtained following the “non-realization” of the Dasein, the “inhibition of the vital centre,” from which only the multiplication of the entities in space and time derive, and the consequent exercise of the “power” and the “force.”30 For this fundamental reason therefore the consciousness of essence is of an essentially different nature from the consciousness or awareness that comes to use from empirical abstraction, induction, observation and from discursive thought. This latter does not at all lose its value in scientific consciousness that is not at all founded in a surpassing of the “reality principle”; indeed it expressly presupposes it. “Empirical abstraction is only possible without reduction and on a condition of maintaining the spatio-temporal multiplicity.”31 If space and time are considered in Newtonian fashion as absolute forms of the real then any intuition of essences is impossible. This is equally the case if space and time are held, in Kantian terms, to be a priori forms of intuition.32 Yet, even if the consciousness of essence and intuition do not appear to be immediate founders of the knowledge of natural science, and even if this latter seems to be fully legitimate only from empirical abstraction and from induction, we cannot give up on the consciousness of essence. It is worth noting here that Scheler intended to introduce something new and substantial into the husserlian phenomenological doctrine of the “intuition of essence,” that he does however accept in its general outline. In it he saw a failure to keep to the notion of becoming as well as a being fundamentally unhistorical, an aspect pushed to intolerable and unsustainable extremes by such authors as B. Bolzano and N. Hartmann, as well as by the first phenomenologists such

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as Reinach.33 The unhistorical nature of the “essence” corresponds, in Scheler’s view, to the idealistic absolutism and abstractly theoretical character of Husserl’s “absolute consciousness,” testament, as has been seen above, to the insufficiency of the Husserlian “reduction,” consisting only in an artificial prescinding from the judgement of existence: “I fail to see in any way what changes in the ‘apple tree in blossom’ (Husserl’s example) by simply suspending the judgement of existence; I fail to see how a new world of objectivity can be revealed that was not already contained in the natural vision of the world. Putting the position of existence in parentheses does not at all result in a clearer imposition of the contingent being-thus (zufälligen Soseins) of the object, that continues to maintain its position in time and space.”34 According to Scheler the consciousness of being does not only have universal objectivities as its correlates. It goes beyond the universalindividual contraposition. The universal is always a type (in German Allgemein, meaning “common to all”). “Essence” is therefore something other than that which, as predicate, is necessary to and belongs to a multiplicity of individuals. It is not therefore a “class.” Not even the number three is in itself a “universal concept.” It becomes so insofar as it is used as a predicate for a group of things that have in common the fact of being three.35 Therefore even “single and unrepeatable individualities possess an authentic essence”; such for example as human persons, despite their indeclinable individuality. The more that they are the less they express a general way of being common to many individuals. An exemplary life, a saint, a genius or a hero, insofar as they are models that incarnate and incorporate an absolute value are also a true essence, while vital organisms “possess only a specific essence, not an individual essence.”36 The opposition between the general and the individual singularity is transcended in the life of the spirit. X

Part five, a critical examination of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, of which Scheler was one of the first attentive readers, is more fragmented. Only in part does it participate in the economy of Idealismus-Realismus. While the first subsection of this part, entitled Das emotionale Realitätsproblem is excessively long, at forty pages as against the sixty-seven of the first three parts published in 1927, the second subsection consists mostly of marginal notes by the author to his copy of Sein und Zeit. The importance of these two parts make them worthy of special consideration but such a study lies outside the ambit of this work. We have not yet written papers expressly dealing with

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these parts of the book. The interest they engender is not merely historical in nature but is of a genuinely theoretical nature. There is here an opportunity to compare one of the last, and certainly one of the most original, thinkers who tried to renew the metaphysical tradition of the west and the great philosopher who, in the twentieth century, opened the way to so-called “post-metaphysical” thought of our own second modern period, or the “post-modern” age as people often prefer to call it, a thought that, in our opinion has not yet found a valid and significant path to tread.37 Scheler met Heidegger and was much stimulated by his reading of the book of 1927. It seems to us that Heidegger achieves, aside from the abstract theoricism of phenomenology (in our opinion more in any case to be found in Husserl’s followers than in Husserl himself), a concreteness of reality that provides a better understanding of the “I” of man as “person” as opposed to “subject” or “consciousness.” He rejects however the general position. In paragraph 10 of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger had criticised Scheler for an inadequate ontological foundation for his concept of the “person” in man, and had also accused him of still being over-dependent on the Christian metaphysic of creationism. Scheler was rather hurt by the criticism and, since he had significantly altered his position from his “theistic” period, he read Heidegger’s work with great care and reacted vigorougly. His ripostes above all concentrate on Heidegger’s phenomenological anthropology of the “Angst” and “being-for-death.” We have seen that Scheler applauded many aspects of Heidegger’s book. He says, in his final judgement of the book, despite the numerous areas of disagreement: “In spite of everything I am greatly looking forward to the continuance of Heidegger’s work. His Being and Time is the most original and independent of works in the philosophical tradition; it is the freest work in current German philosophy, a radical and rigorously scientific undertaking into the greatest problems facing philosophy.”38 Scheler agrees with Heidegger on one very important point: “The dependence of the whole extra-human entity on man … subsists for me as it does for Heidegger. But it is not the starting point of philosophy, rather it is its result.”39 In Scheler’s view man is “microcosm,” as the best tradition of the west has long taught, and so his story is the “nucleus,” the “centre” of the great story that we call “world,” that is no longer the ordered and eternal “cosmos” of the ancients. It must be repeated that this is a result a conquest and not certainly a premise from which we start. Now, according to Scheler it is impossible to understand what may be an original structure of the Dasein of man without presupposing concepts such as those of “Spirit,” “Life,”

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“Living body,” “Mind,” “Inert things,” etc.…40 Heidegger may even be right to reject the idea of an “eternity” dualistically opposed to a “simple presence” that is purely conceptual and theoretical in relation to history and becoming. He may be right in his opposition to any idea of a fetish-eternity, that poorly sustains and is surrogate to the weakness and precariousness of the human being. He is however wrong in not having maintained, in his ontology of the finitude and temporality the necessary distinction between “essence” and the “contingent being of man.” His ontology thus turns into an anthropology of factually existent man. The structures of human existing appear to be empty of content; such structures do not describe a true essence but are configured as purely formal and transcendental. The concrete human being emptied of the actuality of the person and his living act of opening himself to the being of all that there is, in the compenetration of the living pulsion of movement and his spiritual sublimation of the vital passions, bringing with them the vitalisation of the spirit, “is left imprisoned in the being of temporality” and thus he is not able to produce an authentic transcendence over time.41 We no longer understand if the Dasein falls entirely within time and what there is in this that makes time time. For Scheler, on the other hand, “The spirit does not fall into time, but factual existence falls as if falling from an original authentic temporality.” It is therefore necessary to distinguish life from spirit.42 Scheler willingly agrees with Heidegger on the impossibility of locating the ideal entity in an absolutely separate sphere independent of the acts of a spiritual subject and accepts, too, his rejection of eternal truths subsisting in themselves and for themselves. Even Newton’s laws are laws only because they lead back to the formations of a spiritual subjectivity.43 By, however, abolishing the necessary polar distinctions between essence and factuality, spirit and life, Heidegger cannot comprehend that essentiality and ideas are “a formative activity,” that relates to a “supra-individual spirit.”44 Other points of fundamental and severe criticism of Sein und Zeit by Scheler, include, in addition to the emptiness of the essentiality of the Dasein, the primacy of the “being-for-death,” the “care” (Sorge) and the “Angst” as original moments and loci of revelation of the Dasein to itself. An authentic phenomenology of these three moments absolutely cannot avoid from rooting man in “life,” and through “life” in the totality of what is.45 The formal transcendentalism, however, of Heidegger’s “existentials” seems to ignore the need to be rooted in life, in the body and above all to ignore the emotional dimension of the real and existence.46 Since Heidegger’s Dasein has lost the sense of the person as the essential spiritual centre that is in itself eternal, the Heideggerian

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philosophy of finite existence is not able to break down the barriers of “Angst” and “death” as the final realities of the finite life of man. Though Heidegger may be right to reject to transposition to human existence of categories appropriate only for worldly entities, this criticism, says Scheler, fails in any way to touch his own thought.47 Scheler rejects the Heideggerian Daseinsolipsismus, the isolation and existential rigidity from which he moves. This is just “a pure and simple inversion of the Descartes’ cogito ergo sum into sum ergo cogito.”48 Who is Heidegger’s Dasein really? It is neither man, nor woman, nor child, youth or old man. It is not rooted in a reality that is not given only by the Zuhandenheit, the employability and instrumentality of things, but even before that from the sources of an emotional feeling that can extend beyond the pure and simple utility of the entity that is of interest to our actual or possible ability to do. But the only springs of emotional feeling Heidegger are the Sorge (the “Care”), and Angst.49 According to Scheler “Angst” is not at all the final datum that reveals the connection and unity of the structure of finite existence of the human Dasein. Even Angst is connected with a totality and with a complex or affective and emotional act. The insurgence of Angst in man is entirely comprehensible if in the unfolding of life and vital acts arises resistance and obstacles, as we are aware of obstacles in the way of our normal and natural daily relationship with things and with the world. Heidegger also fails to appreciate that the “being-for-death” and “Angst” find their antidote and redemption in the power of Eros, in the lucid ability of the artistic instinct of form, in the Dionysian identification with the perennial spring of universal life.50 “Beyond “Angst” lies the excess of the unsatisfied vital impulse facing that which is satisfied and capable of being satisfied. Angst springs from the obstacle and the resistance of the world as sphere the sphere of possible resistance.”51 “Eros,” the great antagonist of “Angst”, is also the antagonist of death. The nexus is therefore finitude, “Angst” and death which, in the final analysis, are the covers that enclose Heidegger’s book “barring every path to every spontaneous ability of man to free himself.”52 Scheler never gets tired of reminding us that “It is Eros, not anxieties that is the vehicle of the growing participation in being and the process of becoming aware” (in italics in the original text).53 In the fundamental ontology of Heidegger every act that rises above and beyond every occulting worldly fall that conceals from us our true and profound self or “I” (the fall into the “us,” into the “chattering,” into the impersonal “one”, etc.), by a “pieced together ensemble of angst and care,” makes the world something “that would be better never to have been.”54 Heidegger’s phenomenology slides back into Lebensphilosophie (“the philosophy of life”) and into Historismus (“historicism,” both in italics in the

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text).55 Lebensphilosophie and Historismus form the premises for the closing in of philosophy within the exclusive horizons of temporality and history. Every attempt at man’s self-redemption should convince us then, looking from Heidegger’s perspective, once more of this notion of something “that would be better never to have been.” “It may be that behind these outcomes of Heidegger’s philosophy there is a religious faith, a new form of tenebrous Calvinism, that has today been developed by theologists such as Barth, Gogarten and others.”56 So, as has been well observed by an Italian commentator, “Angst and care do not define man, but only the man of the working day, while the true essence of man is manifested only when considering that man is ‘a brief party on the Earth.’”57 Scheler had opened the second subsection of his two notes on Heidegger with this aphorism: “The philosophy of daily life must be set against the philosophy of Sundays. The holiday throws light beyond and into the everyday. We live starting out from Sunday and waiting for Sunday. Care is only a break between one Sunday and the next.”58 In conclusion it seems to us that Scheler had presaged, with almost prophetic intuition, the possible “nihilistic” consequences of a line of thought like that of Heidegger’s that first makes the horizon of being vain in the finitude of the Dasein and after its “turning-point,” it is true, gives back to “being” something of what had been taken away from it – but makes of it a power that hurls man into oblivion and the loss of self. Scheler had, however, indicated in his last views the paths for overcoming the closing in of the horizons of time and historicity. University of Verona N OT E S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

B 190, p. 25 sgg. “Idealismus-Realismus” (sometimes IR), p. 185. IR, p. 188 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. IR, p. 189. Ibid. Ivi, p. 191. Ivi, pp. 205–206. Ivi, p. 213. Ivi, p. 199. Ivi.

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Ivi, p. 206. Ivi, pp. 209 sgg. 16 Ivi, spec. pp. 217–218 e 221. 17 Ivi, spec. pp. 227 sgg. 18 Ivi, pp. 235–236. 19 Ivi, spec. pp. 260. 20 See Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, in Ges. Werke, Bd. IX, and Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens, in Bd. VIII. For a critical biography on the subject we recommend the following works in particular: F. Bosio, L’idea dell’uomo e la filosofia nel pensiero di Max Scheler, ediz. ABETE, Roma 1976, and the more recent Invito al pensiero di Max Scheler, Mursia ed., Milano 1995, as well as G. Cusinato, Katharsis. La morte dell’ ego e il divino come apertura al mondo nella prospettiva di Max Scheler, ESI, Napoli 1999. 21 Ivi, p. 241. 22 Vom Wesen der Philosophie und den moralischen Bedingungen des philosophischen Erkennens, in Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Bd V, Francke Vl, Bern 1954, p. 180. 23 This presumed dualism of Scheler between “spirit” and “life” has been much discussed, and many critics have seen in it an unsustainable dichotomy. For a general picture and a somewhat different interpretation see G. Cusinato, Katharsis. La morte dell’ego e il divino come opertura al mondo nella prospettiva di Max Scheler, Napoli 2000, F. Bosio, L’idea dell’uomo e la filosofia nel pensiero di Max Scheler, Roma 1976 and Invito al pensiero di Max Scheler, Milano 1995. 24 It is in any case necessary to distinguish between the contingent So-sein, that is “form” and “image” of the entities insofar as they are known, and the Wesen, the eidos, the typical and universal a priori that is obviously not the object of immediate consciousness, but of “Intuition” that, in Husserlian terms, may be called “eidetic.” See Erkenntnis und Arbeit. Eine Studie ueber Wert und Grenzen des pragmatischen Motivs in der Erkenntnis der Welt, in Die Wissens-ormen und die Gesellaschaft, Bd VIII, Bern 1960, as well as Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, in Schriften aus dem Nachlass II, Bd XI, a cura di M. Frings, Bern 1979, e Philosophische Anthropologie, in Schriften aus dem Nachlass III, by M. Frings, Bouvier, Bonn 1987. 25 XI, pp. 183 et seq., 200 et seq. 26 IX, p. 252. 27 Ibid. On the nous poietikos as the reification of the need for the security of the intellect and the soul see the fine pages of G. Cusinato, Katharsis, cit., spec. pp. 304–306. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ivi, p. 247. 31 Ivi, p. 245. 32 Ivi, pp. 245–246. 33 Ivi, pp. 285 sgg., pp. 301–303. 34 Ivi, p. 207. 35 Ivi, p. 251. 36 Ibid. 37 On the Scheler-Heidegger relationship see the following works: especially M. Frings, Person und Dasein. Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins, Den Haag 1969, A. Sander, Mensch, Subjekt, Person. Die Dezentrierung des Subjekts in der Philosophie Max Schelers, Bonn 1996. A specific examination of the subject see the pages on Heidegger in Idealismus-Realismus, G. Cusinato, Katharsis, pp. 193–199, and V. Venier, II gesto della trascendenza, Padova 2001, pp. 125–149. 15

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IX, p. 304. Ivi, p. 295. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ivi, p. 303. 43 Ivi, p. 287. See Heidegger, I problemi fondamentali della fenomenologia, trad. it. di A Fabris, Genova 1988, p. 211. 44 IX, p. 289. 45 The singular poverty of the vital and emotional contents of the Da – sein of Heidegger is stressed also by H. Jonas, who though does not refer to Scheler at in his Tecnica, medicina ed etica. Prassi del principio responsabilità, trad. it. di P. Becchi, Torino 1997; see also A., Organismo e libertà. Verso una biologia filosofica, trad. it. di P. Becchi, Torino 1999. 46 IX, p. 296. 47 Ivi, p. 260. 48 Ibid. 49 Ivi, pp. 267 sgg. 50 Ivi, p. 284. 51 Ivi, pp. 270–271. 52 Ivi, p. 271. 53 Ivi, p. 272. 54 Ivi, p. 283. 55 Ivi, p. 280. 56 Ivi, p. 283. 57 G. Cusinato, Op. cit., p. 201. 58 IX, p. 294. 39

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T H E P RO B L E M O F T H E WO R L D : M E R L E AU - P O N T Y O N F L E S H , S O U L A N D P L AC E

In our current period of technoscience, what controversy could there be concerning the existence of the world? In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty outlines a remaining difficulty, which he refers to as “the problem of the world” (le problem du monde). In actual practice, we share a basic faith in perception: “We see the things themselves, the world is what we see.”1 But when we try to express this deeply rooted or mute opinion in terms of some formula, we face a conflict between two indubitable convictions. It is the world and its things that we see; our perceptions enable us to enter upon existing objects and relations. Yet, this claim is contested by the equally strong opinion that sense perception is a singular perspective which does not give direct access to objects in the common world shared by us all. My perceptions surely anchor a belief in the existence of this table and of this visible pencil before me now, but they are also inescapably mine. Thus, we remain perplexed: if we explicate our faith in perception by stating that we see things of the world, then we neglect to mention that contact with the world arises from our own unique look, touch or hearing; but if we affirm that vision or touch permits only singular access, then our account seems to separate us from each other and to place us at a distance from the natural world. Fortunately, Merleau-Ponty indicates that this paradox of convictions does not necessarily return us to age-old debates concerning solipsism and to doubts about the existence of things. Instead, our faith in perception is so unshakable that we accept the task of finding a more basic account capable of explaining how each of us already possesses a singular contact with existing things.2 Thus, perplexity brings an opportunity to begin anew: we begin to interrogate our perceptual faith, with the aim of supporting the subjective opinion that each of us possesses an openness upon each other, the reality of things and our common world. This text explores Merleau-Ponty’s interrogation of our common perceptual faith. The first section describes his strategy for mending the opposition which seems to exist between our two conflicting convictions. His answer is that perception opens upon the world through mediating wholes of flesh. This openness leads us to treat concrete self-existence as a compound of thought and subjective embodiment. In section two, I explicate Merleau-Ponty’s claim 167 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 167–182. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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that such arenas of flesh imply new notions of self and soul which differ radically from more traditional accounts, such as Leibniz’s theory of monads and Aristotle’s description of Socrates as a concrete individual.3 I claim that the flesh of one’s own body gives sufficient evidence for a subjective faith in the existence of a pre-physical self. The third section uses the new notion of self to explain how each life of reflection and cognition has a unique and inalienable place or “home” within natural life. In his book, Getting Back into Place, Edward Casey uses Merleau-Ponty’s notion of flesh descriptively, in order to narrate how each of us finds a place in nature, as opposed to merely understanding our objective position in time and space.4 By applying the existential interpretation of “flesh” advanced in the first section, I try to describe the origins of the experiences of healing and integration that Casey associates with entering into the spirit of a place. 1 . B O DY A N D F L E S H

Merleau-Ponty interrogates the subjective certainty – the common sense opinion – that our sense perceptions open upon one unique world of things and other persons. This contact with the world is not easily explained, since there is evidence for the claim that our perceptions are internal to our own bodies. The flutter of an eyelash brings an eclipse, and the horizon quivers with each footfall upon the pavement; I attribute such movements to my body, not to distant things.5 Moreover, I do not grant that perception gives others direct access to things outside their bodies; I put the perceptions of others behind their bodies. How can I expect others to grant that my perceptions open directly upon the world, when I deny this capacity to them? So, I am brought to the conclusion that my own perceptions belong to the interior of my own body, a private world which is not identical with the one unique world of things.6 The philosophical task, then, is to explain how our own body gives perception an opening upon the world, even while it is equally an occultation of existing things. Merleau-Ponty’s proposal is that our faith in perception arises from the prepossession of a sensible substratum which is nowhere else than in our own bodies.7 This is to say that my openness to the world rests on an organic bond, a dimension of the sensible, that cannot itself be preconstituted as an object of perceptual thought or empirical understanding. Our common faith in the accuracy of sense perception is anchored privately, through each person’s singular awareness of a corporeal context which is something more than mere thinking but still less than a public object.8 Merleau-Ponty describes each

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sensible context of this sort as a latent thickness of the body, a pre-thing, a “flesh of things.” This thickness of flesh gives me an openness upon my own body; and I infer that it is probably in a similar manner that each living perceiver becomes aware of itself as a private world.9 The dimension of flesh consists of separate but overlapping parts, such as the contexts of visibility, tangibility and audibility. The term “visibility,” for example, refers to a pre-objective context which is obvious, at least to me: the porous or wooly texture within which my perception of particular colors takes place. The term “audibility” refers to the carnal resonance of a phrase of music, before it is perceived in the form of distinct notes.10 Each of us possesses our own exemplars of such relatively continuous sensible contexts, though none of us is able to describe them in terms of the objects of our common world which others may be expected to perceive. Moreover, it is the fragment of our own flesh that enables each of us to infer that the other is probably a similar “sensible for itself,” which literally looks or touches to move outside the circle of its own thinking. For example, when my companions, walking near Todi, invite me to perceive a line of trees and fields on a hillside below, a rhythm of curves emerges as a perceptible individual within the visibility which is my own flesh. As I notice the arcs of soil to which they refer, we are not merely seeing the same thing, of the same consciousness, or in possession of the same kind of mental representation. It is the corporeal support for my own perceptions – the visible context which surrounds or underlies my seeing – which enables me, in a way, to actually inhabit the same landscape which they see. I go on to infer that the visual experiences reported by my companions probably depend on similar visibilities which render the hillside equally singular and immanent for each of them. The landscape turns into a social space, because each of us actually possesses our own peculiar contact with the common world and each other. By approaching the body through the subjectivity of flesh, Merleau-Ponty secures several advantages. First, he preserves the alterity and nontransparency of other sentient beings in a way that avoids solipsism. On his account, I witness the pre-cognitive dimension of flesh only in my own case; this ensures the alterity of the other, because there is no possibility of my ever witnessing or coming to know the exact tokens of flesh which I attribute to a sensible sentient other than myself. Since it is uniquely possessed and personally lived in the flesh, the actual life of another living person is prohibited and impossible to experience directly. As Merleau-Ponty puts it, if this other is actually “a For Itself in the strong sense that I am for myself,” then it “must never be so before my eyes … never fall under my look.” The alterity of the other as a concrete domain outside my thought is guaranteed,

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since the other is “inaccessible and invisible for me.”11 By “invisible for me,” Merleau-Ponty evidently means that the internal context of visibility lent by the body of the other can never appear within the token of visibility which is a part of my own element of flesh. By contrast, if I regard the other as an object represented in the universe of my own thinking and perceptions, then the specter of solipsism arises; the alterity of the other, as a dimension outside my thought, is lost. The second advantage of the principle of flesh is that contexts such as visibility and tactility exemplify one’s own bond with nature and the bases of autonomous existence. When I witness that my subjective existence includes the dimension of flesh, then my own alterity, for myself, is also manifest. The idealist notion of a purely mental self is negated immediately, since the contexts of visibility and audibility, which I use to judge the existence of an understandable thing, are exemplars of my own carnal presence. The specter of determinism is also dispatched by the contexts of flesh which make one’s own existence self-evident, since these wholes of subjective incarnation are pre-physical and can never be understood as the effects of known antecedent causal conditions. Merleau-Ponty’s approach helps in a third way, because it enables us to pass through the paradox of conflicting convictions which is an obstacle to the formulation of the origins of our common faith in perception. The paradox is resolved, because it is now possible to move between two different but intimately related modes of sensibility: the sense-perception of things and the awareness of flesh. When I choose to use the gaze of visual perception, I disregard (or take for granted) the visible context which supports my looking and literally focus instead on the particular features or contours of the things themselves, which are revealed and not hidden. But when I cease full perception, leave the circle of my thoughts, and look at the surrounding visibility for its own sake, then I become aware of this sensuous, precognitive backdrop as flesh, that is, as an intimate and pre-objective dimension of my own embodiment. In other words, the mode of visual perception overlooks the visible context which always supports it in actual practice, while the awareness of flesh arises from literally looking between moments of perception at the backdrop of visibility beneath the level of cognition and visual thinking. The radical character of Merleau-Ponty’s principle of flesh is more evident, when his discussion of a community of sensible sentients is compared with Leibniz’s system of monads. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty initiates such a comparison in his working notes, in order to clarify and differentiate

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his own novel principle of corporeality. We must study some details of Leibniz’s account, in order to judge for ourselves the degree of continuity or departure. To begin with, Leibniz holds that each monad is an indivisible element which has “no windows through which anything could come in or go out.” Each monad is a series of changes within which something simple remains; and this multiplicity in a unity is revealed through an awareness which is of a different order than distinct perceptions and consciousness. Since each monad is simple, unalterable by external causes, and unable to exert any physical influence, Leibniz holds that some divine author must adjust the appearances which arise within one monad to match those of all the others.12 If we turn to Merleau-Ponty’s working notes, then the similarities and differences begin to emerge: The In der Welt Sein relation will take the place held in Leibniz by the relation of reciprocal expression of the perspectives taken on the world, and hence god as the unique author of these diverse perspectives which emanate from him as thoughts. The Being thus discovered is to be sure not the god of Leibniz, the “monadology” thus disclosed is not the system of monads-substances; but certain Leibnizian descriptions – that each of the views of the world is a world apart, that nonetheless “what is particular to one would be public to all,” that the monads would be in a relation of expression between themselves and with the world, and that they differ from one another and from it as perspectives – are to be maintained entirely.13

As this passage indicates, the principle of the flesh of the body is similar in several respects to Leibniz’s philosophy of monads. There is no transparency or openness (or metaphorically, “no windows”) which could ever give one person the ability to witness or know another flesh. One’s own singular element of flesh consists of textures of openness which make it easy to see objects on the other side – on the outside – of one’s own embodiment; but the self-evident, inner presence of flesh prepossessed by the other is hidden from the outside and to outsiders. The lining of visibility on the inside of the body of the other is never displayed within the visibility which constitutes one’s own flesh. It is more difficult to explain Merleau-Ponty’s acceptance and appropriation of the claim that “what is particular to one would be public to all.” Our earlier results clearly suggest that the dimension of visibility prepossessed by a flesh is not public to all; the surrounding visibility which is selfevident to one flesh is invisible to every other. However, Merleau-Ponty’s statement is technically correct, in that a particular, a feature of a distinct kind, revealed to perception within the sensuous backdrop of one’s own flesh, during a brief focusing and fixing of thought, could nonetheless be instantiated within the secret flesh peculiar to each sensible sentient. Or he might mean that each of the private dimensions of flesh does at least open upon a

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world that is common to all. According to a third reading, Merleau-Ponty may be claiming that the subjectively witnessed flesh of one’s own body is public in the sense that it is a general principle; for example, each sensible sentient may use its own secret fragment of flesh to formulate the same conclusion, namely, that there are probably others who prepossess peculiar perspectives of flesh of their own. There are other similarities with Leibniz’s account which are not mentioned in the passage quoted above: for example, each part of the element of flesh qualifies as a “simple unity” which remains constant through the multiplicity brought by perception, because each context (e.g. the complete-part of visibility, tactility or audibility) is a sensuous whole which cannot itself be divided into particular perceptible parts by cognition. Moreover, both Leibnizian monads and wholes of flesh count as originating sources which cannot be expressed within a framework of physical causes and effects. Yet, Merleau-Ponty points out that there is a difference of major importance. Leibniz takes the absence of any physical interaction between monads as a reason for believing that the influence of one monad upon another is but ideal; he concludes from this that divine intervention is necessary to adjust the appearances arising in each monad with those of the others. But Merleau-Ponty insists that the private worlds of flesh are corporeal, not ideal; hence, he holds that each perspective of flesh is coordinated with all the others through the things themselves and the one common world which includes them, not through an intervention that is supernatural.14 Dimensions of flesh are private contexts of self-actualization within our respective bodies; they cannot be separated from material life. Finally, Merleau-Ponty would reject Leibniz’s claim that bodies are merely natural automata or machines of nature; for the internal principle for our activities is constituted now by the simple unities of the flesh of the body. 2. FLESH AND SOUL

Having introduced the pre-objective dimension of the flesh of the body, Merleau-Ponty develops the notion that each individual person is a compound self. The activity of reflection which belongs to the soul inheres within simple carnal wholes, such as visibility and tactility. To develop the case for a self of this sort, Merleau-Ponty pauses in his work on The Visible and the Invisible to undertake a second project, which is published as Eye and Mind. This second text investigates the corporeal life of individual artists, as they actually work at painting, in order to interpret some styles of modern art. In making his remarks about paining, Merleau-Ponty develops the claim that the visible

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character of things stems from a secret genesis within the body, or from the pre-thing that is one’s own flesh.15 Merleau-Ponty writes that the painter peering at a landscape is caught up or implicated in what is seen. The things which I see are encrustations revealed through the visibility of my own flesh; hence, their visibleness is also direct evidence of the carnal presence of my body. Given this, Merleau-Ponty claims to express in philosophy what painters have always accepted – that seeing is not a mode of thought but a means for being absent from the self of reflection, a means for “opening the soul to what is not soul.” When a philosopher such as Descartes treats an actual case of seeing as a mode of thought, then seeing is without a place; by contrast, it is the working painter who insists that “what is without place must be initiated by the body to all the others and to nature.”16 Alongside such passages about painting, which state that flesh initiates a place for thinking and perception, Merleau-Ponty introduces a key expression: the “dimension of the composite of soul and body.”17 At first, it is not immediately clear how such a union of soul and body is to be described; for pre-perceptual wholes of flesh participating in such a compound cannot be expressed in any of the forms of rational knowledge. Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty declares that there must be some way to express this dimension, since the self-evident character of the flesh which each of us witnesses within our own singular body compels us all to agree that “[w]e are the compound of soul and body.”18 Therefore, he goes on to describe the individual sensible for itself, where a secret world of flesh is juxtaposed with a soul of rational thinking. This discussion in Eye and Mind of a self compounded out of flesh and soul clearly invites a comparison with Aristotle’s remarks in Metaphysics concerning concrete individuals, such as Socrates and Callias. To appreciate the advance achieved in Merleau-Ponty’s account of the union of soul and body, it is necessary to consider two distinctions which arise in Aristotle’s writings; the first separates known things or capacities from the concrete individuals which instantiate them, while the second involves the actuality and potentiality of things. According to the first distinction, when a thing is understood, it is associated with a formula which expresses its essence, that is, with a formula for what the thing is known to be. However, when a known thing is instantiated concretely by an individual, the essence is compounded with an ultimate individual matter. For Aristotle, the essence of a thing, or what it is know to be, may be expressed in a formula and a definition; but there is neither a definition nor any knowledge of the unique, concrete individual. When we come to this circle, “one of the individual circles … of these there is no definition.” 19 According to the second distinction, the actuality of a thing is what it is

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primarily. Given the framework of these two distinctions, Aristotle proceeds to associate the formula of what a thing is known to be (or its essence) with its actuality (or what it is primarily). Specifically, when the question is the actuality of a person, he frequently turns the discussion to what a living person is essentially and primarily. It is here, at this stage, that Aristotle makes two claims which are important to the comparison with Merleau-Ponty: first, the actuality of a person is associated with soul; and second, soul is actuality in the possession of knowledge. For Aristotle, then, soul is the actuality of an individual person who possesses a body; but it is not the having of a body which constitutes the actuality of the person.20 To put this another way, the actuality of a person will be expressed in a formula; but Aristotle holds that there is no formula for the compound of soul and body which constitutes the concrete individual person.21 With this background, we can appreciate key differences between Aristotle’s account and Merleau-Ponty’s dimension of flesh and soul. To begin with, Merleau-Ponty questions Aristotle’s reliance upon the understanding in the construction of a formula for the actuality of a person. He questions the premise that a formula must always express what a thing is known to be. According to Merleau-Ponty, if we restrict our discussion of the visible context witnessed by an individual painter to what may be understood about visual perception, we regress, in a way, to Aristotle and scholasticism. This is to say that if we merely seek to think about our knowledge of the way perception connects a spectator and the world, then the union of soul and visibility, which an individual person witnesses during actual cases of sense perception, becomes “a corporeal something which cannot be conceived.” Continuing in this direction, Merleau-Ponty refuses to accept the traditional restriction: “The truth is that it is absurd to submit to pure understanding the mixture of understanding and body.”22 By introducing the language of flesh, he speaks of the body in pre-objective terms and includes it in a formula for something which can never be understood as an object, namely, the actuality of the concrete life of a person. Suddenly, there is a formula for the union of thought with the native and self-evident place of the flesh of the body. Once he refuses to be limited by the convention of expressing the relation between thought and body in terms of our determinate concepts of things, MerleauPonty begins to describe something which Aristotle cannot: self-possessed wholes of flesh which are the first grade of actuality of each individual person who lives concretely. The body is not merely a thing to be understood in terms of well-defined physical conditions open to the perception of any external observer; it is suddenly a pre-objective interior which is displayed within subjectivity. If we should decide to retain Aristotle’s premise that soul is actuality

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with respect to the self-possession of knowledge, then the flesh of one’s own body becomes a place for bearing witness to the contact between soul and the body within the concrete life of at least one individual. Or if we consider Aristotle’s suggestion that soul is associated with the actuality of a person, and if we emphasize Merleau-Ponty’s contention that flesh is necessary (or essential) for the actual exercising of sense perception from within a living body, then we may begin to ask whether soul is the actuality of a person with respect to the self-possession of wholes of flesh. By using this language of flesh and soul, it is not only possible to develop an interpretation for the bodily origins of the individual person’s pre-objective faith in the capacity of sense perceptions to represent the world; we may say that the body, witnessed as flesh, displays evidence for a faith in the actual presence of a pre-physical self. The working title of Merleau-Ponty’s manuscript on the flesh of the body, The Visible and the Invisible, also invites a comparison with Phaedo, where Plato assesses the relative value of two realms, the visible and the invisible.23 When the composite of body and the soul is witnessed from the singular perspective of an idios kosmos of flesh, the roles which Plato assigns to the visible and the invisible become reversed. In Phaedo, the character Socrates claims that the visible part of the self is changeable and multiform, whereas that portion associated with reason and the intelligible is uniform, eternal, and unchanging. But with the philosophy of flesh, the private openness of visibility remains the same, uniform, indivisible and ever present; while the invisible part of the self associated with the intelligible and the grasp of reason is multiform and never the same for long. Personal observation confirms that the features or relations which visual perception abstracts into thought are multiform: they come to be and pass away within the relatively constant context of visibility which is lent by the flesh of one’s own body. As a subjective whole, the texture of visibility cannot be grasped by the contingent perceptions for which it is an indivisible context. Given MerleauPonty’s account, it is possible to counter Socrates’ claim that the soul becomes dizzy when thought is abandoned for contact with the body; our reply now is that the soul suffers confusion and fragmentation whenever it is dragged away from the actuality of the simple and unchanging textures of flesh, toward the invisible grasp of reason and the multitude of contentions within the circle of our thoughts. According to Plato, it is the riveting of intellection to the body which causes violent pleasures and pains associated with distinct objects; however, we may say now that violent pleasures and pains are connected with a desire for distinct objects, and that an awareness of distinct objects is caused by overlooking the ground of visibility and taking

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up the kind of thought which fixes particular figures within perception. Our results also suggest that the soul will become less troubled by conflicting desires for distinct objects of merely contingent worth, when it witnesses the pre-perceptual visibility with which it is compounded. If we accept Plato’s contention that the soul is more like that which is constant and not changeable, then we ought to conclude – against Plato – that the soul is after all more akin to visibility, per se, and to the unified and stable wholes of flesh which reason cannot grasp. Finally, if an awareness of flesh contributes to the common-sense opinion that each of us is able to find a stable place in the world, then there would seem to be at least one context where correct opinion may sometimes be prized, as a guide, even more than knowledge. While these reversals of Plato are significant, it is also important to recognize that a similar critique may be advanced against philosophies of the modern period. For example, Kant suggests that the world of sense and perceptual experience presents only objects which are contingent and of variable worth; but Merleau-Ponty’s principle of flesh implies that the context of visibility is a relatively constant exemplar of self-existence.24 Plato contends that disorientation stems from a weakening of the intellect, and this claim seems to reappear in Leibniz’s statement that the absence of distinct perceptions causes a vertigo or swoon. But such discussions of vertigo do not force us to abandon Merleau-Ponty’s claim that contexts of flesh provide a singular awareness of unity in the midst of changing appearances. For if there is such a vertigo, it would seem to arise from remaining in the mode of distinct perception as determinate objects multiply in number. To put this another way, the confusion described by Leibniz may arise when the limits of rationality (or the edges of “high altitude thinking”) are reached, and when there is an unwillingness to fall forward – or a fear of falling – into the unities of one’s own flesh (e.g. visibility, tactility, or audibility). 3 . S O U L A N D P L AC E

This investigation suggests that the body provides a peculiar context of flesh which offers each sensible for itself an awareness of its own singular openness upon the world of things. Each of us is able to witness how sense perceptions open onto the world, because each pre-possesses corporeal wholes which cannot be represented as objects of perception, cognition or understanding. It is possible to proceed to the following question: Does an awareness of the flesh of one’s own body counterbalance the late modern practice of perceiving natural life in terms of objective properties or knowable causal relations?

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Edward Casey has already made the claim that the principle of flesh in The Visible and the Invisible points to a “middle region,” a thickening where nature and culture – the material wilderness of the world and the disincarnate realm of words, ideas and knowledge – are “co-implicatory and com-present.”25 By reviewing Casey’s work, we will move closer to an appreciation of how flesh, in Merleau-Ponty’s sense, implies a place of contact with nature which has been neglected or avoided by modern philosophers and designers. Casey tries to motivate the search for a new description of our place as living individuals within nature, by recalling the exclusions and displacements which result from experiencing things objectively. The mix of benefits and dangers is conveyed through the tale of John Harrison’s invention of the marine chronometer, a device which determines longitude: we save lives at sea by using time to locate our position, yet knowing “one’s whereabouts in the form of time” tends to obscure the question of whether there is a prior dimension of place from which one may choose to experience the state of being at a location in time. 26 For such a critique of modern thinking to be persuasive, Casey must explain how an individual person needs to set aside an understanding of spatial and temporal locations, in order to achieve a more singular integration with nature. To develop such an account, Casey lists six moments or forms which characterize the integration of persons with what he calls “wild places,” or places which are not already pre-constituted by cultural interests: sensuous surface, ground, things, arc, atmosphere and surrounding array. The surrounding array fills out the sensuous surface between particular details of a scene and provides an “indefinitely fine-grained” backdrop which sustains an intimate connection between our souls and the world. The sensuous surface of an ambient array includes the qualities of density, color, shape and texture; the surrounding ground provides stable but invisible support as the “unseen inseam” of sensuous surfaces; things are material objects with distinctive profiles or contours; the arc or vista of a wild place is present as an indeterminate distance or as a fading band of land or sea; and atmosphere permeates everything and reveals the unity of our own body with the felt presence of a place.27 Once he is equipped with the premise that these six features characterize a person’s positive, if indeterminate, contact with nature, Casey is able to articulate contemporary examples where our awareness of stable implacement is progressively suppressed by the modern practice of shaping urban environments according to a functional understanding of human needs. He recounts the stages of his journey by car from Northampton to Hartford, Connecticut, on I-91: the sensuous surfaces of forested hillsides

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which invite an openness to the land are ultimately excluded by the appearance of sites, barriers and walls designed primarily with the thought of maximizing efficiency in transportation. The features, forms or sensory cues which characterize an intimate contact with nature are presented less fully, until the individual motorist is “disenfranchised from the land” and left in the midst of built forms which undermine or suspend any self-awareness of living connection with things.28 It is significant that Casey proceeds to link the six features or forms of contact between nature and culture, with the principle of flesh expressed in The Visible and the Invisible. He claims that Merleau-Ponty’s term “flesh” is another name for the middle region where the world and cultural interpretations are “co-implicatory and com-present”. Moreover, during his explication of the meaning of “sensuous surface,” he even states that “it is tempting to assimilate the sensuous surface to flesh.”29 However, by his own admission, Casey takes over the term “flesh” for descriptive use, or as a way of conveying the experience of integration; he does not interrogate the implications of Merleau-Ponty’s “overtly ontological” interpretation of the term “flesh.”30 Hence, Getting Back into Place closes with a question which still requires an answer: What specific aspect within the self is the probable source for acquiring and sustaining an inalienable sense of place? If we reiterate our earlier interpretation of visibility and touch as wholes of flesh beneath or between perception, then we may be able to describe an origin, within the self, for experiences of personal integration with the “wild places” of nature. As a concrete composite of flesh and soul, I possess inalienable wholes of visibility and tactility, each of which qualifies as a middle dimension between perception and the world things. The color or texture of sensuous surfaces are linked to my own peculiar place in the world, because particular color qualities occur within the texture and depth of visibility, which is one part of the element of flesh and an internal equivalent of external things. The visibility which marks the place of my own body, for me, is a place which reveals and does not hide physical things; hence, Casey is right to suggest that my own place of origin is not an absolute void.31 Yet, if we apply Merleau-Ponty’s existential interpretation of flesh, it may be possible, after all, to sustain the idea that the place of each sensible sentient’s contact with nature is not a thing. To put this more positively, we may say that the pre-cognitive context of visibility which surrounds and supports the crystallization of a perceptible particular is a “no-thing-ness” constitutive of a living individual’s own corporeal life. If I quit the mode of perception temporarily and cease to discriminate determinate contours or locations, then I

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may perhaps literally and temporarily look upon the sensuous whole of visibility as a spatial void; but this same depth of visibility is also an indefinitely dense and fine-grained backdrop, with a texture and an atmosphere of its own, which exemplifies the intimate unity of body and place. By joining Casey’s six features of contact with wild places to MerleauPonty’s more ontological use of “flesh,” we may be able to advance the interpretation for the way some built forms give persons a sense of place within nature. For example, at Ryoan-ji, in Kyoto, the dry garden is bounded by two walls which display indefinite or irregular bands of color, due to the seepage of oil from the clay bricks underneath. The bands are self-obscuring because their indistinctiness discourages the perception of distinct edges or patterns; hence, in Casey’s terms, they are sensuous surfaces which seem to exemplify areas of vanishing and fading which are ordinarily characteristics of arcs. To account for this, we may speak here of the arc as an indefinite background which fills out or encircles fleeting perceptions of determinate colors on the surface of the walls. If we go on to assimilate all six forms of contact with wild places to the flesh of the body, then it may be possible to develop an even more complete account of the subjective effects of the walls of the dry garden at Ryoan-ji. Perhaps the witnessing of the walls encourages an awareness of one’s own actuality as a flesh, as a sensible sentient, since the ambient backdrop which fills in between distinct properties, or which holds temporary perceptions of color together, is also the dimension of visibility. The fading bands help exemplify the pre-objective depth of visibility which remains obscure or vague from the standpoint of cognizable phenomena. If this is so, then Royan-ji may provide support for Casey’s suggestion that entering into “the spirit of a place” is associated with witnessing “what makes that place such a special spot.” 32 By turning a visitor’s awareness to the actuality of the flesh of the body, the walls of the dry garden display the world as a special spot, namely, as an actuality evident to a sensuous idios kosmos. It is in bearing witness to the spot of one’s own fragment of flesh that one’s soul finds a place of connection with the natural world. While the principle of flesh helps us to describe the corporeal origins of our feelings of integration with nature, it also raises a series of new questions. Casey claims that thought and nature will be conjoined in a common world, only after we adopt a genuinely pre-modern or perhaps non-modern geocentrism which will put the earth first before our own subjectivities.33 If the term “subjectivities” is used here to denote modern philosophies which associate the self with reflection, and if the term “pre-modern geocentrism” refers to cultural philosophies which treat the natural world as something

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more than a set of determine relations expressed by the natural sciences, then perhaps Casey’s statement is plausible. But is not Merleau-Ponty suggesting that the flesh of the body, a dimension of subjective incarnation, is central to sustaining a living and less alienated contact with actual things? Does it not follow that our subjectivities, as compounds of flesh and thought, are not obstacles to restoring our place in nature? Given the philosophy of flesh, we need not choose between the naturalist’s belief – that each of us is guided by the natural world – and the claim that such guidance comes from nowhere but oneself. I suspect that we will not find a satisfying account of our entry into Place, that is, into nature considered as a shared koinos kosmos, or as one common world, until the meaning of “subjectivity” is expanded, beyond its traditional modernist boundaries, to include the singular access to places through exemplars of flesh. This would preserve something of the Enlightenment’s interest in unique and autonomous individuals as sources of value, though rational capacity would no longer be the primary marker for the actuality of the self. If each of us becomes more aware of the contexts of flesh which provide an openness to others and a common world, then perhaps we will restore our acquaintance with ourselves and each other, in a preobjective and therefore postmodern way. University of New Haven, United States N OT E S 1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 3–4, 6. 2 Ibid., pp. 5, 7. 3 Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, trans. J. A. Smith (New York: Random House, 1941); Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays, trans. Paul Shrecker and Anne Martin Schrecker (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). 4 Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place, Toward a New Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 5 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 7. 6 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 7 Ibid., pp. 10, 12. 8 Ibid., p. 38. 9 Ibid., pp. 133, 135. 10 Ibid., pp. 132, 149–151. 11 Ibid., p. 79. 12 Leibnitz, Monadology, pp. 148–151, 156–157.

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Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 222–223. Ibid., p. 222. 15 Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, ed. G. Johnson, trans. M. Smith (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993), pp. 127–128. 16 Ibid., p. 146. 17 Ibid., p. 136. 18 Ibid., p. 138. 19 Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 799; Bk. VII, 1036a2–6. 20 Aristotle, De Anima, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, p. 555; Bk II, 412a15–25. 21 Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, p. 802; Bk VII, 1037a25–1037b5. 22 Merleau-Ponty, Eye and Mind, p. 137. 23 Plato, “Phaedo,” in Five Dialogues, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 117–122; see 79a–83e. 24 Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James Ellington (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1993), p. 55. I develop this point in “Merleau-Ponty’s Three Intertwinings,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, 34: pp. 87–89. 25 Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place, pp. 253–255. 26 Ibid., pp. 6, 8. 27 Ibid., pp. 204, 208–209, 214–216, 219. 28 Ibid., pp. 257–258. For another tale of the negative consequences of losing intimate contact with the ground and atmosphere provided through one’s own body, read Susan Best, “Driving Like a Boy: Sexual Difference, Embodiment and Space,” in Imagining Australian Space: Cultural Studies and Spatial Inquiry, ed. R. Barcan and I. Buchanan (University of Western Australia Press, 1999), pp. 95,98–100. 29 Ibid., pp. 210, 255. 30 Ibid., p. 373. 31 Ibid., p. 214. 32 Ibid., p. 314. 33 Ibid., p. 187. 14

Professor Gholam Reza A’awani, Mulla Sadra Just., Tehran, reading and Rev. Professor Edward Kaczynski, O.P., presiding.

M I C H A E L S TAU D I G L

T H E C R I T I QU E O F T H E P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L C O N C E P T O F T H E WO R L D AC C O R D I N G TO M I C H E L H E N RY

Starting from an analysis of Husserl’s concept of the world, I want to show that the structure of the world has been thematized in a restricted way only within classic phenomenology. This omission can be traced back to a twofold reason: On the one hand, the specific phenomenality of the world has been established as the matrix of phenomenological analysis. But this structure, the “pre-givenness” of the world, has also been designated, on the other hand, as the one and only kind of phenomenality, according to which our experience of the world is explicated. Against this background and by means of a radicalised reduction, Michel Henry recovers the fundamental distinction between two different modes of appearing, i.e. originary revelation and manifestation. By restoring this distinction he finally opens the opportunity to break open the self-imposed moderation of phenomenology in order to perform an analysis of “the world” which recognizes its impressional-practical depth as “cosmos.” As M. Henry states, “I am the life of the world.”1 1 . I N T RO D U C T I O N

To regard the question concerning the world and its “origin” as the question of phenomenology,2 points at a preliminary decision of “historic phenomenology.” The actual consequence of this decision is a fixation of the inner sense of phenomenology and a constriction of its object, which might both be traced back to its methodological self-understanding. In order to prove the consistency of this critique I am going to examine the methodological premises Husserl took as a basis for his analyses of the world. Consequently, my question gets a definite shape: did the return to the “things themselves,” as it had been conceived by Husserl, really arrive at the phenomenon of the world? Or did phenomenological analysis not rather come to a halt at a “fore-concept”3 (Vorbegriff) of the world? And is not the rather problematical unity of this concept maintained in favour of the integrity of the only leading access to the “things themselves” (Sachen selbst) – those “things” whose autonomy and selfhood simply pretend to be the essential theme of phenomenology’s questioning back? If this is the case, what is it then, that this omission might be traced back upon? 183 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 183–198. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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The phenomenological question concerning the world is, according to Husserl’s insight into the universality of the apriori of correlation,4 the question concerning its givenness. From a radical phenomenological point of view this means that the question about the “existence” of the world, which furthermore seems to be one of the vanishing points of philosophical treatment of the problem of the world, might be solved by posing the question about its particular mode of givenness. A statement like this looses every scandalous pretence within phenomenology. In Husserl’s account this problematic has already been sublated when the sceptically motivated epoché has been concretized by the constructive trait of the reduction,5 without modifying or loosing the being of the world thereby.6 But it is exactly at that point that further questions occur: Is the world given in a unique, even univocal way within phenomenological reduction? Is it clarified what “givenness” is, especially the givenness of the world? Are the eidetic descriptions of the “natural world-experience,” which has been recognized as the unshakeable reference point of classical phenomenology,7 the originary modes of givenness by which the world gives itself? Or does the givenness of the “world,” on the contrary, not remain a phenomenological and lastly a philosophical problem beyond the unfolding of intentionality, which still needs to be worked out as a problem on its own?8 I am not going to answer all these questions here. I will just pose the rather specific one about the phenomenological status of the world by unfolding the structure of its peculiar and even obstinate givenness. In order to seize the difficulties as well as the prolificity of the concept of givenness (Gegebenheit/Gebung; donation) Husserl’s thought will be my starting-point. His thematization of the world, which becomes operative especially on the genetic level in the sense of an “analytics of horizonality,” raises a problem not only from an internal phenomenological point of view but remains abysmal as such. As I will show on the basis of Michel Henry’s critique, the phenomenological concept of the world turns out to be a fundamental abstraction. But we have to consider a relevant difference immediately: it is not an abstraction concerning some underexposed facets of the constitutive process, but rather an abstraction concerning the phenomenological positivity, which has furtively been adjudicated to the world. To unmask this kind of abstraction bears enormous consequences: on the one hand, the respective way of exposition shows that the conception of phenomenality, which is guiding Husserl’s analyses, is one-sidedly shortened.9 On the other hand, it suggests to reflect on the inner history of this shortening, because this history deploys not only the reason for the maintenance of the “transcendental illusion” the world is, but constitutes at once the matrix of phenomenology’s self-conception.

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Consequently, our focus might get a bit clearer: the world as such qua phenomenon becomes a “leading clue” of a phenomenology trying to radicalize itself. Whereas historic phenomenology exhausts itself in a noeticnoematical determination of intentional correlations or in an eidetic typification, we are now enabled to develop a methodological counterpart as it became apparent that these attempts only contravened to the original task of the reduction, which was to unveil a surplus or even an excess of givenness.10 These critical considerations pose a severe objection concerning the phenomenological legitimacy of Husserl’s whole philosophical project and put the consistency of its leading concepts at stake.11 In order to break open the above aluded abstraction and to reestablish the phenomenon of the world in its full significance, we have to radicalize the reduction. Thereby, we will get into the position to make a theme of the structure of appearance itself, through which the world – and anything appearing within it – is realized as a givenness, i.e. through which its phenomenalization takes place. Consequently, the question arises again how the world is not simply (a) given but gives itself, how the world is becoming a theme qua givenness. This again amounts to asking within which conception of phenomenality world is usually thought. How is the phenomenon of the world to be understood and what is the respective concept of the phenomenon, which has been presupposed within its analysis? From this point of view, we might finally be able to respond to the objection raised against Henry’s conception, which is said to represent a “withdrawal” from our factual world and its opaque alterity. Is this movement really some simple kind of a hostility towards the real world which nevertheless remains dependent upon its factuality insofar as it suspended it beforehand,12 or is the mode of givenness Henry analyzes not rather referring to an irreversible and radical experience which is presupposed within any gesture directed at “the world” we always live in? 2 . H U S S E R L’ S C O N C E P T O F T H E WO R L D

Even if different concepts of the world can be distinguished,13 the cardinal point of the problem remains the same even in Husserl’s later writings:14 within the reduction, within the attempt to make a theme of the intentional apriori of correlation and the according noetic habitualities and noematic typics, the “world” appears as the utmost, last and universal horizon of the life of consciousness.15 This life nevertheless is mainly considered in terms of irreality and anonymity,16 since it is declined only along the methodological “leading clue” of constitution. Thereby, Husserl comes to understand it as a “consciousness of totality” (Totalitätsbewu␤tsein), which renders his own

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identification of world-consciousness and self-consciousness stated in the Krisis intelligible at last.17 What does this seemingly formal understanding of the world as a horizon mean from our point of view? What is that “formal substruction of the general positing” being presupposed by every act,18 whose validity is able to resist any “situative doubt” (Situationszweifel)?19 Does this understanding not rather correspond to a factual limitation of intentionality than to the eidetic laws of the dynamic and irreducibly open process of “sense generation”20 – a process whose unity has been anticipated by Husserl’s use of the term “world” and which has finally been followed through to an end within the theory of constitution and its exposition of an “intersubjective life of worldconsciousness”?21 To pose this question enables us to clarify what the concept of the horizon implies within its operative application by the phenomenological method. At the same time it also amounts to the question of whether this constitutive application onto the problem of the world can be claimed to be phenomenologically legitimate. The concept of “horizon” indicates the eidetic structure of co-givenness22 being linked together with every givenness as such. Husserl also calls it a “background”23 of non-immediate interest, a “field” or “halo” (Hof). In the sense of an endlessly open regularity of closer determination the horizon circumscribes not only an “undetermined determinability” and hence a “scope of potentialities” (Spielraum von Potentialitäten)24 corresponding to possible egoic intervention. Moreover, it also functions as a “typicality” of pregivenness in the sense of a style of normality the world-experiencing life dwells within, which finally terminates in the regulatory function of a coherent world-representation, i.e. in an idea.25 Consequently, a latent horizon of the world can be said to correspond to the implicit “horizonal intentionality”26 which pervades any experience in a structuring way. But the same horizon also turns out to be nothing more than a “universal formal structure”27 to be explicated as the “logics of the world” within the presuppositions of the theory of constitution.28 Thereby, the concept we are dealing with, which still needs to be analysed with respect to its presumptive-apodictical validity as well as to its phenomenological genesis,29 takes over a double function: on the one hand, it functions within the framework of its intentional unfolding in the sense of a catalyst of sensegeneration; on the other hand, it simply denotes the medium of phenomenological life (Lebendigkeit). Now it is exactly this Lebendigkeit, which is only given inasmuch, as it is invested within the pre-givenness of a horizon.

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Consequently, there exists no givenness which has not entered into the condition of a horizon, that might be evaluated intentionally, even if this horizon is the horizon of intuitive absence or egological indetermination. But this condition also duplicates itself at once: There simply exists no givenness which does not owe its being-given (its original self-givenness) to the “selfexteriorization of exteriority” (Selbst-Veräu␤erung der Au␤enheit). Finally we have to acknowledge that it is exactly this ontological movement which forms, insofar as it is thought of as the “act of showing itself” (Akt des Sichzeigens),30 the determination of consciousness as pure manifestation. The more familiar name this movement bears is “time.”31 Time and world are identical. They both name the unique process by which exteriority exteriorizes itself. Such a process has to be recorded on two levels; in itself, and over there, where it is literally the formation of a “world”, i.e. the exteriorization of this horizon, on the streak of which any thing presents itself to us.32

According to his phenomenological determination, the horizon lives through intentionality and at the same time life gives itself with respect to the dynamism of this same intentionality, i.e. with regard to the interplay of intention, closer determination and fulfillment. 33 Thereby, the world qua horizon without doubt gets a decisive phenomenological distinction, as its participation in the process of constitution becomes manifest.34 Nevertheless, it is exactly at that point, where phenomenological analysis seems to reach its highest concreteness by making a theme out of the forgotten “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt), that the immanent problem of historical phenomenology becomes apparent in an exemplary way. According to Husserl, this concreteness comes to appear as a “mute concretization” (stumme Konkretion) only.35 “Life,” being qualified as a “ ‘latent’ life,”36 is announced on the surface of these coagulated validities only. Of course it is true that the autonomous dimension of sense-generation, which shows up within the interplay of the manifold horizons, refers to the co-constitution of subjectivity by the other.37 But beyond the twofold, exorbitant productivity of this concretization hides the aforementioned ambiguity of the concept of the horizon, which Husserl simply tried to dissolve by installing a transcendental “self-explication”38 of “intentional life.” At the same time the seemingly coherent figure of intentionality is found to be a presupposition, because it is realized that its dynamism simply pretends to unfold itself within a horizon, i.e. as a horizon. Nevertheless, intentionality unfolding itself within a horizon is only able to do so, i.e. to unfold itself as intentionality, inasmuch as the horizon within which it

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unfolds itself has already stabilized the dynamism of a preceding intentionality. Consequently, intentionality performs no inferior trick within Husserl’s thought than to produce itself.39 In this respect “horizon” appears to be simply another name for the field of transcendence seemingly produced by him. The concept of the horizon accordingly repeats the impossibility of transcendence to produce itself effectively, i.e. the impossibility to transcend itself originarily.40 Considered from a genetic point of view and against the background of time-constitution a “quasi-anonymous situation of nonphenomenalization”41 becomes established thereby. Additionally, this situation reiterates itself endlessly on the level of primal-impressional selfgivenness (urimpressionale Selbstgebung) where the strange alterity Husserl evocates is at once substituted for the inevitable emptiness of a pervading temporal irrealization which seems to allow its givenness.42 Finally, Husserl’s solution for this severe problem seems as easy as ingenious: pure phenomenological life, which realizes itself within impressional self-givenness, displaces itself on its own, insofar as it is intentionality and time at once. By splitting itself, it steps into this minimal distance from itself that seems to allow its primordial phenomenological, i.e. intentional givenness. But one has to note that life exactly thereby loses its selfness or “ipseity,” which makes the self of the givenness of every phenomenon possible originarily. By installing intentional intuition (Schau) as the original primacy of method,43 a negation of this radical “nonintentional passivity”44 (which realizes and legitimates the self’s givenness, i.e. its ipseity) takes place, which originarily hands every in-tentionality over to itself. Thus, the ontological possibility of transcendence, i.e. the event whereby it receives itself (Selbstergreifung qua self-givenness), taking place within the practical unfolding of the body’s receptivity,45 is negated, too. This constellation harbors an enormous problem for phenomenology: Following our elucidations, it can be observed that phenomenology substituted a specific but not at all universal constellation of givenness for the matrix of all possible appearance: anything that gives itself, gives itself only inasmuch as it shows itself.46 Under the title of intentionality the ontological event of showingitself, which already implies the ec-static dimension of exteriority and visibilizing distance within Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, becomes the exclusive “figure of givenness.”47 This substitution finally occurs, without anyone having clarified the phenomenological possibility of givenness, i.e. the fact of its being given to itself originarily. It happens without anyone having thematized the immanent possibility of intuition being prior to its methodical development, which nevertheless is presupposed in the logics of this same substitution.48

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3 . “ O N TO L O G I C A L M O N I S M ” A N D T H E PA R A D OX O F WO R L D - A P P E A R A N C E

The predominancy of this monotonous understanding of appearance has never been identified as such within occidental philosophy. In the identification of method and matters49 within historic phenomenology, this tendency moved tacitly into its purest form, which has been unveiled by M. Henry as a so-called “ontological monism”50 recently. This proposition firstly purports that the thematization of the essence of the phenomenon has always been delivered within a specific understanding of the concept of the phenomenon: Such an understanding identifies appearance with manifestation. 51 The respective identification occurs by reducing phenomenalization to the fact of becoming apparent or “showing-itself” (Sich-zeigen), which takes place within an “economy of concealment and disclosure,”52 i.e. within the apriori of visibility. But this methodological decision53 does not only imply a preference of a specific concept of phenomenality, even if it is the building of the transcendental horizon wherein the world becomes visible itself, which is at the stake here. As this production is identical with the imperative of phenomenological method itself (in the sense of the correlative unfolding of the horizon), it also implies this model of appearance being set as an absolutum, too. Moreover, it is exactly this model which is marked by an “ontological poorness,”54 Henry was able to demonstrate in the case of the forgotten impressionability being presupposed within time-constitution.55 Because the specific mode of appearance, which is at once set as an absolutum, resides exactly in the “self-generation of exteriority” (i.e. in the “horizon of visibility as such”56 and in its self-sufficiency), this ontological bottomlessness falls back onto the appearance of the world, especially onto the mode how the world as such (as well as any inner-worldly being) comes to appear. It falls back onto every kind of appearance, out of which it makes a modality of “world-appearing” (Welterscheinen). What is it, that might now be inferred from our analysis, which seems to work on a methodological level only? If we follow the essential distinction made by Eugen Fink between “thematic” and “operative” notions,57 and if we also accept that a lack of reflection on the functioning of terminology exercises an influence upon the methodological self-conception of phenomenology, a twofold omission concerning the thematization of the world has to be stated. On the one hand, world has been analyzed by Husserl and his successors as a purely thematic concept. On the other hand, this concept, whose consistency is warranted by the mode of appearance circumscribed by it (but not by its eidetic structure), is doubtlessly a basic operative concept,

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too. This seems to be correct, insofar as “world” (i.e. the mode and modality of any horizonal pre-givenness) designates nothing but an absolutely particular mode of appearance. But, as we have seen, it is the predominant interpretation of this mode being simply adapted within all differentiations of phenomenological analysis58 which paralyzes the self-understanding of phenomeno logical method. Thereby, the method gets heavily restricted according to its possibilities. This circumstance at once indicates that a central principle of phenomenology is violated.59 Consequently, the essence of my critical analyses can be noted: The “world” as such loses its phenomenological dignity inasmuch as phenomenological method considers “worldappearance” (i.e. showing-itself in the exteriority of a horizon) to be the exclusive figure of givenness. Accordingly, the seemingly paradoxical question which guides my further considerations turns out to be the following one: how can one assert an essential phenomenological positivity of the world against the background of this limitation, which turns out to be immanent to the prevailing kind of phenomenological analysis? How is such a positivity possible in the last analysis, if it is exactly the phenomenologics of “world-appearing” (i.e. the laws of the one and only mode of phenomenalization possible within its horizon), which destroys its own substance by projecting it outside itself as well as by exposing it into the sphere of noematic irreality?60 The facts of the case seem to contradict any possibility of considering such a positivity phenomenologically: on the one hand, the integrative figure of the horizon (which appears in an inflationary way in Husserl’s writings) has only been able to guarantee the autonomy of a pure phenomenological life superficially. On the other hand, it is impossible to explain any original “content of the world” (Weltgehalt) by a recourse to the modalities of the respective kind of appearance, because it is exactly the appearing of the world itself which deprives reality of its own substance. This is the extraordinary paradox which remains to be understood in order to sketch out an answer to the questions we posed. This paradox, considered in its phenomenological significance, is nothing but the “hidden prejudice of the preconditions of phenomenology,” which finally collapse when being unfolded totally within their logic. Consequently, the understanding of this paradox sheds light on what the “overthrow” (renversement) of phenomenology is about, which Henry is seeking for. The following paragraph cited from his most recent work points exactly at that problem: Comment ne pas apercevoir qu’une telle situation met gravement en cause le principe fondamental de la phénoménologie. Selon celui-ci, en effect, c’est la phénoménalité qui délivre l’être.

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C’est d’apparaˆıtre et pour autant seulement que l’apparaˆıtre apparaˆıt que quoi que ce soit est susceptible d’être. En cela consiste la préséance de la phénoménologie sur l’ontologie. Cette préséance est rompue dans le cas de l’apparaˆıtre du monde, s’il est vrai que celui-ci est impuissant à poser dans l’être ce à quoi il donne d’apparaˆıtre. En ce cas, ce qui apparaˆıt dans le monde, bien qu’apparaissant effectivement en lui, n’existe pas pour autant. Il y a plus: c’est parce qu’il apparaˆıt dans le monde qu’il n’existe pas. Ici le principe “autant d’apparaˆıtre, autant d’être” n’est pas seulement mis en cause, il est proprement renversé. C’est cet extraordinaire paradoxe qu’il faut regarder en face.61

To look into the face of this paradox, requires that phenomenology thematizes the presuppositions which guided its own development. It requires phenomenology to understand manifestation and intentionality as leading clues, which can be subjected to a radicalized reduction.62 4 . A NA LY T I C S O F T H E “ C O U N T E R - R E D U C T I V E C O N T E N T O F T H E WO R L D ” ( G E G E N - R E D U K T I V E R W E LT G E H A LT )

We have to understand Henry’s concept of a counter-reduction (GegenReduktion) with respect to these considerations. By this special kind of “reduction” he proposes a suspension of the constellation of phenomenological reduction, i.e. of the conditions of visibility and method inaugurated therewith.63 It is exactly on this condition that it becomes possible to concretize Henry’s insight into the “heterogenity” of the modes of appearing by working it out as a “duplicity.”64 By this concept Henry does not intend a “double life” of the subject65 wherein intentionality always remains the condition of giveness par excellence. On the contrary, the term points to the non-intentional investment and formation of givenness by the conditions of its being-given (Gegeben-sein). Adapting a radicalized reduction, these conditions become apparent as a non-phenomenal act. Thereby, the appearing of the phenomenon is taken into account as it is unfolded (i.e. given in an auto-donation [Selbstgebung]) not only beyond every egological intentionality, but even beyond the anonymity inaugurated by the “il y a” (es gibt).66 Here we finally arrive at the crucial point hidden within any monistic understanding of phenomenology, since this non-phenomal act does not persist beyond phenomenality.67 On the contrary, Henry simply deals with another phenomenality, with the “invisible” or the “absolute” which is “not situated outside its effective appearance but constitutes it.”68 This “process,” i.e. the “internal structure of immanence,”69 which is equivalent to a “non-phenomenal” structure of givenness, is nothing but “life” itself. From this point of view, Henry often emphasizes that it must not be understood as a formal structure, but with regard to transcendental affectivity building its effective structure.

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According to these pathic tonalities of life auto-affecting itself, we have to consider life with respect to the “original body”70 persisting beyond the hypostasis of the sensual in Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “flesh of the world,” which obscures the original potentiality of constitution.71 This original “body” is marked by the following characteristics: It is transcendental in the most extreme sense, since it is an “I can” being passively put into itself, i.e. being born.72 By this, it has to be understood as the “auto-revelation of intentionality within life,” which originally constitutes the “possibility of the sensual world” as such.73 The affective integrity of this transcendental ego, which is called “ipseity”74 by Henry in order to point at its non-intentional, invisible “relation,”75 also does not remain undetermined: On the contrary, it presupposes the same radically passive process of “life’s coming into itself,” which is a purely immanent process taking place within the primal “passibility”76 of the flesh, i.e. within the pure phenomenological possibility to experience (s’éprouver) oneself within the pathos of one’s flesh. By this definition the “flesh” becomes apparent as the way life “becomes life.”77 Life, incarnated within flesh, and flesh, being engendered within life itself, refer both to the same aprioric possibility of life’s experiencing itself (le s’éprouver soi même). Finally, this possibility has to be understood with regards to its pure immanence, which leads us to consider the generation of the flesh within life qua “absolute Life.”78 On the condition of the aformentioned “duplicity,” and given that it is the “inner unfolding of the organic body”, which does not only experience the life-world as the “correlate of a movement”79 beyond representation but which also puts it to the test at the limits of its potentiality as a “resistance” (Widerständigkeii), we have to acknowledge a “change of paradigm concerning praxis and intentionality.”80 From this point of view, the radicalized reduction arrives at an original “Being-able-to-move” (Bewegenkönnen), which is grounded in the primal passibility mentioned above. The radical apriori intended therewith precedes not only the “ability to touch,”81 but relates every acting back to the pathic immanence of the flesh, which consequently turns out to be the “immemorial memory of the world.”82 The world, on the other hand, becomes apparent as the “immanent unity” of a “resisting continuum” which is – and always was – immanent to the “I can.”83 Tout l’être de ce qui résiste est alors dans la force à laquelle il résiste. La facon dont il résiste, c’est la facon dont cette force s’éprouve. La facon dont il se révèle, c’est la facon dont elle se révèle à elle-même comme entravée, inhibée, ne pouvant se déployer librement selon son vouloir propre. Le continu résistant est à la force ce que la figure spatiale est à l’espace. De même que la figure spatiale se découpe dans l’espace et n’existe jamais ailleurs qu’en lui, de même le continu résistant demeure intérieur au “je peux” dont il mesure la puissance. Si l’on veut encore parler ici d’extériorité, c’est d’une extériorite foncièrement étrangère à celle du monde …84

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From this point of view a lot of different analyses become possible, e.g. concerning the original body and its incarnation, concerning the earth, sensual cosmos, as well as nature and creation.85 Based on our insights, we have to acknowledge that the explication of these and any other phenomena will have to take place with respect to the phenomenological status of “subjective praxis persisting beyond any equivalents”86 considered in economy and theory. It is not my aim to consider the “ontological modification” intended therewith, which would enable us to reflect upon the extensive metaphysical decision, according to which production might only be thought of within the horizon of the ontological event of truth. Consequently, I only tried to explain how this process remains grounded beyond the production of objectivity and technicalization. This amounted to analyzing how we experience any-thing given within the horizon of the world originarily. By performing a radicalised reduction of the methodological presuppositions of classical phenomenology, we have been able to recover this most radical phenomenological possibility within the immanent unfolding of our subjective and bodily praxis. Finally, this praxis proved to be nothing else but our primordial sensuality. This essentially “sensual possibility to experience” (which has been named “passibility,” in order to emphasize the violence included in it87) engenders any content of our world originally, which has simply been presupposed in phenomenological intution as well as in consumption as a merely distanced correlate. University of Vienna N OT E S 1 Philosophie et phénoménologie du corps. Essai sur l’ontologie biranienne (Paris: P.U.F., 1965), p. 44 (Engl. transl. by G. Etzkorn, Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, Den Haag: Nijhoff 1975, 32). 2 Cf. E. Fink, Studien zur Phänomenologie (Den Haag: Nijhoff 1966), p. 101. 3 Cf. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986), § 7, p. 28. 4 Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1954), (Hua VI), p. 162, where Husserl notices the problematical “relativity” of the “unfolding of the horizon” (Horizontentfaltung) of this special apriori, which does not cease to concretize itself. (All translations from German editions are given by the author; otherwise the English edition is quoted.) 5 Cf. E. Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 1. Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), (Hua-Dok II/1), esp. p. 61 ff. 6 Cf. E. Husserl, e.g. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachla ␤. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935 (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1973 (Hua XV)), p. 366. “Constructive phenomenology” also does not, according to Fink (op. cit., 62), only mark another “closed

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thematic connection,” but a “notion of method concerning transcendental findings of a special sort.” 7 We are dealing with a possible transcendental “leading clue” (Leitfaden) of phenomenological analysis; cf. E. Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926 (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1966), (Hua XI), p. 344. The problematic related therewith has been realized at first by Fink. It becomes manifest within his analyses concerning the “pre-givenness” as a “captivation within the world,” VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 2. Ergänzungsband (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), (Hua.-Dok. II/2), pp. 93–105 and 202–219, cf. R. Bruzina, “Redoing the Phenomenology of the World”, in: Alter 6 (1998) pp. 39–118, esp. 54 ff. 8 Above all one would have to elucidate the status of being a “leading clue,” which has been awarded to the experience of the world within phenomenological architectonics, and which is, in the most essential cases (as the problem of intersubjectivity e.g.) the reason for all the known paradoxes and paralogisms (cf. E. Fink, op. cit., 267 f.). 9 See also J. G. Hart, who provides us with a similar conclusion by analyzing the implications of Husserl’s theory of intentionality: “Intentionality, Phenomenality, and Light,” in: D. Zahavi (ed.), Self-awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Central Topics in Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998), pp. 59–82, here 77–79. 10 The respective principle of phenomenology, i.e. “more givenness – more reduction” has been worked out by J.-L. Marion, Réduction et donation. Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie (Paris: P.U.F., 1989) (Engl. transl. Reduction and giveness. Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1998). Taking up this discussion, Henry shows how this principle finally allows for the secret logic of “historic phenomenology” to become manifest, cf. his “Quatre principes,” in: Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 1 (1991) pp. 3–26. 11 Henry accordingly speaks about a “degeneration of the fundamental concepts,” cf. Radikale Lebensphänomenologie. Ausgewählte Studien zur Phänomenologie (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1992), p. 81. 12 This refers to the reproach made by B. Waldenfels (see e.g. “Antwort auf das Fremde. Grundzüge einer responsiven Phänomenologie,” in: I. Därmann, B. Waldenfels [eds.], Der Anspruch des Anderen. Perspektiven phänomenologischer Ethik, München: Fink 1998, pp. 35–49, esp. 41 f.), which we are going to discuss here implicitly. 13 Cf. S. Strasser, “Der Begriff der Welt in der phänomenologischen Philosophie,” in: Phänomenologische Forschungen 3 (1976) pp. 151–179, here 154 ff. 14 See Husserl’s analyses concerning an absolute monadology and teleology, cf. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (Hua XV), op. cit., p. 592 ff. and 619 ff. 15 Cf. Die Krisis (Hua VI), op. cit., p. 147, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), II. Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1959), (Hua VIII), p. 161. 16 Cf. E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1950), (Hua I), p. 84: “das anonyme cogitierende Leben.” Husserl’s narrow conception of “life” is critized by R. Kühn, Husserls Begriff der Passivität (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1998). 17 Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis, op. cit., p. 255. 18 R. Kühn, Husserls Begriff der Passivität, p. 328. 19 Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis, Beilage VI, p. 407. 20 E. Husserl, op. cit., p. 171. 21 Cf. E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachla ␤ 1934–1937 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), (Hua XXIX), p. 192, 247.

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22 Cf. E. Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Hua XI), p. 4 ff.; according to the genetic, apperceptive structure which is implied within this kind of givenness, see ibid. p. 336 ff. 23 Cf. E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1950), (Hua III), p. 71, 262. 24 See, for this relationship, E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985), e.g. p. 32, and K. Mertens, Zwischen Skepsis und Letztbegründung. Kritische Untersuchungen zum Selbstverständnis der transzendentalen Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1996), p. 205. 25 Cf. R. J. Walton, “World-experience, World-representation, and the World as an Idea,” in: Husserl Studies 14 (1997) pp. 1–20. 26 E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (Hua VIII), p. 182, cf. Die Krisis (Hua VI), p. 240: “implizite Horizontintentionalität.” 27 Ms. A VII 14, 32a, cited G. A. de Almeida, Sinn und Inhalt in der genetischen Phänomenologie (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1972), p. 215: “universale Formstruktur.” 28 E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, p. 37. See also M. Merleau-Ponty (Das Sichtbare und das Unsichtbare, München: Fink 1994, p. 377) who radicalizes the above alluded logic finally, inasmuch as he considers the radical passivity of one’s becoming a subject to be equivalent to the genesis of transcendence itself. 29 See the author’s Die Greuzen der Intentionalität. Zur Kritik der Phänomenalität und Husserl (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2003). 30 See M. Henry, “Ich bin die Wahrheit.” Für eine Philosophie des Christentums (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1997), pp. 26–32, who uncovers the phenomenological homology of these movements. 31 Within the conception of constitution Husserl also arrives at this point, cf. Die Krisis (Hua VI), p. 172. 32 M. Henry, “Ich bin die Wahrheit,” p. 31. 33 U. Kaiser, Das Motiv der Hemmung in Husserls Phänomenologie (München: Fink, 1997), p. 162 ff., shows, how phenomena like “surpression” or “retardation” might be located within this correlation. 34 See E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (Hua XV) z.B. p. 366 u. 380, but also E. Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation (Hua Dok. II/1), p. 49, 64. 35 E. Husserl, Die Krisis (Hua VI), p. 191. 36 Ibid., p. 122: “ ‘latentes’ Tiefenleben.” 37 See D. Zahavi, Self-awareness and Alterity. A phenomenological Investigation (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), p. 134 ff., for an elucidation of this relation along the guiding thread of self-consciousness. 38 M. Henry, Radikale Lebensphänomenologie, p. 178; see also E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen (Hua I), § 41, p. 116 ff. 39 Cf. Henry’s discussion in Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair (Paris: Seuil, 2000), p. 50 ff.; the problem is dealt with in R. Kühn, “Immanenz als affektive Historialität,” in: H: R. Sepp and T. Tani (ed.), Zeit in der Phänomenologie (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2004 (forthcoming).) 40 M. Henry’s main work L’essence de la manifestation (Paris: P.U.F., 1963), pp. 276 ff., 427 ff., 479 (Engl. transl. by. G. Etzkorn, The Essence of Manifestation, Den Haag: Nijhoff 1973, pp. 223–225, 342–344, 380) is dedicated to the radical phenomenological explanation of this fundamental impossibility; see also Incarnation, e.g. p. 55 and Steinbock’s explanation of this situation in “The problem of forgetfulness.” in: Continental Philosophy Review 32 (1999/3) pp. 271–302, here 274–277.

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R. Kühn, “Immanenz als affektive Historialität.” op. cit., § 2. See. M. Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle (Paris: P.U.F., 1990), p. 32 f.; cf. R. Kühn, Leiblichkeit als Lebendigkeit. Michel Henrys Lebensphänomenologie radikaler Subjektivität als Affektivität (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1992), pp. 178–196, for a respective demonstration according to Husserl. 43 See. E. Husserl, Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1950), (Hua II), p. 31, 62 f., E. Fink, Studien zur Phänomenologie, p. 206. 44 See, e.g. M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 366 (Engl. transl. p. 294). Henry understands this passivity, which functions as the concrete condition of the act of transcendence, as the “pure immanence” in its “auto-revelation.” This immanence furthermore bears its own dimension of becoming, which can be analysed along the “leading clue” of affectivity in the sense of a “pathetic historiality” beyond mundane historicity. 45 See. M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 256 ff. (Engl. p. 208 ff.) 46 J.-L. Marion’s explication leads exactly to this point, see Etant donné. Essai d’une phénoménologie de la donation (Paris: P.U.F., 1997), Engl. transl., pp. 100–102 Being given. Towards a Phenomenology of Givenness (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002), pp. 68–70. 47 J.-L. Marion, Réduction et donation, p. 303 ff. (Engl. transl., pp. 203–205) 48 Phénoménologie matérielle, pp. 61–135 (German transl., Radikale Lebensphänomenologie, pp. 63–186). 49 M. Henry, Radikale Lebensphänomenologie, p. 162 ff., Incarnation, pp. 45–46, 104 ff.; cf. D. Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française (Paris: Eclat, 1991), p. 65 ff. (Engl. transl. by. G. Prusak, in: Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn” (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp. 16–103, here 79–86) who thematizes this correlation with respect to the problem of the scientific character of phenomenology. 50 See M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, pp. 59–164 (Engl. pp. 47–133); cf. R. Kühn, Leiblichkeit als Lebendigkeit, 51–126; A. Steinbock, “The problem of forgetfulness in M. Henry,” pp. 277–283. 51 R. Kühn, Leiblichkeit als Lebendigkeit, p. 127. 52 A. J. Steinbock, “Limit-phenomena,” in: Alter 6 (1998) pp. 275–296, here 292. 53 Steinbock (“The problem of forgetfulness,” p. 281) discusses whether this decision remains related back towards the invisible essence of immanence, which would imply that “ontological monism” is grounded in an ontological hiddenness of the essence and gets unfolded in its “creative elaboration.” 54 M. Henry, Incarnation, § 4, pp. 55–61, with respect to Heidegger. 55 M. Henry, Phénoménologie matérielle, pp. 13–59; see again R. Kühn, “Immanenz als affektive Historialität,” op. cit., for a profound reconstruction of this constellation. 56 M. Henry, “Ich bin die Wahrheit,” p. 30. 57 E. Fink, “Operative Begriffe in Husserls Phänomenologie,” in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung XI/3 (1957) pp. 321–337. 58 See R. Kühn’s detailed study, Husserls Begriff der Passivität, as well as the author’s, “Von der Analytik der Vorgegebenheit zur ‘Metaphysik der Erprobung,’ ” in: R. Kühn/S. Nowotny (eds.), Michel Henry. Zur Selbsterprobung des Lebens und der Kultur (Freiburg/München: Alber, 2002), pp. 109–143, for the demonstration that an “analytics of pregivenness,” which applies the whole instruments of genetic phenomenology, does not escape this streamlining. 59 See M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 38: “Höher als die Wirklichkeit steht die Möglichkeit.” Our reproach, which seems to meet Husserl only, nevertheless is at once directed against Heidegger, because he even stronger locks up the structure of possibility by intepreting it against the background of Dasein’s being-in-the-world being interpreted within the systematics of “care.” 42

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60 Cf. Henry, Radikale Lebensphänomenologie, p. 137 f., 172 f., Die Barbarei. Eine phänomenologische Kulturkritik (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1994), p. 304 ff., “Ich bin die Wahrheit,” p. 34, vgl. 47, Incarnation, p. 69 u. 131. 61 M. Henry, Incarnation, p. 61. 62 See R. K¨uhn and M. Staudigl, “Von der skeptischen Epoché zur Gegen-Reduktion,” in: R. Kühn/M. Staudigl (eds.), Epoché und Reduktion. Formen und Praxis der Reduktion (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2003), pp. 11–28, here 20–28. 63 This expression occurs in Henry, “Radikale Lebensphänomenologie,” p. 279, “Nichtintentionale Phänomenologie und Gegen-Reduktion,” in: R. Kühn and M. Staudigl, Epoché und Reduktion, op. cit., esp. p. 100 ff. The problem of a “reduction a priori” is developed by R. Kühn, “Die lebensphänomenologische Gegen-Reduktion,” in: R. Kühn and S. Nowotny (eds.), Michel Henry, op. cit., pp. 23–54, as well as in J.-M. Longneaux, “La réduction radicalisée comme passage du premier au troisième genre de connaissance,” in: J.-M. Longneaux (ed.), Retrouver la vie oubliée. Critiques et perspectives de la philosophie de Michel Henry (Namur: Presses universitaires, 2000), pp. 45–64, here 61–64. 64 See, for a final definition of this heterogenity, M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, pp. 860–861 (Engl. p. 684). See also ibid. p. 561 ff. (Engl. transl. pp. 447–448), where the “irreducible heterogenity” of the according structures is not only explicated in the sense of an “eidetic,” “structural” and “ontological” heterogenity, but, in the last analysis, as a “formal ontological” one (p. 564; Engl. p. 450), as well as an “absolute difference” which finally turns out to be a (phenomenological) “indifference” (p. 561; Engl. p. 468). Some explications of the notion “duplicity,” occuring originarily in Fichte and Schelling, are to be found in Inkarnation, p. 101, 160 and 216. 65 See R. Bernet, La vie du sujet (Paris: P.U.F., 1994), esp. pp. 297–327 (Engl. transl. of this chapter, “An intentionality without subject or object,” in: Man and World 27/3 (1994), pp. 231–255) for a discussion of Henry’s argument. 66 Cf. J.-L. Marion (Etant donné, esp. pp. 50–60), who suggests to translate the “es gibt” by “cela donne,” in order to emphasize the autonomy of the structure of donation against Heidegger’s priorization of the “event” and its temporality. 67 Cf. M. Henry, L’essence de la manifestation, p. 557 (Engl. transl. p. 444). 68 Ibid., p. 597 (p. 478); cf. H. R. Sepp, “Der Begriff des Absoluten bei Husserl und Henry,” in: R. Kühn and S. Nowotny (eds.), Michel Henry, op. cit., pp. 205–226, esp. 212 ff., who sheds some light on the identity of immanent revelation and the absolute. 69 L’essence de la manifestation, p. 349 ff., (pp. 281–298). 70 Incarnation, p. 167 ff.; cf. R. Kühn, Leiblichkeit als Lebendigkeit. 71 See ibid., p. 166. 72 Cf. M. Henry, “Phénoménologie de la naissance,” in: Alter 2 (1994) pp. 295–312, “Ich bin die Wahrheit,” pp. 86–89, 147–148, 189–190; cf. Incarnation, pp. 196–197, 202, 206. 73 Ibid., p. 168. 74 Cf. M. Henry, L’ essence de la manifestation, pp. 581–583 (Engl. transl. pp. 465–467); Radikale Lebensphänomenologie, pp. 41, 84–85, 102; Die Barbarei, pp. 126–127, 148, 255, “Ich bin die Wahrheit,” pp. 83–84, 156 ff., 173 ff., 181 ff. and passim; see J. Hart, “Michel Henry’s Phenomenological Theology. A Husserlian Reading of C’est Moi, la vérité,” in: Husserl Studies 15 (1998/3) pp. 183–230, here 197–198. 75 This is a point already to be found in L’ essence de la manifestation, even if Henry actually clarified it much later, esp. in “Ich bin die Wahrheit.” 76 M. Henry, Incarnation, p. 174 ff., 242 f. 77 Ibid., p. 174.

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Cf. ibid., p. 172 ff., 187, 192–193; see J. Hart, op. cit., pp. 204–208. M. Henry, Die Barbarei, p. 167. For an analysis of the “organic body” (organischer Leib) in the sense of a “body prior to sensation, prior to the world” (“Leib vor der Empfindung, vor der Welt”) cf. Incarnation, § 28, p. 209 ff. 80 R. Kühn, “Einleitung,” in: M. Henry, Radikale Lebensphänomenologie, op. cit., pp. 17–62, here p. 51. 81 M. Henry, Incarnation, pp. 197–198 and 203–206. 82 Ibid., § 27, p. 206 ff. 83 Vgl. ibid., § 28, p. 209 ff. 84 Ibid., p. 212. 85 See R. Kühn, “Schöpfung und Urpassibilität des Lebens,” in: Communio. Internationale katholische Zeitschrift 30. JG (2/2001) pp. 97–109. 86 R. Kühn, “Einleitung,” pp. 43–62. Consequently, the analysis is in the position to uncover the original event of correlation between our lived bodies and the world (Corpspropriation/Erdeinverleiblichung), which primordially sets us in the position of being “owners of the world” (cf. Die Barbarei, pp. 165–166). 87 Cf. R. Kühn, Radikalisierte Phänomenologie “Ausblick: Gewalt der Erprobung – oder praktische Phänomenologie,” (Frankfurt/M. et al.: Lang 2003) pp. 240–258. 79

SECTION III T R A N S C E N D E N TA L I S M R E V I S I T E D

WILLIAM D. MELANEY

AN ARCHEOLOGY OF BEGINNINGS: PHENOMENOLOGY A N D T H E S PAC E O F T H E WO R L D

The concept of beginnings retains considerable importance among contemporary philosophers who seek to deepen the significance of phenomenology as an inquiry into the question of truth and the space of the world. Edmund Husserl frequently emphasized the role of a return to the things themselves as a prerequisite for extending phenomenology beyond the horizons of constitutive subjectivity. Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the theme of time and the emergence of the life-world in his mature standpoint, but the issue of how phenomenology integrates the moment of world-formation into a special approach to knowledge is rarely assigned long-range significance. Hence, we will be concerned in this paper with how the phenomenological tradition, particularly as developed in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, employs the space of the world in exploring the question of truth and opening up the possibility of ideal meaning. However, we will first discuss how the space of the world was explored in Heidegger’s seminal work, Sein und Zeit, in order to suggest its importance to later phenomenological research. Our discussion will then converge on Husserl’s important study, Der Ursprung der Geometrie, which will be shown to form a unique response to the problem of existence, just as it moves beyond a purely theoretical approach to life in attempting to reconcile the experience of truth with the phenomenology of language. I

Husserl’s approach to the phenomenon of existence is what establishes the singularity of his approach to the things themselves. Epistemology is primarily concerned with the progressive attainment of complete knowledge, which assumes that entities are determined in the mode of givenness. Phenomenology, in contrast, is no longer metaphysics in the received meaning of the term. Husserl would have us return to the things themselves and thus transform the known into something that no longer belongs to a familiar setting. Within the orbit of this experience, the phenomenologist attains a level of understanding that is irreducible to an encounter with a single entity or set of entities that emerges within the horizon of experience 201 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 201–215. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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itself. A given science may offer precise knowledge, but the structure that it elaborates is only part of a larger sense of the world that phenomenology adopts as a leading theme in the attempt to clarify transcendental meaning. However, while encountering entities in this way, phenomenology stipulates that existents are originally presented as phenomena, and that the mode of presence remains important to temporal experience. Does phenomenology forfeit its claim to radicalism if it examines how entities present themselves in the mode of presence rather than in some other way? In addressing this question, we must be willing to acknowledge that phenomenology never becomes a theory that can be detached from a return to beginnings. The concept of return, however, begs the question of what has been adopted as the medium of return, that is, what enables us to assume that the act of return takes place in a coherent manner. This question can be related to Husserl’s later conception of the world-world as a “space” that is not only the setting for experience but cannot be understood apart from a reinterpretation of experience itself. Gadamer emphasizes in Wahrheit und Methode that Husserl develops a view of experience that performs an integrative function in the life-world: “Just as Dilthey begins with experience only in order to reach the concept of psychic wholeness, so Husserl shows that the unity of the flow of experience is prior to the discreteness of experiences and necessary to it.”1 Experience in phenomenology assumes a role that enables consciousness to rise above the conditions of subjective immediacy. The flow of experience, particularly when thought of in terms of time, is the element in which consciousness always surpasses the consciousness of what is given as present. For this reason, Heidegger’s later distinction between presence and presencing is, in some respects, already contained in the thought of experience as a continual flow that both enables time to be captured and disappears behind the momentary signs of what endures. From this perspective, the phenomenological motif of a return to beginnings acquires a significance that it would not have if it were simply an exhortation to remain bound to what is self-evident. Hence, the whole notion of a return, when understood in its radicality, enables us to better understand what motivated Heidegger in Sein und Zeit to denigrate all attempts to prove the existence of the world, since the matter of proof is exactly what prevents ontological criteria from determing the phenomenal significance of worldhood.2 His discussion of the “scandal” of proof is consistent with his commitment to the idea that being-in-the-world is fundamentally constitutive of Dasein. However, if the rejection of proof as a response to the danger of

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solipsism were a capitulation to relativism, then nothing could have been said about the possibility of grounding truth in an ontological sense. What is being rejected is not logical demonstration as such but the inadequacy of all attempts to found the world through the mere act of representing it. Heidegger’s critique of modern philosophies of representation has been the theme of many studies, but what is not so often taken into account is the unusual conception of the phenomenological method which prevents him from reaching for a proof in the first instance. To be sure, his early use of the term “method” is already a sign of his critical relationship to the Cartesian tradition. This does not mean, however, that the question of method is unimportant to the general structure and overall purpose of Sein und Zeit. It would be a mistake to confuse sheer factical givenness with the modes of presence that enable the things themselves to appear to Dasein. Furthermore, phenomenological appearance is irreducible to visual experience, which functions as only one mode of presence among others. Phenomenology can become a “method” for Heidegger precisely because it provides a rigorous basis for bringing the things themselves to the attention of research: “Thus, the meaning of the expression ‘phenomenon’ is established as what shows itself in itself, what is manifested.”3 As a philosophical method, phenomenology is not primarily concerned with showing in the prosaic sense. That which shows itself in itself could inform a genuine phenomenology only if such a phenomenon were already capable of revealing unanticipated aspects of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. When a return to the things themselves is assigned a new meaning in the attempt to designate a setting for brightness, phenomenology does not foreclose the play between visible and invisible any more than it reduces the phenomenon to the spatially present. Sein und Zeit is already committed to the attribution of an original difference to appearing phenomena, which become objects of knowledge only in derivative cases. This difference is not to be understood metaphysically but as the temporal precondition for what appears as phenomena. But to say this much is already to broach an ontological thematic that informs a return to the things themselves. The return in question would not presume a “theoretical” vantage point in terms of which beings could be grounded in an external form of apprehension. The setting that enables the things themselves to be more fully known requires a “hermeneutical” orientation. Phenomenology becomes a hermeneutic when it employs interpretation, when it works out the conditions for ontological investigation in general, and finally when it provides an analytic for Dasein’s existence.4

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Phenomenology in this special form is not compelled to assume that a “theoretical” account of the world is more valid than a “practical” account that relates to a situated understanding. The hermeneutical approach, at the same time, is far from involving a simple inversion of the traditional opposition between theory and practice either in Heidegger’s early or his later writings. The example of Descartes is taken up in Sein und Zeit to specify the decisive limitation of early modern ontologies in which entities emerge primarily as present at hand and therefore lack a proper basis for invoking a coherent sense of the world.5 Underlying the analysis of Cartesian ontology is the assumption that to be present-at-hand is an ontologically deficient mode of Dasein. This assumption, however, does not allow us to merely replace a theoretical standpoint with a practical one. The opposition between theory and practice is first suggested in the commonplace distinction between someone who only observes and someone else who truly acts. And yet, Heidegger contends that practical behaviour is never atheoretical or sightless, and that observation is a kind of concern rather than a detached form of looking.6 The phenomenological concept of world cannot be ontologically grounded unless Dasein can adopt an insightful and concerned relationship to beings as a whole. Moreover, the return to the things themselves would be incomplete if it did not enable us to determine how Dasein’s sense of the world is transcendentally constituted. The worldhood of the world does not normally appear to us until an instrumental complex has been disturbed in a manner that renders its inscribed function highly problematic. The world announces itself at the very moment that the things themselves cease to limit the horizon of Dasein’s circumspective concern.7 What this means is that the worldhood of the world is not composed of what is proximally ready-at-hand but discloses Dasein’s prior involvement in an interpretive situation. The question of truth is thus more fundamental than the emergence of the worldhood of the world since Dasein only understands the things themselves as explicit within an open situation and its temporal occasion. All seeing is seeing as, not only structurally but also because whatever is understood has been grasped in advance as in some sense knowable. 8 The transcendental horizon of the world is what enables Dasein to disclose the truth of entities, but the mere fact that Dasein “has” a world does not exhaust the circular movement of its understanding. In arguing that being and truth are intrinsically related, Heidegger also clarifies his view that practical activity is prior to theory, which emerges as an existential modification of circumspective concern through the temporal

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constitution of being-in-the-world.9 The difference between practical activity and the theoretical attitude seems to suggest that the latter can be defined in terms of an absence of praxis. Nonetheless, praxis always contains a special kind of theory, just as theoretical research invariably integrates a degree of technical praxis that at least establishes a framework in which scientific research can be carried out. The role of circumspection in practical concern provides an understanding of making-present, the process through which the living present can constitute the condition for the possibility of transforming projected meanings into proximal ones. The theoretical discovery of the present-at-hand would depend on the capacity of the researcher to interpret the living present within the horizon of anticipation and retention as well as in terms of the as-structure of the understanding.10 Modern physics is especially important in this respect since it is primarily concerned with the mathematical projection of Nature through the disclosure of what is a priori, rather than with either factual discoveries or with the use of mathematics as a theoretical tool. While emphasizing the role of temporality in the act of projection itself, Heidegger also invokes the space of the world in a transcendental sense when summarizing his discussion of how circumspective concern is modified in the formation of the theoretical attitude. A modification of our ontological understanding of the world occurs in the transformation of place into a spatiotemporal position during the genesis of theoretical behavior. This transformation conceals the space of the world as a phenomenological space that remains essential to any possible recovery of praxis as an activity informed with concern and insight. Hence Dasein must experience the disclosure of a world in understanding its involvement in the ready-at-hand before it can perform the existential neutralization that typifies the theoretical attitude. Furthermore, world-disclosure is ultimately grounded in temporality, which reveals how the space of the world is transcendentally constituted on a level that remains ontologically unclarified whenever it is falsely interpreted in terms of simple location. However, certain questions concerning the status of ideal meaning remain difficult to pose, let alone answer, within the framework of Sein und Zeit. The problem of ideal meaning acquires special urgency at the precise juncture where the problem of transcendental origins and the space of the world come together in Dasein’s experience of time. It could be argued that aspects of Husserl’s late work can be read as a creative response to the very problematic that receives a more existential articulation in Heidegger’s early work. In examining this possibility, however, we will be interested in

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exploring how Husserl moves toward a conception of ideal meaning that casts light on his view of science, language and history. At the same time, in order to more fully explore the deeper significance of these theoretical concerns, we will introduce two traditions of commentary that will enable Husserl’s work to be appreciated as an elaboration of earlier phenomenological themes and as a creative departure of its own. II

The phenomenological sense of world provides a useful starting point for considering how the problem of ideal meaning emerges in Husserl’s late work, which seeks to move behind the special sciences and uncover the conditions that render them possible. Particularly in the Die Krisis, Husserl employs the concept of the “life-world” in order to form a phenomenological picture of scientific endeavors. This very concept, however, is difficult to set apart from what Husserl repeatedly identified with the nature attitude, an unphilosophical predisposition that phenomenology seeks to move beyond through the transcendental reduction. It is possible, nonetheless, to accept the life-world as a useful philosophical concept by emphasizing its historical character, which can be clarified on the basis of human consciousness. Gadamer has argued that the life-world is basically a historical world and presumes the phenomenological concept of time.11 The unity of the life-world now assumes the form of a historical hypothesis that implies a somewhat revised view of tradition as an inescapable aspect of temporal experience. Now instead of seeing tradition as what encumbers a return to the things themselves. the term acquires a positive meaning that allows the entire lifeworld to be understood in a new guise. Moreover, in discovering the historicity of the life-world, Husserl opens up a crucial sphere of investigation that is irreducible to familiar epistemological categories. Merleau-Ponty suggests that the entire direction of Husserl’s thought, beginning with Ideas II and ending with the Die Krisis, is less a movement toward heightened subjectivity, “but that its function is rather to unveil a third dimension in which this distinction becomes problematic.”12 We might compare the role of this third dimension in phenomenology to the place of the aesthetic in Kant’s complete philosophy. Hence, just as Kant suggests that the space of the aesthetic carries us somewhere between understanding and freedom, Husserl brings us to a sphere of thought that indicates the point of contact between theory and practical experience. In Husserl’s case, of course, the meaning of the practical

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is not so closely identified with moral agency, but, it, too, is concerned with the element of praxis that adheres to every authentic act of consciousness. The theme of knowledge begins to emerge in this sphere as linked to the “space” in which the mind moves as active and free. Before reaching this moment, however, we begin to observe the forms and sedimentations that never found their way into ideal procedures. The space of phenomenological reflection is no longer constituted through an opposition between a priori considerations and the flux of immediate experience. Hence, in shifting his orientation from a concern with eidetic structures to this new space of origins, Husserl foregrounds the horizonal aspect of constitution that enables the appearance of the world to be taken as the setting for historical life. This shift in emphasis, however, still goes along with a persistent interest in the question of how the world can be universalized, particularly if it is thoroughly historical rather than the product of ideal reflection. The attempt to impose unity along “theoretical” lines would be inconsistent with the general tenor of Husserl’s thought. What is required would be an approach to the life-world that is capable of demonstrating how the concept of beginnings is already inscribed within history as both productive and spontaneous. Such a concept would have to be based on a view of temporality that goes beyond the Kantian position that time is subjective, in other words, the coordinate of an inner sense, and the more classical attempt to assign it an objective meaning within a trajectory of absolute motion. Finally, the phenomenological concept of time would have to be applicable to a new understanding of history that is no longer bound to a physicalistic interpretation of the present-at-hand as constituting the raw materials for reconstructing the past. A careful reading of Husserl’s essay, Der Ursprung der Geometrie, shows that history performs a role in the process of ideation that can be related to the phenomenon of the “living present” as it encompasses the experience of human consciousness. This phenomenon cannot be understood apart from the movement of protension, which enables consciousness to retain the past and surpass it as past present, and then to constitute another living present in the movement of time itself. History is only possible on the basis of the perpetual renewal of an original and absolute temporality.13 When understood in terms of the living present, history assumes the form of a unified tradition that animates the entire community in its quest for truth. From this standpoint, Husserl contends that the science of geometry is irreducibly historical because it could not have come into existence as a complete project before it emerged in time. This process of emergence does

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not provide a fixed a priori that is objectified through secondary practices. Furthermore, the historical nature of geometry also refutes its Platonic formulation as a science of ideal objects as well as its empirical a reduction to a regional ontology. The interconnections that constitute tradition provide the motive for a coherent reading of the historical world. Does this mean, however, that phenomenology interprets history through a concept of the a priori that overrides the interconnections themselves? The answer to this question requires a closer look at the way that history appears in the phenomenological setting of human knowledge. In an early commentary on Husserl’s text, Jacques Derrida has discussed the importance of language and writing to the possibility of this space of appearance. Husserl contends that all ideal formations, not simply those pertaining to geometry, are in some sense rooted in language, since it is in language in general that objectivity achieves its initial form. This does not mean, of course, that our common language is adequate for assessing scientific truth. However, the cultural world itself, which would include the sciences as well as the art of literature, derives fundamental significance from ideal meaning. This ideal significance pertains to the nature of ideal objects and is irreducible to empirical considerations. For Husserl, the ideal object provides the basis for understanding any real object or group of objects. A major purpose of Der Ursprung der Geometrie, therefore, is to elucidate the possibility of the ideal object, which becomes important precisely because it cannot assume the attributes of a real object in the mathematical context. Hence to say that ideal objectivities are rooted in language is to say various things about the nature of language. Husserl regards ideal objectivity as the basis for sustaining the sameness of individual words as expressed in linguistic utterances. The ideal object that emerges in the form of the same does not require the actual existence of the speaking subject in order to acquire identity. Husserl will argue that intentional content, rather than concrete expression, is what allows a given word to be translated from one language to another. At the same time, since the object implied by a word is contingent and natural, it falls beneath language and becomes the occasion for the expression of ideal meaning. The ideal object, in contrast, is absolute in the sense of being able to maintain itself apart from the possibility of any given translation. This helps demonstrate how science only becomes possible through a reduction of language, rather than merely through the expressions of a given language or even on the basis of language in general. Furthermore, in appearing as a reduction of language, science shows us that the idealities

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that make up its truths are no longer coextensive with the ideal meanings that animate language and broadly define its importance. And yet, in Derrida’s interpretation, Husserl shows that geometry can be spoken about only on the basis of an inquiry into language in general, apart from which it would remain bound to the psychology of the factual individual. The possibility of speaking about geometry therefore becomes essential to the constitution of truth in its objective form. Derrida assesses the situation in this manner: “Speech is no longer simply the expression (Aüsserung) of what, without it, would already be an object: caught again in its primordial purity, speech constitutes the object and is a concrete juridical condition of truth.”14 The turn to language is thus a rehabilitation of history, which alienates the ideality of sense that would otherwise remain imprisoned in subjectivity. However, in disagreeing with Merleau-Monty, Derrida insists that this movement is fundamentally consistent with Husserl’s early work in logic as well as his later, more transcendental orientation.15 He underscores the continuing importance of the epoche- to demonstrating how “constituted language” is also included in the phenomenological reduction. What is revealed through this procedure is the complex role that intersubjectivity performs in constituting the ideal object. It is at this point that language appears as a factor in constituting the ideal object on the basis of material inscriptions. The role of language in the origin of ideal purity, therefore, can be related to the whole thematics of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the formation of the life-world.16 The constitution of the ideal object presupposes a setting of sedimentations that are both retained and projected into the future. The origin of geometry enables us to see how intersubjectivity can be conceived in terms of the role of language in producing a common world. Within the horizon of linguistic practices, the individual confronts the existing object only because consciousness shares in precultural meanings. The phenomenological discovery of precultural experience is not a regression but a theoretical achievement of the highest order. However, the precultural always remains in some sense inaccessible. It is not conceived in the form of a limitation to phenomenological method but as the site of an ineffable subjectivity that cannot be encoded in the language of science and must be respected as an element of the unknown. This lack of adequation is also reflected in Husserl’s view that geometry attaches objective importance to space but reveals that a science of the Earth would be phenomenologically incoherent.17 Derrida contends that, even as spoken communication, language as such is incapable of grounding ideal meaning in a community of subjects. A further

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step must be taken before the object can be instituted in a transcendental capacity: “Writing will do this by emancipating sense from its actually present evidence for a real subject and from its present circulation within a determined community.”18 What writing allows is a virtual dialogue that opens the space of the world in which speaking subjects would otherwise communicate only in delimited contexts. This allowance also has its dangers, which are expressed in the phenomenological concept of crisis as a description of whatever can be shown to threaten the project of univocal meaning. Such a notion of crisis, however, is only an aspect of what Husserl would have us understand to be possible to the scientific stance, which might be raised to the level of genuine reflection if the importance of the life-world to its own activity were to be grasped in a phenomenological manner. The inevitability of crisis is not simply imposed on science as part of the work of analytic reason but relates to the “meaning” of subjectivity as it functions in conjunction with the life-world. Crisis in this sense is interminable. In this case, because the possibility of being written down is what enables sense to transcend the limitations of time and space, writing introduces a measure of freedom that is only imperfectly expressed in the notion of linguistic embodiment. Writing is a virtual performance that introduces a transcendental field apart from which ideal meaning cannot be said and written, that is, apart from which it cannot become fully objective. The transcendental field that writing brings into being is one from which every particular subject is absent, but it is also a condition for the possibility of transcendental subjectivity in general.19 Hence writing is conceived in Derrida’s formulation as an essential element in the formation of the world when its virtual incarnation comes to initiate ideal meaning. III

Our discussion of phenomenology has brought us to the world as it opens to the constitution of ideal meaning. We began our discussion with reference to how phenomenology seeks to return to the things themselves. Heidegger’s understanding of world-disclosure provides a temporal basis for re-thinking the ontological limits of theoretical reflection. What has become increasingly obvious, however, is that the telos of the return to the things themselves brings us to the phenomenology of language. For Merleau-Ponty, the role of language in the constitution of ideal meaning testifies to the space between being and knowledge: “Truth is another name for sedimentation, which is itself the presence of all presents in our own.”20 The importance of language

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was foregrounded in Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on the “third dimension” that assumes decisive importance in Husserl’s later work. There is no purely theoretical standpoint that can master the living present from the outside, since every theory presupposes linguistic conditions that remain aspects of its history. The role of language in Husserl’s phenomenology was prepared for us through the articulation of subjectivity as essentially anonymous, which enables specific accomplishments to be carried out in the life-world. Husserl acknowledges that no previous philosophy, not even that of Kant, was able to return to the subjective conditions that constitute the possibility of a knowable world. Phenomenology calls attention to the distinction between the logical a priori and the a priori of the life-world, just as it attempts to situate theory itself in a new milieu. Furthermore, in phenomenology, the ground of the sciences themselves is conceived as a single ground, and one that can be investigated before all others. This very ground, however, is that of anonymous subjectivity upon which our more personal accomplishments invariably depend: “Before all such accomplishments there has always already been a universal accomplishment, presupposed by all human praxis and all scientific life.”21 Human subjectivity in this scheme would arise on the basis of a world-constituting activity that exists prior to personal expressions and provides the goal for consciousness itself. Finally, the organic metaphor of the purposive body would acquire cogency when the life-world is conceptualized as an “inside” in relation to the “outside” of pure research.22 Consciousness in this setting becomes the place where crucial issues are articulated in terms of a life-world that always flows on while containing a hidden source. The phenomenology of language, however, is not only concerned with the embodiment of meaning as an on-going, if necessarily interminable, movement toward truth. Derrida has shown how writing as well as language must be taken into account whenever objectivity is constituted on the horizon of the transcendental field. Writing is not extrinsic to the embodiment of meaning but opens the space in which ideality can become free, a process that is the reverse of what occurs when the speaking subject engages in acts of verbal expression. The leap that enables ideal meaning to emerge is one that re-establishes the difference between being and (present) knowledge in terms of a living present, just as it calls attention to how a situation of closure can be altered through the creation of new meaning. This leap might be described as a departure that enables writing to prepare ideal meaning for its exile in language. Derrida contends, however, that “truth is no longer simply

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exiled in the primordial event of language” when it assumes objective form through the vehicle of a linguistic intention.23 The historical place of truth authenticates the linguistic event and determines whether the event itself establishes truth-value. Derrida alludes to the theme of exile only in passing, but this theme might be related to the new beginning that phenomenology could initiate as it reaffirms its fundamental premises. Husserl attributes the form of infinitization to Greek philosophy and geometry; however, he also suggests that the world of the Greeks is that of a finite and closed a priori.24 Derrida contends that, even within Die Krisis, “the modern infinitization will mark less an authentic upsurging than a kind of resurrection of geometry.”25 What this means is that the birth of geometry is always in some sense the pursuit of an origin that remains forever concealed. We might suggest further that every contribution to this unreachable goal presupposes a kind of exile from an earlier stage of praxis, which also sets limits to the scope of new initiatives. While Husserl does not seek to explain the origin of our ability to invent, he does discuss the anticipatory structure of intentionality that underlies this process in terms of “an Idea in the Kantian sense.”26 The latter corresponds to an ideation. It has the capacity to constitute an object on the basis of intuitions that define the field of current practices and enable new practices to emerge in their place. The space of a (given) world is the setting for the truth that it discloses. It would seem, however, that the role of consciousness in phenomenology could entail a subjectivization of truth, in other words, a return to the position of classical Kantianism that Husserl sought to transcend in his early work. How does phenomenology respond to this familiar criticism of its special interpretation of the transcendental attitude? The answer to this question has been clearly presented by Husserl himself. Transcendental life constitutes the world in a manner that includes transcendental subjectivity but does not coincide with it insofar as the objective life-world remains unreflective.27 Phenomenology requires a complete overturning of the natural attitude rather than the partial overturning that occurs in critical philosophy. It could be argued that the thematics of exile might describe this more radical overcoming, which indicates how the world as normally constituted through the natural attitude must be left behind and subsequently revisited before it can become the subject-matter of transcendental phenomenology. We move in this framework from the space of the world to basic disclosures that become inseparable from a temporal experience of the life-world. This entire process takes us beyond a sense of the world that is limited to immediate experience. It now becomes clear that the things themselves to

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which phenomenology returns should not be confused with discrete entities that can be perceived at close range. The motive for return is not the thing that is present-at-hand but a willingness that allows the thing to assume its place in an arc of thinking that describes an imperfect circle.28 Philosophy, we have been told, begins in wonder, and yet the philosopher who remains attached to the totality of what exists would misunderstand the return to beginnings.29 The phenomenon of existence, therefore, is not to be understood apart from the entire circuit of return in which entities present themselves as both intuitively present and absent from worldly knowing. The possibility of being written becomes, in this trajectory, a crucial mode of absence that anticipates the presence of ideal meaning in consciousness itself. Again the theme of exile could be invoked in the attempt to convey the value of absence to linguistic intentions in the constitution of meaning. In an essay on the poetry of Edmond Jabés, Derrida discusses the essential gap between significations as something that cannot be understood as a flaw in the nature of language. The poet who goes into exile only to discover his origin in language already calls attention to the creative distance that writing brings into relief. To assume that this distance can be eliminated is “to misconstrue that language is the rupture with totality itself.”30 The return to beginnings must include this moment of rupture in the opening of the world that occurs in our encounter with the things themselves. The existence of the world may not be susceptible to proof, but our sense of its presence is woven into the space of this departure and this return. The American University in Cairo N OT E S 1

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1991), p. 249. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), section 43, p. 249. 3 Ibid., section 7A, p. 51. 4 Ibid., section 7C, pp. 61–62. 5 Ibid., sections 19–21, pp. 122–134. 6 Ibid., section 15, p. 99. 7 Ibid., section 16, p. 105. 8 Ibid., section 32, p. 191. 9 Ibid., section 69(b), pp. 408–415. 10 Ibid., pp. 411–412. 11 Gadamer presents this interpretation of the life-world as part of the hermeneutical task of overcoming epistemology: “The concept of the life-world is the antithesis of all objectivism. It is an essentially historical concept, which does not refer to a universe of being, to an existent ‘world.’” Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 247. 2

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12 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Philosopher and His Shadow,” Signs (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 162. Husserl discusses how a “life of depth” is the hidden dimension in Kantian philosophy, which can be made accessible to sciences through an appropriate method of disclosure. Cf. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999), section 32, pp. 118–121. 13 There can be no doubt that Heidegger’s speculations on the temporality of history are indebted to the phenomenology of internal time-consciousness: “If we are to cast light on historicity itself in terms of temporality, and primordially in terms of temporality that is authentic, then it is essential to this task that we carry it out by construing it phenomenologically.” Heidegger, Being and Time, section 72, p. 428. It should be added, furthermore, that history in the phenomenological sense depends less on the temporal distance of the present-at-hand than on a temporal depth that must overtake everything destined to become historical. 14 Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry”: An Introduction (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 77. 15 Ibid., pp. 77–78. 16 Ibid., p. 79. 17 Ibid., p. 83. 18 Ibid., p. 87. 19 Ibid., p. 88. 20 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language,” Signs, p. 97. 21 Husserl, The Crisis, section 29, p. 113. 22 Ibid., pp. 113–114. 23 Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry”: An Introduction, p. 90. 24 Cf. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis, section 21, pp. 21–23. 25 Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry”. An Introduction, p. 130. 26 Ibid., pp. 134–135. 27 Husserl, The Crisis, section 52, pp. 175–176. 28 The arc of thinking is imperfect because it describes a hermeneutical circle, rather than a complete circle that remains self-contained. The field of transcendence that establishes distance toward all of being, which makes the human being a “creature of distances,” is the precondition for our closest encounters with the beings that are nearby. Cf. Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Reasons (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), pp. 130–131. 29 While arguing that wonder among the ancient Greeks was an attitude, not a psychological disposition, Heidegger also contends that “the basic disposition can no longer be one of wonder, in which beings as such with regard to their Being once emerged as the most universal.” Cf. Martin Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic” (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 159. It would seem that the limit of modernity itself constitutes a new starting point for the ontological response to the Being of beings demanded of human beings today. 30 Jacques Derrida, “Edmond Jabes and the Question of the Book,” Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 71.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bachelard, Suzanne. A Study of Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Lester E. Embree. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968).

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Carr, David. Phenomenology and the Problem of History: A Study of Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974). Derrida, Jacques. Edmund Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry”: An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). —. “Edmond Jabés and the Question of the Book.” Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1991). Heidegger, Martin. Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic.” Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994). —. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). —. The Essence of Reasons. Ed. Terrence Malick. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969). Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Trans. David Carr. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999). —. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Trans. Dorion Cairns. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Prose of the World. Trans John O’Neill. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). —. “On the Phenomenology of Language” and “The Philosopher and His Shadow.” Signs. Trans. Richard C. McCleary. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964). pp. 84–97, 159–181. — Themes from the Lectures at the College de France 1952–1960. Trans. John O’Neill. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Ricoeur, Paul. Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Trans. Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967).

M I C H A E L F. A N D R E W S

E D M U N D H U S S E R L : E M PAT H Y A N D T H E T R A N S C E N D E N TA L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E WO R L D

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A critical tension within Husserl’s thinking – that is, his attachment to the classical Greek Enlightenment and things apodictic on one hand, and his constantly returning to the world that is “constituted” and “in flux” on the other hand – saturates the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Such ambivalence is manifest by Husserl’s controversial notion that empathy [Einfühlung] is a founding mode, a transcendental condition of the Objective world. Kathleen Haney notes that empathy is not only intrinsic to any life-world, but as well provides the unity of the sciences and the means for their proper ordering.1 Because empathy makes possible our objective knowledge of the natural [Naturwissenschaften] and social [Geisteswissenschaften] sciences, Husserl’s notion of empathy was met with derision by Martin Heidegger, who rejected outright any theory that assigned to empathy a founding mode. “This phenomenon,” Heidegger argues, “which is none too happily designated as ‘empathy,’ is then supposed, as it were, to provide the first ontological bridge from one’s own subject, which is given proximally as alone, to the other subject, which is proximally quite closed off.”2 If this were the case – that is, if empathy was a founding mode as Husserl proposed – then, Heidegger concludes, the Other would be reducible to a mere a duplicate of the Self, a non-differentiated reproduction cloned by “publicness” [die Offentlickeit], a mere Thing [Ding] in a world [Welt] in which “everyone is the other, and no one is himself.”3 My argument is that Heidegger’s critique of empathy sells Husserl short. In fact, Heidegger’s assault on empathy demonstrates a serious misunderstanding as to the goal and spirit of Husserl’s overall project. What Husserl is giving is a (static) account of the component strata of our knowledge of other persons. Similar to the existence of nature and the world, the Other is never in doubt for Husserl, but rather needs explaining. Hence, it is in proposing a defense of empathy as a condition of possibility of transcendental constitution that I am primarily concerned. It is essential not to confuse Heidegger’s critique of empathy (which occurs most explicitly in chapter four of the first part of Being and Time),4 with Husserl’s more robust social theory of constitution as outlined in the 217 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 217–237. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Fifth of the Cartesian Meditations. What Heidegger says is that the “who” of everyday Dasein is never I-myself, but the They [das Man] of mass society. In its fallen everydayness, Dasein encounters the Other as an object in the world, a mere tool [das Zeug] for its use, and shares this world with others who are always and already there in Being-among-one-another [Untereinandersein].5 The Other is always given to Dasein environmentally, that is, in the fallenness of tools and their uses. Accordingly, the world in which Dasein finds itself is from the start always a with-world [Mitwelt], a world of Others. But by Others [Anderen] Heidegger means the ones among whom I am myself already lost, astray, caught-up with even before “I” enter the scene. “By Others,” Heidegger notes, “we do not mean everyone else but me.… They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself.”6 For Heidegger, Others are precisely those who are not different from me. Hence, Heidegger proposes a categorical rejection of the use of empathy for any sort of theoretical explanation of the constitution of the alter ego. By dismissing analogical appresentation, Heidegger’s task is to show, not how others are constituted, but how I can ever authentically hope to be myself [mir “selbst”] in the midst of the overwhelming presence of Others. What is primordially present for Heidegger, then, is my being in the world of-andwith others. In Being and Time, Heidegger defines empathy as an ontic structure that presupposes the ontological a priori structure of being-with: empathy is not a primordial existential phenomenon.7 It is therefore in principle incoherent that there could exist any sort of private world at all. Because it is a founded mode, the main problem of empathy consists for Heidegger in the difficulty of authentic being-with. “Only on the basis of Being-with does ‘empathy’ become possible: it gets its motivation from the unsociability of the dominant modes of Being-with.”8 This is not the case for Husserl, who argues that empathy is a founding mode, the way that Nature and Objectivity get constituted as such. In contradistinction to Heidegger, Husserl’s epoché ensures that the relationship between I and Other is not reducible to what Being and Time calls the “primary ontological structures” of idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity. The Other and his or her cultural life is never constituted primordially as a tool for my use. For Husserl, even care [Sorge] is a founded mode: it must first be constituted cognitively. Hence, whereas I am motivated to constitute every real or imagined person whom I encounter by analogical apperception, so what is constituted by community – that is, the higher-order values of culture and spirit – must first be constituted by me in the order of knowledge so that I may experience them

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intersubjectively; that is, as particular values shared amongst a plurality of egos. Empathy is therefore essential to every analysis of the intersubjective constitution of the objective world. By “objectivity” Husserl means the world that is intersubjectively shared by Others; and by “Other” Husserl means a living, animate, embodied center of conscious life that constitutes me the same way that I constitute it: as a transcendent and independent subject. In order to give a phenomenological account of how the Other is given as a for-itself in my own conscious stream of lived experience, it is equally important to investigate the paradox of how the alter ego can be said to be constituted intentionally and, at the same time, autonomously. Especially given the apodicticity of my own lived experience [Erlebnis], how is empathy possible at all? (That is, how do I have knowledge of fellow human beings?) By empathy I mean Husserl’s notion that the body of the other is primordially given whereas the other’s conscious life is analogically apperceived. Hence, I am concerned in this essay with offering a critical read of Husserl’s theory of constitution as it is expounded in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Some of the questions I wish to pursue are the following: Can I ever know the existence of the world in an apodictic sense? How are Nature and the Objective world given intersubjectively? What does Husserl mean by transcendental constitution? What is the role played by intersubjectivity and the community of egos in the order of knowledge? Does Husserl’s account of monadology adequately explain his epistemological description of the givenness of Others? What role does the transcendental ego play in Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the natural world? PA RT O N E : H U S S E R L’ S T H E O RY O F T R A N S C E N D E N TA L C O N S T I T U T I O N

1. The Reduction to Originary Givenness Husserl explores the relationship between consciousness and the world with rigorous precision. He begins by rejecting the notion that the world and consciousness are two distinct things or units that co-constitute each other. Constitution, in a manner of speaking, is always rather pregnant.9 Husserl argues that consciousness originates in the realm of the private and then moves ek-statically towards the public. Consciousness is a field of latencies, potencies and limited horizons that transcendentally builds-up meaning, knowledge and the world of sense. Phenomenological reflection does not create meaning; rather, it unfolds nature and language, it makes manifest what

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lies anonymous and potential and implicit, it brings into the light the givenness that verifies every intention. Every synthesis is constituted by a correlation in which the object gives itself to me while, at the same time, I as subject constitute the object in its givenness. This means that there is always an anticipatory hermeneutics at work: In the sphere of solitary verification, I interpret the world in terms of evidence, as what is meant for me alone. In the broadest sense, evidence denotes a “universal primal phenomenon of intentional life, namely … the preeminent mode of consciousness that consists in the self-appearance, the self-giving … of a value … given originaliter” (CM, p. 57). But because every piece of evidence originates in my sphere of ownness, does Husserl’s theory of givenness lead to a spirit of solipsism? How can a theory of transcendental constitution which takes the ego as originary inspire Husserl to posit the rich and robust theory of intersubjective constitution that characterizes his Fifth Cartesian Meditation? Let us take a closer look at what Husserl is up to. The transcendental Ego, Husserl claims, is not a pure flow of consciousness, an empty pole. It is an I, constituted as the same I. Husserl explains the discovery of the transcendental ego in terms of a kind of synthesis that unites the multiplicities of cogitationes into an identical Ego. In a manner of speaking, the Ego fills itself in – or “builds itself up” – by acquiring abiding properties in the form of acquired judgments to which it may return. These “havings” are described as habitualities, and the Ego is the substrate of these habitualities. Constituted by a kind of temporal unity or temporal enduring, the Ego is defined neither as res cogitans nor res substantia any more than it is a process or continuity of processes. The Ego is that which underlies all processes and possibilities. As such, the Ego does not merely “have” a history: the ego in its concreteness is its history. This flow which the Ego is, is described by Husserl in terms of protentions and retentions, as a unitary cogito-cogitationes-cogitatum, as having a “personal character” (CM, p. 67). In contrast to the Ego as “identity pole” and substratum of habitualities, Husserl posits the concrete ego or the ego as monad. Without its essential monadological structure, the Ego cannot be complete. What appears from Husserl’s analysis is a steady progression in Husserlian thought that may be observed by noting the following: (a) in the Logical Investigations there is no mention of an ego; (b) in Ideas, the ego appears only in terms of its being an identity pole; whereas now, (c) in the Cartesian Meditations, the ego is a monad or concrete. For Husserl, the Ego includes its meant objects, including the whole world that surrounds it as meant. The totality of the ego as a field of consciousness is reflected in Husserl’s description of the concrete Ego as

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monad. Hence, Husserl’s phenomenological description of the monadological ego includes all constitutional problems. And this, precisely, is the Leibnizian moment: the totality of the Ego as a field of consciousness is reflected in Husserl’s description of the Ego as concrete monad (CM, p. 68). According to Husserl, the Ego as concrete is constituted in terms of three distinct characteristics: (1) the ego as identity pole; (2) the substratum of habitualities (what Husserl calls “immanent transcendencies”); and (3) the fleeting acts. Founded as a field of consciousness, these three modes of apprehension co-constitute the ego insofar as the Ego is directed towards an intentional object. The Ego taken by Husserl in its full concretion is hence designated by its Leibnizian name (“monad”), and defined in terms of intentional objects – what Husserl calls “transcendent transcendencies.” He characterizes the principle of all principles as a constitutive correlation between noema and noemata. In terms of the theory of constitution, the Ego can be concrete only in the flowing multiformity of his intentional life, along with the objects meant – and in some cases constituted as existent for him – in that life. Manifestly, in the case of an object so constituted, its abiding existence and being-thus are a correlate of the habituality constituted in the Ego-pole himself by virtue of his position-taking. (CM, p. 68)

The whole of phenomenology lies for Husserl in the exploration of the ego as monad. As a unitary perspective of the whole, each monad constitutes the whole field of conscious activity. This unitary, flowing, harmonious life is a monad. Flows of acts of consciousness [Erlebnisse] are not totally arbitrary, however; they are structured according to habitualities, densities, predelineations, cultural ways of seeing things. In the theory of constitution, habits are immanent transcendencies that are built up and which structure the flow of consciousness. These multiple modes of consciousness break down into particular types or categories (i.e., formal and transcendental logic, ideal logic, culture), each type calling for intentional analysis of the noeticnoematic structure. This is the primary task of transcendental theory. And because the cogitatum is never quite present “as a finished datum” (CM, p. 45), there is always more work to be done. Hence, whereas every cogito is a meaning of its meant, nevertheless the signification of what is meant always involves more than what is meant explicitly in any given experience (CM, p. 46). Constitution is an infinite task. 2. The Meaning of Meaning I exist for myself and am continually given to myself, by experiential evidence, as “I myself” (CM, p. 68). And this is true with respect to every

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sense of the word ego, whether implying the transcendental ego or, correspondingly, the empirical ego. Since the concrete ego includes the whole of actual and possible conscious life, transcendental constitution functions primarily as epistemology, as a theory of knowledge grounded in the correlation between noesis and noema, identity and object, ego and alter. This strict cognitive approach, however, in fact limits the role that sociality plays in every genuine experience of the world. Maurice Natanson calls Husserl’s attempt to start with the individual monadic ego rather than with the social order the egocentric predicament: Within the immediacy of the self’s perceptual experience, there is appreciation of sensations and ideas of the surrounding world which appear to be limited to the subject for whom there is experience – the individual. The colors, noises, tastes, odors, touch-sensations, as well as kinesthetic experience are all aspects of the individual’s sensory apprehension, as are, it would also seem, the multitude of ideas, concepts, interpretations, and other constructions of cognition.10

On the surface, the egocentric predicament is wrought with uncertainty. In so far as the world is reduced to my own perspective, Husserl’s theory of strict monadology remains somewhat abstract, even solipsistic. But on a far more complex level, Husserl is describing a radical principle of hermeneutics; namely, that the very meaning of meaning is itself constituted by the fact that I always have my own unique perspective. What Husserl means by constitution is nothing less than a full-blown epistemological description of how I come to see the whole world from my own perspective. Transcendental phenomenology, then, is concerned with describing how things are formed, or constituted, or given by consciousness as objects of knowledge (CM, pp. 84–85). How is the world given by consciousness? What does it mean to say that Nature – the world – is meant? For this, we must turn again to Husserl’s adaptation of Leibniz. In considering the constitution of the transcendental ego, Husserl discovers that a history unfolds within the constraints of certain types, analogous, in a sense, to Leibniz’s theory of compossible possibilities: possibilities that are possible only in a certain order and at certain loci. This means that the Ego’s history is essentially an a priori history, not a history of chronological dates, but a history of how things must have unfolded. In this sense, what is a priori does not at all concern causal necessity. Rather, the Ego’s history is constituted from a law of motivation whereby the ego is moved – motivated – to form certain unities that are neither coerced nor arbitrarily free. The Ego is a sui generis feature of intentionality: “The ego constitutes himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a ‘history’ ” (CM, p. 75). Tracing the unity of this “history” is what Husserl proposes by genetic

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phenomenology, whereas static phenomenology examines only fixed types of objects. A genetic account of the Ego thus implies a description of the Ego with its history; i.e., the Ego as monad, the I as subject. There are, however, two kinds of constitutive genesis: active and passive, the latter preceding the former. Passive genesis is the means by which merely existent physical things are given to perception. Although it is in a sense involuntary and does not require conscious active intervention, nevertheless passive genesis is a synthesis with a history. Given beforehand, passive genesis establishes the ground upon which higher-order active genesis is constituted. Essential to the being of the concrete ego, passive genesis accounts for how the Ego always “comes to itself” by means of a particular environment. “Thanks to the aforesaid passive synthesis (into which the performances of active synthesis also enter), the Ego always has an environment of ‘objects’” (CM, p. 79). The principle of passive genesis is founded on the principle of association, which for Husserl signifies a phenomenological law of “meaning” – not of naturalistic causation. Consequently, Husserl clearly distinguishes his notion of association from the definition given by the popular naturalistic psychologisms of the day, especially those derived from Meade and Hume. As a matter of intentionality, Husserl contends that association is not at all a psychic process. Rather, it is the innate a priori conformity of consciousness to eidetic laws, without which an ego as such is unthinkable. In effect, the ego can be understood only from the basis of genetic phenomenology’s principle of passive genesis, which affirms that the ego is constituted (or built-up) as an infinite nexus in time. Only through the phenomenology of such genesis can temporality and meaning be constituted as structural concepts within the system of the concrete a priori (CM, p. 81). Association – precisely as a priori – thus stands in contrast to Hume’s psychologistic naturalistic understanding of association; however, if we were to eliminate those prejudices from his theory, we would in fact discover the precursor to genetic phenomenology: Association is a fundamental concept belonging to transcendental phenomenology (and, in the psychological parallel, a fundamental concept belonging to a purely intentional psychology). The old concepts of association and of laws of association … are only naturalistic distortions of the corresponding genuine, intentional concepts. (CM, p. 80)

Ultimately, the transcendental genesis of association draws Husserl to conclude that active genesis, in contrast to passive genesis, is characteristic of higher-order ego acts such as those pertaining to culture [Geist], spiritual activities and even reason itself (CM, p. 78). Acts of active genesis take up

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the earlier givens of passive genesis as material for the constitution of new objects or products. Like passive genesis, active genesis can become habitual. 3. Transcendental Knowledge of The World Phenomenology is a theory of knowledge that examines the conditions of possibility of knowledge; it was inspired to a great extent in light of the currents in German philosophy and psychology extant between the two World Wars. What Husserl hoped to achieve was a new beginning for philosophy by which the traditional problem of transcendence would be overcome rigorously and definitively. Descartes, of course, had argued that the problem of philosophy is transcendence, that is, the question of how to move from immanence to transcendence, from the cogito to the thing, from the knower to the known. In other words, how can I be assured that what is happening inside my consciousness holds apodictic significance in the objective world outside my conscious experience of it? How can I acquire any sort of Objectivity in the midst of the flux of conscious activity? But Husserl rejected Cartesian dualism out of hand. By describing how we build-up knowledge of the world over time, Husserl instead examined how the ego is temporally-ordered and genetically structured. Such active constitution theory marks Husserl’s attempt to characterize Cartesian thought as fundamentally stuck in the natural attitude. Hence, the traditional problem faced by every epistemology – How do you get from inside consciousness to the natural world? – remains, at best, naive. For Descartes, of course, only God – that is, the Infinite which is nowhere to be found within the mind – can account for how the cogito gets outside the limits of its own sphere. Hence, the Cartesian problem of inner/outer distinction is theoretically solved by the guarantee of divine veracity; whereas, for Hume, things like other persons, culture and even values are nothing but mere bundles of perceptions habitually recognized over time. But in Husserl’s account, both Descartes and Hume offer incoherent methods for framing the question of knowledge. Descartes’ failure was that he neglected to make the transcendental turn with regard to the cogito, consigning instead the ego as an “island of consciousness” (CM, p. 83). In asking how I, an immanent self-enclosed island of consciousness, can know the outside world, Descartes mistakenly took the subject already as a substance or thing [res]. Hence, when asking how I know the outside world, Descartes was in fact asking a transcendental question that presupposed the ego cogito as knower in the real [res] world. For Husserl, such inner/outer

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distinction is simply meaningless. Consciousness is not a piece of the world, a res cogitans, but that by which worldly entities have meaning. Hence, there is nothing outside of consciousness, not because nothing exists, but because it is meaningless to speak of meaning outside those structures by which meaning is constituted. Consciousness describes how the world becomes manifest: The attempt to conceive the universe of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible consciousness, possible knowledge, possible evidence, the two being related to one another merely externally by a rigid law, is nonsensical. They belong together essentially; and, as belonging together essentially, they are also concretely one, one in the only absolute concretion: transcendental subjectivity. If transcendental subjectivity is the universe of possible sense, then an outside is precisely–nonsense. (CM, p. 84)

This privileging of cognition provides an epistemological account of what we take for granted in the natural attitude: the world as given intersubjectively. Descartes’ problem, Husserl insists, is that the traditional theory of knowledge attempts to ask and answer the question of knowledge in the natural attitude. Since everything that I know is constituted for me and by me in consciousness (that is, in the transcendental realm), then what is required to understand knowledge is precisely the epoche or phenomenological reduction. The epoche alone opens up this realm as a field of investigation, as phenomenon. By recasting the question of knowledge firmly in the transcendental attitude, the question of factual existence is bracketed and the formulation of knowledge as an inside/outside problem is finally eliminated. “Every sort of existent itself, real or ideal, becomes understandable as a product of transcendental subjectivity, a product constituted in just that performance” (CM, p. 85). For Husserl, everything that exists exists for the ego, is constituted by consciousness itself. In seeking to explore the transcendental field of intentionality, phenomenology contends that what we know is that we only know the world as meant. Husserl offers an “explication of my ego as subject of every possible cognition” (CM, p. 86). In this context, phenomenology provides a strict monadological foundation to epistemology that attempts to fall victim neither to Kantian Idealism on the one hand, nor psychologism on the other hand. PA RT T WO : T H E P RO B L E M O F T H E OT H E R

1. The Charge of Solipsism As an event, phenomenology happens precisely within the phenomenological reduction, the epoche, the description of the transcendentally reduced ego as

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a field of consciousness. But if phenomenology is egology – and a monadological egology at that – then do I become solus ipse whenever I perform the transcendental epoché? Does Husserl’s attempt to solve the problem of knowledge and Objectivity by a reduction to ownness result instead in a form of solipsism? It would appear on the surface that any reduction to pure consciousness would result in eliminating everything not-me, thereby leaving Descartes’ cogito as lonely and solitary as ever. But Husserl vehemently rejects every attempt to equivocate the transcendental ego with a solipsistic self. Solipsism, Husserl submits, is simply non-sensical, for it posits that nothing exists outside of the existing mind. But the phenomenological ego reaches no such conclusion. If solipsism posits that nothing exists outside of the self, then Husserl concludes that the phenomenological reduction does not deny existence but rather merely brackets existence. The reduction does not make a metaphysical or ontological judgment about existence. It rather withholds judgment by placing existence in suspension. Even more: for Husserl, others appear or present themselves to me within the transcendental field of inquiry. And it is by virtue of this transcendental clue that the human Other comes to me from beyond the reach of my own absolutely given experience, in terms of what Husserl describes as the “noematic-ontic mode of givenness of the Other” (CM, p. 90). In other words, through the Other’s appearance I am motivated not to experience the world as a private world, but rather as an intersubjective one. 2. Reduction to the Sphere of Ownness Either the Other appears by magic, or Husserl must give some sort of account of how the Other becomes constituted as a subject, as an alter ego. That the Other is phenomenal – manifest – is not something Husserl questions. The Other is always and already there. But in order to give an account for how the Other gets there, for that Husserl argues we must start with consciousness – with the ego – since it is only by consciousness that we can become aware of the Other as other. The problem that Husserl now faces is how to give a description of transcendental constitution that does not reduce the (human) Other to being a prisoner (that is, a representation) of my own stream of consciousness. As a response to this problem, Husserl introduces the reduction to ownness to explain the evident fact that we know other persons. The meaning of intersubjectivity arises from Husserl’s transcendental theory of the objective world, the world that is valid for everyone. In order to arrive at this world, we must first perform another reduction within the

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phenomenological reduction: the reduction to the transcendental sphere of ownness [Eigenheitssphäre], to the transcendental sphere of I-myself. In making this reduction to the sphere of radical privacy, I take myself as the only living, conscious thing in the world. By bracketing everything that is alien [Fremde], I treat every psycho-physical organism in the world as if it had no subjectivity or living consciousness. This is the founding stratum for the experience of the Other. Since every possibility for shared empathy is eliminated, I alone remain as the animal organism that is uniquely singled out as a living organism; everything Other is reduced to mere physical appearance for me. In bracketing everything that is not-me, all forms of life and activity that are not immediately intuited by my own consciousness must be bracketed as well, including all conscious life as well as all cultural objects. Things are only shapes, with no consciousness attached to them. What I am reduced to is my own ego, my own stream of consciousness, what is actually present to me and given originaliter. And it is this alone which I hold as the apodictic evidence of transcendental self-perception (CM, p. 103). The reduction to the sphere of ownness eliminates anything living or conscious that is not me; I even have to engender experience of my own body. This means that only my ego is given absolutely, whereas my body is given apperceptively. Nevertheless, my ego is never given in a non-bodily way. Body-image is constituted according to tactile sensations that are always localized and embodied. This means that embodiment is constituted by a sense of localizations of conscious acts that occur as localizations in my body. Hence, my hand is not an object for consciousness; rather it is a localization where consciousness finds itself as belonging to a primordial here, as the place where I build up over time a sense of myself as embodied. By virtue of mundanization, I become motivated to constitute everything included in the sphere of ownness as transcendentally mine – that is, as constituted by my transcendental ego. Hence, every experience of alterity, every mode of appearance of otherness, must first be constituted in my sphere of ownness (CM, p. 100). By reducing the world to exclude all that is alien to me, Husserl brackets the subjective life of others. What is given in terms of the world is not what is ours but what is mine. There is no culture, no language, no possibility of communication; the only things that exist are objects of various sizes and shapes. According to Husserl, this unique stratum of my world is a founding stratum, what Husserl calls the first stratum of my psyche (CM, p. 100). But it is important to note that the reduction to privacy is not the negation of the public; it is that upon which the public is founded. Hence, what Husserl

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means by my living body [Leib] is that unique body constituted in nature in which I rule and hold sway. The body that I encounter in the reduction to the sphere of ownness is not, then, a negative residue added onto pure consciousness. Rather, it signifies a positive phenomenology of embodiment, of incorporation, of incarnation. For Husserl, consciousness is never a pure ego; my body is always a prominent, inseparable feature of every intentional act. Concretely, this means that intersubjectivity is not explained genealogically but rather statically, in terms of its component strata. Therefore, whenever I say that I experience another human person, what I am really saying is that the living, animate body [Leib] of the Other is there, present, felt, before me. Of course, Husserl is not talking about the givenness of the essence of the Other’s lived experiences. For, if I was given someone else’s lived experiences, I would be that person, and not myself. Husserl is very clear that I cannot have or share primordially any other person’s lived inner experience. There must always be some sort of mediacy of intentionality involved in every conscious act. And it is precisely this experience of something alien (something that is not-mine), that Husserl says makes possible the experience of an Objective world and the presence of others in that world (i.e., an intersubjective community of alter egos). Through his theory of transcendental constitution, Husserl offers a descriptive account of how the Objective world – and the beings who live and share life in it – is given to my own conscious stream. He does not offer a metaphysical or ontological analysis of the value of such existence. Here it is not a matter of uncovering a genesis going on in time, but a matter of “static analysis.” The Objective world is constantly there before me as already finished, a datum of my livingly continuous Objective experience and, even in respect of what is no longer experienced, something I go on accepting habitually. (CM, p. 106)

What gets constituted as “Other,” then, is always relatively other for me. Accordingly, the intrinsically first other (the first “non-Ego”) is the other Ego. This other Ego “makes constitutionally possible a new infinite domain of what is ‘other’: an Objective Nature and a whole Objective world, to which all other Egos and I myself belong” (CM, p. 107). As a result, a substratum remains that Husserl designates “Nature,” and which he places in contrast to the Objective nature investigated by the natural sciences. My body, therefore, is a presumptive unity by which I perceive embodiment as the embodiment of myself. Because my body is uniquely co-given or co-intuited, what alone is given to me primordially is my own inner lived experience. The very notion of experiencing the experiences of another person makes no sense. This means that the theory of constitution is founded on the synthetic unity of

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perceptual, automatic, analogical acts of transference. The living stream [Erlebnis] of another person’s flow of conscious life remains beyond my grasp and apprehension. What, then, are the implications of apperceptive acts and analogical transferences in terms of meaning and the constitution of nature and the world?

3. The Role of Apperception and Analogy According to Husserl, the way things are built up over time is through the process of apperception and analogy. When I see the front of a building, for instance, I instinctively apperceive its various sides that are not open to my immediate visual perception. Likewise, since the mind is motivated by laws of association and analogy, pairing one object with another is a primal form of passive synthesis that Husserl designates as association. Whenever a physical object is present, its other sides and faces are apperceived. In the same way, when I see another person, perceive someone’s words, feel their presence, etc., I apperceive what is not there; that is, the Other’s flow of conscious, intentional life. Therefore, when we speak of another being present before us in person – in the flesh, so to speak – we do not mean that his or her Erlebnis or stream of consciousness is present to me as my own. If that were the case, the Other would not be other but only the same as myself (CM, p. 109). What Husserl means by the Other is what appears to me without appearing; that is, what appears to me as more than body and yet appears leiblich. What appears in person appears by means of appresentation. For Husserl, there are two kinds of appresentation: (1) an appresentation of external perception of physical things (such as the back of a house); and (2) the appresentation of another subjectivity (which always exists in its originary sphere). Because the appresentation of the back of a house can be verified through fulfilling presentation, external appresentation is markedly different from analogical appresentation since verification of the latter is excluded a priori. Whereas (theoretically, at least), I can always later verify through further inquiry a side of an object that is presently outside my perspectival grasp, the Other’s Erlebnis can never be completely verified for me. As Other, it is infinitely beyond my grasp. Hence, analogical appresentation means that another subjectivity is given to me as a non-originary making present. Having made the reduction to the sphere of ownness – in which only my body is present as an animate organism – the other body first appears only as a material object [Körper], one among multitude others. But the similarity of the body over there with my body here motivates an analogizing

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apprehension of the other body as an animate, living organism. This analogical apperception is not an inference or a thinking act. Motivated by an originary presentation, the transformation of a material body [Körper] to a living, animate body [Leib] is what Husserl designates by his theory of analogical transference. It is a kind of making co-present, a certain mediacy of intentionality (CM, p. 109). What is given to me first is the other’s body, from which I am then motivated to apperceive the other’s ego. And the reason why I apperceive the Other as having a body different from mine (rather than its being a mere extension of my own body), is because the Other is irreducibly other to me, its alterity lies outside the givenness of my own experience: experience is original consciousness (CM, p. 108). Constituted transcendentally in the sphere of ownness, the Other’s body is first encountered as a material body; it is only via analogical transference that I am motivated to then apperceive the Other’s body as alive, that is, as an alter ego, as a living body [Leib]. The other is himself there before us “in person.” But this being there in person does not keep us from admitting forthwith that, properly speaking, neither the other Ego himself, nor his subjective processes or his appearances themselves, nor anything else belonging to his own essence, becomes given in our experience originally. If it were, if what belongs to the other’s own essence were directly accessible, it would be merely a moment of my own essence, and ultimately he himself and I myself would be the same. … We have here a kind of making “co-present,” a kind of “appresentation.” (CM, p. 109)

By ego Husserl means that I see the whole world from my point of view. Accordingly, the world is what Husserl means by Objectivity, since it is the realm constituted by the public, by what is intersubjectively shared among different egos. Husserl in fact says that the Objective world is an immanent transcendency, an idea, the “ideal correlate of an intersubjective (intersubjectively communalized) experience which ideally can be and is carried on as constantly harmonious” (CM, pp. 107–108). As a harmony rising from the synthesis of transcendental monads, the world is what we all agree upon. Whereas in Ideas Husserl argued that objectivity meant what the transcendental-I is motivated to see as an object of harmonious unity, in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation he expands his definition of the Objective world to mean what the transcendental-we are motivated to see as a harmonious and synthetic unity. The constitution of the world essentially involves this harmony of monads (CM, p. 108). The problem of inner-vs-outer, the problem of how to prove that the world “inside” my consciousness correlates directly to the world of external materiality, is met by Husserl with his distinctive notion of Objectivity. For

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Descartes, the problem of objectivity got played out in the third and fifth meditations, specifically in his attempt to structure reality in such a way that God makes possible the notion of veracity. In a sense, Descartes mistook the transcendent for the transcendental. Husserl thus rejects Descartes’ epistemology on the grounds that any sort of transcendental realism only succeeds in dividing the mind/body dualism wrought by Platonic metaphysics. For Husserl, the ego cogito must be a social cogitamus; Otherwise, the “I think” remains trapped in the world of solus ipse, where everything gets reduced to my mind or my representations. As we saw earlier, solipsism is clearly and definitively rejected by Husserl, even though he affirms the proposition that everything existing for me must derive its existential sense exclusively from me myself, from my sphere of ownness. Since solipsism inevitably leads to the denial that anything exists outside the mind, Husserl concludes that the theory of intersubjective monadology alone accounts for its demise: “the illusion of solipsism is dissolved” (CM, p. 150). 4. Pairing Through analogical apperception, I “see” other objects moving in the world. These objects are known analogically – that is, by comparisons in which I grasp commonalities and differences to various degrees. One of the things I apperceive is my own body. My consciousness, on the other hand, is what is absolutely given, what is peculiarly my own, what is given apodicticly (CM, p.95). But as I apperceive my body, what I am drawn to are other bodies that are like mine in an analogical sense. Through pairing (or twinning), I match my own body piece-by-piece with other bodies; that is, I am motivated to constitute the Other in the manner of creative analogical transference based upon a hand to hand … face to face relation. In the order of knowledge I become aware of my own consciousness first, whereas my body is founded by apperception. In the constitution of the Other, however, I am first aware of the Other’s body and only later do I apperceive a consciousness. Hence, the other body given similarly to mine is paired with my own and appresented as an alter-ego. And because its conscious life is not accessible to me originaliter, it cannot be my animate organism: ergo, it is wholly Other. 5. Harmonious Verification Well, not quite “wholly” other. Through greater and more detailed pairing, the Other gets filled in, so to speak, so that I am motivated to believe that the

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body which is before my eyes not only moves, but holds sway over its own space in much the same way that I hold sway over my own space. Motivated to constitute a sense of subjectivity in an alien body that moves in the world in a manner similar to the way my body moves in the world, I am spontaneously motivated to posit the other body with consciousness. The Other, according to his or her own constituted sense, points me to myself. Husserl says that, “the other is a ‘mirroring’ of my own self and yet not a mirroring proper, an analogue of my own self and yet again not an analogue in the usual sense” (CM, p. 94). Through imaginative variation I meet a givenness that has a one-to-one likeness with me. Such givenness is then expanded into an embodiment, a worldifying mundanization that gets founded on an apperception of myself as embodied. Into this embodied self enters the Other: a spatial, physical, living body like mine, yet different. What is physically seen is this bodily being; whereas what is apperceived is its ego (CM, pp. 113–115). For Husserl, I am motivated to form a pre-conscious attitude of the Other’s body, and then to posit a consciousness into that foreign body that is remarkably similar to mine – though it must be different in the sense that it is not-me. But whereas the Other is never absolutely given to me but only analogically apperceived, so the constitution of the Other needs to be verified by what Husserl calls harmonious units of similarity. This means that the very idea of intersubjectivity contains a self-limiting notion; namely that verification will never be complete. As an infinite task composed of intersubjective verification and apperception, I can never perceive the Other’s consciousness directly. The Other’s lived experience is not open to me the same way that my stream of consciousness is mine. If I could see the Other’s stream of consciousness, then the Other would not be alter ego, but merely an extension of an economy of the same. And since my animate living organism is reflexively Here whereas the Other’s body is over There, I can, through imaginative variation, change my position and convert a There into a Here. Through imaginative variation I am further motivated to constitute the Other as not being a duplicate carbon-copy of myself. Reflexively, I become conscious that my experience revolves around my Here, not the There from where I perceive the Other’s body to be oriented. Further, because I experience the Other’s body as distinct from my own, my being Here confirms the otherness of the Other’s body insofar as the Other’s body is always over There. What is interesting to note, however, is that Here and There are relational, even reciprocal, terms.

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PA RT T H R E E : T H E C O N S T I T U T I O N O F NAT U R E A N D T H E O B J E C T I V E WO R L D

1. The Inter-monadic Community The sphere of the phenomenological reduction is founded upon monadology (CM, p. 94). For Leibniz, a monad signifies a self-sufficient unit, a unity of mind and body that is enclosed within itself. In a particular sense, it carries a perfect image of the Husserlian theory that consciousness constitutes the world. What Husserl means is that consciousness is always intentional – it is ek-static, outwardly-directed, always “in flight.” Consciousness constitutes the world. Consciousness does not create a world ex nihilo, but founds meaning: consciousness always infers consciousness-of something as meant. Each monad, therefore, is a separate entity of consciousness-intentionality. Yet, a monad is not a self-enclosed entity that remains trapped within itself with no access to an Objective world outside itself. Rather, for Husserl consciousness is like a monad “with windows.” Whereas Descartes found recourse with God and the Infinite in order to ground veracity, Husserl uses Leibnizean monads that open onto one another in order to establish the notion of objectivity (CM, p. 120). Objectivity is constituted by intersubjectivity. Husserl in fact argues that, “the first thing constituted in the form of community, and the foundation for all intersubjectively common things, is the commonness of Nature, along with that of the Other’s organism and his psychophysical Ego, as paired with my own psychophysical Ego” (CM, p. 120). The Other’s body, along with my own body, belong to the world of nature. “Nature,” then, is not mine, nor yours, but ours. Nature signifies the Objective world, the world that is intersubjectively shared and constituted. Nature is the common object that describes Husserl’s third characteristic of embodiment: the Objective world of the we. Whereas my own sense of Here founds my first perspective of Objectivity, and the Other’s absolute Here founds a second perspective of Objectivity, so Nature as intersubjectively constituted founds the third and most robust perspective of Objectivity. This means that the Other’s body is the first common intersubjective mundane thing. In the same way that I constitute the Other, so I too am constituted by the Other. Such reciprocal inter-active consciousnesses signify that I belong to a transcendental community, a socially constituted world. For Husserl, of course, reciprocity sets in only once (structurally speaking, of course, not genetically) the other is constituted. Therefore, taken together, these analogically similar – yet distinct

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– egos constitute a common world, what Husserl calls the inter-monadic community (CM, p. 128). While on one hand Husserl argues that all egos share a status of equalization, so on the other hand Husserl holds that the two primordial spheres of my Here and the Other’s Here are “separated by an abyss I cannot actually cross” (CM, p. 121). The abyss that separates different egos even within a community is absolute. For me to pass from my ego to another would mean that I can acquire an original (rather than an appresentational) experience of someone else. Such a “shared consciousness” violates Husserl’s notion of primordial egological experience. Still, what becomes possible to share by the individual members of an inter-monadic community is what Husserl calls Geist, the spiritual, cultural world, the life-world of shared values built-up over time. In terms of constitution, the movement from the sphere of my ego to the sphere of the alter ego is what Husserl means by culture. A first level of constitution is that of the constitution of Others, of intersubjective monadology; whereas a more robust theory of constitution must also include an account of what is constituted as Nature, as what is Objectively shared by intersubjective communities. Rather than positing a world of closed monadological units, Husserl’s strict egology in fact transforms transcendental constitution into a dynamic, intersubjective, reciprocal phenomenon. 2. From “My” World to “Ours” The cultural world is the shared (objective) world of intersubjectively constituted values. But although the reciprocal intertwining of ego with alter implies the positing of the Other as a co-constituting subject who shares the same world as me, the origin of my knowledge of the alter ego nevertheless remains monadological. Yet without empathy, there can be no objective world of common objects or shared values. This means that empathy is necessary for intersubjective experienceability, that empathic constitution is based upon an intersubjectively experienceable Body [Leib] that can be understood by the person who just enacted the act of empathy as the Body of the corresponding psychic being. Constituted as an irreducible center, my living body is the empathic source of the constitution of the alter ego. For Husserl, the cultural world is constituted through acts of empathic constitution. This means there must be both difference and similarity within every analogical transfer. Otherwise, what is wholly other could not be recognized as such. In terms of culture, this means that what I recognize as

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“other” is a life-world similar to mine, yet different. Because the law of empathy is founded for Husserl on analogical transference, what he means by culture is precisely what is held in common by a community. Values are thus empathically constituted insofar as material and cultural objects are shared (i.e., intersubjectively constituted) at all. By empathy, Husserl means the intersubjective world of all compossible worlds, of all the worlds that can converge into one another, of every system of value of compossibility that arises from what is given. According to the pivotal section of Ideas II 43–47: “The Constitution of Psychic Reality,” Husserl posits empathy as the hinge that moves the theory of constitution from the psychological realm into the cultural life-world. But of course, for Husserl there are many life-worlds. Whether implicit or explicit, real or ideal, all values and cultural artifacts are public and, therefore, built-up over time. The I is not a self-sufficient creator of itself. It is a part of a community, a member of many different communities that overlap and co-exist. But even here, the I is never naturally intersubjective; every sense of its public nature is theoretically derived from the genesis of ego-constitution. If I find myself always and already in a public world, a “we”-world, a world of “us,” a world constituted by art, tools, science, meaning – and especially language – this is only because what is ours must be first constituted by me as ours. In this sense, Husserl’s cognitive approach to epistemology remains largely traditional, vulnerable to what Levinas calls “the history of ontology.” For Husserl, a purely private world is thus theoretically conceivable though certainly not experientially possible. Nature and the Objective world are, therefore, transcendentally constituted, first passively by the individual ego and consequently by a plurality of individual egos. This is what Husserl means by the social constitution of the life-world. Husserl’s theory of transcendental monadology contends that every intentional act of consciousness originates for me in the sphere of ownness and then moves ek-statically towards the Other, towards the social. In like manner, what is constituted in terms of culture – as ours – begins in the sphere of a shared life-world and then moves towards what is foreign, alien, unfamiliar. Social communalization determines the character and value of all social discourse. For Husserl, this means that empathy not only constitutes Nature in its Objectivity; it is the transcendental condition of possibility without which all human communication remains inconceivable: Everyone, as a matter of a priori necessity, lives in the same Nature, with the necessary communalization of his life and the lives of others, he has fashioned into a cultural world in his individual and communalized living and doing – a world having human significances. … Here I and my

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culture are primordial, over against every alien culture. To me and to those who share in my culture, an alien culture is accessible only by a kind of “experience of someone else,” a kind of “empathy,” by which we project ourselves into the alien cultural community and its culture. (CM, pp. 133–135)

What happens when I first experience the Other is that a world of value opens up to me in that the Other is a live, animated, living body that is not a mere thing that I encounter like other material objects in the world. The Other is a subject of embodied consciousness, a subject that sees me in the same way that I see it. As a conscious stream of intentional lived experience, the Other constitutes a field of motivations which I first experience analogically. I am spontaneously motivated to apperceive the Other as another for-itself, a center of embodied consciousness that experiences itself the same way that I experience myself – that is, as transcendent. The Other is like me, yet different. This similarity-in-difference is empathically constituted and grounds every unique experience of shared, higher-order values. It is what Husserl calls the transcendental constitution of the world as intersubjectively given. It is the world as given – in a word, given as infinite: as a further consequence, an “empathizing” of definite contents belonging to the “higher psychic sphere” arises. … In this sphere, every successful understanding of what occurs in others has the effect of opening up new associations and new possibilities of understanding. … (CM, p. 120)

SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

As a “science of essences,” Husserl’s theory of transcendental phenomenology is concerned with an analysis of social constitution based on monadological intersubjectivity. But unlike Heidegger, who argued that empathy is a founded mode, Husserl’s position is much more rigorous, rich and penetrating. Einfühlung is a transcendental condition of possibility that leads to the givenness of Other persons in terms of acts of cognition. While adapting Leibnitz, Husserl does not get trapped into a solipsistic enclosure of monadic self-sufficiency. I need the Other – especially on a cognitive level – in order to experience myself as a member of society, of nature, of the world. Geist and the cultural world are accessible only through Einfuhlung. Without empathy, meaning and sense cannot be constituted. Therefore, empathy is the condition of possibility by which material and cultural objects are intersubjectively given and constitutively shared. What Husserl refers to as common objects – that is, objects intersubjectively shared – are values constituted by a plurality of egos. Husserl’s double reduction to the sphere of ownness at the conclusion of the Cartesian Meditations indicates that transcendental intersubjectivity is

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as equi-primordial to the theory of constitution as is the apodicticity of the primary givenness of my own ego. This key Husserlian insight – rejected by Heidegger in terms of empathy and perhaps not even fully appreciated to its most radical extent by Husserl himself – nevertheless demonstrates that even the concrete monad may be described in a certain sense as a social phenomenon. Seattle University N OT E S 1

Kathleen M. Haney, “Logos and the Empathic Life,” from Analecta Husserliana, Volume XL (Dordrecht: The Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 320. 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), p. 162. 3 Ibid., p. 162. 4 Ibid., see p. 149–168. 5 Ibid., p. 166. 6 Ibid., p. 154. 7 Ibid., p. 163. 8 Ibid., p. 162. 9 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorian Cairns (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), p. 56. (Hence referred to as CM) 10 Maurice Natanson, The Journeying Self (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1970), p. 28.

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‘ WO R L D S A PA RT ? S A RT R E ’ S A N D M E R L E AU - P O N T Y ’ S T R A N S I T I O N F RO M T R A N S C E N D E N TA L TO O N TO L O G I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E O N T H E NAT U R E O F T H E WO R L D ’

Numerous commentators interpret the complex relation holding between the philosophical projects of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre primarily as a skilled and in-depth criticism established by the former with regard to the inadequacies of the philosophical system elaborated by the latter. Not only that: MerleauPonty unveils, as much as he successfully overcomes, the obvious limitations of Sartre’s dualistic ontology of being and nothingness with his unitary conception of the flesh of the world. He is therefore able to both critically examine the bifurcated reality model proposed by Sartre and definitely depart from its limiting and unfounded – although validated by a long philosophical tradition – belief that the binary opposition of inner subjective life and external objective world is basic and insurmountable. This dominant interpretation of the relation between Merleau-Ponty’s and Sartre’s projects is not unjustified. The reader of the chapter on “Interrogation and Dialectic” from The Visible and the Invisible1 can admire MerleauPonty’s elaborate critique of the formal dialectic system developed at length by Sartre. The reader can be even more impressed by the descriptive finesse of the final chapter of this unfinished project (due to author’s untimely death), which develops the elemental category of the flesh of the world as the basis for a new unitary ontology. However, if one is to do justice to both thinkers and read Sartre not only with Merleau-Pontian glasses – or with the glasses of commentators partial to Merleau-Ponty – but turn to the primary texts themselves, one can trace an important affinity between their respective projects, an affinity which challenges the customary opposition between the “bad ontology” of Sartre and the “good ontology” of Merleau-Ponty. My objective in this essay is to take a closer look at this affinity. The affinity will be explored in two stages. Firstly, I shall point to the shared firm dissatisfaction (expressly admitted by both thinkers) with the perspective of transcendental constitution in phenomenology and a need to establish a phenomenological ontology. Secondly, I propose to put forward the argument that there is a shared ontological conception of embodiment as the lived and 239 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 239–258. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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direct form of participation of the self in the world, whether it takes the explicit form of the “flesh of the world” hypothesis in Merleau-Ponty or a more implicit and possibly contradictory formulation of the status of the body in Sartre’s texts. If this affinity can be convincingly demonstrated, then new light can be thrown on the complex relation between Sartre’s and MerleauPonty’s ontological projects and the position of Sartre in this relation partially rehabilitated. 1 . M E R L E AU - P O N T Y, S A RT R E ’ S C R I T I C

“Merleau-Ponty is indebted to Sartre, as Kant was to Hume, for awakening him to the need for overthrowing the philosophical assumptions which had become embedded in the Western tradition since Descartes.”2 This essay will show that Merleau-Ponty’s debt to Sartre is not limited to an awakening from “dogmatic slumbers” – but let us for the moment pause to identify these philosophical trends which have become crystallised since the time of Descartes and served to orient the Western philosophical tradition till the present day, and which Merleau-Ponty both strove to overthrow and found apparent in Sartre’s philosophical project. They have become classified under the rubric of intellectualism and empiricism, and their historic source can be located in the Cartesian quest for indubitable knowledge. Recall in this regard the “beloved examination question for philosophical children”3 concerning the Cartesian method of doubt in perceptual experience (perceptual illusion) and even intellectual intuition (evil genius hypothesis) as a means for eradicating unfounded opinions and ascertaining true knowledge, and the resulting indubitable truth of the cogito. The cogito gives itself in the form of a clear and distinct idea, which guarantees that it is true and real, or that in it the objective reality of the idea and the formal idea of the thing corresponding to it coincide. This coincidence of objective and formal reality, understood in terms of a causal relation, defines true knowledge for Descartes. Yet this “theory of knowledge” testifies simultaneously to an implicit ontological assumption that there is profound disparity between the perceptual world and the realm of true ideas, the locus of truth being confined to the sphere of intellection. As a result, we witness a massive reduction of the “transcendent” realm of things to the “immanent” realm of understanding; the grasp of clear and distinct ideas, causally produced by things and corresponding exactly to them, comes to define uninhibited access to reality itself. The world loses its sensible density and opacity in the process of being redefined as an object seized and scrutinized by consciousness.

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This Cartesian line of thought forms the foundation of the intellectualist current of Western philosophy, which can be exemplified by the project of renewing the Cartesian style quest for certainty undertaken by early Husserl in Ideas I and in The Cartesian Meditations. Rather than tracing these concrete examples of recurrence of the Cartesian project in European thought, it suffices for the purpose of the present essay to realize that the quest for absolute certainty onto which sound science can be based is found in both of the philosophical trends that Merleau-Ponty strove to overthrow: intellectualism as well as empiricism. The empiricist, in contrast with intellectualist thought, refuses to rely on self-evident truths of reason in its quest for sound science and locates the ground of true knowledge in perceptual experience. The reductionist tendency of that epistemological procedure is similar, however, to the one operative in intellectualism. The empiricist reduces perceptual or sensuous experience to its supposed building blocks, such as primary qualities (Locke) or simple impressions (Hume). The question of how these basic sense data constitute and correspond to complex perceptual reality remains, however, problematic and – in the phenomenalistic strand of empiricism (Hume) – it is ultimately insoluble, leading to profound scepticism about the possibility of access to reality itself. Alternatively, naïve realism is proposed, which stipulates that basic sense data are part of transcendent reality itself (Locke) – in which case, however, an additional proof of this de facto correspondence is required, testifying to a similar break of continuity between the external world and our idea of it that we find in phenomenalism and in Descartes. It appears then that, despite the refusal to rely on truths of intellection and appeal to direct experience, the empiricist fails to reach out to the perceptual world, having decomposed it into atomic elements to be known with absolute certainty. She is forced, moreover, despite the initial mistrust in rationalism, to ultimately appeal to the subjective activity of association (Hume) in order to recompose the object of experience from its atomic components. In this way the attempt to suspend immanence for the sake of unmediated access to transcendence becomes curiously reversed into a reaffirmation of immanence as the ultimate locus of veridical knowledge. The similarity of approach in intellectualist and empiricist epistemologies outlined above prepares the way for Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of this trend in Western thinking, and ultimately of the ontology of Sartre. Merleau-Ponty finds fault with the basic, even though nonexplicated in the case of intellectualism/empiricism, ontological contention that the whole of reality bifurcates into opposing poles of immanence and transcendence. Starting

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with his early texts, Merleau-Ponty identified and criticised this dualistic reality model which provides a common battleground for the debate between intellectualism and empiricism. The case could be resumed, despite the oversimplification that will be apparent to the reader of the above paragraphs, in the following way: the immanent life of the subject is accorded ontological priority by the intellectualist camp, whereas the transcendent reality is granted ontological priority by the empiricists. Or put more generally and somewhat differently: a polarization between immanence and transcendence occurs in both the intellectualist and the empiricist trend as a tributary of the reduction of the inexhaustible perceptual world to basic (sensuous or intelligible) elements, which can be exhaustively known. As a result, the field of transcendence is removed from the domain of veridical knowledge, which allows for no opacity in the object of study and so becomes confined to the realm of immanence. This epistemological polarization of reality into the known and the unknowable, evident in the strategy of intellectualists and empiricists alike, is coupled with the ontological polarization into the inner and the outer, the transparent and the opaque, the subject and the object. And it is this “bad” ontology or unfounded ontological division into disparate regions of being that Merleau-Ponty strove to eradicate. As noted earlier, this bad ontology is explicitly reaffirmed by Sartre’s system of being and nothingness. Postulating the fundamental ontological disjunction between the non-being of the conscious self accessible in the manner of the cogito and the plenitude of inert matter which is alien to the self or appears as “not being consciousness”, Sartre’s system is oriented by a similar bifurcated reality model and deliberately perpetuates the exclusive dualism of immanent and transcendent ontological regions. Following Sartre, consciousness is in direct access to its life through its auto-reflexive structure, i.e., through the fact that in every act it is involved in a non-thetic or nonpositional relation to itself. The famous prereflective cogito names this nonpositional way of subject’s internally relating to its conscious life without having to assume a reflective stance with regards to it. The prereflective autorelation grounds, in fact, a specific kind of being (or non-being) of the conscious self: consciousness is a “non-substantial absolute,”4 whose existence is founded in its for-itself structure or self-consciousness. At the same time, the conscious self is not confined to the realm of immanent prereflection but simultaneously opened onto the transcendent realm of substance through intentional ecstasis. Sartre, despite the distance taken from the perspective of transcendental constitution, as will be shown in more detail below, adopts the principle of intentionality, yet he significantly redefines it in

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order to justify the radical ontological disjunction between the intending subject and the intentum. This disjunction can in fact already be found in early texts, where Sartre reappropriates and redefines in his own terms the founding concepts of Husserlian phenomenology. Henceforth Sartre’s presentation of the concept of intentionality, rather than stressing the continuity between consciousness and its intentum, highlights the supposed confrontation between an enclosed subjectivity and a radical otherness: it is the necessity to exist as consciousness of something other than itself (d’autre chose que soi), that defines intentional relating.5 This “something other” is ontologically retranscribed in Sartre’s opus magnum as being in-itself, compact seamless fullness, the encounter with which can produce a nauseating effect, as illustrated by the effect the chestnut tree root has on Roquentin in the celebrated public garden scene. It appears then that the contention of insurmountable dualism separating the being of the conscious self from its object guides Sartre’s philosophical project in its earliest formulations. Defining consciousness by intentionality in the manner of Husserl, Sartre significantly redefines the intentional ecstasis in terms of the “fallen” character of the self, which flees from itself in its worldly engagements and covers over its “unworldly” character brought to light in the experience of the cogito (such as the attack of anxiety or insomnia, where the monstrous spontaneity of consciousness is made manifest).6 Being in the world, albeit inescapable, appears therefore from the start as inherently contradictory – and this contradictory relation of opposites, allowing the self to feel at home in the world only at the price of an oblivion of its non-substantial character, gets raised to the level of an explicit ontological thesis in Being and Nothingness. I will have a chance to show in more detail how Sartre’s redefinition of intentionality gets founded in an “ontological proof” further in this exposition. For the time being, the nature of the contradictory relation holding between the opposed poles of Sartre’s polarized universe needs to be examined in some more detail. On the one hand, there is consciousness defined through non-being or negativity, and which involves, following the intentional structure of consciousness outlined above, both the objectrelation (the object is something that the consciousness is not), and selfconsciousness (non-positional awareness of itself as not being the object it posits). The consciousness is characterized further by an internal negation of “being what it is not and not being what it is” (BN, 32; lxvi). On the other hand, there is being or positivity, a massive block of matter devoid of any differentiation and coinciding perfectly with itself (“it is what it is”, BN, 32, lxv). The question remains how the mediation between the two

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incompossibles is to be operated. Sartre’s response to that query is found in his characterization of our access to transcendence in knowledge. Knowledge serves as the intermediary form between the non-being of the knower and the being of the known (BN, 255; 218). For the object as known by the for-itself “detaches” itself, so to say, from the solid wall of the initself: the known is a differentiated “this”, separated from the undifferentiated background totality and ready to be reabsorbed into it. The differentiation of the in-itself into a determinate “this”, like a table, has the structure of negation: “this” is determined as not being the sheer undefined plenitude. Sartre terms this differentiation of an object out of plenum an “external negation” and correlates it with the “internal negation” the for-itself effectuates in virtue of its temporality (BN, 219; 183). The temporal structure of consciousness makes it impossible to theorize knowledge in terms of immediate presence: temporal ecstasis provides an internal distance between the knower and the known. Indeed, nothing separates the knower from the known, if not this internal negation operated by the for-itself; being, albeit external or transcendent to the ontological region of the for-itself, is at the same time oppressingly close, inescapable, present; after all, “there is only being” (BN, 253; 216) and nothingness is not. And it is being itself – and not its representation – that presents itself to the for-itself in knowledge: the foritself “adds nothing” (BN, 254; 217) to the in-itself it knows, apart from affirming that the in-itself is. The world, universal time, space, quantity, are all but negative affirmations, i.e., procedures of negating the compact plenum of being by differentiation, through which being is affirmed as being such and such (Ibid.). These negative affirmations by the for-itself “in no way modify the pure being which is revealed through them” (Ibid.); henceforth they produce the “only possible adventure” (BN, 253; 216) that can happen to the in-itself which is but cannot affirm itself. This “theory of knowledge” as negated affirmation of the in-itself by the for-itself is praised by Sartre for its ability to resolve tension between realist and intellectualist currents by combining rather than opposing their respective insights. The realist is right to advocate that the subject has direct access to reality or that “it is being which is present to consciousness in knowledge” (BN, 254; 217). After all, the epistemic procedures of differentiation do not affect or adulterate being, nor do they produce “prismatic distortions” (Ibid.) of representation across which one would try to access being itself; their negating potential only affirms being’s presence and so justifies the claim of realism. That does not imply that some intellectualist claims are unfounded. The intellectualist is right to postulate an identity between knowledge and

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the being of the subject, as long as it is understood that “knowledge is [not] the measure of being” but a relation of presence to being, which can only be realized by the for-itself. If there is being only for the subject, this does not imply that being is relative to the for-itself in its being (Ibid.). It appears therfore that rather than having to choose between the subjectivist and the realist standpoint, a theory that accommodates for both can be provided once it is understood that without the subject being could not be brought into presence but also that without being nothing would be brought into presence. The debate over the primacy of immanence and transcendence is thus definitely resolved by Sartre’s thesis of co-dependency of the for-itself and initself in knowledge. The question posed by Merleau-Ponty to this elegant epistemological solution to the realism versus intellectualism quarrel would be whether it does not leave the problematic ontological base, upon which these opposed theories of knowledge are founded, untouched. Sartre is said to make the problems encountered by these classic doctrines “volatilize, for they were problems about ‘compound’ or ‘union,’ and compound and union are impossible between what is and what is not, but for the same reason that makes the compound impossible, the one cannot be thought without the other” (VI, 81/82; 55). This solution to traditional antinomy is thus found on the level of thought, more specifically of dialectic mediation by negativity. This negative dialectic is for Merleau-Ponty but a formal structure imposed externally onto undifferentiated being and rendering the relation between self and world both abstract and static, as it leaves no room for change through self-mediation (VI, 126; 92). Being-in-itself, supposedly brute material of experience onto which negative structures are projected, is in fact an abstraction and not possible content of perception, perceptual content having been stripped of its inherent ambiguity, life, inner differentiation, and formalized into a compact block of inert mass. At the other end of the spectrum lies nothingness, inspired by the ideal of pure vision deployed by a detached observer, rather than a concrete lived experience of sensible being in touch with the world. The resulting ontology opposing the in- and for-itself fails to solve the classic problem of the primacy of immanence and/or transcendence. Sartre dialectically rejoins the two poles of the opposition without questioning the foundations of the dualism. Despite his intention to arrive at a unitary ontology, which co-includes immanence and transcendence, Sartre’s thinking fails to account for the original unity of being. His formal solutions to the problem of this original unity threaten to ultimately dissolve it through the

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eradication of the self: itself, defined as nothingness, is not, and there is only being, then the thesis of dualism easily reverses into a de facto monism of Being (VI, 127; 93). This possible reversal of dualism into its opposite already testifies to the highly abstract character of Sartre’s “solution,” which pushes the thesis of absolute difference to its logical limit of de facto identity. Stripped of any intrinsic character and definition, pure plenum and pure nothingness are defined merely through their relation of mutual exclusion, and so can ultimately be viewed as one. This tendency towards monism is echoed on the level of Sartre’s epistemology as well: to know being itself, i.e., the sheer undifferentiated plenum and not differentiated “objects of knowledge,” consciousness would have to be the being itself and so abolish the difference between itself and transcendence. 7 It follows that Sartre’s theory of knowledge, despite its overt rejection of a representation theory, is faced with a difficulty similar to the one found in intellectualism and empiricism, namely how to attain transcendent being itself. It appears that the category of being-in-itself remains just as inaccessible as the transcendent reality is for an empiricist and an intellectualist. On the other hand, the self, albeit defined through intentional ecstasis, remains imprisoned in the ontological region of immanence, for all it can know are the products of its own negating potential. The furrow between immanence and transcendence remains therefore as deep as ever, despite Sartre’s elaborate procedures of dialectic mediation through negation. 2 . M E R L E AU - P O N T Y ’ S & S A RT R E ’ S O N TO L O G I C A L P RO J E C T S

A. Shift from Phenomenology to Ontology Despite the difference between the project of developing a unitary ontology that co-involves the traditionally opposed realms of immanence and transcendence and the project of developing an ontology affirming an original unity of flesh that precedes and cancels the traditional dualism, it should not be forgotten that both Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s projects stem from a growing dissatisfaction with the perspective of phenomenology. Both thinkers expressed their growing discontent with the perspective of transcendental constitution of the world and the need to establish a phenomenological ontology. Late Merleau-Ponty followed as much as he critiqued Sartre on that point. The initially accepted consciousness-object structure proved to seriously hamper his ambitious project of transcending traditional Western binarisms, such as subject-object or intelligibility-sensibility.8 The

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Phenomenology of Perception, despite its successful rethinking of subjectivity in terms of the body-subject, adopts the intellectualist perspective of Husserl’s idealism by situating the starting point of analysis in the body of the subject, as different from that of objectivities. That’s why Merleau-Ponty stated that the problems encountered in this text are ultimately insoluble.9 This perspective is fundamentally abandoned in the final work, wherein the body proper no longer provides the matrix but is turned into an “exemplar” of general Sensibility and an instance of the anonymous movement of Reversibility running throughout the flesh. The flesh provides the founding category for Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. It is said to be an absolutely novel concept for which one can find “no name in traditional philosophy to designate it.” (VI, 183; 139). The flesh must not be thought in terms of “substances” – as the body in its opposition to the spirit or as the impossible union of these two “contradictories” (VI, 193; 147). The flesh is neither material nor spiritual, nor a composite of the two. It stands rather for the general prepersonal stuff in which incarnated beings participate and should be thought of in terms of an ancient “element”, such as air or water, i.e., the original and ultimate component of all there is.10 The notion of the flesh allows Merleau-Ponty to creatively rethink the underlying unity of formal philosophical binarisms of subject-object and intelligibility-sensibility, and to definitely resolve the tension between them. One could object, however, that rather than postulating a clear turn from idealistic phenomenology to ontology of impersonal flesh in the trajectory of Merleau-Ponty’s thinking, it should be demonstrated rather that the explicit ontological claims made in the final late work are in a continuum with the earlier statements on the study of phenomena. Hence, the early thesis of the primacy of perception would contain, without properly explicating it, the notion of an originary unity of Being and so would read as a constructive attempt towards establishing a phenomenological ontology. Following the thesis of the primacy of perception, the field of perception co-involves that which is revealed (perceptual reality) and the one to whom it is revealed (perceiver) and so ontological primacy belongs neither to “subjectivity” nor to “objectivity” but to the unitary phenomenal world, which is theorized ultimately under the heading of the flesh. Rather than stressing the shift of perspective in Merleau-Ponty’s project, one would then view its final ontological thesis of the flesh as a unitary elemental category as explication of the nascent claims regarding the original unity of the being of the perceiving subject and the being of the perceived object, made in earlier works. 11 In a similar way, one would refer to Merleau-Ponty’s statements on the anonymous

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character of sensible experience made prior to the “turn to ontology.”12 It seems however that one can both accept that claim of progressive development through explicitation in Merleau-Ponty’s unitary ontology, and contend that the initially accepted structures, indebted to the Western philosophical tradition, were definitely abolished only in the final opus. Let me turn now to Sartre’s shift from phenomenology to phenomenological ontology. The author himself devotes a significant part of the introduction of Being and Nothingness to explaining why the discipline of phenomenology requires an ontological foundation. 13 It might come as a surprise, however, that a thinker who advocates an expressly dualistic ontology should begin his exposé with a critique of dualistic oppositions which are an embarrassment to philosophy and declare further that phenomenological reduction of existent things (I’existant) to a series of appearances that manifest the thing produces the “monism of the phenomenon,” which only seemingly overcomes these dualistic oppositions. The dualisms Sartre has in mind are the following: 1. The dualism between the exterior and the interior, or more precisely between the external and possibly misleading appearance of a thing and its hidden veritable nature. The phenomenon cannot be reduced to a mere appearance concealing the thing itself; in fact, the idea of the phenomenon does away with the necessity to postulate such a distinction altogether. Hence, in a phenomenological perspective, force does not designate a metaphysical conatus hiding behind its visible effects but the totality of visible effects; the electric current stands for the totality of physicochemical actions which manifest it. 2. The dualism of action and potentiality. Consider the “genius of Proust.” Instructed by phenomenology, we should take it in the sense of the totality of artistic production which manifest the genius, and not a potentiality to produce works of art. And finally, 3. The dualism of appearance and essence: essence is no longer hidden behind the series of appearances but stands for the principle regulating the series. As such, the essence is not different from the appearances, it remains on the level of appearance. Having enumerated the dualistic oppositions supposedly overcome by the “monism of the phenomenon,” Sartre raises the question whether phenomenology does not in fact reintroduce a new dualism encompassing the other three into its theory – the dualism of the finite and the infinite. Husserl’s model of perception is used to support this claim. The object of perception reveals itself through an infinite series of profiles or Abschattungen. The series is infinite, not only because the subject of perception can look at the object from an infinite number of different points of view, but also because

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adequate givenness of the perceptual object in its totality is de jure impossible. Sartre uses this account of perspectival and adumbrational elaboration of objectivities in order to make his point concerning dualistic oppositions. The phenomenological perspective results in a dualism: on the one hand, there is a finite number of appearances available to the subject at a given moment, on the other hand, there is an infinite series of possible appearances. This infinite series is never given to view but remains hidden behind the appearances. Thus it seemingly restores the old dualism of appearance and being, exterior and interior, etc. Having reduced the reality of the thing to appearance, i.e., subjective impression, phenomenology relies on the infinite number of appearances in the complete series to guarantee the transcendent character of the object. This recours à l’infini is accomplished by means of the Kantian Idea: a merely regulatory idea or ideal of adequate givenness, which guides the perceptual process but which can never be realized. It follows that phenomenology cannot resolve the tension in the infinite/finite opposition if it wants to preserve the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. Yet the objection of non-overcome dualism is only a preliminary stage on the way to a more fundamental criticism concerning the very possibility of accounting for the transcendence of the object in the phenomenological perspective. Can transcendence be simply founded on the infinite? Sartre’s “ontological proof” proves to the contrary. If transcendence consists in the infinite series of appearances, i.e., contents of consciousness, then it is the absence or nonbeing of appearances that founds being, or more specifically, it is the absence of subjective contents that grants transcendence to the object. Yet how can an immanent content grant objectivity in virtue of its absence?14 Without an ontological difference between the subjective and the objective, consciousness and the world, transcendence is impossible. Following this line of thought, ontological dualism is de facto necessary as a condition of veritable transcendence, which got suppressed and neutralized in phenomenology. Sartre goes on to argue that transcendence is a constitutive structure of consciousness, and that this ecstatic relation to transcendence can only be realised if there is being irreducible to its appearance. Hence, it is the very conception of intentionality of consciousness taken over from Husserl that allows Sartre to establish the “ontological proof” of non-conscious or transphenomenal being, and so allows him to “prove” that an ontological foundation is required for any study of phenomena.15 This brief exposition on the dissatisfaction shared by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre with the perspective of transcendental constitution does not minimize

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the differences between their respective theories of how an ontological basis to the study of phenemena should be provided. It is clear in this regard that Merleau-Ponty was dissatisfied as much with pure phenomenology as he was with its ontological reformulation by Sartre. It seems, however, valid to put forward the claim that Merleau-Ponty’s and Sartre’s transition from phenomenology to ontology has as a result a shared redefinition of the being of the world. Once the world ceases to be defined solely in terms of the constitutive potential of intentional consciousness, its brute, resistant and possibly meaningless character is brought to the fore. Whether made of flesh or of the in-itself, the world is no longer a collection of intenta, but a pre-existent ontological field; and, according to both thinkers, the self participates directly in this world through its inescapably embodied existence. It is possible therefore – as I propose to do in the final section of this essay – to put forward the contention that even though Merleau-Ponty’s ontology operates with the single category of the flesh, while Sarte’s ontology is expressly dualistic, both postulate a “flesh of the world” thesis in their turn away from transcendental phenomenology. This thesis annuls both the idea of the world as a series of intentional objects and of the self as a conscious constitutive agency by rethinking embodiment (of the world, of the self) in ontological terms. B. Flesh of the World The notion of the flesh is central to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology – this point seems indisputable and hardly in need of an extensive textually based demonstration. What does require some justification, though, is a less evident contention that one can find an argument for the “flesh of the world” contained, yet occulted by the pervasive idea of supposedly dis-embodied cogito-subject, in Sartre’s ontology as well. In developing this contention I will try to show that Sartre puts forward contradictory claims concerning the self, depending on whether he develops it in the context of self-consciousness or in the context of being-in-the world. Insofar as the theoretical exigencies of these two forms of relating (to oneself through self-awareness, to the world through being-in-the-world) stand in apparent stark conflict, they lead to differing conclusions regarding the embodied (or disembodied) nature of the self. In order to prepare the ground for the discussion of embodiment in Sartre, however, I need to turn to Merleau-Ponty first and throw some light onto his views on this subject. Merleau-Ponty was fascinated by vision and at the same time appalled by the abstraction this concrete bodily sense has undergone in the course of the

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Western philosophical tradition. The visual sense became abstracted from the sensibility of the body and attributed to the domain of mental life, where it is conceived in terms of the ability to understand or to have clear and distinct ideas (une opération de pensée qui dresserait devant l’esprit un tableau ou une représentation du monde).16 This abstraction, albeit partially justified by the very structural character of vision, needs to be corrected through a return to the lived experience of seeing, which is a form of participation and communication of the visible with the visible, and not a scrutiny of inert being by a detached observer. Certainly, sight lends itself to being interpreted in terms of a dis-embodied subjective function. In order to see a thing, I need to remove it from the immediate proximity to my body. In the case of vision there is no contact between the sensing organ and the sensed, and, so, no direct affection of the eye by the thing seen. Should I feel, e.g., pain or itching in the eye, these sensations cannot have been produced by the thing seen, they are not the effect of what I look at. Surely I could touch the organ of vision itself with my hand or a tool. A pen or a finger poked in my eye does come in con-tact with the eye and does affect the eye directly, but it is not as a thing seen that it affects the organ of vision. In fact, the finger or the pen in the eye prevents me from seeing altogether. That is why seeing something is different from palpating it with one’s hands. The touching hand is filled with internal sensations while it is touching; there is an echo of the sensed in the sensing, which is missing in the case of vision. Hence a certain forgetfulness of the embodied subject of vision and the belief in the possibility of the impersonal and objective scrutiny of the world by means of impassionate observation which adds nothing to the spectacle. The lack of internal sensations in the eye as it explores the world can lead one to have certain scientistic pretensions and to believe in the possibility of an invisible spectator. For Merleau-Ponty, visibility is not an external hypothetical addendum to the activity of seeing but a precondition of our entry into the visual world: in order to be able to see something, we have to be made of the same stuff as it is; the seer is cut out from the same element that composes the surrounding world. Vision then is interpreted as form of carnal intimacy and continuity of the seer and the seen, despite and nonwithstanding the necessary distance that separates the body of the onlooker from the body of the seen thing. 17 Hence the reversibility manifest in vision – and in other form of carnal communion with the world – the seer is visible as well, vision reverses into visibility. Certainly, there is an internal Schism between these two active and passive, seeing and seen, facets of my carnal existence, which makes it impossible

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for my body to ever close onto itself and to withdraw into a sphere of absolute immanence. Reversibility of seeing and seen is then not a fact of the cogito – this dis-embodied spectator of all the acts of consciousness; – reversibility is a fact of the body in a continuous deferral from itself. Embodied vision is simultaneously anchored in the (flesh of the) world: vision does not come “from nowhere” but from the specific place occupied by the body as it wanders through the visible world. This presentation of vision as carnal intimacy across distance follows the unitary ontological principle of the flesh, this basic foundational element shared by disparate bodies engaged in visual communication. It appears therefore to stand in stark contrast with Sartre’s being-nothingness schema, engendering a theory of vision as a confrontation of ontological opposites, drawn one to the other by their ineradicable difference. Indeed, in the Sartrean account, the seer need not be visible in order to access the world of visibles. Sartre argues that the possibility to see one’s own body is a mere “‘curiosity’ of our constitution,” a pure factual given, absolutely contingent. We “could easily conceive of bodies which could not take any view on themselves” (BN, 398; 358) and yet be able to exercise vision. Sartre’s theory of vision appears to take then the form of structural opposition of an invisible subject and the visible object, reformulating the guiding ontological principle of binary dualism in the scopic sphere. It appears that the seer need not be made of the visible stuff of the world in order to visually participate in the world. Yet this contention blatantly contradicts Sartre’s explicit claim that to enter into contact with the world, the self has to be of the world,18 i.e., cut out – in Merleau-Ponty’s terminology – from the flesh of the world. This claim can only be realized if the self exists in continuity with its (visible) environment due to its inescapable embodiment. Sartre attempts to account for this lived experience the self has of its own body by means of the “first ontological dimension” of the body. The “first ontological dimension” belongs to the order of the for-itself (le pour soi); it accounts for the immediate selfawareness an embodied being has of its own carnal existence and so incarnates the non-thetic prereflective auto-relation of the conscious self by situating it in the domain of the flesh. However, it is only in the “second ontological dimension,” which regards the body no longer from the perspective of the self but as if it were a body of the other, that one’s body can appear as an element of the visible world. For whereas the “first dimension” involves my body as “that by which things are revealed to me,” on the level of the “second dimension,” my body appears as “a thing among other things”

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(BN, 343; 304). These two ontological orders of embodiment are said to be “radically distinct” and to exist “on two incommunicable levels” (Ibid.), postulating therefore a radical disjunction between embodied subjectivity, accessed by means of direct and evanescent self-affection, and the body as a mundane thing, apprehended in the manner of an object. It follows, as far as the question of vision is concerned, that the body can manifest itself either on the side of non-objectivated subjectivity, i.e., as an invisible agent of vision, or that it must fall over to the side of visible mundane things, grasped across the objectivating distance by the seer. Following the radical subject-object distinction introduced by Sartre into his presentation of embodiment, any visible content manifest on the side of the agent would prevent it from functioning as a mere opening or “window” onto the world and turn it into a visible “object” in turn. That is why the body of the “first dimension” weaves the self into the fabric of the world and yet, paradoxically, it does not participate in its visibility. The problematic split between two dimensions of bodily existence can be seen as a vestige of Sartre’s redefinition of intentionality, opposing the pole of the subject to that of the intentional object. In Sartre’s exposé, any positive determination of the body relegates it from the domain of the carnal subject to the “radically distinct” domain of the body as an object, in the manner of an intentum defined in contradistinction to the intentional subject as what the subject is not. The body-subject and the body-object exist “on two incommunicable levels” in the manner of the subject and the object of an intentional act, which opposes rather than unites the two elements of the relation. It could be concluded therefore that the problematic conception of transcendence as external difference survives into Sartre’s presentation of embodiment, making it difficult to account for the continuity between the body as a “subject” and as an “object”, or even ascertain that the seer and the (body) seen are one, that vision and visibility are two facets of the same bodily existence. One of the reasons for this problematic subject-object disjunction cutting across the body can be found in Sartre’s difficulty in providing an unambiguous account of subjectivity as embodied. If it is unclear whether the subject is embodied in a fundamental and not only in a derived or secondary sense, it remains equally unclear how that subject relates to the body as an objectified thing. Recall that the first ontological dimension of subjective embodiment conjoins the experience of the body and of consciousness by means of the auto-relational structure that they share: “consciousness as being-for-itself and the body as being-for-itself are structurally

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identical, insofar as the being of each is grounded in the relation to itself.”19 The body in the first dimension would then translate immediate selfconsciousness defining the cogito into the domain of carnal existence. Despite the structural parallel between subjectivity and embodiment, the two remain, however, distinct. Paradoxically, the “first ontological dimension” of the body both defines the conscious subject and cannot be identified with it. The subject remains theorized by Sartre in terms of a non-being (“it is the foundation of its own nothingness”), and yet it “is not even anything except the body” (BN, 370; 330). That is why, even though the body is not “contingent addition to my soul” but “a permanent structure of my being” (BN, 367; 328), belonging “to the structures of the non-thetic consciousness,” (BN, 369; 330) and stipulating that “[b]eing-for-itself must be wholly body and it must be wholly consciousness; it can not be united with a body” (BN, 344; 305), still the body cannot be identified with conscious subjectivity attained by means of prereflective self-awareness. This contradiction reveals the internal tension present and unresolved in Sartre’s entire presentation of subjective embodiment. The contradiction follows from Sartre’s efforts to continue to theorize the self through the non-substantial reflexivity of the cogito, as he undertook to do from the beginning of his ontological project, and from the need to include corporeality into his presentation of facticity and contingency of human existence in the later stages of the project as well. As a result, Sartre’s analysis of subjective embodiment oscillates between two contradictory affirmations, according to which 1. the cogito-self is dis-embodied and 2. the cogito-self must be embodied. The cogito-subject is dis-embodied as long as it is regarded as an evanescent interiority and an aspacial domain, generated by the purely mental operation of reflexive self-relating. In that case, it can be declared that “in the pure realisation of the cogito my consciousness of being a consciousness is not bound to my own body […]” (BN, 316; 276). However, the cogito-subject must be embodied if is to be in the world, i.e., exist in a carnal continuity with its environment. As Dillon observes, “[h]aving grounded the being of consciousness in sheer interiority (i.e., in the prereflective cogito), Sartre needs something other than consciousness to serve as the ground of its inherence in a world, to give it an exterior, as it were.”20 This procedure of situating the cogito-self is accomplished by means of the body and of the idea of ontological continuity between the self and its world through embodiment. Henceforth, the “first ontological dimension” of the body covers not only the self-relatedness of the embodied self, but also the relatedness to the world that the self works upon (BN, 379; 339).

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Sartre analyzes this relatedness of the incarnated self to its world by reappropriating the Heideggerian theme of being-in-the-world. Hence, Sartre argues that my manipulation of a variety of tools implies and reveals my body as their centre of reference. Tools refer to me as an embodied agent who can realize a concrete project in the world: by means of a telescope, for example, I can see remote planets “with my own eyes”. It is with my body that I operate machines and accomplish concrete tasks in the world – embodiment is therefore a condition and point of entry into the instrumental world. At the same time, Sartre specifies that my body is not given to me as a mere instrument, in which case I would require another instrument with which to handle my body-tool, and so on, ad infinitum.21 As a result, we would fall back onto the classical picture of the soul supposed to act directly upon the body while being different from it (BN, 360; 320). The body as I live it cannot therefore be subsumed under the category of tools available to me. For this body of mine, which engages in practical tasks such as operating telescopes, is not simply given to me as an object or a means – I am this body, I am these eyes. Or if my eye and my body is a “tool”, then it is a tool that I cannot use by means of another tool. Otherwise, I could not distinguish between e.g., my bodily organ of vision from an optical machine, such as a telescope or a pair of glasses.22 Yet I grasp my body that I am as my unique and irreplaceable vantage point onto the world. Certainly, Sartre notes, a tool such as a telescope or binoculars functions as “a supplementary sense organ” (BN, 369; 329), a veritable extension of my body. It is the telescope that fixes my “point of view” upon the planets that I observe and enables me to have telescopic vision. Nonetheless, what distinguishes my body proper from the multitude of instruments which enlarge or re-define my field of vision is that my body offers me a “point of view” that I cannot examine from a distance; my body offers me a “point of view” with regards to which I cannot adopt an other “point of view”. This careful exposition on the inherence of the acting self in the instrumental world through embodiment can justify the contention that Sartre operated with an implicit “flesh of the world” thesis while elaborating his ontology. Certainly, the thesis of inherence of the self in the world through embodiment accounts only for the subjective experience of the body in the “first ontological dimension,” and so it is bound to encounter the difficulties resulting from the aforementioned radical disjunction between the bodysubject and the body-object. Sartre stipulates in fact that the instrumental body viewed in the “second ontological dimension” appears as a tool, i.e., no longer as a sensory organ-ization that I am and in virtue of which participate

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in the world, but as a complex instrument, reminiscent of Descartes’ living machine.23 The question of accounting for the unity of this body-instrument to the embodied agent remains therefore a problem unresolved by Sartre’s ontology. Yet even though it partially justifies the critical interpretation as an unacceptable subject/object (and by extension subject/world) dualism, it makes clear also that the status of the body in Sartre’s text is highly complex and cannot be classified as an unambiguous Cartesianism. Neither a mere object or external addendum to subjectivity, nor a subjectivity embodied through and through, the body forced into the theoretical binarism between an empty cogito-subject and the transcendent plenum cannot easily mediate the difference between them and function as a satisfactory third or middle term – a for-itself which is in-itself as well. As long as the basic ontological binarism persists, so also will the ambiguity concerning the ontological status of the body in Sartre’s opus; still, it is the body that shows the way towards its possible dissipation through the implicit thesis of ontological continuity between the self and the world. Let me conclude therefore that, despite Sartre’s “failure” to think embodiment in a rigorous and consistent fashion, it can nonetheless be maintained that his presentation of embodiment in terms of originary inherence in the world anticipates and might have provided inspiration for the explicit thesis of carnal continuity between self and world in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of the flesh. University of Louvain, Belgium

N OT E S 1

Le Visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). The Visible and the Invisible, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Abbreviated as VI, page numbers from the French and English texts. “Interrogation and Dialectic”, VI, 75–141; 50–104. 2 M. C. Dillon. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (2nd ed., Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997), p. 37. 3 As Husserl puts it in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 75. 4 L’être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). Being and Nothingness, trans. H. E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956). Abbreviated as BN, page numbers from the French and English texts. BN, 23; lvi. 5 “Cette nécessité pour la conscience d’exister comme conscience d’autre chose que soi, Husserl la nomme “intentionnalité.” (“Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l’intentionnalité,” reprinted in La transcendance de l’ego (Paris: Vrin, 1992), p. 112. 6 Sartre speaks explicitly of the “consciousness which imprisons itself in the world in order to flee from itself.” La Transcendance de l’ego, p. 63; The Transcendence of the Ego, p. 81.

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“pour connaˆıtre l’être tel qu’il est, il faudrait être cet être, mail il n’y a de “tel qu’il est” que parce que je ne suis pas l’être que je connais et si je le devenais le “tel qu’il est” s’évanourait et ne pourrait même plus être pensé.” (BN, 255; 218). 8 See e.g. articles included in “Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty,” in Notes de Cours sur l’Origine de la géométrie de Husserl. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1998. Especially, I. M. Dias, “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: une esthésiologie ontologique” and R. Barbaras: “Le dédoublement de l’originaire.” Barbaras notes that “Conformément au mouvement amorcé dès la Phénoménologie de la perception, la chair est généralement abordée à partir du corps propre […]. Or, il nous semble que cette approche échappe difficilement aux catégories – sensation, mouvement, sujet, objet, etc. – que l’analyse de la perception vise pourtant à dépasser, de sorte qu’il est particulièrement malaisé d’aborder le concept ontologique de chair à partir de l’étude du corps propre, voué à disparaˆıtre comme tel au profit de la Chair comme être d’indivision.” (p. 289). 9 Merleau-Ponty observes in a working note that “the problems posed in [the Phenomenology of Perception] are insoluble because I start there from the ‘consciousness’ – ‘object’ distinction.” (VI, 253; 200). 10 “The flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. To designate it, we should need the old term “element,” in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being.” (VI, 183; 139). 11 I refer here to Dillon’s Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (op. cit.), especially pp. 51–57 and 85–100, where the argument that Merleau-Ponty’s project contains an at first implicit and subsequently explicated ontology is developed. 12 As stated in the Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 215: “Every perception takes place in an atmosphere of generality and is presented to us anonymously … So, if I wanted to render precisely the perceptual experience, I ought to say that one perceives in me; and not that I perceive.” 13 I refer specifically to subsection 1: L’Idée de phénomène and 5: La preuve ontologique. 14 “Comment le subjectif absent et attendu devient-il par là l’objectif?” (BN, 27; lxi). 15 Let me add that Sartre develops the cogito along ontological lines as a self-relation of being and not of knowledge, but argues that the cogito cannot have primacy over the intentional relation to transcendence but is interrelated with it (see part 3 of the “Introduction”: “Le cogito ‘préréflexif’ et l’être du ‘percipere.’”). 16 L’oeil et l’esprit (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 17 17 “[D]istance is not the contrary of […] proximity, it is deeply consonant with it, it is synonymous with it. It is that the thickness of flesh between the seer and the thing is constitutive for the thing of its visibility as for the seer of his corporeity; it is not an obstacle between them, it is their means of communication.” (VI, 178; 135). 18 “Il n’est d’autres manière d’entrer en contact avec le monde que d’être du monde.” (BN, 357; 318). The meaning of this sentence is only partially rendered by Barnes’ translation: “my being has no other way of entering into contact with the world except to be in the world;” Sartre says rather that one has to be of the world in order to enter into contact with it. 19 M. C. Dillon. “Sartre on the Phenomenal Body and Merleau-Ponty’s Critique”, in The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. J. Stewart (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1998), p. 128. 20 Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, op. cit., p. 128. 21 “[M]es rapports avec cet instrument privilégié ne peuvent être eux-mêmes que techniques et j’ai besoin d’un intrument pour manier cet instrument, ce qui nous renvoie à l’infini.” (BN, 361; 321).

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22

“En un sense [le corps pour moi] est ce qu’indiquent tous les ustensiles que je saisis […]. Mais si nous nous bornions à cette remarque, nous ne saurions distinguer, par exemple, le corps de la lunette astronomique à travers laquelle l’astronome regarde les planétes.” (BN, 368; 329). 23 In fact, Sartre’s explicit remarks about the body as “one instrument in the midst of other instruments” (BN, 360; 320) or “an instrument which I can utilise with other instruments” (BN, 380; 340) are made in the context of his inquiry into the body of the other person and not of the self. Still, following his contention that it amounts to the same to study the body in the “second ontological dimension” by taking other’s body or one’s own body as it appears to the other (BN, 379; 339), they apply to the objective body of the self as much as to the body of the other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barbaras, R. “Le dédoublement de l’originaire.” In Notes de Cours sur l’Origine de la géométrie de Husserl; suivi de Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty. Ed. R. Barbaras. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998). Diaz, Isabel Matos. “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: une esthésiologie ontologique.” In Notes de Cours sur l’Origine de la géométrie de Husserl; suivi de Recherches sur la phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty. Ed. R. Barbaras. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998). Dillon, M. C. Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology. 2nd ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997). Dillon, M. C. “Sartre on the Phenomenal Body and Merleau-Ponty’s Critique.” In The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Ed. J. Stewart. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998). Husserl, Edmund. Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. Trans. F. Kersten. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982). Husserl, Edmund. The Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Trans. D. Cairns. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991). Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. D. Carr. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Structure of Behaviour. Trans. A. L. Fisher. (Boston, Beacon Press, 1963). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith. (London: Routledge, 1994). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Le Visible et l’invisible. (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). The Visible and the Invisible. Trans. A. Lingis. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. L’oeil et l’esprit. (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). Sartre, Jean Paul. La nausée. (Paris: Gallimard, 1938). Sartre, Jean Paul. “Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l’intentionnalité.” Reprinted in La transcendance de l’ego. (Paris: Vrin, 1992), pp. 109–113. Sartre, Jean Paul. La transcendance de l’ego. (Paris: Vrin, 1992). The Transcendence of the Ego. Trans. F. Williams and R. Kirkpatrick. (New York: Octagon Books, 1972). Sartre, Jean Paul. L’être et le néant. (Paris: Gallimard, 1943). Being and Nothingness. Trans. H. E. Barnes. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956).

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O N “ E N WO R L D I N G ” T R A N S C E N D E N TA L S U B J E C T I V I T Y: R E T H I N K I N G A M I S L E A D I N G M E TA P H O R

Metaphorical terms often indicate weak points of a theory. These points may be improved and in doing so one may try to replace the terms in question by others which can be literally understood. However, it is not always possible to advance in this way. Metaphors do not always function as unnecessarily misleading expressions. Sometimes we cannot do without them because they convey the highest possible accuracy while gropingly approaching the limits of what we can grasp at all. Certainly talking in metaphorical terms can be useless and confusing; but it can be equally useful and elucidating. Paying attention to metaphorical figures in our philosophical disputes aims at finding out whether we are dealing with the first or the second case, whether metaphors occur as provisional stopgaps or signal the limited nature of human rationality. Transcendental phenomenology pretends to explain how the enworlding (Verweltlichung) of transcendental subjectivity takes place. Discussing this topic Husserl seems to reapproach a double-substance theory. Accordingly, we had to assume a preexisting mental entity which subsequently gets entangled in the empirical world by taking on some contingently attached bodily appearance. Phenomenologists reject this idea. However, it is not clear how one could interpret this strange phrase of “enworlding subjectivity” without thereby to some extent supporting the double-substance view. Getting over this predicament and regaining a phenomenological stance we have to find some plausible explanation for the enworlding metaphor. Doing this requires an understanding of why a phenomenological investigation rules out any extra world entity. It requires an explanation of what Husserl’s so-called “impartial observer” amounts to if there is no disembodied consciousness, if every consciousness we come to know actually is localized in a world of physical appearances. But we equally have to ensure the possibility of gaining some reflective distance to the pregiven natural conditions of our existence as thinking and living creatures. In terms of methodology: We have to abstain from both a radical interpretation of transcendental phenomenology assuming a pure transworld consciousness and a naturalization which renders impossible the phenomenological reduction. Instead, we have to specify the conditions for establishing the phenomenological reduction which is a methodical device for “deworlding.” In what sense does this method call on 259 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 259–282. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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me to surpass my being-in-the-world? The guiding principle of the following argument is: Understanding the idea of deworlding is the key to understanding the idea of enworlding. For the present purpose we can distinguish three aspects of enworlding. The first one lies in i) our turning back to the natural attitude which we have temporarily left in favour of pure phenomenological description. ii) The constitutional analysis of intentional relations which is the task of transcendental phenomenology results, among other things, in asserting that the empirical ego has to be considered as a self-apperception of a transcendental ego. iii) Following the demand for self-foundationing, transcendental phenomenology gets into the paradox of subjectivity. 1 According to this, the phenomenologizing ego has to think of itself as simultaneously empirical and transcendental. Consequently, we should say that in some peculiar sense the transcendental ego always is or remains enworlded although its transcendental nature, just the contrary, lies in surpassing its being-in-the-world. Aspect i) is the reverse of the phenomenological reduction. Concerning i) and ii) phenomenologists preferably talk about “mundanization.” Nonetheless, this term can be equally used with reference to iii) which will be the main issue of the following considerations. Unless otherwise provided, “enworlding” will refer to iii). The hard problem represented in this cannot be solved or soothened by referring to ii) since ii) does not necessarily focus on the identity of constituting (transcendental) and constituted (empirical) ego without which there is no paradox to be solved.2 Of course, the term “selfapperception” implies this identity manifesting itself in performing a change of attitude by means of which we leave the natural world and open up the pure field of noesis-noema correlations. However, stating ii) one need not reflect on how this self-apperception is possible although it certainly produces some incentive to do so. However, stating ii) does not necessarily involve a change from the phenomenological to the natural attitude. Consequently, ii) will not suffice to radically question the identity of empirical and transcendental ego. Since there is no clear-cut separation between ii) and iii), analysing ii), if effected in a proper critical manner, ultimately will pass on to analysing iii). Doing this is relevant to i). In the case that we succeed in explaining how the functioning of the phenomenologizing ego ties up the different domains of objects belonging to the natural and the phenomenological attitude, we shall succeed in explaining how a turning back to daily life world can take place, too. The term “transcendental subjectivity” is ambiguous in Husserl’s phenomenology. In the first place it refers to the pure ego which is introduced in

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Ideas I as the “radiating” centre of all intentional experiences. This pure ego can be considered as either actually functioning (latentes Ich) or as reflectively referred to (patentes Ich). Beyond that the term “transcendental subjectivity” refers to the field of phenomenologically reduced phenomena, i.e. the field of pure noesis-noema correlations. Finally, it can refer to the absolute ego of original time constitution. In discussing the problem of enworlding we confine ourselves to the first-named usage, thereby bearing in mind that “pure ego” and “transcendental subjectivity” are not synonymous. I shall argue that the contrary requirements of interpreting transcendental phenomenology mentioned above, i.e. rejecting both a transworld consciousness and a naturalization, can be met if we realize that enworlding and deworlding or, broadly speaking, mundanization and transcendentalization are two mutually inseparable aspects of the process of phenomenological reflection.3 Recognizing this “dialectical” structure will enable us to understand the mysterious identity in difference stated in iii).4 Following this line of reasoning it will become evident that transcendental phenomenology harbours a hermeneutical substructure coming to light in any attempt to make sense of the enworlding problem. Contrary to a common view I do not think that we are faced with the alternative either to take a hermeneutical turn in doing phenomenology or to support an allegedly abstract transcendental phenomenology.5 Transcendental phenomenology in a way depends on a hermeneutical view though it thereby is not refuted. W H E R E TO S TA RT F RO M ? H OW TO F O R M U L AT E T H E P RO B L E M ?

During his last period in Freiburg Husserl entrusted his assistant Eugen Fink with reworking the 6th Cartesian Meditation (see Fink 1988a and 1988b). In the course of doing this Fink felt compelled to introduce a non-human subject of phenomenological thinking which he, taking up a Husserlian expression, called the “observer.” The observer is said to be distinct in its ontological status from both the transcendental ego and the empirical ego. It is meant to mediate between them in order to explain under what aspect they could be considered identical. Husserl was sceptical vis à vis Fink’s proposal. Instead of introducing an additional mediating ego Husserl emphasized the identity of empirical and transcendental ego although he failed to elaborate how this paradoxical double-nature of subjectivity should be interpreted. Do we not straightforwardly run into contradiction by asserting the empirical and transcendental ego to be identical? How could the same entity be empirical and non-empirical? What is the ontological status of the transcendental ego?6 My

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own approach sides with Husserl (see Fink 1988a, p. 183) and tries to explain how we can cope with the paradox without introducing some additional nonhuman ego (see Rinofner-Kreidl 2001a). I proceed from the idea that, ontologically considered, the philosophizing ego always is the empirical ego. Stipulating a non-human observer in order to close the allegedly absolute gap between empirical and transcendental ego manifesting itself, as Fink maintains, in different modes of being is in my view unnecessary and inefficient.7 Although we certainly have to be aware of mediating functions in methodology there, ultimately, is only one agent of phenomenological reflection, the empirical ego, if we use the expression “is” in its genuine, ontologically weighty sense. In my view it is both intelligible and unavoidable to assume the epoché to be motivated in our natural attitude. According to Fink this is impossible due to the absolutely new beginning represented by the phenomenological reduction. Whether or not this conflict can be settled by doing justice to both moments – the motivation and the absolute beginning – will be pursued later on. According to the motivational view we may reformulate the problem of enworlding as follows: How can we explain an empirical ego’s being motivated to introduce (or: becoming aware of) the distinction between natural and phenomenological attitude if it is right, as Husserl insists on, that the notion of natural attitude is a transcendental concept? Taking for granted that there must be some motivation for effecting the epoché in the natural attitude I consider the impartial observer to represent a methodical figure which, from a broader point of view, can be said to fulfil a special task in a person’s life. Endorsing the motivational view means to consider philosophy as embedded in a comprising lifeworld-practice (see Sepp 1997, pp. 280ff). Of course, theoretical ends may lead to or may aim at giving new interpretations to our concept of practice and the relation between theory and practice. Regarding this process of theoretically readjusting the relation between theory and practice we have to distinguish two basically different modes of practice: a) our culturally and historically divergent life-world practices which are beyond the reach of theoretical concerns, at least insofar as they develop, to the highest degree, unreflectedly and independently of any philosophical ideas whatever; and b) (transcendental-phenomenological) theory as practice. Within the framework of b) different claims with regard to a) can be formulated. Aspect i) of enworlding is not restricted to the demand for utilizing the outcome of one’s theoretical reflection with regard to some pregiven practice. Theories are practically effective in quite different ways depending among other things on the type of theory in question. A philosophical theory, for instance, may intend

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to restructure a given life-world practice by reinterpreting the way empirical agents see themselves and their relations to others. In general, coming to grips with the enworlding-problem can either mean to straightly solve it, to reformulate it in a more precise manner before trying to solve it or to refuse it pure and simple as a misguided idea. In the latter case one may argue that the problem was raised only due to some deficient line of reasoning so that it disappears (without being solved and without being amenable to more adequate reformulations) when we give up the arguments or points of view in question. I decide in favour of the reformulateand-solve-it strategy. Thereby I take up the idea of a time-neutral attitude (zeitneutrale Einstellung) which has been discussed outside the phenomenological circles referring to the project of a meaning theoretical transformation of transcendental philosophy (Rohs 1980, 1992) and a philosophy of person (Sturma 1992, 1997). However, a similar idea implicitly guides the secondary localization of meanings within the temporal and spatial order of things formulated in Husserl’s Experience and Judgement (Husserl 1985, §§ 64–65). Going beyond the above-mentioned projects the concept of timeneutrality can be made productive in order to explain the relation between empirical and transcendental ego. T I M E - N E U T R A L AT T I T U D E S

Acting as a subject in terms of both theoretically structuring experiences and practical agency requires consideration of one’s existing in time. Any human being who behaves in a self-conscious and responsible way must be able to locate herself in the flux of time. I can refer to past and future experiences which are intended to be my experiences because I suppose them to once have been immediately present or to be in the future immediately present to me. What has been expected to come will soon pass through a fugitive present and fade away in the past. However, we could not know anything about this process of change if there were not something remaining unchanged. How does this moment of identity come into play? I take the content of my present experience to represent some object or state of affair which could be identically represented at another moment and by another person. Any objective interpretation of my experiences is based on distinguishing between the living-through of an experience and its meaning content. Whereas the former is identified by its occurring at a particular time, the latter is relatively independent of time. Being temporally located is no intrinsic feature of meaning contents. In assuming a temporal perspective to

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be constitutive for human experience we can either refer to the fact that any living-through of experiences is bound to the present or to the fact that past experiences (as well as future ones which are expected to come) are represented in different modes according to their varying distance from the present, although irrespective of this constant shifting they are said to remain the same experiences. (Last year the visit of M., whom I had not seen for a rather long period, reminded me of my wedding celebration. In remembering this celebration today I am directed to the very same occurence although it is seen from a different “perspective” due to its continual temporal receding and, in connection with this, its changing modes of appearing.) This temporal structuring of our experiences would be thoroughly mysterious if we were not able to distinguish the living-through and the meaning content of our experiences, i.e. their performance-relative and content-relative aspects. Whereas my living-through of a particular experience coincides with an immediate awareness of presence, any referring to past and future events is mediated by representational contents. Interpreting our experiences according to the tripartite structure of past, presence and future is based on the distinction between living-through and referring-to (via some meaning content). Any single instance of remembering the past and expecting the future is realized by means of a present experience directed to something which is not present. With a view to ethical concerns a temporal structuring of our experiences is indispensable, too. In considering ourselves and others as agents with whom one may trustfully cooperate we assume the ability to acquire personal identity by repeatedly appealing to the same reasons in order to justify our way of behaving. If I succeed in bringing some continuity into my selfdetermination I shall become a recognizable person (or: a “character”) in moral respect. It would not count as reason if it turned out that what I referred to in explaining my behaviour was fully dependent on changing circumstances of acting and correspondingly changing motivations. A reason can be recognized to be the same only with regard to different moments of asserting it. It is the same if its meaning content does not vary according to the succession of different acts of recognizing it. In other words: A reason can be asserted the same if its identity does not depend on being asserted at a particular time. Making comprehensible our experiences with regard to theoretical as well as practical demands we have to refer to time-neutral attitudes. Doing this means to transcend the immediate presence by means of the double-structure of our experiences which all embody some objective, i.e. relatively time-independent meaning content whose realization

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nonetheless requires that the experience in question is actually lived-through by a person at a particular time. Most of our experiences are intentional. In case of intentional experiences there is a meaning content mediating a person’s relation to some object or state of affair. While being directed to the object or state of affair one simultaneously is aware of this being-directed-to, i.e. of the intentional experience itself. This immediate awareness of one’s having an experience which has been called “living-through” cannot be reduced to the meaning content of the experience in question. Different persons can grasp the same thought. They can refer to the same object by means of the same thought or by means of different thoughts. But no one can share my actual living-through of a particular experience, e.g. my present grasping the thought that p, or my present feeling that there is a shooting pain in my back. Regarding this aspect the person who actually has an experience is irreplaceable. It is essential for human persons that their theoretical and practical intentions in this sense are all “perspectival” or “subjective.” The finitude of human experience ultimately grounds in its being bound to a shifting “now” in which meaning contents “occur” while experiences are performed. Depending on a particular time with regard to one’s living-through an experience equally holds good for the experience of adopting a time-neutral attitude. Attitudes are ontologically dependent moments. They can become real only if there is a person adopting them. Time-neutrality has to be performed. Consequently, it cannot be understood as an unrestricted time-independence.8 On that score it cannot, on principle, be completely realized. It was therefore said to represent a borderline concept which cannot be taken literally. Literally speaking we cannot leave the temporal order of things. We are individual entities existing in time. “Time-neutrality” metaphorically indicates our ability to reflectively deal with matters of time while remaining immersed in time.9 Therein we achieve a relative independence of what is immediately present. A person’s relation to herself is characterized by at least partially going beyond indexicality in favour of ideality (see Sturma 1997, p. 204). N E U T R A L I T Y- A S - TO - B E I N G A S A “ S E I N S M Ö G L I C H K E I T ” O F HUMAN PERSONS

Now, what can we make of this with regard to the enworlding problem? The idea of time-neutrality helps us to deepen our understanding of how enworlding and deworlding are interrelated. It allows us to explain how an empirical ego is able to perform the phenomenological reduction and in what

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sense it thereby remains within the empirical sphere, although in another sense it is “transformed” to a transcendental ego. Following the concept of time-neutrality we can argue that empirical and transcendental ego are distinct without being separated. The epoché establishes a neutrality-as-tobeing which can be understood as analogous to the idea of time-neutrality. Performing the reduction we turn back from our directedness to the objects of daily concern and become attentive to the meaning contents by means of which these objects are picked out. We leave the natural attitude and adopt the phenomenological attitude. The latter represents a distancing from our ordinary being engaged in situations and projects. Still, this distancing aims at reaching a deeper and clearer understanding of what we encounter while being immersed in our ordinary view. Accordingly, the idea of timeneutrality leads us to realize that we have to go beyond our immediate presence in order to attain an understanding of what it means to exist in time. In both cases we are faced with a contrary movement of distancing and approaching. If we succeed in phenomenologically approaching the world, i.e. if we discover the meaning constituting processes lying beneath our ordinary way of behaving, this is due to our ability to temporarily give up our life-world engagement. This distancing movement itself, while neutralizing the implicit existential presuppositions of intentional experiences, is dependent on a person’s performing this intellectual act. Consequently, the phenomenological reduction in a sense remains incomplete. It remains incomplete not with regard to the meaning contents whose existential presuppositions are neutralized by making them explicit, i.e. by discovering them to be part of the intentions in question. The incompleteness of the reduction rather lies in the experience of performing it which cannot neutralize itself. This would require simultaneously representing the experience of representing within the field of meaning structures. Any representation involves a representing activity which, on its part, can be represented by some other experience reflecting on the original activity as a past experience. However, this cannot be done while the original experience is still going on. 10 Accordingly, my present experience of adopting a time-neutral attitude cannot be represented as a time-neutral state of affair. There is an essential (non-contingent) incompleteness of the phenomenological reduction following from the fact that the actual performing of an experience is irreducible to its intentional content. This being the case, it is evident that the phenomenologizing ego cannot be considered a pure, disembodied ego which would be able to objectively represent everything, including herself. The actual functioning of the lived body is irreducible to any objective referring

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to my body. Therefore, explaining how transcendental and empirical ego can be identical does not mean explaining how a purely mental ego could become embodied. Performing the reduction does not mean that I could get out of my thoughts in any literal sense. I certainly cannot think nobody’s thoughts. As long as I exist, the thoughts that I entertain will be my thoughts. (The phenomenological reflection neutralizes this presupposition by presenting it as part of the relevant phenomenon which can be named, for instance, as follows: “a day-dream of x, conceived as my experience.”) Whatever I think, it will not represent something merely subjective because of my presently thinking about it. Otherwise any thinking and communicating would become impossible. The trivial fact that there must be someone who performs the reduction does not annul the claim to objectivity referring to the results of the phenomenological analyses. It is an objectivistic prejudice to assert that subject-related types of knowledge could not demand for objectivity in any sustainable sense. The abovementioned incompleteness does not annul the epoché since it does not affect the phenomenologically reduced domain of noesis-noema correlations. It rather concerns the fact that we cannot start describing unless the field of pure phenomena has been established. We have to decide for performing the reduction. Doing this we are embedded in some contingent empirical setting. From this, however, cannot be inferred that the reduction would be impracticable on principle. If the idea of time-neutrality meant to posit a sphere which were absolutely independent of the temporal order we experience, then it would be unattainable from a human point of view. If the idea of neutrality-as-to-being meant to posit a pure consciousness which were absolutely independent of the world we experience, then it would be impracticable from a human point of view. Giving up the claim to absolute independence, time-neutrality is attainable and the epoché is practicable.11 Performing the reduction which allows us to discover the functioning of a transcendental ego is an achievement of the empirical ego.12 The neutrality-asto-being represented by every phenomenological investigation is an existentially relevant possibility (Seinsmöglichkeit) of human persons.13 The idea of an impartial observer corresponds to the idea of neutralizing the existential content of intentional relations. According to the foregoing interpretation, the observer is a methodical figure expected to realize the phenomenological idea of a pure, presuppositionless meaning analysis. It is nonetheless the empirical ego who commits herself to this idea and who reflects on methodological demands. The impartial observer is the natural person taking a particular stance towards the world.

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Understanding the phenomenological reduction according to the interrelatedness of indexicality and ideality calls on understanding transcendentality in the light of mundaneity.14 Referring to an empirical ego whose basic character as to philosophical interests is seen in her ability to transcend the immediate present, we have to consider what being-embedded-in-changingsituations means. This is of utmost importance with a view to asking how the performance of the reduction can be motivated in the natural attitude. Reflectively transcending the situation at issue is a constitutive part of a person’s being embedded in situations.15 (In this peculiar sense animals are not situated although they are adjusted to their respective environment.) If this is right, then asserting that performing the reduction necessarily lacks any motivation, obviously refers to a misguided idea of what it means to be a person. (The interaction of being embedded and reflectively transcending one’s embeddedness equally seems to be ignored by those who join the common practice to criticize philosophical projects by merely emphasizing the moments of contextuality and contingency.) The natural, historical and social embeddedness of the phenomenologist does not prevent him from effecting the reduction. Rather, the fact that it is possible to return to the natural attitude after having been occupied with phenomenological descriptions, becomes intelligible only if we acknowledge that the epoché is practiced in some contingent empirical setting. The ego is characterized by its ability to adopt different attitudes. But this may not be taken merely abstractively as a function of changing attitudes.16 In adopting this or that attitude the ego always has a “place” in the world – if considered objectively. Nevertheless, the subject in question simultaneously represents a transcendental ego insofar as the pure function of changing attitudes and intending something cannot be objectified. The empirical/transcendental distinction does not confront us with the question of how two separated entities could be brought together. It has to be considered as a self-distinction of the empirical ego. Granted this to be so we, however, face an intriguing problem. Performing the reduction the phenomenologizing ego turns back to the intentional content of her own consciousness. The experience of referring to one’s own experiences under the condition of neutralizing existential positings can only retrospectively be imputed to the empirical ego since doing this draws on a point of view which is available only by virtue of the reduction. Discerning empirical and transcendental ego requires having performed the reduction. The distinction in question cannot be introduced as long as the ego remains in the natural attitude. On the other hand, attributing it to the pure ego runs into obstacles,

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too, since the empirical/transcendental distinction cannot occur within the field of noesis-noema correlations which reveals itself only on condition that the reduction has been effected. So we obviously are caught in an aporetic situation. Both in natural and in phenomenological attitude it seems impossible to introduce the empirical/transcendental distinction. Acting according to the natural attitude we cannot establish the difference between empirical and transcendental ego. Acting according to the phenomenological attitude we have to assume that it has already been established although we cannot make evident the unity of the difference within the field of phenomena whose introduction reflects the empirical/transcendental distinction. This aporetic situation results from disregarding that natural and phenomenological attitude cannot be explained except in their interrelatedness. Taking this into account we have to disapprove of the idea that the reduction brings about an inconceivable leap. Instead, we have to take advantage of the hermeneutical device to rightly get into the circle (see Heidegger 2001, pp. 152f, 314ff) with a view to the methodological problems of transcendental phenomenology. 17 Contrary to a common Heideggerian reproach (e. g. Masullo 1989, pp. 236f, 238f) the present interpretation denies that the epoché results in a vicious circle of facticity and ideality due to assigning these moments to two separated spheres of being. It is, rather, characteristic of transcendental phenomenology to consider facticity with a view to its being transcended in favour of ideality. Ideality, vice versa, cannot be thematized phenomenologically except in its relatedness to facticity. The real point of dissent, therefore, is whether the advocates of a hermeneutical philosophy are right in claiming that transcendental phenomenology either cannot be interpreted hermeneutically at all or, in case that such an interpretation is established, unjustifiedly equates the hermeneutic idea of facticity with the transcendental concept of natural attitude. Thereto, an irreconcilable conflict between Heideggerian and Husserlian phenomenology remains irrespective of any hermeneutic implications of transcendental phenomenology whose explanation actually does not touch on Heidegger’s idea of facticity. C AU S A L I T Y A N D M OT I VAT I O N

For any phenomenological investigation it is of crucial importance to distinguish causal and motivational relations, the former referring to physical occurences, the latter referring to intentional (meaning) contents. There are some striking features of the idea of motivation we should take notice of with

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a view to our present interest. Being motivated to do x I am instantaneously aware of being motivated in a certain way. On the contrary, x’s being caused by y does not entail that anyone knows about this causal relation presently occurring. Analysing motivational relations is impossible without taking into account the self-interpretation of an agent who, in a sense, motivates herself by acknowledging certain motives as reasons to act in a particular way in order to realize some state or occurrence. Talking about motivational relations includes talking about the time-horizon of agents who are able to anticipate future actions and remember past ones. Contrary to this, analysing causality is indifferent to any subject/object distinction as well as to the subjective time-horizon of past, presence and future belonging to the thinking and acting of a person who is aware of her being localized in time and space. What motivates me to effect the reduction is that I intellectually anticipate the end which I try to attain by means of this very action. I know that y’s becoming real requires that x has to be done. My decision to do x is motivated by a representation of y as something which is not yet real, but could become real by doing x. (Supposed that y were already real and I knew about that, there would not be left any incentive for me to act.) Being motivated to do x in order to realize y means being convinced that y will become real as soon as the motivation has resulted in some action suited to bring forth y. Analysing intentional contents according to Husserl’s methodical ideas cannot take place unless the phenomenological reduction has been established. Finding ourselves in the phenomenological attitude we assume that there has been some motivation to leave the natural attitude in favour of the phenomenological one. (Otherwise we had got into it by mere chance. In this case there would not be any need for explanation because there would not be any striving for cognition either.) Our analysis of intentional contents is “belate” by its very nature. My being motivated to adopt the phenomenological attitude can be elucidated only after I have been following the motivational incentive. In order to function as a motive of my approaching action y has to be anticipated in some more or less vague sense. However, this anticipation is embedded in an indeterminate meaning horizon (Sinnhorizont) which will be opened up step by step post factum. In order to explicitly understand where my motivation to perform the reduction is leading to, what precise purpose is underlying it and what further consequences it will bring about (for instance with respect to my self-understanding as a morally responsible person), I have to have left the natural attitude. Therefore we rightly assert that there is some motivation to adopt the phenomenological attitude which can be found

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in the natural attitude. However, as long as we keep to the natural attitude there cannot be any clear and profound understanding of the meaning and scope of being motivated in this way. Performing an action does not imply to be reflectively aware of doing so. It is not until the epoché has been established, that I can start inquiring into how phenomenological and natural attitude are interrelated. This includes finding out what I really have been doing when I effected the reduction. The only way to appropriate my motivation is by retrospection, thereby deliberately acknowledging the idea of a phenomenological critique of reason which nevertheless must have been previously effective as a motivational incentive. At this point it is useful to remember what we said at the beginning. Whether or not a problem can be solved often depends on how we formulate it. If it is true, as we said above, that strictly speaking there is no other ego than the empirical one since any ontological reading of iii) would annul the very problem it pretends to formulate, then we have to argue that there must be some motivation for performing the reduction in the natural attitude. However, taking this we do not commit ourselves to a particular view of how this motivation should be interpreted. Therefore we can, in a sense, agree with Fink who asserts that there could not be any cogent motive to perform the reduction as long as we keep to the natural attitude (Fink 1988b, 159f).18 Fink is right if “being cogently motivated to do x” means to be in the fullest possible sense aware of meaning, purpose and consequences of my present motivation. But if we do not follow this restrictive use of the term “motivation” – and there is no cogent reason why we should do so – then we can consider the epoché to be motivated in the natural attitude. If we falsely take the reduction as an instruction to posit an extramundane ego, then it becomes totally incomprehensible why an enworlding should take place at all. Why should the extramundane ego, supposing there is one, not persist in its autonomous, self-sufficient mode of being? Any attempt to reunite it with the empirical ego would appear unmotivated. As for methodological concerns it is obvious that demanding a phenomenology of phenomenology were altogether inappropriate if the phenomenologizing ego did in some respect always remain the mundane ego whose actions are tied to an irreversible succession of temporal units. Performing the reduction does not all at once and in any relevant sense remove this temporal structure. Living one’s life in a temporally ordered way does concern us as thinking subjects, too. It is, for instance, impossible for us to simultaneously behave in a naive and a reflecting mode with reference to the same (moment of an) action. We always behave either naively or reflectively. Of course, each new level of

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reflexivity harbours new moments or types of naivety which subsequently have to be revealed. There is nonetheless a mutual exclusion of naivety and reflexivity with regard to any presently performed experience. This holds true for philosophical analysis, too, which is, in a quite peculiar sense, reflective since it knows about the difficulties one strikes when distinguishing naivety and reflexivity. In any case, doing phenomenology is subject to the temporal mode of our existence. This is evident with a view to the process of egosplitting (Ich-Spaltung) in course of which a gradually realized selfobjectification of the phenomenologizing ego takes place. This process admits of no final self-positing. T H ROW I N G S O M E L I G H T O N T H E T E M P O R A L S T RU C T U R E O F T H E PA R A D OX

How, then, is the theoretical framing of the ego in transcendental phenomenology affected by temporal structures? The problem of aspect iii) of enworlding brings to light that the form of temporality is not only a formal condition of the process of analysing meaning contents. Beyond that it plays an essential part in introducing and interpreting the empirical-transcendental distinction. The paradox of subjectivity can be further elucidated by explaining how different views of the ego (empirical, transcendental) are correlated with different modes of being immersed in (sc. objective, constituted) time. In going into this more closely we have to discern two modes of how temporality takes effect within the transcendental field, the latter being constituted by noesis-noema correlations successively emerging in consciousness. On the one hand, temporality is intrinsic to the intentional structures which are the object of a phenomenological description. On the other hand, there is the phenomenologizing ego performing the reduction, trying to grasp some essential insight concerning the structure of pure phenomena, and ready to readopt the natural attitude after having finished her analysis. Here we are faced with thinking activities which do not belong to the object-field of our analysis but to the way this field is made accessible, how it is established, gradually opened up with regard to its content, and finally abandoned in favour of some other domain of objects. Temporality is intrinsic to the thinking activities of the phenomenologizing ego. These activities while functioning as instruments for presenting the object of analysis cannot be included within the present field of analysis although later on they can be interpreted in terms of temporal succession. In other words: It is impossible to simultaneously objectify temporality as intrinsic moment of

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the intentional structure described and as intrinsic moment of the describing activity. What is present in terms of (implicit) temporal relations pertaining to the objects described is not, at least not in the same sense, present in terms of the actually performed act of grasping and describing these object-structures. It is a question of a merely contingent simultaneity. That is to say: The actually performed act of describing could as well exist simultaneously with any other (temporally structured) object to be described. The phrase “being simultaneously” in this case does not indicate the same way of being immersed in time. It does not indicate the same mode of being. The temporality of the object described (represented time) is given as a section of objective time as it presents itself from a certain point of view within the flux of time. The temporality of the actually performed experience (representing time) belongs to the inner time consciousness which, at this very moment, still lacks any objectification.19 Nevertheless, it can be objectified if the analysis is continued. This being the case, a further step of “ego-splitting” takes place renewing the duality of transcendental ego and empirical ego. Consequently, the merely contingent simultaneity stated above whose discovery hinders us to consider empirical and transcendental ego to represent the same mode of being does not urge us to assume two separated modes of being either. With a view to its actual functioning as transcendental ego the phenomenologizing ego, rather, does not exist in any particular mode of being at all. What is called “transcendental ego” does not have any genuine mode of being for its own.20 It does not have any genuine temporal order for its own. If it is said to be temporally structured this can be recognized only retrospectively, i.e. owing to its being related to the empirical ego. Although the empirical (or: natural) ego always has functioned transcendentally, it does not know about it as long as it sticks to the natural attitude. “Auch als natürlich lebendes Ich war ich transzendentales, aber ich wußte davon nichts” (Husserl 1950, p. 15). Having performed the reduction the natural ego turns out to be “nur ein besonderes Stück oder eine besondere Schichte meines enthüllten transzendentalen Lebens” (ibid.). The methodological counterpart to this is the retrospective appropriation of my motivation to perform the reduction. On the other hand, as has been elucidated above by introducing the thesis of contingent simultaneity, the transcendental ego always is the empirical ego. This offers a plausible explanation of Husserl’s much disputed assertion that the transcendental ego is not a kind of general ego, but my ego. From this point of view the “wundersame Parallelismus des Psychologischen und Transzendentalen” (Husserl 1962b, p. 275) appears in a slightly different light. It is a mutual

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dependency manifesting itself in two different approaches to consciousness which refer to each other for the sake of being comprehensible. It is this transcendental reflection on how to introduce the empirical-transcendental distinction which finds expression in the paradox of subjectivity. If the above considerations are right, then the empirical-transcendental distinction becomes real as a self-distinction of the transcendental attitude (see Husserl 1962b, p. 343)21 because adopting the latter implies knowing about its differing from the natural attitude. (This does not hold, vice versa, for the natural attitude.) From the point of view of retrospectively elucidating these different attitudes we have to deny any independent positing of the transcendental sphere as against the empirical (natural) selfapperception of a person existing in time and space. From this point of view we, therefore, can nonetheless argue, as I did above, that the empirical-transcendental distinction results from a self-distinction of the empirical ego. L AY E R S O F PA R A D OX

In trying to understand the enworlding-problem it is useful to trace out in what precise sense we are confronted with a paradox. In uttering the phrase “the ego has to be thought of as being simultaneously empirical [Subjektivität in der Welt] and transcendental [Bewu␤tseinssubjekt für die Welt]” (Husserl 1962a, p. 184), the adverb “simultaneous” tacitly introduces ontological homogeneity. It is assumed that both empirical and transcendental ego are amenable to temporal qualification. Consequently, the previously formulated problem takes a shift. We began with asking how the ego to whom we attribute intentional experiences could be considered as empirical and transcendental at the same time. Asking in this way leads to stating a paradox with regard to the object judged. We (seemingly) are faced with a paradoxical state of affairs. One and the same thing is said to be of a twofold nature. It is said to be the same and not the same at the same time. This is how Husserl’s paradox of subjectivity usually is understood. Nevertheless, the paradox also manifests itself in the semantical content of the sentence. Due to the ambiguous use of the term “being”, the adverbial qualification “simultaneous” tends to annul the distinction between empirical and transcendental ego which nonetheless is asserted. Finally, there is a third layer of paradox referring to the uttering of the sentence in question. The very fact of my asserting the identity of empirical and transcendental ego is paradoxical insofar as the paradox dissolves whenever the double nature of subjectivity is

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attributed to someone from a third-person perspective. This objectification is achieved by any judgment asserting that something is the case or not or that something has certain qualities or not. Regarding the objectifying quality intrinsic to any assertion whatever, there is no formal distinction between attributing different qualities to a spatially localized thing which it simultaneously instantiates and asserting the empirical/transcendental doublenature of an ego. In ascribing some quality to a person we take the ego as an object embedded in some natural environment and involved in a manifold of causal relations with other things. This being the case stating the paradox becomes unintelligible. If the ego were nothing but an object “within” the world how, then, could it be attributed a paradoxical character due to its oscillating between being-in-the-world and not-being-in-the-world? 22 Any single instance of uttering the paradox occurs at a certain time. Utterings are ontologically dependent moments. Whenever the paradox is uttered there must exist some person uttering it who is located in an objective temporal and spatial order. We are caught in a hopeless situation. In order to understand and discuss the paradox it has to be uttered. Any instance of uttering it seems to annul it. Analysing Husserl’s paradox we can distinguish different layers of paradox depending on whether we single out the object or state of affair referred to (paradoxer Gegenstand/Sachverhalt), the meaning content of the judgment (paradoxer Aussagesinn) or the utterance of the judgment (paradoxe Äu␤erung). It is the last-named paradox which represents the very core of the problem. The first paradox dissolves as soon as an ontological interpretation of the empirical-transcendental distinction is refuted. We are not dealing with two different (kinds of) objects but with two different approaches to the world. The second paradox dissolves as soon as we, endorsing a non-ontological interpretation, realize the merely contingent simultaneity of empirical and transcendental ego. We are not dealing with two different types of temporal order and two different modes of being.23 The third paradox announcing itself in the incompleteness of the phenomenological reduction as explained above cannot be dissolved. But it need not be dissolved either. It is not paradoxical in a strict sense. It does not involve a contradiction. Analysing the paradox of subjectivity with a view to the essential incompleteness of the phenomenological reduction discloses that it is not primarily a theoretical problem. The paradox makes clear that phenomenological and natural attitude cannot be explained except in their interrelatedness. It indicates that understanding the methodological device of reducing the world means to act accordingly to it. Consequently, the paradox

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can be “solved” by practically grasping the interrelatedness of natural and phenomenological attitude, i.e. by performing and abandoning the reduction in a process of reflection. Of course, we could not have reached this insight without reflecting on the way we theoretically behave. Raising the demand for reflexivity is not foreign to the phenomenological practice of reduction. It is an intrinsic moment of doing phenomenology. In this context theory and practice are inseparably linked up with each other. Following this interpretation of the paradox of subjectivity we have to discern different levels of practice coming to bear in Husserl’s Crisis. The most obvious manifestation of practice concerns the relation between science and life-world including the claim that it is the task of transcendental phenomenology to make comprehensible this relation. Beyond that there is the existential interpretation of the phenomenological reduction according to which it is a method for gaining a deeper self-understanding and for rebuilding one’s personality by cultivating neutralizing attitudes. Finally, there is the aforesaid layer of practice which is effective in the methodology of phenomenological reduction though it remains hidden in Husserl’s terse remarks on the paradox of subjectivity. Although constituted and constituting ego cannot be said to represent the same mode of being this does not sustain the idea that the transcendental ego could represent a special mode of being of its own. On the contrary, asking this way indicates that we do not understand the nature of a transcendental ego. Trying to specify a transcendental ego’s inherent mode of being leads to either reducing transcendental phenomenology to ontology or to introducing an extramundane ego whose identification with the empiricial ego could not be explained. (Moreover, this ego would again be subject to Kant’s paralogism-critique.) Instead of stipulating a transmundane ego we have to acknowledge that, phenomenologically viewed, it is impossible to give a complete self-objectification and that this impossibility is the only attainable und purely negative indication of the peculiar status of the transcendental ego which functions as “bordering” the world. Just as the incompleteness of the phenomenological reduction does not render the epoché impossible, this negativity does not rule out considering a transcendental ego. It certainly makes evident that asking for a genuine mode of being is thoroughly misguided since it ignores the precarious status of the transcendental ego which is “überweltlich als Welt konstituierende” (Husserl 1962b, p. 345). This phrase is illuminating. It demonstrates how the ego recedes from being descriptively grasped. If it functions in terms of meaning constitution with regard to our experiencing of the world, it cannot be situated beyond the world. Trying to make sense of the enworlding problem

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we cannot dispense with metaphorically talking about the ego as “border” of the world. Keeping in mind the iterative character of the phenomenological ego-splitting, we have to avoid interpreting this metaphor statically. The transcendental ego “is” a deferrable and constantly deferred border. It is a shifting between natural and phenomenological attitude which cannot be grasped as a movement leaving behind some objective trace. As soon as we try to objectify this ongoing process of enworlding the transcendental and transcendentalizing the mundane, these interrelated moments fall to pieces. Consequently, the transcendental ego turns into an extramundane ego and the mundane ego turns into a natural organism represented in causal or functional terms. Karl-Franzens-University Graz (Austria)

N OT E S 1

See Husserl 1962a, §§ 53–54; Husserl 1962b, pp. 288ff, 333–343. I shall confine myself to the level of active constitution. The constituting ego will not be considered as absolute in terms of original time-constitution. 3 The idea that iii) is unsolvable arises if it is erroneously asserted that a) I can thoroughly objectify myself from an absolute point of view, and b) that any adequate solution had to be a strictly theoretical one. See Rinofner-Kreidl 2001b. 4 Among the first who thought about a dialectical undercurrent of transcendental phenomenology was Waldenfels in his landmarking investigation from 1971, though he finally endorses a negative reply. “Husserls Denken ist dialektischer, als manche Kritiker es wahrhaben. Doch dies selbst vorausgesetzt, bleibt zu fragen, ob nicht die versuchte Auflösung des genannten Paradoxes Husserl in eine einseitige Richtung treibt, wodurch die anfängliche Dialektik in einer schlechten Einheit zum Stillstand kommt. … Es besteht der Verdacht, die nur scheinbar gelingende transzendentale Reduktion könnte mit ihrer transzendental-mundanen Spaltung des Subjekts einen transzendentalen Akosmismus zur Folge haben.” (Bernhard Waldenfels, Im Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen im Anschluss an Edmund Husserl [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971], p. 12) 5 The over all question which is at stake in discussing the paradox of subjectivity is the idea of philosophy as an autonomous spiritual activity. See Mohanty 2000. Taking into account hermeneutical and dialectical moments when explaining the identity of empirical and transcendental ego promises that in some crucial sense we can defend an autonomous philosophy without thereby denying its existential, historical-cultural and voluntaristic-methodological presuppositions. Ibid., p. 38. 6 As is well known, Heidegger was the first to advance a fundamental critique of Husserl’s phenomenology by pointing at these problems. “Welches ist die Seinsart dieses absoluten ego – in welchem Sinn ist es dasselbe wie das je faktische Ich; in welchem Sinn nicht dasselbe? Welches ist der Charakter der Setzung, in der das absolute Ego Gesetztes ist? Inwiefern liegt hier keine Positivität (Gesetztheit) vor?” (Heidegger an Husserl, 22.10.1927, in Edmund Husserl Briefwechsel. 2

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Band IV: Dïe Freiburger Schuüler, ed. Karl Schuhmann in cooperation with Elisabeth Schuhmann [Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1994], p. 147) Assuming an absolute ontological fissure between pure consciousness and thing-like reality the paradox actually seems to indicate that transcendental phenomenology reaches a fatal impasse. “Wie ist es möglich, daβ die Erlebnisse eine absolute reine Seinsregion ausmachen und zugleich in der Transzendenz der Welt vorkommen?” (Martin Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs [Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann 1979], p. 139) See Heidegger 2001, §§ 25–27 and 64. 7 It is inefficient insofar as it merely shifts the problem and introduces additional problems. Formerly we had to understand how we can take the phenomenological attitude. Now we have to understand how the appearing of the observer can be explained. Formerly we were faced with an allegedly mysterious simultaneity of empirical and transcendental ego. Now we are faced with a mysterious simultaneity of observer and transcendental ego. If we follow Fink in taking the phenomenologizing observer to be in ontological distance from both the empirical and the transcendental ego how, then, could we ever hope to explain this threefold structure to be compatible with the idea of one identical subject? Moreover, there seems to arise an infinite regress of mediating observer-subjects reminding on Aristotles’ tritos anthropos argument if we stick to the idea that the identity of empirical and transcendental ego cannot be explained except that we stipulate an additional uniting principle (“observer”) ontologically abstaining from both. Granting this, a further observer at a higher level of reflection is needed who will be able to refer to the difference of empirical ego, observer and transcendental ego and, under some aspect, brings about their identity and so forth. To be sure, this negative result is avoidable according to Fink due to his (strongly Hegelianizing) idea of the absolute. Different ideas of the ego are said to be preserved in a “Erkenntnisbewegung des Absoluten in sich selbst.” See Fink 1988a, pp. 117–135, 161, 166f. Fink’s attempt to grasp the concrete concept of the phenomenologizing ego in terms of a dialectical unity of transcendentality and mundaneity presupposes the thesis of a radical “Seinsgegensatz” which is constitutive for his meontic philosophy of the absolute spirit. 8 “[…] daβ Zeitneutralität sich nur in einer datierten zeitlichen Perspektive einstellen kann. Zeitneutralität muβ daher als eine Grenzbestimmung begriffen werden, die sich nur in der Form von tendenziellen Annäherungen auf Sachverhalte des Lebens von Personen bezieht, denn aufgrund der Irreduzibilität der subjektiven Perspektive kann personale Existenz niemals vollständig vom zeitneutralen Standpunkt gelebt werden – Zeitneutralität ist eine zeitneutrale Einstellung in der Zeit.” (Dieter Sturma, “Person und Zeit,” in Zeiterfahrung und Personalität, ed. Forum für Philosophie Bad Homburg [Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1992], pp. 123–157, here: p. 151) As indicated above Husserl follows a similar conception by explaining an ideal object’s being-beyond-time (Zeitlosigkeit) in terms of its being-at-any-time (Allzeitlichkeit). The latter is a mode of temporality. It is not essential for ideal objects to be realized at a particular time since they can be realized at any time whatever. However, it is essential for them to be realized at some time. See Husserl 1985, pp. 311ff, 323. 9 See Sturma 1997, pp. 278ff; Sturma 1992, pp. 142–145, 154–157. 10 Therefore, we may say that the incompleteness in question finally is grounded in the process of original time-constitution. See Bosio 1963, pp. 21ff, 32, who rightly emphasizes that Hussert’s paradox of subjectivity is tightly connected with the problem of original time-constitution. 11 The phenomenological reduction does not ensure absolute presuppositionlessness. Moreover, “extramundanc” and “absolute” have to be carefully distinguished. See Rinofner-Kreidl 2000, pp. 757–773. 12 Contrary to this: “Der Vollzug der Reduktion bedeutet das Sichselbstübersteigen (Transzendieren) des Menschen, der damit auch sich selbst in allen seinen menschlichen

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Möglichkeiten übersteigt. Paradox ausgedrückt: Indem der Mensch die phänomenologische Reduktion vollzieht (sich entmenscht), führt er damit eine Handlung aus, die ‘er’ gar nicht ausführen kann, die gar nicht im Bereich seiner Möglichkeiten liegt. Diese Paradoxie klärt sich auf, wenn wir uns vor Augen halten, dass eigentlich gar nicht der Mensch die Reduktion vollzieht, sondern das in ihm erwachende, zum Selbstbewusstsein drängende transzendentale Subjekt” (Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil I: Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre). Texte aus dem Nachlass Eugen Finks (1932) mit Anm. u. Beilagen aus dem Nachlass Edmund Husserls (1933/34), ed. Hans Ebeling, Jann Holl und Guy van Kerckhoven (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1988, 132) See Fink 1988b, pp. 164f, 170f, 174, 176f, 219. 13 This comes near to Heidegger’s view. “Die transzendentale Konstitution ist eine zentrale Möglichkeit der Existenz des faktischen Seins.” (Heidegger an Husserl, 22.X.1927, in Edmund Husserl Briefwechsel. Band IV: Die Freiburger Schüler, ed. Karl Schuhmann in cooperation with Elisabeth Schumann [Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1994], p. 146) As will be clear in the following I nonetheless take Heidegger’s demand for stating a transcendental ego’s mode of being to be fundamentally misguided. 14 Asking for the latter is an essential impetus in Sepp 1997. 15 See Sartre 1991, pp. 756f, 828f, 841–858, 877–879, 941–950. 16 See “Reine Gegenwart ist kein zeitlicher Ort des bewu␤ten Lebens von Personen.” (Dieter Sturma, Philosophie der Person. Die Selbstverhältnisse von Subjektivität und Moralität [Paderborn et. al.: Ferdinand Schöningh 1997], p. 282f) 17 For an attempt to spell out what “rightly” means with regard to Husserl’s paradox see Rinofner-Kreidl 2001b. From the teleological point of view of personal identity the radical leap of the epoché presents itself as an integrated part of an overall practical continuity. 18 There are some remarks in Fink’s work which seem to corroborate the present interpretation. See Fink 1988a, p. 126 (“Erweckung der Disposition für den Durchbruch der blitzhaften transzendentalen Vorerkenntnisse, die den Vollzug der phänomenologischen Reduktion überhaupt erst motivieren”), Fink 1988b, pp. 172, 192. 19 It should be noted that at the level of original time constitution there is an analogue to the retrospective appropriation of motivation, though it takes place within phenomenological attitude. (In the foregoing case it was due to a change of attitudes aiming at entering pure phenomenology.) The analogue is this: The process of original time constitution cannot be determined except in terms of that which is already temporally constituted. In other words: The constituting necessarily has to be understood in its relatedness to the constituted. See Bruzina 1997. 20 “Mein transzendentales Ich ist also evident ‘verschieden’ vom natürlichen Ich, aber keineswegs als ein zweites, als ein davon getrenntes im natürlichen Wortsinn, wie umgekehrt auch keineswegs ein in natürlichem Sinne damit verbundenes oder mit ihm verflochtenes. Es ist eben das (in voller Konkretion gefaβte) Feld der transzendentalen Selbsterfahrung, die jederzeit durch blo␤e Änderung der Einstellung in psychologische Selbsterfahrung zu wandeln ist. In diesem Übergang stellt sich notwendig eine Identität des Ich her; … Ist der Parallelismus der transzendentalen und psychologischen Erfahrungssphären als eine Art Identität des Ineinander des Seinssinnes aus blo␤er Einstellungsänderung verständlich geworden, so auch die daraus sich ergebende Folge des gleichen Parallelismus und des im Ineinander implicite Beschlossenseins der transzendentalen und der psychologischen Phänomenologie …” (Edmund Husserl, “Der Encyclopedia Britannica Artikel,” in Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1962], pp. 237–301, here: p. 294) See ibid. pp. 292, 342, 531f. 21 See Rang 1973, pp. 81, 87.

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22 The thought that the ego limits the world and does not simply “inhabit” it, cannot be objectively asserted. Compare Wittgenstein 1984, 5.632–5.6331, 6.45. 23 Following Husserl’s non-restrictive use of the term “being” referring to everything which can function as an object of predication, it is clear that this, for instance, applies to noematic contents. It does not apply to the actually, i.e. latently functioning of a transcendental ego.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bosio, Franco, “Il paradosso della soggettività,” in aut aut 76 (1963), pp. 17–35. Bruzina, Ronald, “The Transcendental Theory of Method in Phenomenology: the Meontic and Deconstruction,” in Husserl Studies 14 (1997), pp. 75–94. Fink, Eugen, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 1: Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre. Texte aus dem Nachlass Eugen Finks (1932) mit Anm. u. Beilagen aus dem Nachlass Edmund Husserls (1933/34), ed. Hans Ebeling, Jann Holl und Guy van Kerckhoven (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1988a) (Husserliana Dokumente Vol. II/1). Fink, Eugen, VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Teil 2: Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass Eugen Finks (1932) mit Anm. u. Beilagen aus dem Nachlass Edmund Husserls (1933/34), ed. Guy van Kerckhoven (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988b) (Husserliana Dokumente Vol. II/2). Heidegger, Martin, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979). Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit (18th ed., Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001). Husserl, Edmund, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950) (Husserliana I). Husserl, Edmund, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962a) (Husserliana VI). Husserl, Edmund, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962b) (Husserliana IX). Husserl, Edmund, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1985). Masullo, Aldo, “‘Sorge’: Heideggers Verwandlung von Husserls Intentionalitätsstruktur,” in Phänomenologie im Widerstreit. Zum 50. Todestag Edmund Husserls, ed. Christoph Jamme, Otto Pöggeler (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 234–254. Mohanty, Jitendra N., “Philosophy as Autonomous Spiritual Activity,” in Jitendra N. Mohanty, The Self and its Others (Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 33–39. Rang, Bernhard, Kausalität und Motivation. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Perspektivität und Objektivität in der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) (Phaenomenologica 53). Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja, Edmund Husserl. Zeitlichkeit und Intentionalität (Freiburg/Munich: Karl Alber, 2000). Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja, “Selbst-Objektivation, Selbst-Entfremdung, Selbst-Bestimmung. Zur phänomenologischen Konzeption von Subjektivität,” in Traum, Logik, Geld. Freud, Husserl und Simmel zum Denken der Moderne, ed. Ulrike Kadi, Brigitte Keintzel, Helmuth Vetter (Tübingen: edition diskord 2001a), pp. 125–152 .

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Rinofner-Kreidl, Sonja, “Praxis der Subjektivität. Zum Verhältnis von Transzendentalphänomenologie und Hermeneutik,” in Subjektivität – Verantwortung – Wahrheit. Neue Aspekte der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls, ed. David Carr, Christian Lotz (Frankfurt New York: Lang, 2001b), pp. 37–56. Rohs, Peter, Die Zeit des Handelns. Eine Untersuchung zur Handlungs- und Normentheorie (Königstein/Ts.: Hain, 1980). Rohs, Peter, “Die Zeitlichkeit von Leib und Seele,” in Zeiterfahrung und Personalität, ed. Forum für Philosophie Bad Homburg (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 207–230. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, ed. Traugott König (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1991). Sepp, Hans R., Praxis und Theoria. Husserls transzendentalphänomenologische Rekonstruktion des Lebens (Freiburg/Munich: Karl Alber, 1997). Sturma, Dieter, “Person und Zeit,” in Zeiterfahrung und Personalität, ed. Forum für Philosophie Bad Homburg (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 123–157. Sturma, Dieter, Philosophie der Person. Die Selbstverhältnisse von Subjektivität und Moralität (Paderborn et al.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1997). Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1984).

Sonja Rinofer-Kreidl lecturing; Kadria Ismail in front.

Trimme Kurenkova handing A–T. Tymieniecka a “letter of distinction” (potchetnaya geramota) awarded by the University of Vladimir.

R . K U R E N KOVA , E . P L E K H A N OV, Y. RO G AC H E VA

T H E T R A N S C E N D E N TA L – P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L M E A N I N G O F T H E N OT I O N O F “ E X P E R I E N C E ” I N T H E PHILOSOPHIES OF E. HUSSERL AND J. DEWEY

The theme of “Husserl and Dewey” could hardly have been outside of researchers’ interests in connection with the contribution of both outstanding thinkers of the 20th century to the determination of the ways and perspectives of development of all contemporary philosophy and culture. We can mention the names of James W. Garrison and Emanuel I. Shargel,1 who stressed the internal pithy similarities between Husserl’s and Dewey’s philosophies. The problems of the existential nature of human experience and its horizontal structure were understood by Dewey and Husserl within the context of “life-world.” We highly appreciate the objective research attempt being undertaken by our American colleagues, but at the same time we’d like to state that we consider the interpretations of the notion of “experience” presented by the founders of transcendental phenomenology and the philosophy of pragmatism to be of a more complimentary and interactive, rather than convergent, character in relation to each other. The basis for such relations could be the similarity of the central theme that had become the peak of Husserl’s and Dewey’s intellectual efforts, namely the theme of the future. The main reasons for Husserl turning to the problems of transcendental phenomenology, characterized by the analysis of “historical teleology of the infinite aim of the human intellect,” were the crisis of Western Culture and anxiety about the future of European mankind. The essence of the crisis at the height of scientific civilization may be vividly seen in the loss of practical life sense by the human being in conquering the world. The contradiction between “life self-excitement” on the part of the human being and his/her scientific self-determination in the world reached its highest degree of acuteness at the beginning of the 20th century. Husserl thought the search for new liveliness and spirit, which would provide a great and distant future for mankind, to be a positive alternative to that “European existence” decay, as he proclaimed the immortality of the spirit.2 As for Dewey, the theme of a future that is open and not initially guaranteed, requiring constant and persistent human efforts, has also become 283 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 283–292. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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the focus of attention. As he thinks, with the establishment of democracy there appeared a principally new way of social life and activity based not on a collective tradition and authority but always presupposing critical reflection on and creative solution of problems. Thanks to democracy a person brings into his life-world a notion of freedom, but at the same time sets problems for his/her personal future. Dewey stressed the idea that we live in a developing world, one that is not static but dynamic in character. So he considered the main task for the human being to be to concentrate not on the past but on the future. For Dewey the past (all our knowledge, in comparison to thinking, lies in the past) has its value only if it is capable of providing validity and effectiveness to our future decisions.3 It seems that the evaluation of the situation of the crisis looks different for Dewey and Husserl. For the leader of pragmatism, the development of democracy is a phenomenon of a permanent crisis. Democracy can function only as a process, as a constant, permanent transcending of social experience and overcoming of its marked life-world borders. In this sense the fact of the crisis of democracy is less important than the openness of democracy to the horizon of infinite goals, tasks and needs. Husserl sees in the crisis of European spirit not the stage of Faust’s darings but Wagner’s tiredness and disillusionment with a new European philosophical and scientific way of cognition. In spite of the marked differences, both scientists display similarity in giving importance to life-sense and rational-reflective components of human experience for the future of democracy and culture. Taking into consideration the place that the category of “experience” takes in the phenomenology of Husserl and the pragmatism of Dewey, we may consider the creative work of both thinkers as an attempt to give way to the “philosophy of experience.” Dewey wrote: “the philosophy in question is, to paraphrase the saying of Lincoln about democracy, one of, by, and for experience. No one of these words: of, by or for, names anything which is self-evident. Each of them is a challenge to discover and put into operation a principle of order and organization which follows from understanding what educative experience signifies.”4 We should stress that Husserl and Dewey were far from identification of experience with the reality of individual mental life. For Husserl this statement needs no special confirmation. As for the transcendentalphenomenological sense of the notion of “experience” in the philosophy of pragmatism, it is not that evident. One should pay attention to the declaration of Dewey to create “a scientific philosophy of Experience.” Dewey stressed

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“the organic connection between education and personal experience; or that the new philosophy of education is committed to some kind of empirical and experimental philosophy. But experience and experiment are not selfexplanatory ideas. Rather, their meaning is part of the problem to be explored. To know the meaning of empiricism we need to understand what experience is.”5 Dewey’s intention was in tune with Husserl’s, but the realization of this task by these two thinkers was done in different ways. In his theory of experience, Husserl started from the theory of intentionality, which made it possible for him to avoid the dubbing between the quality of an object and sensation, a thing and an image, physical and mental processes. Intentional objects are not the reflection of material phenomena and objects. They are constituted by mechanisms of functioning of consciousness and are given to us in the form of internal experience, the modes of which (presentation, perception, imagination, desire, evaluation and others) express a processdynamic character of a mental reality. So, from the point of view of phenomenology it is more important to know how immanent objects are given to us than to know what is represented in our emotional experience. For Husserl, every attempt to put physical objects under mental phenomena blocks the singling out of experience from natural things and processes. Phenomenological reduction is a necessary prerequisite that makes it possible for a reflective consciousness to face itself as an object for description and analysis. At the same time, reduction is something more than just a pure methodical procedure not concerning the ontological status of the external world and the being of consciousness. As contemporary researchers mark “what people call a real world, what physicists call transcendental substances – all of it, according to Husserl, is nothing more but correlates of consciousness, having partly a mythological character.” If we look at the world of nature as a result of the natural orientation of our consciousness then it will lead to the conclusion that the intentional content of experience needs no external reality. On the contrary, the world may be understood as reality only in our emotional experience. As Husserl states: Consciousness, if it is understood [in its pureness] must be accepted as a closed interlink of being, and namely as an interlink of absolute being, where nothing can penetrate into and nothing can escape from. … On the other side all space – temporary world, to which a human being, a human “self” as main subordinate realities belong – is in its sense only intentional being, the being that has only a relative, secondary sense of being for consciousness. … The being of this type is an identity of uncontradictory motivated varieties of experience and it is open to

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contemplation and determination – above of all this such a being is just nothing, or, to be more exact, it is the being, for which every above this is an antisensible thought.7

We all need to see to what extent the elimination of substantional dualism by means of reduction of the content of objective being to intentional being of experience was constructive. It is necessary to analyze the contribution of Husserl to dynamicallyprocessed understanding of the experience of consciousness. From the phenomenological concept of consciousness, experience is seen as a permanent process of changing emotional experiences. Only in the permanent constituting of “pure” experience does consciousness find the reality of its being, The movement of intentional objects is to some extent an immanent way of life accomplishment of our consciousness. “The life of consciousness is a current, and every cogito is fluctuating, it has no fixed elements and relations.”8 However, as Husserl had warned, the image of the current is very treacherous, as it is easily associated with cincretic being-becoming, and so, opens the perspective of the way of theoretical thought to relativism and subjectivity, which the founder of phenomenology opposed so much. So in another line of his writings we find a special explanation related to the fact that the dynamism of a life of consciousness is a product of incompleteness of a row of reductions. Thanks to the phenomenological epoche, experience is shown in the form of different “blinks,” psychological phenomena – feelings, emotions, thoughts, excitements, fantasies, etc. These uncertainties form an empirical level of experience. So phenomenological psychology is possible owing to an eidetic reduction that reveals a deeper level of internal experience, a level of invariant structures of emotional experiences. As Husserl stressed, “In a current, there rules a very well expressed technique.” A deep layer of experience, formed by stable configurations of intentional objects, cannot be seen as a unity and division of separate elements of consciousness. A concrete emotional experience is a sort of chain in the continuous chain of other emotional experiences that form a permanent meaning field in our experience. At the same time, emotional experience is the unity of immanent running, where one can see different phases and intervals. “In every partial perception running as a phase of integrated perception, the whole meaning of the object that is percepted is seen in every phase meaning, it is fed by phase meanings, becoming deeper and being determined more in detail, but it is by no means integrated from separate parts and united in a whole one with the help of gestalt sensitivity.”10

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The constituting of an integrated process of experience is aimed by Husserl to criticize the associanism that is still ruling in psychology and that explains the integrity of internal experience by chancy links not connected with the context. It is also a criticism against reductionism in natural science is which explains the content of psychic reality on the basis of the activity of perceptive mechanisms of the sense organs. Integrity and continuity of internal experience is supplemented by its capacity for “soft” and flexible self-determination. The current of consciousness includes immanent teleology, which is a constructive basis for the collecting of discrete emotional experiences, local in modality and as well as in the time of running, into an integrated unity that has the characteristics of meaningful configurations. The state of configuration is explained by the presence of some definite internal form in a permanent field of experience. This form gives integrated outlines (contours) to its intentional content. The capacity of consciousness to make distinct outlines of the objects of internal experience is accomplished in the noematic-noetic structure of intentionality. Noematic-noetic unity is of a projective character. It is explained by the fact that intentional objects in opposition to physical objects, belong to the field of human experience and are projected by constituative capacities of our consciousness. Besides, being definite they are not schematic, but variable. Owing to this there takes place what Husserl called “attentional shifts in noemic and noetic aspects” of emotional experience. The possibility of existence of every meaningful concrete integrity in different modes (in forms of perceptable, imaginative, desirable, thinking, etc.) is characterized by them as intentional projects, as various variants of one and the same meaning of the object. The notion of “intentional projects” presupposes not only a meaningful content for every concrete emotional experience, but also its principal peculiarity as horizonness. Husserl himself uses the term “horizon” in at least 3 different meanings. Firstly, by horizon Husserl means a potential level of experience in opposition to an actual, completed state. As every emotional experience includes a sort of intrinsic potentiality. it cannot be seen as completely realized in any of its states. In this case, the horizon is an internal logic that determines the perspectives of the perception unfolding and its striving to exhaustive accomplishment. The ex-statics of this kind, typical of human reality, is explained by Sartre by the need of consciousness to fill a gap in its onthological insufficiency. So, the horizon of “being for oneself” is dependent on projections of our desires,

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in the form of which the intuitive striving to fullness and completeness of our emotional experiences is given to us.11 In connection to this, actual acts of consciousness potentially contain both possible and previous experience of excitements; they are accomplished in a permanent horizon of immanent time and so can be unfolded as prospective and retrospective projects. Prospective projects are ones that are going to enter our perception, to be accomplished in expected, desired, anticipated, or foreseen intentions. Retrospective horizonness is not equal to earlier accomplished intentional acts. otherwise it would lose its projective character. The horizon of the past is displayed through intentionality of recollections, each of which takes us to a permanent infinity of other recollections. And retentional projects are not always a reconstruction of previous perceptions, but their new excitement, comprehension, explanation, and evaluation of the past always appear to us in unprocessed and unexpected images.12 The unity of retentional and potentional projectivity may be seen as a twofaced Janus. It forms a diachronic horizon of constitutive experience of the activity of our consciousness. Secondly, the notion of horizon is connected by Husserl with potential completeness of the content of actually given experience. Every initial perception (image, knowledge, meaning) is impoverished, schematized, but at the same time it has a capacity to complete, to enrich a content, to find out something hidden. In the process of intentional perceptive acts there occurs a change of various parameters that determines an object in experience (distance, background, a degree of lighting, etc.). So, possible variations of perception of this object form what is called a synchronic horizon of a current of consciousness. In “transverse” light, intentional experience may be seen as a total combination of inter-linked projects, or variants of intentional objects potentially contained in an actual content of emotional experiences. And, at last, thirdly, a horizon is given by an environment of internal experience. Every concrete perception is born and grows within the frame of other perceptions, that, owing to the synthetic capacity of consciousness, flow together into a permanent universal cognitive field. So, a general emotional background, peripheral settings of consciousness, and rational and axiologic dominants create a contextual horizon of emotional experience. If a surface noemic-noetic structure of an object is fairly determined and factual, then its deeper, meaningful structure is variable, as it gives room for different interpretations. This very circumstance was meant by James when he analyzed a horizontal organization of sense perception:

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The meaning, the value of an image is mainly in its addition, its light shadow (penumbra) of the elements of thought surrounding and accompanying it. Better to say, this penumbra together with this image makes the whole …, leaving the very image the same as it was before. It gives it a new function and a fresh colour.13

The aforementioned properties of intentional life and of experience are not exhaustive, but are sufficient to convey a notion about Husserl’s understanding of experience. In contrast to Husserl, Dewey pays more attention to elaboration and the growth of experience on the part of a subject and focuses less on the constitution and organization of internal experience. So the experience may be seen as consisting of active and standard components. The active side of experience presupposes an action with objects, thus, it presupposes intentionality in a sense of directness, selectivity of influences on an object. The passive side is in reverse the influence of world objects on human beings, The sense of experience is in making connections between our influences and the counteractions of things. Here is where we find the richness of his content. That is why, as Dewey stressed, “the main thing in experience is the combination of activity and passivity, and not its cognitive aspect.” 14 At first sight this interpretation of the nature of experience does not open a wide space for its critique from the positions of “pure phenomenology.” In reality, this is not so. First of all we should stress that Dewey very definitely says that the relations between the objects cannot be understood outside the context of experience. More to the point, the noemic content of things can be seen only within a structure of intentional relations; a thing may be found in experience to be hard or soft, coloured or colourless, useful or not only if it is in relation to us. Secondly, Dewey gives priority to active elements of experience, and not to cognitive ones, but this does not mean that he underestimates the importance of rational reflection in the process of consolidating experience, and to its intentionality and projectivity. As he points out, “Thinking is an explicit expression of the intellectual component of our experience. Owing to thinking, an aimed action becomes possible.”15 In turn, the action that has aim and is conscious is based not on a psychological but on a transcendental level of experience. And, thirdly, as for Husserl, his attitude toward the natural setting has undergone a great evolution, which may be explained by his dealing with the problem of inter-subjectivity and “life-world.” To be more exact, Husserl does not simply accept and rehabilitate a natural assumption, but analyzes it as the dominant state of human experience by

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means of phenomenology. The product of it is the notion of “life-world” as a field of cultural and historical experience that is seen as the content for collective practice. In its horizon lie all possible meanings, concepts, norms and values of human life. So, Husserl removes some duality from Dewey’s understanding of the world of objects, trying to stress that every concrete person deals in his experience not with the things and phenomena transcendental to his consciousness, but with the fragments and regions of the cultural and historic life-world. Dewey wrote: We live from birth to death in a world of persons and things which in large measure is what it is because of what has been done and transmitted from previous human activities. When this fact is ignored, experience is treated as if it were something which goes on exclusively inside an individual’s body and mind. It ought not to be necessary to say that experience does not occur in a vacuum. There are some sources outside an individual which give rise to experience. It is constantly fed from its springs.16

It is here that we can sum up the way of our research. The interpretation of experience by Husserl and Dewey is complimentary, at least, in two aspects. Dewey adds to Husserl’s discovered horizontal structure of experience a vertical structure that is seen as a consistent stage of its growth. As for Husserl, in systematically clarifying a transcendental-intentional content of life-world he adds much to the theory of activity that Dewey had put forward. Husserl binds the gaining of individual experience with a cultural – historical context.17 Pedegogical University, Vladimur Russia N OT E S 1 James W. Garrison and Emanuel I. Shargel, “Dewey and Husserl: A Surprising Convergence of Themes,” Educational Theory, Spring 1988, Vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 239–247. 2 Husserl, E. “The Crisis of European Mankind and Philosophy,” Voprosi filosofii, 1986, no. 3. s. 115. 3 Dewey, J. “Democracy and Education,” in Democracy and Education (Moscow, 2000), p. 145. 4 Dewey, J. Experience and Education, The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series (Macmillan Publishing Company, 1938), p. 29. 5 Ibid, p. 25. 6 The Outlines of Phenomenological Philosophy (Saint Petersburg, 1997), s. 14. 7 Husserl, E. The Ideas Towards Pure Phenomenology (Moscow, 1994), s. 9. 8 Husserl, E. Parisian Reports, Logos (Moscow, 1991), vyp. 2, s. 17. 9 Ibid. 10 Husserl, E. Amsterdam Reports (Moscow, 1992), vyp. 3, s. 74.

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11 Sartre, J. P. Being and Nothingness: The Experience of Phenomenological Ontology, (Moscow, 2000), ss. 118–123. 12 See for details Husserl, E. Phenomenology of Internal Consciousness of Time, Husserl Collective Works (Moscow, 1994), Vol. 1, ss. 32–67. 13 James, W. Psychology (Moscow, 1991), s. 71. 14 Dewey, J. Democracy and Education (Moscow, 2000), s. 134. 15 Ibid, s. 139. 16 Dewey, J. Experience and Education, The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series (Macmillan Publishing Company, 1938), pp. 39–40. 17 To tell the truth, Dewey touched on the question of the environment as the source of experience. The elements of the environment present everything that the individual interacts with. “The environment, in other words, is whatever conditions interact with personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities to create the experience which is had” (Dewey, J. Experience and Education, The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1938, p. 44). And, nevertheless, this important notion was not sufficiently taken as a theme by the American philosopher.

The courtyard of St. Thomas Aquinas University showing the arcade leading to individual lecture halls.

SECTION IV CIPHERING THE PLURISIGNIFICANT SHARING OF EXISTENCE

A L E K S A N D R A PAW L I S Z Y N

I N T E R H U M A N C O M M U N I C AT I O N B E YO N D T H E L I M I T S O F T I M E ( G A DA M E R ) A N D T H E T E M P O R A L I T Y O F L O N E LY DA S E I N ( H E I D E G G E R )

I N T RO D U C T I O N

The febrile hurly-burly of contemporary life is not friendly to reflection on the sense of human life; in fact, it is not friendly to reflection at all, because reflection requires pause, thought, silence. In searching for the grounds of the human condition, are able minds capable of backing out of the present arena of chaos? It is rare to have the ability to find a shadow, to be in its darkness, to let someone observe the kaleidoscope of occurrences of a scene, and to analyze their essences. To stop in silence and darkness, as contrary to moving in turmoil and glare, is distinctive to the specific situation of the searcher. Brightness, especially in its intensification, becomes a dazzling brightness. When someone is hidden in darkness he can see more, and a shadow could be grasped as the lowest threshold of light, as the base of its spectrum, because of which therein the essence of light reveals all. Just so, it is a question of silence – the opposite of turmoil. It is obvious that in silence one can hear every sound; however, it is difficult to hear silence amidst noise. More important is the fact that silence is the background to the significant voice. Silence is the foundation of the sensible word. Pause gives humanity the possibility of seeing something that is moving; when we stop we are able to see this movement. When we participate in movement we lose sight of it, we are surrounded by it, we are immersed in it and we get lost in what is always under our eyes, what fills all space from immediate nearness to the farthest horizon. When we are always moving we are not able to grasp the essence of movement; it will only be grasped when we stop. When someone can stop and reach the sphere of darkness, he has traveled far, and only then can he see glimmers in the light; because of shadows shapes of objects appear, and because of silence the significant voice is revealed. This human attains a certain sphere of thought and a specific position in the face of surrounding occurrences – he can penetrate the surface of ordinary phenomena and grasp their essence. The opinion that the essence of phenomena is hidden, and to reach it one must pass over the surface and 295 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 295–311. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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strive for that essence, is characteristic of Heideggerian philosophy. In the first period of his creativity he tried to find the sense in all of existence, especially the sense in human life. It turned out that the question of time was essential in his inquiries; and because of this question he wanted to reveal the sense of existence. He stressed the “is” of entities and the human and the results of his inquiries on issue of time influence the question of truth. They also affect the impact of Heideggerian thought on the modern epoch.

HEIDEGGER ON SCIENCE

Heidegger claims that one can see the essential way in any area when he reaches the metaphysical ground on which it grasps entities and truth.1 This position allows him to grasp the sense of phenomenalistic symptoms and to find relations explaining phenomena. As for science – it is the symptomatic feature of the modern era. And when we reveal its metaphysical base we will find the horizon of its essence. But what is the essence of science? Heidegger uses the method of questioning the essence of certain phenomena. These questions follow certain occurrences, perhaps to state at the end that as a unit they are unrepeatable phenomena. The sphere of inquiry is based on process. Learning occurs in the objective sphere of procedure. In such a way is instituted the rigor of investigation. The essential feature of inquiry is procedure, which ought to make reaching different spheres of projected areas possible. But this procedure objectifies a territory of inquiry, because it stops movement, seeking rules of change and fixing principles to manage the necessity of change. Heidegger shows that modern science specialization is penetrating reality, in that it is projecting forth the territory of scientific investigation. Every science (besides philosophy), with its growing specialization, deepens the loss of the human in the contemporary world, because science is unable to solve the question of human existence sensibly. Progressive specialization extends the processes of exploitation and institutionalization of the sciences, which put procedure before being. The entity becomes a subject to be analyzed and truth becomes a certainty to be conquered. Science does not give the human the chance to learn something that cannot be learned analytically. When someone is with in the borders of science he cannot really know about truth, which is not to be found in certainty of method. Now, Heidegger attempts to analyze what is truly essential for the existing human (Dasein). He wants to find what was lost when the modern era set to looking at reality in a scientific way – which made the picture of humanity and the world painfully one-sided.

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G A DA M E R O N D E AT H A N D T H E G A M E O F A RT

According to Gadamer, human life consists of a commonplaceness game and an artistic game.2 The creative dimension of human life, where constant change is stopped, is opposed to the world of everyday life. Death in a daily world is, for Gadamer, a symptom of transcending the sphere of constant movement, of reaching the artistic sphere and the sphere of act of thinking.3 Death is considered on two levels. On one hand it is the expression of the finiteness of human life, on the other it is the opposition to daily change (constancy). The provocative statement that death occurs when the human is thinking could be read as a conviction about the close connection between life and death. When we subject something changing to reflection we inevitably stop this something, which exists through change. When we are thinking we are out of everyday life, we are lifeless, but this does not mean our death in general. Death as Gadamer considers the end of the whole of life is the death of freedom of choice – outside of our own lives there is no free choice. So, the finiteness of our existence gives us the freedom to search for ways to stretch out its finiteness. The essence of human life is, according to Gadamer, a trend towards commemoration of everything that is changing (death of change – change overcome by cessation). Paradoxically, death enables human life, it is always present when we are thinking or creating something, which puts daily change to death. The dead cult is present in our life and, in Gadamer’s opinion, it is an example of connection between death and life; it also illustrates the human desire to stop what is minute and fleeting. Death means here a lack of change, or constancy – a way of negating decay. So, death as the end of the human being, and death as the process of thinking is a lack of change and the cessation of movement. In real human life death is connected with life, and there is a longing for immortality. Death of the minute, of daily life, is the way to realize that longing. Tradition, the past, is present in everyday life; in life, death is present. We ought to restore the past to the present. And great possibilities of conquering the transitory exist in the sphere of art. T H E S P E C I F I C T I M E O F A RT

The essential moment of art is, according to Gadamer, the holiday. The holiday is something which unites everybody – the union is the holiday. In Gadamer’s consideration, time is viewed on three levels: time in general, the time of art and time as holiday. If because of art we fix what is changing, insofar as the celebration (in the sense of a human participating in the

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holiday) causes that which was fixed to suddenly become alive, someone has a contact with the past. A work of art unites everybody, it creates a specific form of community (different from the community of crowds or masses) where we find something that grips and expresses something to us. The category of “holiday,” in turn, means “full” communication, everybody with everybody, it is the quintessence of regaining communication. So, because of art we regain something which is missing in commonplaceness, ordinariness; we regain communication on every level of time. Though art our own life goes from anonymous and ordinary to the holiday; we are grasping something constant and significant. T H E F U T U R E C O L L I D I N G W I T H T H E PA S T OV E R P R I M O R D I A L I T Y

In the context of the Heideggerian analysis of the lonely human Being (Dasein), Gadamer’s considerations on the issue of time should be seen as stressing a circle of societal communication. While for both philosophers the problem of the temporality of the human entity is fundamental, nevertheless the details of their views on the question of time differ. It is obvious that the Heideggerian analysis of the awakened Being4 (which in its essence is just time – Dasein) is the basis for Gadamer’s expression of hermeneutic consciousness and other hermeneutic categories (experience, understanding, truth). Those categories are also involved in language and history – which is a consequence of the Heideggerian concept of Being, time and that which is as an expression of life. However, where the author of Sein und Zeit treats the future as the primary phenomenon of proper (based on sources) temporality, Gadamer stresses the past, which causes both the present and the future. Also, for Gadamer the past is the tradition of human community – not merely, as for Heidegger, a way of being thrown into the world in a particular way (fear and anxiety). The loneliness of Dasein’s past (Heidegger) is modified into a common participation in tradition (Gadamer). Interhuman communication overcomes the loneliness of Dasein – for whom the community is the source of “falling” according to Heidegger – whereas in hermeneutics community gives the human the possibility to transcend time’s conditions – to communicate on a level beyond the limits of time, which is accessible, for instance, by a work of art. Understanding as a way of being Dasein becomes in hermeneutics a sort of process which takes place in the variability of everyday life and proceeds between people of different eras. And while the level of full communication relates somehow to reality (to the moment “now”), it simultaneously realizes human expectations beyond the limits of

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time. This does not mean that Gadamer denies the Heideggerian grasp of understanding as a way of being Dasein; rather, he extends that grasp to the human community. This community has to be not only a source of human falling, but also, and here first of all, the spring of human rebirth, where man can reach a level of constancy beyond the limits of time. THE FINITENESS OF EXISTENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DESIRE F O R I M M O RTA L I T Y

The issue of death, considered by hermeneutics as the finiteness of an entity, resolves itself into the question (also investigated by Heidegger): why is there something rather than nothing? Gadamer does not follow Heidegger in the matter of death – as grasped as a primary phenomenon of time. In his investigations the occurrence of death is treated, rather, as a symptom of thinking – a process of transcending limitations that press upon our body through the changeability of time. The process of thinking annihilates time, and in this way it inflicts time’s death, because that process spares the constancy of something that has just passed and actually is not existing in respect to time and space. The category of the finiteness of the entity expresses the temporality of our existence, the fact that we will die one day – this is considered in hermeneutics on the level of social existence. There was shown the possibility of participating in a community beyond the limits of time. The basis for this world of the human spirit is typical of the human inclination to fight with time in everyday life, and also the human desire for immortality (for the possibility of stopping moments, “now”). It turns out that creativity is a chance to comply with that human desire, since creativity reveals the most fundamental property of human existence: the ability to exist in an unsensual world, where the moment “now” is a kind of constancy under our authority. That specific human property determines the possibility to “fill” that “now” with the substance of an individual attempt of creativity. Other people will try to understand this substance of creativity, and this will cause a rise in the base of communication. However, the source of the communication process is an individual contact with the sphere of that stopping of the moment “now” and with other moments stopped by the creativity of other people. T H E L A N G UAG E O F C O M M U N I C AT I O N : S O C I E T Y ’ S T I M E

The essential moment of that exchange of communication is the similarity (in a common sense) of ways leading every man into a dimension of mental

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grasping, escaping time. Since we have to do only with our own mental experience, we are not able to go into other people’s experience’s of that kind. However, communication is the way in which we communicate to each other our private states of mind. According to Gadamer, language is the medium connecting the internal mental spheres of every man in a common kind of activity, which is distinctive of human beings (a special kind of entity). The process of mutual consultations has to give here evidence of the aforementioned similarity – the structural, formal unity of an act of thinking in every human being. The category of language in Gadamer’s hermeneutics contains the languages of art, myths, stories, and also scientific language. According to Gadamer, language consists of pronouncements and more important questions, which determine every attempt at articulation. Also, time is reflected in language: the past of tradition is manifested in monuments of art (of literature) and in myths. The present expresses itself in actual utterances (oral and written) that refer to the present day. Anticipations of the future are the results of what exists now, in which one could meet questions from the past, but in manifestations that no one can provide. Gadamer examines time as relating to mutual relations between people. These relations are recognized as an affirmative element constituting proper human temporality. Heidegger solves this matter in a different way. S O C I E T Y A S A T H R E AT TO T H E E S S E N C E O F T I M E

Heidegger’s analysis reveals that other people cause a human inauthenticity, a Dasein’s falling into a compelling force, das Man (Self). Society life involves reckoning something that could not be reckoned, namely time. Measuring time loses its essence – time cannot be “extended” (as with something that can be measured) – time is, as contrary to something spatial. The temporality of Dasein, as his own proper essence of being, could not be grasped as public time, since the latter is, according to Heidegger, external to the human being. Other people personify here what Dasein is not in his essence. Publication of time is in Heidegger’s philosophy connected with the notion of being one with other people. A community results in the essence of Dasein’s temporality being lost in the act of measuring, or dating, because this act removes the spatial extension into time. Heidegger does not attribute as important a role to the past as Gadamer does, because Dasein as thrown into the world falls down and expands his own time as a way of reckoning time. Dasein can “handle the tools he works with” (Zuhandenheit), and is connected with a spatial, picturesque way of

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grasping existence. But for Heidegger the greatest error of this philosophy was obliviousness to the temporality of existence, and concentration on the spatiality of that which is. A picture connecting with space eludes the proper grasp of what is. A person’s falling arises from his being thrown into the world (the past), but it is realized in the present, when Dasein can handle the tools he works with. A D I S C L O S U R E O F S C I E N C E S C L A I M S ( W H I C H A R E N OT R I G H T F U L ) : T H E T RU T H A S A N AT T R I BU T E O F A N E N T I T Y

According to both philosophers the issue of time is broader than the problem of learning. Time is not a subject of science, but it is the primary factor of constitution of the human world. Temporality is the way of the human being – it is the possibility and at the same time the limit of existence. The traditional view of the human in the world, the human as an entity, is questioned and referred to as a more fundamental perspective of the entity’s being. This point of view discloses science’s claim to have the whole truth. Science does not consider the time aspect of things, so science is placed outside the truthful, general, fundamental human references to the world. It is revealed that science actually takes care of the sureness of scientific methods. The requirement of verification limits the range of scientific method. It becomes obvious that truth exists outside of science, but also that the meaning of “truth” is modified. In the ontological mode of expression the truth has to border on everything that is, according to both philosophers. In such a way is outlined the horizon of truth as “unconcealment.” Temporality becomes here the pivot of the human world. One ought to say properly: the temporarlity of Dasein realizes itself for the time being as the whole, as the unity of time ecstasies: future, past and present. Because of that the human being is “joining” himself with time. Human existence appears here as a sort of tension that follows from an attempt to extend past and future forces to set up the territory of the present, exactly the territory of existence. It is characteristic of both philosophers that they grasp the human world not only in scientific categories. According to them, philosophy ought to search for the truth about human beings outside of science, and science is only one of many human possibilities. The aforementioned modification of “truth” reveals that concealment is an inseparable element from truth, or unconcealment. From the ontological point of view, where the human being is the center of time, the question of logical truth and falsehood is secondary to the unconcealment of an entity (aletheia). The human attempts to grasp

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that truths are, in the context of that philosophy, suspended, because our activity could not drown out the sounds of entities that are only sometimes unconcealed to us. According to Heidegger’s philosophy, one could speak of an outspokenness for what the world has to “tell” man. The expectation of what the other man has to tell us is the precondition of agreement. The situation when truth is concealled before us is a constitutive element of understanding. The essence of being thrown into the world, when Dasein is falling, is the proper stage, which shows to the human being how he has not to be. Concealment as a second, opposed, inseparable side of unconcealment is constitutive to the essence of the truth. When we experience something, at the same time that we experience time we become the center of time. Strangeness stops us and forces us to become silent and to hear voices from a hitherto unknown world – we become open to the possibility of contacting a world different from our own.

T H E T RU T H A B O U T T H E T RU T H

The temporality of an entity (as expressed in the finiteness of existence) marks the limit of existence – when we meet something strange, incomprehensible, there is a possibility of overcoming a lack of understanding, just as in the situation when Dasein goes from falling into inauthenticity to rising to the proper existence. Thus, the truth about the truth is that truth’s concealment plays with time in such a way: it exists always and only when something occurs. This concealment testifies to the finiteness of existence as the end of everything that is. That kind of truth is outside of science, it reaches the constitution of the world of the human being. The scientific method selects objects of the world through the process of verification – it constitutes the sphere of verifiable phenomena. However, the unrepeatable and individual character of every human life is outside of scientific verification, since the scientific method would try to bend someone’s way, which is impossible in the case of every human life. Human life belongs to the man gifted with it. In this way human life is human time – every moment of this life is unlike every other one. The sense of human existence is to realize that we unexpectedly appear on the Earth and in the same way we disappear. Therefore, death describes our life. The stigma of death exists in the whole of human existence, and according to Heidegger it is also the most characteristic feature of temporality (the essence of existence). While Gadamer stresses the past, history, tradition is crucial for the condition of the human “now.”

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According to Gadamer, mostly by art we, as specific entities, are able to “bewitch” time through works of art and gain access to every dimension of time simultaneously. The specificity of the human lot in comparison with the condition of the not-human world is based on the continual need for constancy, on the need to reduce time to one dimension (ecstasy – Heidegger), namely to the present. An act of thinking can be treated as a kind of realization of that need, according to Hannah Arendt (The Life of the Mind: 1. Thinking, 1971). Human consciousness is manifested absolutely in the act of thinking. The time of world phenomena, of everyday life limits us, but the human need for eternity forces the human being to break these limits. The present reigns supreme as a kind of eternity, which belongs to time – it is the quiet eye of the storm (Arendt). Every meeting of human consciousness with the world is at base marked by the time of the world. As a result of that meeting the human can grasp the time of the world in a way characterized by the need for constancy. Hermeneutic experience is a meeting – a kind of expectation to meet something, and a kind of human changing as a result of that meeting. Commemorated experience could return to us in the future. The category of understanding, grasped by Heidegger in an ontological way, acquires in Gadamer’s hermeneutics learning features. While on the most basic level it is a way of the human being, nevertheless as a hermeneutic experience it is a certain process. Also the truth has here a seal of temporarlity. According to Gadamer, it has an “as-if” structure – for different people, in different historical contexts, in different stages of tradition development, the truth has different content. On the other hand the truth is one – its structure is a living picture of human existence, it is the fully formed present, which in every historical condition has one form – unconcealment (aletheia, Lichtung). W E A R E S AT U R AT E D W I T H T I M E A N D L A N G UAG E

The temporality of the human being also marks human existence through language. According to Gadamer, we are immersed in language, and we think in a linguistic way. Language fuses together the past and the present. The linguistic character of hermeneutic experience determines the central position of language in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The language characteristic, as a derivative of temporality, is fundamental to a description of the human entity, because the past, as exactly linguistic (as talking to us), determines our present. Also the present organizes the past: contemporary occurrences reveal

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something as if it is a new truth: to what happened they give a new sense. The time of human origins as manifested by myths and stories is the basis for the history of human reason, according to Gadamer. Mythlical language is a language of metaphor, which transfers to us the constant past. Metaphorical language is mostly a language of art. As for Arendt, the process of thinking conquers the distance of time and space, so for Gadamer, language has the same property. We can in language talk about the past and the future. Language also has the power to commemorate fleeting variability, especially the language of art. From the essence of the human condition it follows that we are saturated with time and language. T H E T I M E O F E V E RY DAY L I F E A N D T H E T I M E O F T H E H O L I DAY O F C O N S TA N C Y

Gadamer suggests that time has in hermeneutics two meanings. On one hand it is the time of everyday life (common parlance), on the other it is the time of the holiday of constancy (metaphorical language). Gadamer considers language as memory – not only the memory of every individual man, but of the whole community. The author of Wahrheit und Methode grasps language as cumulated human experience, which could be interpreted as follows. In language there is the past, which determines (as a kind of preconception) the reasonable way of the human being. Language builds connections between the human past and future, and because of language a human being constitutes the present. Also from temporality follows the periodicity of our life, which is described by the metaphor of a circle. According to Gadamer, periodicity distinguishes both hermeneutic experience and understanding, and also truth, which has the character of time. C O N V E R S AT I O N A S T H E E S S E N C E O F S P E E C H : S P E E C H A S A N EXPRESSION OF TIME

For Heidegger, language and history are brought into relationship. In Heidegger’s opinion, in history, processes take place that testify that the human being exists consciously. Gadamer claims that Heidegger caused the rehabilitation of history as the hermeneutic principle of every interpretation. Heidegger assumes that conversation is the essence of speech. When conversation occurs a human being must be able to hear voices from the world and from gods. Conversation inspires time and reason in activity. Still, in Sein und Zeit Heidegger searched for a new way to reach the truth, but in his later

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works he assumed that the truth itself only sometimes reaches us, and we are not able to force the truth to become unconcealed by any particular method. Heidegger’s attitude changes especially when he first talks about the speech of notion – about poetry.5 The philosopher notes that the essence of poetry is to proclaim being through the word. The poet is the creator, a spring of essential words – people later adopt those words. The poet should first be hit by god’s call, and later he should answer in a way of naming things just as they are. The motive connecting two of Heidegger’s philosophical periods seems to be the human/temporality connection that is manifested in language, in conversations. A spoken language, as a sign of temporality, constitutes the human world. However, its influence on the creating process of that world is submitted to god’s judgment, according to the second period of Heidegger’s philosophy. It seems that human activity is limited to an insubstantial factor (or even eliminated) in the process of searching for the truth. The source of the truth is the entity that is unconcealed to the human. Gods reign over this “sometimes” when they put us into conversation, which creates time – human time, a time of reasonable being. In Sein und Zeit Heidegger emphasizes that the condition of temporary realization of speech is the unity of time ecstasies: future, past and present, which constitute the structure of concern: understanding (Verstehen), the moods of states of mind (Befindlichkeit), falling (Verfallen) and speech (Sprache). Heidegger distinguishes speech from other human activities as being closest to the human existence of time. Especially in speech (conversation) the finiteness of our existence is revealed – it is impossible to talk about everything at the same time. Because of the future of death the truth about the temporality of our life reaches us. This truth relates to the situation when we realize that death organizes our existence into a sort of running (Being-unto-death) – the prospect of death describes the human being as finite, and other entities as well. The time of the world connects with our temporality and as a result of this connection our life should become authentic. We ought to see the past and the present in a new way: the past rises up from the future and the present constitutes this moment. In fear and anxiety Dasein can handle the tools he works with, he grasps the present as a whole, not as a single moment, “now.” Temporality becomes the sign of existence. Because of temporality human existence is revealed in its entirety (appearance). Time discloses who the human being is. The human articulates (in speech) his being, his world. Time circularity means here that the human being does not reveal himself at the same time: he is not also a baby and an old man, but he goes through the stages of life – every conversation ends

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somewhere. Every conversation is only a certain episode of our contact with the world. But in every episode we are present and we could be authentic. O U R P R E S E N T I N C O N V E R S AT I O N : T R A D I T I O N

Gadamer inquires into our present in conversation, but he interprets it in a different way than Heidegger does. According to Gadamer, our present is first of all consciousness of our contact with tradition. The influence of the past is for the author of Wahrheit und Methode fundamental for describing the human condition. It is because of our being thrown into existence that we are able to participate in that which is; we are able to create our individuality. In this meaning the present is caused by the past, for both the individual human and the community, since only in belonging to a community do we have contact with tradition. The life of each human has an influence on the tradition in which he participates. Gadamer emphasizes that this influence has a mutual character. The past influences the present and vice versa; the creativity of existing people enriches tradition. The matter of the future is open for Gadamer, because it is impossible to actually foresee anything. The future is unpredictable, unexpected, undetermined. It is surprising in the dimension of human expectations, although death is certain in the future. According to Gadamer, this certitude causes the finiteness of our existence, which marks the proper way of the human being in the world. D E AT H S T I M U L AT I N G L I F E O U T O F H U M A N I N F L U E N C E

Both Heidegger and his disciple Gadamer do not foresee that the human could have an influence on death. Death as the end of human life is for Heidegger a matter of principle, a phenomenon of the fundamental experience of temporality, and also of the experience of humanity as a whole. Death directs all of existence for itself; it makes from existence the running of a proper human being. However, death is outside of human influence. If, according to Gadamer, we are able to have an influence on the past, inasmuch on the future we are not. Only the future where we are still present submits to our influences. But we could not have an influence on death as the limit of every life. Instead, we must accept death as an inevitable stage of our existence, to include it in the understanding of human life (just like we include silence in language, concealment in unconcealment, the present beyond the limits of time …). Death, as the stigma of our finite life, makes time in this life assume new and different shapes: from birthday through full

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bloom to the end. One could say that if there is no death there is no time in life. The human longing for immortality begets consciousness of the end of existence. Every human action is stimulated by the human desire to conquer death. Typical of the human being, thinking processes and creativity give a chance to satisfy this desire. The mortality of biological organisms does not equal the mortality of human beings – we participate in our own dimension of time, in tradition. Our creativity grants us the possibility of a new existence in the world of work lasting beyond time. This possibility also means that we undergo two kinds of death: on the level of creativity and on the level of living organisms. These levels are not connected with each other in such a way that one necessarily determinaes the other. S O C I A L F O R M S O F C O E X I S T E N C E A N D AU T H E N T I C H U M A N EXISTENCE

According to Gadamer, the human community secures for us the possibility of participating in a collective memory. This is tangible dissonance from his master’s opinion, because for Heidegger, public time is outside of sense – when Dasein is falling, losing himself. According to Heidegger, Dasein is the spring of authentic time and consciousness of existence. The Sun is treated as the reference point for measuring time, which is needed by a community; this time is in opposition to time as an occurrence. The coexistence of people causes a public time, which extends as a space – but this is not real time. The moment “now” of public time is not the same moment in real time. Time as a river of change is not the proper structure of concern. In Heidegger’s opinion, concern for entities of Dasein is an expression of temporality as the structure of concern (understanding, state of mind, falling, and speech). Concern, as connected with projection of the future is the understanding of what was projected. Dasein decides to meet handy tools he can work with in the present, which becomes the source of falling. It seems that the Heideggerian analysis is concerned with conditions of the proper way of the human being. However, social forms of coexistence are obstacles to existing in the authentic way; on the other hand it is impossible to tell anything about authenticity without the background – inauthenticity follows from the Self (das Man). One can say that community is the authentic representation of the inauthentic way of human life, just as public time is the model of time outside of time. So, deceitfully unsuitable public time is the pivot for searching for authentic human temporality. Gadamer does not reject Heidegger’s analysis and the results of this analysis

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and in fact he adopts them as assumptions. However, he goes farther and searches for the truth outside of science, in the area of artistic activity, for which the characteristic of time is very specific. Using Heidegger’s terminology, one can say that existing in the authentic way, Dasein could go into the area of creativity and crystallize that authenticity, which as a work of art could be in the sphere of the present, beyond the limits of time. On the other hand, in order to participate in the process of creativity one ought to grasp the essence of the human being; that is, one ought to resign from being in a community, which weakens one’s individuality. It seems that Gadamer and Heidegger consider two different levels of human participation in community life. Heidegger says of coexistence with other people in the context of constitution that proper existence is based on the authentic recognition of temporality, while Gadamer refers to authentic human creativity, to the creativity of other people. He searches for connections between people existing in the authentic way to complete Heideggerian considerations. The time of human work is not inauthentic. On the contrary, its constitution is under the proper human way of life. In a work of art (or of the human spirit) a change is consolidated that goes over to the level beyond the limits of time. Communication on this level is based on the authentic contacts between people searching for this level. The level beyond the limits of time could consist of “islands” of the present, of a constant present, which could be a matter of human communication. Because of creativity, individual paths of thinking can be reached by other people. T H E M E D I U M O F M U T UA L R E L AT I O N S B E T W E E N P E O P L E : T H E E X C H A N G I N G O F I N D I V I D UA L T I M E S

Relations between people need a kind of mediator, a medium, where they can be expressed. So, at the base of total communication and reconciliation lies the conviction that human contact with other humans can exist in a kind of environment affording possibilities for connection. Nobody and nothing is able to cause somebody to know my world of thinking. Everybody is sentenced to be in his (or her) own non-interchangeable territory of thoughts (spirit). But our non-interchangeable inward worlds can become the basis for searching for a link to that uniqueness of existence. This total mediation of these individual spheres is executed through language. We ought to realize that the mediation of individual inward and outward worlds also takes place in language. It turns out that language is the medium connecting expressions of the world and of humans, and it is impossible to separate language from

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human existence. On the contrary, language is a symptom of human temporality, because the finiteness of the human being excludes “selfsufficiency” of existence, which provokes the searching for contact between individual existences. Therefore, language in the context of temporality becomes the ontological environment, which makes all contact possible. The exchange of individual times (lives), taking place in language, acquires a supraindividual quality. So, language includes that elusive transition from private life to community life and from perpetual change to constancy. The power of language as a medium is huge, because without language one cannot imagine real human life. We must remember that language is still a mysterious phenomenon of, e.g., a fusion of the horizons of speaking people, or a connection of time’s ecstasies. The time of the inward human world can be approached for everybody because of language. However, the specific character of this accessibility is that the way of perception of what was accessed is inexhaustible. According to Gadamer, especially the language of art stands for the surplus of sense included in the work of art.6 So, this work is inexhaustible, and because of that every attempt to translate it into a conception threatens its identity. This surplus of sense could be seen as a chance for an interpretation of this work of art by someone other than the author, and may warrant that different forms of expression (searching for sense) can be compared. L A N G UAG E A S A M I X O F S E N S E S

In language, everything that differs in the mind is mixed, the past connects through language with the present (where anticipations of the future are present). This specific mix characterizes an indefinability of changes in direction; as for speaking subjects these changes end in articulation. One could compare this phenomenon to waving ocean water that is breaking on the shore. We do not know how ecstasies of time mix; we only have access to the final effect – conversation, which in a broader sense is the way of human beings. When some principles of the world are grasped in conversation, it goes over the level of timeless senses. This level generally contains the effects of every human creative and thinking attempt. Works of art have the same rights to exist as scientific principles, and perhaps even more because works of art appeal to the fundamental nature of the human being. According to Gadamer, the broader formula of hermeneutic thought is that everything is a symbol (as Goethe says).7 This “everything” is not a statement on what exists, but on how it is interpreted by humans. There is nothing that could

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have no meaning for humans. There is nothing that would have only one meaning. The language of works of art has a specific symbolic character, and from a hermeneutic point of view this character belongs to everything. Symbolization as a way of manifesting entities to humans seems to be only one form of accessing human temporality in the time of the world. The human being as an occurrence of time can shape the environment of his existence. Because of his own attempt to stop continualy changes he notices the essence of time. This kind of activity allows the human being to constitute his world and to feel the force of the pressure of eternal change as the resistance of existence. Temporality is “the fundament” of the human being that could be treated as the basis for the linguistic way of human beings. T WO L E V E L S O F H U M A N T I M E

Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s views on the question of time were presented as interacting and as being complementary to one another, although sometimes they are discordant with one another. The sore points of both philosophies were interpreted as following from the different levels that have been considered in the matter of time, but not as discards of the principles. The intention of this approach was to acquire the most possible light in which the issue of time can be shown. This made it possible to speak about human temporality acts on two levels: in the sphere of the authentic human being (Dasein), and in the dimension of total interhuman communication – as different from the time of natural phenomena. Institute of Philosophy and Sociology University of Gda´nsk N OT E S 1

See M. Heidegger, Die Zeit des Weltbildes, in: Holzwege (Frankfurt a/Main, 1962). See H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), Part I. 3 See H.-G. Gadamer, Die Aktualitat des Schonen. Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest (Stuttgart, 1977). 4 See M. Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964). 5 See M. Heidegger, Erlauterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt a/Main, 1971), pp. 3–16. 6 See H.-G. Gadamer, “Asthetik und Hermeneutik,” in: Kleine Schriften, II, Interpretationen (Tubingen, 1967). 7 On the subject of symbols Paul Ricoeur writes a lot – according to him, the proper territory of hermeneutics is the symbolic structure. This structure is every semantic structure, in which a direct, literal sense is pointed out beside another, indirect sense, which cannot be grasped 2

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differently from that first one. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols changes into a hermeneutics of metaphor by means of methodological advantages, which follows from metaphors that could be analyzed in their linguistic aspects. See P. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, 1976), and P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge, 1981).

NATA L I A S M I R N OVA

A . S C H U T Z ’ S C O N T R I BU T I O N TO P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L T H E O RY O F I N T E R S U B J E C T I V I T Y

The problem of intersubjectivity nowadays greatly influences our contemporary social thinking. The cause for this is that under post-modern conditions the concept of social reality includes multiple virtual realities, the majority of which are produced by computer activities. Such a virtual reality might include not only an imaginative animal of which we are able to take care, but even a spouse who – in contrast to a corporeal one – does not appeal to our feelings of responsibility or our sense of justice. Anyway, the efforts to tackle the problem of intersubjectivity seem to contribute both to the socalled mind-body problem and to the problem of a meaningful background of social communication as such. I shall confine myself to the analysis of the most influential phenomenological approaches to the problem of intersubjectivity, derived from Husserl’s transcendental theory of intersubjectivity (the Alter Ego problem). Phenomenology turns out to be one of the most significant aspects of modern philosophy and sociology due to the fact that phenomenology claims to reveal a solid background of human thinking as such and to constitute the deepest meaningful foundation of transcendental certainty. The general aim of phenomenology, as Husserl posited, was to shed light on the implicit presuppositions upon which any science, and even current philosophy are actually based. For this reason phenomenology ends where all the traditional philosophies begin. It poses the questions that cannot be answered by the methods developed within the framework of the social sciences themselves. And the question of how it happens that mutual understanding and communication in human society are possible at all, appears to be the most significant theoretically and the most practically oriented among them. But could the problem of intersubjectivity have any satisfactory solution at all within the framework of transcendental philosophy? Husserl clearly sees the eminent danger of solipsism as a possible consequence of his conception of the phenomenologically transcendental reduction. A. Schutz points out that, when asked why he had refrained from publishing the second volume of his Ideas of Pure Phenomenology (Ideen), Husserl answered that at that time (1913) he did not find any satisfactory solution to the problem of intersubjectivity. The father-founder of phenomenology clearly recognized 313 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 313–319. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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that the attack on this problem presupposed carrying out still further analysis of the constitutive activities of consciousness. Husserl faithfully believed that he offered the desired solution of the Alter Ego problem in the Fifth of his Cartesian Meditations.1 Unfortunately, he did not succeed there in eliminating some difficulties. The main difficulty consists in the fact that within the framework of transcendental philosophy the problem of intersubjectivity is inconsistent by its very nature. Having performed the phenomenologically transcendental reduction and analyzed the constitutional problems of the consciousness, built up by the activities of the transcendental subjectivity, Husserl singles out within the transcendental field what he calls “my own peculiar sphere” (primordial sphere) by eliminating all the constitutive activities which are related to the subjectivity of the Others. This could be done by abstracting from all the meanings referring to the Others. What still remains is strictly my private primordial sphere in the most radical sense of the word. In short, if the phenomenologically transcendental reduction brackets the natural attitude, in the framework of which the others are simply taken for granted, the so-called thematic reduction – as far as I can see it – seems to be a kind of cognitive activity within this particular sphere aimed at solving the problem of intersubjectivity as it were.2 Husserl presupposes that within the primordial sphere there can be singled out the object which can be controlled by the activities of meditating ego. He calls it “my own body” and ascribed to it all the sensorial fields. The essence which functions in my body and controls its gestures Husserl suggested calling “my personal I.” If a resembling object emerges within my primordial sphere, it is interpreted by means of the so-called “passive synthesis” (also called “pairing” or “coupling”) as analogous to my own body and therefore apperceived as other people’s bodies. This means that two objects are presented in the unity of consciousness by means of associations. The psychical nature of the Other’s corporeality manifests itself in changing but always concordant gestures. In this way the Other appears to be appresentatively constituted as an Alter Ego. As far as I can see it, it is not only the resemblance of bodies, but rather the ability to control them, which constitutes an Alter Ego in the precise sense of the word. But Husserl himself did not clearly formulate this conclusion. This Second Ego is the Other, which in accordance with its constitutive sense refers back to what Husserl calls “the first creation.” He stresses that the Second Ego is an Alter Ego, i.e. the alien corporeality. It can be apperceived in the mode of another spatial dimension, namely, “there” (illic)

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instead of “here” (hic). Thus, according to Husserl, in transcendentally and thematically reduced spheres we are able to grasp an Alter Ego by means of an analogical projection.3 And this is precisely the point, where Ortega-yGasset deviates from Husserl’s view. According to Ortega, the Other’s human life is to me latent and hypothetical. His reality is of a special kind, namely a “second degree reality.” Even though the Other’s body belongs to my world, his world remains strange to me. For this reason Ortega criticized Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the Alter Ego as an analogical projection of my own body. Husserl (he thinks) fails to take into consideration that I observe merely the exteriority of the Other’s body, whereas I experience my own body “from within.” Never can this difference be reduced to the spatial perspectives of Here and There. For this reason, Ortega insists that the Other’s radical reality remains inaccessible to me as well as mine to him. Schutz also points out several difficulties in Husserl’s transcendental theory of intersubjectivity. Some difficulties arise from the very conception of the transcendental reduction. First of all, this transcendental intersubjectivity exists within the consciousness of the meditating ego. It was constituted exclusively from the sources of Ego’s intentionality and does not lead to the real existence of an Alter Ego. This objection against Husserl’s transcendental theory of intersubjectivity is by now widely shared by many philosophers. Furthermore, I tend to agree with Schutz, that it is hard to understand how the abstraction from all the meanings referring to Others could be performed in the required radical manner. Having suspended human belief in the real existence of the Other, as well as in the real existence of an outer world in the very process of the phenomenologically transcendental reduction, Husserl feels induced to elaborate within this reduced sphere the device of abstracting from the meaning of the Others again, in the process of thematic reduction, leading to the primordial sphere. This fact seems to confirm the aforementioned difficulty, rather than refute it. In other words, where is the demarcation line that singles out my primordial sphere? Hence, some meanings related to Others must be necessarily presupposed in the very criterion of non-reference to Others. Finally, it is in no way established (suggests Schutz) whether the problem of intersubjectivity and therefore sociality is a problem of the transcendental sphere at all, i.e. whether it does not rather belong exclusively to the mundane sphere of our life-world.4 M. Scheler greatly contributed to the solution of the problem of intersubjectivity.5 He was convinced that the failure of all the efforts to deal with

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this topic has been caused by the lack of clear distinctions between the different questions here involved. He enumerates the following questions: 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

The ontological problem. Is the relation between man and fellow-man just a factual one or does the concept of man already presuppose society quite independently of the factual existence of a concrete ego within a concrete social world? The logico-epistemological problem. How does the reality of another’s consciousness becomes accessible to me? The problem of transcendental psychology. Which individual experiences must be presupposed and which activities of consciousness must be considered as already performed before the knowledge of Alter Ego might emerge at all? Some metaphysical problems are also involved in the theory of the Alter Ego. M. Scheler has in mind here the Cartesian assumption of two separate substances influencing each other. At last, some value problems are also connected with the problem of intersubjectivity. It obviously cannot be contested that such moral acts as love, responsibility, duty, gratitude, etc., refer by their nature to the existence of Alter Egos. Scheler calls them “essentially social acts” because they cannot be construed as pre-social. According to him, this means that each individual sociality always presents a part of society. For this reason the sphere of the “We” is given to us prior to the sphere of the I. Scheler admits that there can be situations where we cannot clearly distinguish whether a thought is actually ours or not. And he even goes a step further. Basing his conclusion on the results of modern child psychology, which clearly reveals that the discovery of the child’s own individuality is a relatively late one, whereas the existence of others is simply taken for granted, he maintains that man lives from the very beginning rather in other people’s experiences than in his individual sphere. He argues, furthermore, that the traditional identification of inner experience (inner perception) and self-experience is wrong. Scheler puts forward the perceptional theory of the Alter Ego, which stresses the role of the body in the process of experiencing other people’s physical life. We experience our bodily movements by sensation, whereas other’s people gestures are given to us as optical phenomena, having no analogy to our kinesthetic sensations. For this reason, it is exactly bodily feelings, he thinks, which constitute the separation between a man and a fellow-man. But as far as man lives only in his bodily feelings, he cannot find any approach to the

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life of an Alter Ego. Only if he elevates himself as a person does he gain the experience of the Other – without empathy and inference by analogy. The very perceptions of the Other are viewed as rather complicated. If we really ask what the object of our perception the Other is, we have to answer that we perceive neither the Other’s body, nor his Soul or Self or Ego, but a totality, undivided into objects of outer and inner experiences. By no reasoning might it be interpreted as “expressions” of the Other’s thought, which cannot be broken down into parts of expressive character. But does Scheler’s perceptional theory of intersubjectivity greatly contribute to the solution of the transcendental problem? As Schutz points out, Scheler has supported this theory not by analysis within the transcendental sphere, but by references to the empirical facts, taken from the psychology of children and primitives. He was convinced – and I tend to agree with him – that for transcendental phenomenology (as a science based on accurate analysis of the transcendental field) Scheler’s hypothesis does not offer the desired solution. According to Schutz, it is in no way established whether the existence of Others is the problem of the transcendental sphere at all, whether the problem of intersubjectivity does exist between transcendental egos or whether intersubjectivity and therefore sociality does not belong exclusively to the mundane sphere of our life-world. Schutz clearly suggests taking the problem of intersubjectivity not as a transcendental, but rather as a mundane problem.6 And if we take this problem as belonging to the life-world, the first question is, whether Scheler’s proposition, that the sphere of We is pre-given to us, proves true. Schutz maintains that within the natural attitude the existence of Others is simply taken for granted and is no more questionable than the existence of an outer world. As long as we stick to the natural attitude we have no doubt that intelligent fellow men do exist. So far, we may agree with Scheier, that the sphere of “We” is pre-given to the sphere of the I. But in this naive attitude I am not aware of myself. My own stream of thought seems to be an anonymous flux. Schutz suggests that still remaining in the natural attitude and without performing the transcendental reduction, I may always turn in the act of reflection from the objects of my acts and thoughts to my acting and thinking. Only in this reflective turn does my Self emerge (hidden yet by the objects of my acts and thoughts). It does not merely enter the field of my consciousness; rather, it constitutes this field. But the fact is that in his perceptional theory of Ater Ego Scheler does not distinguish between the naive attitude of living in the acts and thoughts and

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the attitude of reflection upon those acts and thoughts. Taking the distinction between these two attitudes into account, Schutz made the following objections to Scheler’s theory: 1. 2.

3.

The statement that we live rather in Other’s than in our own stream of consciousness becomes true only for the naive attitude. There is no such experience that would not indicate which individual stream of consciousness it belongs to. I might feel doubtful whether the origin of my thought lies within my stream of consciousness, but both this thought and my doubt belong to the content of my experience. At last, the results of modern studies in the psychology of children and primitives, supporting that they only slowly become aware that they are individuals, only prove that the technique of reflection is acquired very late by children and primitive men. 7

Furthermore, Schutz points out that the time-structure of both attitudes is quit different. He supposes that in adopting the natural or naive attitude we live in our present and are directed towards the immediate future, which we anticipate in our expectations (Husserl calls them “protentions” as the counterpart of “retentions”). Schutz calls the elements of our present, referring to the immediate future, “vivid present.” But according to the phenomenological theory of reflection, what we grasp by the reflective act is by no means the present of our stream of thought – it is always its past. In other words, selfconsciousness can only be experienced in the past tense, as “lived through.” But – and this point is decisive for Schutz – in contrast to our own, in face-toface situations other people’s behavior and thoughts we experience in the vivid present, as a vivid simultaneity. This conclusion leads Schutz to a definition of the Alter Ego: the Alter Ego is that subjective stream of thought which can be experienced in its vivid present. The Alter Ego, therefore, is that stream of consciousness whose activities I can grasp in their present by my own simultaneous activities. This experience of the Other’s stream of consciousness in vivid simultaneity Schutz calls The General Thesis of the Alter Ego’s Existence. This present, common to both of us, Schutz calls “the pure sphere of the We.” And if we accept this definition, we can agree with Scheler, that the sphere of the We is pre-given to the sphere of the Self, but in quite a specific sense, which Scheler himself never had in his mind. To the best of my knowledge, I cannot entirely share Schutz’s criticism concerning Scheler’s theory of the Alter Ego. It is based upon the distinction between the naive and the reflective attitudes. But the matter is that the aforementioned distinction itself should be viewed as a kind of a strong

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idealization, which belongs not to the natural attitude, but to the field of reflection itself. In other words, within the sphere of the life-world taken for granted we never “simply live,” just as we never “only think.” Both processes seem to be simultaneous, and can be divided into parts only by means of reflection. But Schutz is absolutely right in saying that the general thesis of Alter Ego referring to the mundane sphere of the life-world opens the door for constituting a sufficient frame of reference for the foundation of the social sciences. It is just what should be done in the process of further development of theory of intersubjectivity. Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia N OT E S 1

Husserl, E. Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage (Haag, 1950), V Meditation, S. 121–177. 2 Husserl, E. Cartesianische Meditationen. Sec. 44. 3 Husserl, E. Cartesianische Meditationen. Sec. 50. 4 Schutz, A. Collected Papers (The Hague, 1962), Vol. 1, pp. 141–149. 5 Sheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy (New Haven, 1954), pp. 213–264. 6 Schutz, A. Collected Papers, pp. 167–172. 7 Schutz, A. Collected Papers, pp. 170–171.

GERALD NYENHUIS

INGARDEN AND THE PHILOLOGISTS

In his work, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, Roman Ingarden tells us that the wrong kind of “perspectival foreshortening” in the concretization of the literary work of art takes place when the reader takes a “philological” attitude during reading.1 The purpose of this paper is to explain why Ingarden would make such a remark. I . T H E I D E A O F C O N C R E T I Z AT I O N

Already in his major work on literary theory (we may even say aesthetic theory), The Literary Work of Art,2 Ingarden presents his concept of “concretization”. In order to understand what he wants to tell us in the remark cited above we must first grasp his idea of concretization, 3 because it is precisely his concept of concretización that causes him to question the procedures and results of the philologists. Ingarden indicates4 that we must distinguish the concretizations of the work from the subjective operations and other experiences we have while we read. He insists that the literary work we read, or hear read, or see on the stage, is a highly structured complex object at which we direct ourselves in a multiplicity of interrelated conscious acts and other psychic experiences (which are not precisely conscious acts); this very complicated circumstance cannot be identified with concretizatión. These are, of course, perceptual acts through which we become aware of the word signs, word sounds and phonetic configurations by means of which the work becomes accessible to us. In this sense they take part in the cognitive acts that form our “meaning-apprehending” acts. The reader’s imaginative contemplation of the represented objectivities of work is also part of his only partially conscious complex of psychic experiences during reading. The experience of a faint perception of the metaphysical qualities may also accompany this complex of experiences. These, of course, are more than simple sensory perceptions, but it would take us far afield to analyze them here. All of these elements of the reader’s experience during the activity of reading, although not totally extraneous to the interpretative act, are not in themselves the essence of concretization. It is certain that the reader, when he submits himself to the literary work, experiences precisely those aspects that are held in readiness by the 321 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 321–326. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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schematic structure of the work, and through them experiences something of the aesthetic value of the work, because the aesthetic values have their source in them. Even more, certain feelings, opinions, judgments and emotions will have been evoked in the mind of the reader during reading, which are closely associated with his apprehension of the work, even though they are not sufficient for the work to be apprehended correctly. The situation in which we find the reading subject, we can easily see, is a very complicated one and would require a special analysis to be understood fully. Even though this complicated situation is, in a certain sense, a reflection of the varied and intricate structure of the literary work, realized simultaneously, as it were, through diverse pieces of a broken mirror, the complexity of a full apprehension of the work is such that the experiencing ego is overwhelmed with the multiplicity of tasks that have to be realized at the same time. The result is that in this complex situation of interwoven acts and experiences, only a few of these acts and experiences are realized effectively in the concentrated activity of the ego; these then are considered as central. All the rest, if they are noted, must be treated as co-experienced or coeffected, and are placed in subordinate positions. In this process, especially during several readings, there will be constant change as to which are the central acts and the determinative experiences, and as to the various relations that can pertain between them. At the same time there is a constant change in the direction of the reader’s attention. As a result, some of the parts and strata of the work are constantly perceived as different; all the rest fade into obscurity, a semi-darkness, or a semi-vagueness, from which they speak weakly in a delicate vibration and can contribute only by giving the work an occasional shade, color or nuance. The reader will be left with a wide variety of irreconcilable impressions and intuitions, but will not be able to make solid affirmations about the work as a unified work of art, although, of course, he can still call attention to many of its aspects, in an isolated way, or, which is more common, describe in detail his own experiences while reading. This situation, of course, must be distinguished from concretization, because it depends not so much on the work itself as on the attitudes and conditions of reading. As a result of this situation, we must say that one can correctly grasp the work only to a certain degree, never completely, so as to exclude all other and different comprehensions of the work. This means that there will be several, or even numerous, concretizations of one and the same work. Even though there are many concretizations, and we must distinguish the concretizations from the work itself, it is important to insist that the various concretizations

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are concretizations of the same work. It is not possible to think of the concretizations as only the work of the reader and independent of the work itself. To be legitimate the concretization has to be a concretization of the work. In a manner of speaking, we may say that the work itself seeks its concretizations. The experiences caused by the work and the cognitive acts provoked by it, although they are not in themselves the concretization, are required to carry it out. While we must distinguish between the concretization and these experiences and subjective operations, we can never separate them. There can be no concretization without them, although, as we have seen, these experiences and subjective operations by themselves are not yet the concretization. The literary work of art, as it were, insists on the sub-final aspect of these, and that through them the concretization be carried out. To carry out the concretization, the interpreter (which is the higher grade of reader) must become, to use my own expression, “epistemologically selfconscious”. He must be purposely aware of the fact that he is conscious of his own experiences and subjective operations, and of the role they play in his meaning-forming activity in the apprehension of the work. To achieve this, the interpreter must shield himself from all disturbing influences. In order to carry out the concretization, he must suppress all those influences that belong to the rest of the interpreter’s “real” world, so that the world of the represented objects, the world created by the work of art, becomes a “separate” world, a completely different set of references. There is a kind of purposeful blindness or deafness to what occurs in the “real” world. There is an effort to observe the created world of the literary work, pushing away all possible distractions that may arise, even from one’s body, so that the reader looks for a comfortable chair and a quiet place. The reader does not enter in this separate world; he concentrates his attention on it and it becomes an “existent” object for him.5 He assumes the attitude that Ingarden calls “pure beholding”6 in which he perceives the opalescence7 of the work and can fully enjoy its “aesthetic qualities”. For Ingarden, the “beholding attitude” is the “aesthetic attitude”. This attitude is necessary for the apprehension of the literary work and to have a kind of communion with it; it also makes it possible to contemplate the literary work of art as an entity in itself and to speak of it as an object. The interpreter perceives the literary work as existing. It is there, as a work of art; it has its own existence. Although he knows that it has a cause, he does not perceive it in terms of its cause; and while he knows that it has effects, he does not perceive it in terms of its effects. To say it another way: for the interpreter the work does not exist in the mind of the author, nor in the

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mind of the reader; it is not to be found in either of those minds, nor even in the combination of the two. It is to be found in its own existence. As Ingarden explains in his major work, 8 its existence is “hereteronomous” (not autonomous) as is the case of all intentional objects, but this does not have to do with the minds of either author or reader, rather it has to do with its mode of existence. Concretization depends on the real existence of the literary work as an intentional object, and on its perception as such. There is a real inclination to say that the “one and same” literary work, the intentional object (the welding together, or fusión, of “real” object and “intention”), is apprehended in its various changing aspects, all of which are accesses to the one and same work. The multiplicity of these interwoven aspects which belong to the same intentionally existing work are of decisive significance for the construction of the specific concretization that is being realized in the study of the work at any given time. The multiplicity of these interwoven aspects may have a different configuration in the various readings, and thus in the various concretizations, so that while all are concretizations of the work, not any one of them is to be totally identified with the work, even though we must insist that each one is a concretization of the one and same literary work. The aspects are seen and studied when the work is beheld as an independent whole. The concretization, which presupposes the attitude of “pure beholding” that Ingarden has posited, seeks to perceive the “essential structure” of the work, and, as he elaborates in The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, its “idea”.9 At the end, the wealth of the cognitive experiences and acts contribute to a recreative reconstruction of the essential structure that takes place in a reading which is, at the same time, a concretization. Of course, in the process, the possibility for distortion becomes real and, in a sense, unavoidable, but, on the other hand, this multiplicity contributes to a perception of the characteristic total form of the work, without which the work can not be viewed as a genuine work of art. The concretization also demands what Ingarden calls a “perspectival foreshortening”. This means that we can (and must) perceive a whole year, or a dozen years, in one moment. At the same time, we perceive the beginning and the end of a whole long process. We see the whole person at once, even his “backside”. In a way we perceive his body even when it is hidden behind his clothes, and we see his humor in his eyes. We reduce to a glance what would take a long time, and perhaps a slow process, to see in reality. All of this is related to what Ingarden has called “spots of indetermination”. An essential characteristic of all represented objects is that they

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are all basically undetermined. Certain aspects are given, and the reader must fill in the spaces between them. An overly simplified, but not totally inaccurate, way of speaking of concretization is to say that it is “filling in the blanks”. We count to two when we read that the eagle spreads his wings, and we don’t put claws on the elephant we read about, nor a hump on a tiger. An important part of concretization is this making explicit what is implicit in the text. And this must be done in terms of the world presented in the work, which exists as an independent object, existing on its own terms, with all of its aspects and strata coalescing in one unified object. All of the acts and experiences of apprehension constitute the condition in which the work can be concretized. The work itself, however, and every one of its concretizations, is different from these experiences and acts of apprehension. It is clear that there could be no concretizations without these experiences of apprehension, because the concretizations depend on them, for their existence and for their content. This does not mean that the concretization is a psychological experience or even an element of a psychological experience, even though the concretization depends on these experiences. Just as a rainbow, Ingarden says, is not a psychic experience even though it exists concretely only when a certain visual perception is effected, under certain objective conditions, so also is the concretization of a literary work. Although it is conditioned in its existence by corresponding experiences, it has at the same time its ontic basis in the work itself.10 I I . T H E P H I L O L O G I C A L TA S K

The philologist concentrates his attention on the linguistic stratum, and, in a very real sense, on the phonic material. His interest is focused on the “language” of the work, on the phonetic phenomena and on some of the peculiarities of the semantic stratum. The philologist pays especial attention to the modes of expression, the sentence structure, the etymology of the words, the amplitude of the vocabulary, and to certain rhetoric and stylistic peculiarities. The object becomes a linguistic phenomenon rather that an artistic or aesthetic one. This is the opposite of the perspectival foreshortening that is required for the concretization. For the philologist the value of the work is determined mainly by the language stratum. What is present in the other strata, the polyphonic harmony of all the strata, as well as the metaphysical and the aesthetic qualities are of a very secondary importance. This leads to the idea that poetry, and literature in general, is simply a very particularized function of language; that there are no

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real literary works of art; only very specialized uses of language. This would be akin to saying that sculpture is a specialized use of stone and that the way to understand sculpture would be to carefully examine rocks. Paintings are made of canvas and color, therefore a careful study of canvases and colors will give us a thorough understanding of painting. The philological attitude does not produce a full and vivid constitution of the concretization of the work, only of one aspect of the work, or, at best, of two of its strata. Such a concretization is partial, incomplete and distorted. It would be like a symphony played only by the violins or the Messiah sung by only the tenors. No one can doubt the importance of violins and tenors, but no one would expect to get an understanding of the work by studying only their role. The philological attitude displays a poverty and emptiness in the ideological aspect as well as in the aesthetic polyphony of the work. It reduces the work, in a kind of reverse “perspectival foreshortening” in the concretization of the work, to a presentation of the work in only linguistic categories, and thus prevents such a “concretization” from being a real concretization, that is, a concretization of the work. Universidad Iberoamericana N OT E S 1

The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art (English translation of Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 91. 2 The Literary Work of Art (English translation of Das literarische Kunstwerk) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), esp. Section #62, p. 332 ff. 3 A selection of passages over this theme taken from Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerk is presented in Warning: Rezephonsästhetih (München: Wilhelm Fink, 1979). There is Spanish translation, published by Visor, Madrid, 1989 4 Ioc. cit. 5 Ingarden explains the different kinds of objects and their mode of existence in the first chapter of his work, The Literary Work of Art, 6 The Literary Work of Art, p. 335 7 Dr. Gloria Vergara has an interesting chapter about this in her book Tiempo y Verdad en la literatura (Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2001). 8 Chapter I of The Literary Work of Art 9 Ibid. section #13a 10 The Literary Work of Art, pp. 335–6.

RO B E RT D . S W E E N E Y

NA R R AT I V E S E L F A N D WO R L D

Ricoeur’s multi-faceted oeuvre has continually modified and expanded phenomenological concepts. Already in Freedom and Nature and Fallible Man, self as subject and world as horizon are in a tight interrelationship, but such as to maintain a modified autonomy/independence on the part of both terms of the relationship.1 In those early works, one can discern Husserl’s transcendental ego as an influence that is gradually being rejected by reason of its inherent idealism as pointed up by Ricoeur’s critical studies.2 In these early works also – including The Symbolism of Evil and Freud and Philosophy3 – we find a philosophical anthropology based on what can be called an “existentialist” version of the subject that stresses the role of the imagination in tying together the voluntary and the involuntary, the “finite and the infinite.” With the works concerned with the philosophy of language, however, this version of the subject changes by taking on a strong overlay of structuralist theory along with a new emphasis on the temporal dimension of self. In several articles in The Conflict of Interpretations, e.g., “The Question of the Subject: The Challenge of Semiotics” and “Structure, Word, Event,” there is basically a defense of the concept of a very limited subject from the danger of its being eroded or even eliminated in a structuralist system of signifiers, i.e., a semiotics.4 Ricoeur challenges the structuralist position, first, in the name of psychoanalysis and its archaism of desire, but then, at the same time, utilizes it to develop a new semantics of discourse that relates the (structural) langue to the world via the event of speaking (la parole) – and, in such a way that the metaphor becomes the source of language change. In The Rule of Metaphor,5 the subject becomes not simply the presupposed anchorage for the world, but the source of the creative metaphor that enables the writer and reader by way of “split reference” to reveal the “deep structures” of it – which I take to mean the underlying values and cultural patterns. In the properly hermeneutic works, primarily the three volumes of Time and Narrative, the self is able to advance new meanings, new interpretations of itself and the world, by reason of the imaginative distance that the text creates (both temporal and spatial). Here we have the world of the text understood as a habitable horizon for the subject. Writing has a special role in this correlation for Ricoeur: “Thanks to writing, man and only man has a world and not just a situation.” This is so even for the minimal case of descriptive 327 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 327–338. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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writing and its direct, ostensive mode of reference, but, as we see in Time and Narrative, more so for the creation of literary and historical narratives and their indirect, allusive reference. This means that only with the advent of writing, preceded, supplemented, by the role of “inscription” in memory – oral recounting, etc. – does our awareness have full-scale horizons, depths of possibility both spatial and temporal.6 Also, this would seem to mean that animals – even primates that share most of our (human) DNA – should not be said to live in the “world” since they do not have writing, and their memory does not represent inscription. With the concluding paragraphs of Volume 3 of Time and Narrative, however, there is a noticeable change in emphasis from a relatively stable subject and world to a temporally dynamic version, as indicated by the new usage, “narrative self,” and by the new concern with narrative identity. “Narrative identity” actually is the main usage here; “self” is utilized only in a short section of two paragraphs (246–247) where Ricoeur is challenging the predominance of idem in theories of personal identity and to which he opposes the “self constancy” (maintenance de soi) of ipse. “Unlike the abstact identity of the same,” he says, “this narrative identity, constitutive of self-constancy, can include change, mutability, within the cohesion of one lifetime.” In Oneself as Another, the same theme is developed but the emphasis changes somewhat to challenge the now-classical polarization of identity: as embedded in Cartesian substantialism it is challenged by Hume and Nietzsche as an “illusion,” but their only alternative is a “pure manifold of cognitions, emotions and volitions.”7 The only viable option to this polarization, Ricoeur says, is to focus, not on the “what” of sheer sameness, but on the “who” that presupposes the story of a life (Arendt); that is, a self in the sense of a personnage “that can include change, mutability, within the cohesion of one lifetime” – wherein the subject “then appears both as a reader and the author of its own life” (246). This “who” is the narrative self. This theme of a narrative self and its identity – a “decentered self” – is primarily explicated in Oneself as Another, where the concern is mainly with the narrative self as an ethical subject as displayed in the internal dialectic of idem and ipse, wherein the former maintains the stability of personal identity and the latter its variability. But this variability of ipse is at the service – “self-maintenance” – of the ethical aspect of the narrative self as responsible, while the consistent stability of idem is a matter of character as the “sameness in the mineness” (starting with the genetic code). As he describes this “dangerous distinction between two kinds of identity” in a recent interview,

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there is the “repetitive identity of the same, of the idem or “sameness” on the one hand, and identity in construction of the ipse on the other.” He had applied it to the “narrative construction of identity” and to the holding of a promise; is there not also, he asks, “a maintaining, which makes it happen that we recognize the same author for a single work” – the sameness of a succession within novelty … so that “each work is each time a new work, but which, in being in a sequence, designates the ipseity of the creator.”8 Such an effort to delineate a decentered self – as contrasted with a deconstructed or a “broken” self – has remained within the compass of the thesis fundamental to hermeneutic phenomenology, viz., “Being-in-the world.” It should be noted that the concept of self and world here is comparable to (and influenced by) various other versions of “man in the world” besides Heidegger’s, starting with Husserl’s ego and world, but also Scheler’s person and world, Sartre’s être dans le monde, and Merleau-Ponty’s être au monde. And in each case there is an important variation, even as they are all derivatives of the leading concept in phenomenology, viz., intentionality. Even if Heidegger and others disavow the term intentionality, or claim to diminish its importance, it is still operative – one might say, in disguise. Indeed, we shall see that Ricoeur himself, both early on in his writing and later on under Heidegger’s influence, has deemphasized the term, primarily to avoid any suggestion of idealism. In his latest work, in particular, La memoire, l’historie, l’oubli,9 Ricoeur’s main complaint against Edward Casey’s phenomenology of memory and its utilization of intentionality, is the idealism he finds implicit in it, despite Casey’s intentions. Neverthless use of the term intentionality endures expressis verbis, not only in this work, but also in Oneself as Another,10 and in another recent work, What Makes Us Think?11 – a dialogue with Jean-Pierre Changeux. The key is, of course, the now-classical “of” of “consciousness of,” Husserl’s phrase that derives originally from Aristotle, through medieval thought and Brentano’s early position. It is intentionality, then, that provides the connecting link between self and world, and thus affects Ricoeur’s position on both ends of the relation. In order to counteract Changeux’s adherence to a purely internalistic neuron-centered position – the mind as a container for representations – Ricoeur presents a picture of intentionality, both in Husserl and in Heidegger, as overcoming the subject/object, internal/external dichotomies. He points out that “phenomenology challenges the idea that there exists a replica, in the mind, of some reality belonging to a wholly finished world” (162). In another section he makes a similar point regarding Changeux’s picture of mind as “brain with representations”; like certain psychologists, for

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Changeux, representation is an “internal mental image – in the head, as it is said – contrasted with external reality, itself wholly made and wholly given at the level of knowledge of the physical world” (119). Instead, Ricoeur proposes a shift from the theoretical to the “practical plane” of the notion of action, where one finds “first of all, activities of orientation and prehension together with chains of motor intervention, which help to configure the world as a navigable milieu, marked out with paths and strewn with obstacles – in short as a habitable world.” This, he says, is what was worked out by Husserl in his later work on the Lebenswelt, but also coincides with Merleau-Ponty’s position: It is “the feeling of I can that carries the scope of intentionality beyond itself. Through the I can, and perhaps still more through the I think, I am over there – I am not in my head, I am next to things outside of me” (164). Thus, in phenomenological experience consciousness is not a box in which there are objects. The notion of mental content has been constructed in relation to the experience of being led toward the world and therefore of being outside the world in intentionality. I stand in a very particular relation to the world, that of being born into this world, of being in it. The great advance of phenomenology was to reject the containing/contained relationship – that made the psyche a place. … I simply say that I am outside of myself when I see, which is to say that seeing consists in being confronted by something that is not myself, and therefore participating in an external world. (119)

And this world – “life-world” – is a “world in which human beings orient themselves, choose signals that are meaningful to them, and anticipate events with a view to making of it a relatively practicable world, which is to say a habitable world (117). Or, as he puts it in an interview, “a world is something where I find myself and can inhabit under diverse modalities, according as it is hospitable, familiar, strange, hostile.”12 The further point of this paper is to explore Ricoeur’s position in more detail in order to reach (approximate) the more particular version of world and self that obtains in his account. Throughout the stages of development of the subject/self, world maintains an appropriately correlative polarity to self; in so doing, it moves pari passu from being a relatively static network of meanings to an action-oriented, spatial and temporal field – not just a semantic one (V). While one might think that the hermeneutic texts are so dominated by the world of the text that we are encapsulated in an intertextuality of reflecting mirrors in the manner of the “hors-text” of Derrida, the point of “triple mimesis,” central to Time and Narrative, is to include the world of action both at the point of prefiguration and at that of refiguration.

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Configuration, emplotment, pulls together the discordant shards of everyday experience so as to return us to the world in a more focused comprehending mode of action. Most important, throughout this period, Ricoeur consistently reaffirms (with “vehemence,” he says) the ontological status of the “extralinguistic world.” “Seeing as” – that is, metaphor – “is being-as … I make ‘being-as’ the ultimate referent of the metaphorical statement”13 In general, then, world is not a fully developed concept but seems rather to be primarily dependent on self; that is, while there is not a balanced symmetry, there are mutual dependencies in the further developments discernible in La memoire, l’histoire, l’oubli which is focused on memory and history. Even though the world of the text plays only a minor role here, and the world of action as well, that is, they are only minimally thematized, still the concept of “worldness” (mondaneite) is given some new elaboration. After reiterating his thesis on triple mimesis – prefiguration, configuration and refiguration – and on the intersection of fiction and history in a kind of counterpoint, he adds the role of memory, in combination with imagination, as depicting. And in this context, after challenging Casey’s dismissal of Husserl in favor of Heidegger, he reiterates his conviction supporting the concept of intentionality and a Lebenswelt without idealist implications. While recognizing, in Casey’s work, the effort to find and display memory “beyond the mind” in habit (habitude), and thus as supporting the pole of “worldness” (mondanéité) as opposed to reflexivity, he points out the more basic role of corporeality (48), i.e., the corporeal memory that is invited by the wounds, the “traumatisms of the past,” to focus on specific incidents that appeal principally to “secondary memory,” that is, “to remember and make a story out of it.” But this means, in turn, that corporeal memory is crowded with memories affected by different degrees of temporal distantiation (e.g. regret, nostalgia, etc. [49]) and that such remembering also leads to the memory of places, especially of habitation. The “habitable earth” means here that things remembered are always located in places (lieux): “What has happened has taken place” – places live as inscriptions, monuments, even documents. But such geography presupposes a key thesis in Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics, viz., that a phenomenology of datation and localization cannot be constituted without borrowing from “objective knowledge of space – let us say, Euclidean and Cartesian”14 – and the objective knowledge of chronological time, itself articulated on physical movement. This, he says, raises a question posed by any effort at reconquering a Lebenswelt anterior – conceptually, if not historically – to the world (re)constructed by the sciences of nature.” (50). This question is

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answered in the act of inhabiting, which “yields the strongest connection between date and place” (referred to here as a mixed category) since inhabited places are “memorable par excellence.” Thus, in any utilization of the epoche of Husserl, Ricoeur says, what legitimates the “desimplication” (the de-implying – the untying) of space and time from their objectivated form, is the “knot tied between corporeal memory and the memory of places” (51). In this respect the body constitutes the primordial place, the absolute here, in relation to which all other places are there. Similarly with the now: all other times – past and future – are related to my corporeal present. Or again, there is an exact symmetry between the use of the pronouns I and you and the here and there, and the now and then. But so also with respect to the body of the other, over there, which requires “a system of neuter/neutral spaces.” How could I be a neighbor, Ricoeur asks, without a map, “a topographical sketch (a map in the brain?) of where the other is?” (51). Thus there emerges an “unsurpassable dialectic” between the “desimplication” of lived space with respect to geometrical space and the reimplication of one by the other in every relating of the foreign to the proper (one’s own). Likewise, commemorations, liturgical rituals – even founding events – all have their temporal place through dating, through the calendar. This is particularly the case when memory is stretched beyond its “mentalistic” core. In other words, the human experiential dimension, i.e., “phenomenologicalexistential time” (and “existential space”), brought out by Heidegger’s ontology, entails not a dichotomy between the Lebenswelt and an “objective knowledge of Euclidean space and cosmic time” but a dialectic. There is no absolute gap between the phenomenological and the cosmic – as Heidegger would have it – but an interlacing. This focus also reveals the role of calendar time as the anchorage of the world of the historical text as well as that from which the work of fiction, by playing with time, is liberated. The thrust of this view, then, as I see it, is a modified theory of the Lebenswelt in which both the human/phenomenological and the “objective” knowledge are conjoined. But the mode of inclusion is rather complex: the epoche that brackets the natural attitude, scientific objectivity, etc., to reveal the absolute here and now of my “I can,” is in turn reimplicated in the objectal here and now of datability and geography. Instead of a strict exclusion of the scientific perspective, we are pointed to a horizon enriched by neutral spaces and potential dates that can eventually be distilled into the components of a scientific world view. Recall that in the above quotation/passages (from MHO) the terminology used to capture this relationship is “dialectical.” But if we go back to Ricoeur’s earlier statements on this theme in Volume 3 of Time and Narrative, the terminology

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is characterized by the metaphor of “bridges,” of which there are three: calendar time, generations (biological time) and the trace – in each of which we move from the phenomenological to the cosmic and back. For example, “On the one hand, the calendar is an off-shoot of astronomy. On the other, it is an institution in the political sense of the word. … It integrates the community and its customs into the cosmic order.”15 But the two orders are separated by the gap – the aporia – between the phenomenological time and cosmic time, which cannot be totally overcome. That historical time throws a bridge over this gap does not validate any assumption that one could literally know/understand the nature of cosmic time and space in the way – and to the degree – that one understands human time. A similar point is made in Ricoeur’s discussion of deixis in Oneself as Another that he undertakes in order to lessen the presumed gap between the two forms of philosophy of language – pragmatics (speech act theory) and semantics (referential theory) as they are utilized to analyze the (meaning of) self. Here again the two basic components of linguistic reference – space and time – must each include both the phenomenological and the cosmic. Here again, the “now” points both to the human, phenomenolgical context – the extended present of my care oriented to the being-toward death of my future – and the specious “instant” of linear, cosmic time. This conjunction, he says, “does not consist in a mere juxtaposition of the notions belonging to distinct universes of discourse; it rests on precise operations that assure what I called the inscription of phenomenological time onto cosmological time, the model of which is the invention of calendar time” (OSA 53). Similarly with space: the “here” that I refer to is my human situation but also the location on the map that is marked by (Cartesian) coordinates. The “here” is opposed to the “there” as the place in which I am situated corporeally. Absolutely speaking, “here,” as the place where I am, is the zero point in relation to which all other places become near or far. And notice, he says “In this sense, ‘here’ is nowhere. But the use of ‘here’ in conversation (speech act) implies a minimal topographical knowledge, that by which I can situate my ‘here’ in relation to a system of coordinates whose source-point is just as indifferent as the instant of cosmological time.” Thus, he adds, “… the complete significance of the deictic ‘here’ is that of a localized here.” One might see the need to reconcile the difference, in these recent works of Ricoeur, between the terminology of “bridges” and that of “dialectic.” I would say that the latter position would be more representative, in that Ricoeur’s style of thinking has been thoroughly grounded, over the course of many books, in the dialectical, often articulated in the very general phrasing

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of “productive opposition.” “Bridges” stands as a very useful metaphor but one whose clarification is not fully accomplished by the simile “connector.” But both strategies – “bridge” and dialectic – maintain the difference between the opposites. This dialectical opposition or coordination, it seems to me, runs to the heart of what I am here suggesting is a reworking of the Lebenswelt that is only hinted at in La memoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Since Ricoeur’s overall aim in this book is to show how memory operates in the world in relation to history, i.e., “The transition from living memory to the ‘extrinsic’ positing of historical knowledge” (MHO, 191), or what he calls “the historical mutation of the time of memory” (192), central to this temporality is the capacity for “datation” which we find, already in Aristotle, in our sense for intervals; in Augustine, the capacity to measure the lengths of time; in Kant, the sense of temporal extension that makes spatial extension possible; and in Bergson, the evocation of memory with the date. Calendar time consists in a “properly temporal modality of inscription, namely a system of dates extrinsic to the events” – comparable to the way place, referred to the absolute here of the corps propre, becomes “any place that can be inscribed among the sites for which cartography makes a map.” Thus the present moment with its absolute now becomes “any date among those of which the calendar permits the exact calculation in the framework of such and such calendrical system accepted by a more or less extended part of humanity” (192–193). In the context of memory, he adds, the “other-time” of the “remembered past” is inscribed henceforth within the before of the dated past; symmetrically, the “later” of expectation becomes the “after,” marking the coinciding of an expected event with the grid of dates to come” (193). Obviously, this calendrical system – more basically, this “datability” – is not “scientific” in our modern empirical sense, nor is it a product of the “natural attitude” and its naive realism, since it incorporates the role of subjective temporalization (and localization). Yet at the same time, we might also see the calendar as the “starting point” or platform of a developmental process leading to an eventual scientific amplification and clarification of datation, just as neutral places offered themselves to the origins of geometry. In La memoire, l’histoire, l’oubli these issues are discussed in those sections dealing with the phenomenology and epistemology of memory and history, sections which consistently defend the objectivity of reference. But our question also emerges in passing in the last, culminating section, the “historical condition” which sets out an ontology of the human reality, including historical collective memory. Here again the narrative self is given

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extensive development with emphasis on the “experience of history” and self-knowledge through history. Here Ricoeur explores the burden of history (Nietzsche) and the nature of our involvement with history in terms of our judgments, our sense of modernity, etc. Considerable attention is given to temporality and history, first with existential time and the future in terms of “being towards death,” and then of “being-in-time” and its attendant inauthenticity. Forgetting, including neuronal dysfunction, is developed, not so much as a counterpart, as an antidote, correction and pharmakon. Here also we have a crowning achievement of the narrative self – the amnesia of the pardon, especially in terms of the amnesty of “collective memory.” And as the counterpart of the pardon, we find the promise, which, unlike the pardon, is directed at the future rather than the past. Finally happy memory is explained with a quotation of Andre Breton relating to the joy of recognition, but also in counterpoint to “unhappy history” (Benjamin). At this stage, it is clear that Ricoeur’s focus is on the “collective” aspect of the self. This is not a collective self as such, but the dimension that shows up in collective memory, in familial, communal and political awareness. This brings up the consideration (necessarily brief) of the “ethical” self and the world. The ethical self does not, as suggested by Venema,16 represent a radical difference from the narrative self, but rather a new dimension of it; it does not supersede but enriches. It involves the central aspect of human capability, namely, our ability to respond to the other as other. This concept, derived from Levinas’ position, differs importantly from Levinas’ “asymmetry” in its symmetrical notion of capacity – ethical responsibility is that of a fully empowered self. But it is still the narrative self. Since narrative represents a “laboratory for ethical experimentation,” i.e., testing out possible modes of action in literary imagination, the ethical dimension is already included, even though, as Ricoeur says, there are “deliaisons” – disconnections – between the literary and the ethical. Thus the focus on the Other in Oneself as Another, following Levinas, does not represent a departure from the narrative self (pace Venema) – indeed the narrative self is thematic throughout the book – but rather an intensification, a radicalization of insights opened up by narrativity with respect to ethical possibilities. In other words, the “face of the other” (over)dramatized by Levinas, does not float as a disembodied image, but rather functions in a context formed by the world of the text. And if this text is biblical, one might suggest that the face gets a special enhancement from the context. Such a context is not a “totality” in the Levinasian pejorative, since it is not static but subject to variation under imaginative enterprise; nor is it strictly cognitive, since it is affective and

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action-oriented as well. It is important, as well, to note that Ricoeur rejects the radical asymmetry of Levinas’ position on the ethical, arguing that the self must maintain a fundamental capability, and even a “self-esteem,” to be the responsible self demanded by the face of the other. Thus, Ricoeur’s “self as another” is neither a full symmetry (Venema) nor a dissymmetry but what might be called a “domestication” of Levinas’ radicalism. Levinas’ hyperbolic use of the metaphor “hostage” to describe the nature of the responsible self suggests to Ricoeur a lack of capability in its responsive duty, and a consequent depreciation of self-esteem.17 Returning to the theme of the world in this context, we can ask: But is the world then simply the world of the text enriched by the ethical? Here one should recall the full point of “triple mimesis” as the basic character of narrativity: It begins with prefiguration and ends with refiguration – both of which are connected with the world of action. Here also we can situate objective theories of value found, for example, in Scheler, von Hildebrand, et al. where values function as nodal points of importance as well as objects of our interests, access to which is provided by affectivity (feelings) – valueresponse. We might see such values as crystallized around the face of the other in adjusting to Ricoeur’s more recent thinking that reduces the role of the concept of value to a marginal function.18 Here, I believe, we can situate the key role of the promise as the emblematic case of ethical commitment. The promise, highlighted by Ricoeur following Levinas along with many others – and driven by valuemotivations – begins in the prefigured world of interaction, is filtered through the narratives of lived promises, and ends up with the fulfillments (or nonfulfillments) in the refigured world of action: Despite my self, my inclinations (character/idem), I keep my word (ipse) and in the process change the idem in a way that brings it closer to the virtue of fidelity, of promise-keeping. It is the keeping of difficult and important promises, one can discern from Ricoeur’s texts, that gives us the most profound changes in the self and, hence of the world of the self. Consider how the vows of marriage, for example – vague, open-ended, unforeseeable in their consequences (and strongly invested by feelings) – require a range of self-disciplines, rethinkings, reshapings of the self, with the immediate consequence, as well, of reshaping one’s world and its values, especially when parenting ensues; and yet how, at the same time, the narratives of marriage allow us to review and imagine new possibilities, nevertheless. The ethical then, might better be seen as not only central to the self but also – in terms of value, the “face” etc. – the cornerstone or primary nodal point of world.

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CONCLUSION

My main point has been, not to assign to Ricoeur some elusive notion of the Lebenswelt that he hasn’t himself addressed or expressed, nor to adjudicate between different phenomenological theories of world in, e.g., Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, not to speak of Roman Ingarden. Indeed, the full meaning of Lebenswelt was not spelled out by Husserl himself and has been a matter of considerable controversy over the years among his commentators, especially as to its being subject or not to historical conditioning. One might even say that it functions as a cluster of concepts, or else a magnet for a number of disparate theories quite distant from Husserl’s and ranging from Habermas and Tymieniecka to Hilary Putnam, among those who have used the phrase. Rather, it is to spell out some of the implications for a notion of Lebenswelt that derive from Ricoeur’s efforts that are basically focused elsewhere. The primary implication is that the mixed concept of an intersubjective yet also objective (“objectal”) space and time is intrinsic to any life-world notion or its equivalent, not as scientific objects nor as mere formal conditions, but as equal components, equal foci, that are required by the very essence of narrativity anchored in corporeality, especially as this narrativity shows up in memory and/or history. Such “mixed” concepts, I would add, if not themselves scientific in the modern sense of the term, provide a platform for the development of scientific concepts. It might well be that the notion of life that Ricoeur utilizes in his reference to Lebenswelt – “lifeworld” – does not sound like current usage in the “life-sciences,” but it has at least a relevance to them, as can be seen in his dialogue with Changeux, and his serious efforts to incorporate scientific concepts. And I think such an enriched and inclusive perspective is also the point of the eloquent final words – a kind of poetic epilogue – in La memoire, l’histoire, l’oubli that display Ricoeur’s hesitant but intense concern with the meaning of life in dialogue with science: Sous l’histoire, la memoire et l’oubli. Sous la memoire et l’oubli, la vie. Mais écrire la vie est une autre histoire Inachèvement. Underneath history, memory and forgetting, Underneath memory and forgetting, life. But to write life is another story. Unachieved.19

John Carroll University Cleveland, Ohio

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1

Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Trans. and intro. Erazim Kohak (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965). Fallible Man. Trans. Charles Kelbley (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965). 2 See Paul Ricoeur, A Key to Edmund Husserl’s Ideas I, Ed. and Intro by Pol Vandevelde: Transl. Bond Harris and Jacqueline Spurlock. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1996). 3 The Symbolism of Evil. Trans. Everson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967); Freud and Philosophy. Trans. Don Savage (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970). 4 Don Ihde (ed.) (Northwestern University Press, 1967). 5 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (University of Toronto Press, 1977). 6 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (3 volumes) (University of Chicago Press, 1983–1988). 7 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (University of Chicago Press, 1992). (abbreviated OSA) 8 Jean-Marie Brohm and Magali Uhl, “Arts, langage, et herméneutique esthétique.” Interview with Paul Ricoeur. Published on website of Philagora, 1996 (http://www.philagora.net/ricoeur.htm) 9 Paul Ricoeur, La memoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (Paris: Seuil, 2000). (abbreviated MHO) 10 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another 11 “A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher argue about Ethics, Human Nature and the Brain.” Trans. M.B. Devoise (Princeton University Press, 2000). 12 Philagora. 13 “On Interpretation,” in Kearney (ed.), Continental Philosophy (Routledge, 1996), p. 155. 14 The work of Patrick Heelan is relevant here in that Heelan privileges a Heideggerian emphasis on the originality of non-Euclidean spatial perception as prior to (but interconnected with) the “carpentered” space (of Euclid and Descartes) that still prevails in our time as its basic meaning. Cf. Space Perception and the Philosophy of Science (University of California Press, 1983). Such non-Euclidean space is experienced in the close and distant zones as framing the Euclidean middle zone. But the emphasis is different and Heelan (or Ihde) cannot accommodate the dialectic with the “objective.” 15 Paul Ricoeur, “Narrated Time”, Philosophy Today, Vol. 29, No. 4, p. 265. 16 H.I. Venema, Identifying Selfhood (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 159–161. 17 Oneself as Another, p. 338. 18 For a discussion of these themes, see, e.g., Robert Sweeney, “Value and Ideology,” A.–T. Tymieniecka and C. Schrag (eds.) Analecta Husserliana XV (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), pp. 387–400; and Robert Sweeney, “Ricoeur’s Ethics and Narrative,” in M. Joy (ed.) Paul Ricoeur and Narrative (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997). 19 This term is used by Ricoeur to capsulize his reinterpretation of the theme of Ausstand in section 48 of Being and Time where he finds that “Being–unto-death” takes on, for Heidegger, a too narrow focus compared with the overall theme of a conflict between openness and closedness. See Ricoeur, MHO, p. 464.

ZAIGA IKERE

O N TO P O I E S I S O F L I F E A N D N E W H O R I Z O N S I N H U M A N I TA R I A N E D U C AT I O N

The present paper will touch upon several concepts which lie at the basis of Professor Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s philosophy. It will be considered how these concepts are related with education and its goals and how to implement these ideas into reality through teaching national cultural heritage. Our present age has called forth revolutionary transformations in views about the nature of human life from cosmic, national and societal perspectives. There should be a philosophical scheme, which, according to Professor Tymieniecka “may allow a human being to resituate himself or herself within society, to find his or her foothold in the web of nature, and to find his or her bearings upon mother earth and within the cosmos.”1 The scholar maintains the philosophy of life to be “a new paradigm in the field of philosophy, encompassing all the traditional disciplines but supplying them with … a new engine, one provided in philosophy’s dialogue with the new science and our deepening insight into cultural creativity.”2 As admitted by philosopher W. Kim Rogers, the phase of phenomenology initiated by Professor Tymieniecka has a its task the development of phenomenology of life and the Human Condition. His conclusion is that “Tymieniecka’s view of the emergence of the world of life-conditions or life-world is far superior to the conception presented by either transcendental phenomenologists or existential phenomenologists, both of which treat Nature’s involvement in this process in passive terms. They consequently miss entirely the significance of the interplay between Nature and the inner structuredness of human life, which, on the contrary, Tymieniecka brings out strongly.”3 In this respect I cannot but agree with his opinion. Professor Tymieniecka holds that phenomenology of life is an interplay of three concepts: first, the concept of ontopoietic self-individualization of life, which, as stated by the philosopher, “grasps the real from the inside, through its generative processes in the constructive becoming of beingness”; the second concept is the principle of unity-of-everything-there-is-alive; and the third concept is the notion of the Human Creative Condition “as a frame of reference for both philosophy and science.”4 It is this last concept, namely the creative act of the human subject that provides the crucial meeting point of the sciences and the philosophy/phenomenology of life, since “only the 339 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 339–347. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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creative act of the human subject can mediate the scientific experience by introducing us into the hidden spheres of reality.”5 T H E P R I N C I P L E O F A U N I T Y- O F - E V E RT H I N G - T H E R E - I S - A L I V E

As a result of man’s continuous estrangement from nature, man feels endangered and gone beyond the balance established between nature and human beings. Professor Tymieniecka maintains: “It appears that human inventive ingeniousness in bringing on an enormous advance in the deciphering of the rules of cosmic and natural forces … has broken the timeless pattern of surrender to nature and gone beyond the equipose established through millennia of life between nature and human beings.”6 In the history of Western thought there have been different approaches to nature. In the Ancient Greek philosophers’ world – picture the notion of physis is represented as a unity of beingness incorporating both nature and man. The Ancient Greek philosophers did not contradistinguish man and nature and did not consider them as opposing forces. The web of life subsists and manifests itself through principles of differentiation and unity. As Heraclitus said: “Things taken together as wholes and not wholes, something which is being brought together and brought apart, which is in tune and out of tune; out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things.”7 Human relations with nature which have been that of alignment with nature at the beginning have developed into relationships of hostility and opposition. Since Descartes’ teaching of two substances nature has been understood as a quantitative entity, a kind of mechanism. With the so-called “mechanization of nature” which took place as a result of scientific revolution the confrontation of man with nature has begun. The essentialistic/normative way of understanding nature was replaced by a functionalist/descriptive way of explaining natural happenings expressed by mathematical functions. In the words of F. Soontiens, “as a result of this mathematization of nature, the causal relation between events was considered more and more a formal logical implication: an effect follows its causes with the same necessity as a conclusion its premises.” 8 The 18th century British empirical philosopher David Hume held: “The only immediate utility of all sciences is to teach us, how to control and regulate future events by their causes. Our thoughts and inquiries are, therefore, every moment, employed about this relation: yet so imperfect are these ideas which we form concerning it, that it is impossible to give any just definition of cause, except what is drawn from something extraneous and

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foreign to it. Similar objects are always conjoined with similar. Of this we have experience. Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second. The appearance of a cause always conveys to the mind, by a customary transition, to the idea of the effect.”9 Gradually with the development of technology, subjectivity comes to the foreground in the interpretation of nature: the Western mode of thinking. This conception has created the present gap between man and nature. Man due to his mind, will and skills has created an artificial world as if independent of nature. In contemporary philosophical views, subjectivity, not nature; the I and not the Other; the world artifically created by man and not God; have gained the dominant position. In order to get a significance in the world of man, nature has become a construction of human mind, a subject and symbol, a mere object for utilization.10 The vital experience of the stability of life is uprooted, hence new tasks for the contemporary philosophers and educators emerge. O N TO P O I E S I S O F L I F E A N D I T S RO L E I N E D U C AT I O N

Tymieniecka’s ontopoiesis of life can provide new approaches and open up new horizons in education. Basing on Tymieniecka’s ontopoiesis of life the Russian Center of Phenomenology of Education in Vladimir, for example, has launched a new phenomenologically–oriented pedagogy. According to the new phenomenological pedagogy the following aspects are highlighted: 1) the central picture is of creative coordination of human life both as an individual and as an instantiation of life itself; 2) the creative potential of life itself can be originally described in aesthetic terms, so any educational problem may be resolved if it is placed in the general context of the beauty of the cosmos, nature and human beings; 3) education is viewed upon as a process of self-construction or individuation.11 Contemporary pedagogy stresses different aspects of human life. The final goal of education is to create favourable conditions for the development of the personality of each individual and of the society according to individual abilities, interests and needs, to help prepare for competitiveness in practical activities in the society and to offer possibilities for acquisition of the national culture and the basic values of mankind.

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The way of enlightening humanity as seen by Professor Tymieniecka is “to create a harmonizing, universal vision of life, human aims and human destiny, and to assure individual access to it through education. This harmonizing necessitates what Plato called the “method to combine’ all the insights of the sciences and arts according to a measure that could account for the combination and exclusion of factors in education.”12 According to Tymieniecka, the goal of education is “to prepare the youth for a productive adult life, including a fruitful social life, and a personally fulfilling existence. Yet the pressing question, in the present context, concerns the validity of principles for such an educational system.”13 The young generation is educated through literature, culture, the surrounding intellectual and physical environment, and through teachings advocating moral and ethical values. New approaches to ethical values should be adopted. We need an ethical theory where man can see his ultimate goal, his telos aimed at the concentration not only on himself/herself, his or her family and home, his or her country, but deep concern for other living beings. Humanity as seen by Professor Tymieniecka is placed deep in the midst of the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive. It is the moral sense of man to take care of other life forms. The question arises – how to implement this lofty goal through education? Do we have to invent something utterly novel or can we base our teaching on any cultural tradition? We have an answer in the case of Latvian culture, where educators can make use of the ideas deeply rooted in the traditional cultural heritage, in its folklore. Notions of rhythm and harmony, benevolence and empathy are manifested there. It is my strong belief that these conceptions are essential for an individual in this complicated, technology – driven contemporary society. T H E V I RT U E S O F B E N E VO L E N C E A N D E M PAT H Y I N T H E C O N T E X T O F E V E RY T H I N G - T H E R E - I S - A L I V E

A basic attitude folk songs endeavour to inspire towards the world and other people is benevolence, instead of the suspicion, mistrustfulness, cruelty and hard-heartedness we experience in this world. Benevolence is explicitly shown by abundant use of diminutives and thanksgiving formulae in the texts of folk songs. The feeling of benevolence is manifested as experiencing untinged delight about people’s success or as the admiration of Nature’s boundless beauty and fecundity. Benevolence is a precondition of understanding the mood of authentic Latvian folk songs. It is the mood of

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goodwill, of utmost consideration for everything-there-is-alive. It is a feeling of being open towards the world and the otherness. This attitude evokes associations with Heidegger’s argument “that the key to humanity is Entschlossenheit, ‘unclosedness,’ openness unconstrained by the boundaries of the Cartesian subject.”4 Benevolence likewise is a feeling of a living bond with Nature and all its creatures, having confidence in it and readiness for a dialogue. The feeling of estrangement as in contemporary humanity experiences, is incompatible with the world of folklore. As remarked by Latvian philosopher Skaidr -ıte Lasmane, benevolence appears in diversiform nuances in folk songs. At times it shows as lavishness of warm-heartedness, now and then it emerges as readiness to assist others, betimes it manifests itself as compassion for people in a plight, every so often it arises as uttermost consideration for one’s fellow human beings and a resolution not to beset them with one’s own problems and complaints about life constraints.15 Words of goodwill are not void of power; they stir up activities of assisting, protecting, sustaining and, above all, caring. Benevolence and sincerity are lofty unselfish virtues. Education and culture are aimed at cultivation of reason and rationality. One might ask what is the sense of virtues? Do they have a meaning in this rational male world? Empathy and compassion seem to belong to the irrational female world. Humans are goal-setting beings. Could moral perfection be a goal in itself and for what purpose? Can only the weak, i.e. people experiencing some physical or moral inadequacy feel a drive towards their fellow creatures? The 17th–century philosophers believed that rationality elevates human beings above the animal world. Contemporary philosophers maintain that human life possesses a “moral sense” and in that it differs from the life of other creatures. Professor Tymieniecka defines “moral sense” as a “virtuality” that is characteristic of the “human condition” as “a decisive factor in the specific nature of man, in the meaning of his life and of his fate.”16 As pointed out by N. R. Rial, moral sense “not being innate, explicit knowledge of what is good and bad” is the factor that enables man to differentiate between good and evil: “The ‘moral sense’ is one of the human being’s a a priori qualities in the sense that it is possible for a man to order his life in accordance with certain norms. He has the power and the capacity to handle values and perceive whether given behavior or a given object is good or bad … the moral sense is a property, a condition of the human being by which he is enabled to become conscious of the presence of good or evil. It is thus one of the individual’s essential possibilities, an irreducible dimension of man, and perhaps the dimension that

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makes him human and makes him irreducible.” 17 Professor Tymieniecka, however, has come to the conclusion that “we have lost the cornerstone of our moral attitude toward others, along with our foothold in nature.”18 With regard to Latvian lyrical folk songs, one of the essential elements in the structure of virtues is the feeling of empathy, the power to identify one’s self with others, to feel compassion and act accordingly. Man is able to experience compassion not only for his fellow human beings, since the beingness for him entails as well the realm of animals, plants and the inanimate world. Empathy involves not only relationships with other living creatures, it embraces the totality of Nature. The world for man contains many creatures to be liked, bred and taken care of. Folk songs show a peasant’s concern for his horse, which is of vital importance in his hard mundane toil, and likewise a possession to be proud of. They say: Vizi, vizi atmatina, , Sudrabina , lapin, am; Ta- viz manis kumelinis , - -ıtem. Sudrabina , l as

Glitter, glitter fallow land, All in silver leaves, My steed glitters like you All in silver spots.

- -ıts, mansi kumelinˇ Ber , s, - auzas nesijatas, Need Kad auzinas , izsijatas, Tad ber ıti pabaroju.

My dear horse Doesn’t eat unriddled oats, Only when I’ve riddled them Then I feed my horse.

The relations between man and other living creatures or objects of inanimate world are dialogical rather than monological. As, for example, in a folk song which expresses empathy and compassion for a pine-tree which is being cut: Neraud gauˇzi, sila priede, Ne es tevi skaliem certu: - istabas pamatiem C ert Dai,lu dziesmu klaus-ıties

Stop crying, dear pine tree, I don’t cut you for splinters: You’ll be laid as the base of my house And you’ll listen to nice songs there.

T H E C AT E G O RY O F H A R M O N Y

The answer to the question about the telos of human life as expressed in the Latvian folklore is that the sense of one’s life is living it. For contemporary man it is difficult not to adopt Bergson’s belief that the flux of life is haphazard, that it moves by bounds and whims. As pointed out by Tymieniecka “humanity has lost its sense of balance.” In folklore everything has its own time, like in Nature’s cycles. “All in good time” is the message encoded in the

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folk songs. The cycles of seasons, human birth, growth, and death reveal mutual implications. As it is in nature, an individual’s life also has its order and rhythm. One’s young days are full of various duties, but also there is much pleasure and joy. One has to make hay while the sun shines as concerns one’s personal situation in the web of life. A folk song describes a maiden as a blossoming bird-cherry tree that bursts into flower only once in a season: Vienreiz ieva, ne divreiz Vasara- noziedeja; Vienreiz jauna, ne divreiz Es priec-ıgi padz-ıvoju.

A bird-cherry tree blossoms once, not twice In a summer time; I’m young once, not twice Enjoying the life’s pleasures.

A maiden’s life is not yet bedridden with misfortunes, her days are light as apple tree blossoms, her steps are easy as a bee’s flight: Kas kait man nedz-ıvot Zem vizu,lu vainadzin’: , Dz-ıvo bites viegluminu, , Abe,lziedu baltuminu. ,

Life’s an easy living For a young maiden: Light as a bee, White as an apple-tree in blossom.

Life possesses rhythm and harmony. All in good time, even death cannot approach man when unexpected. In a lyrical folk song the Biblical truism “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:/A time to be born, and a time to die” is visualized with the following image: Visi zemes kukain-ıˇsi Gaida mani nomirstam, Pagaidiet, kukain-ıˇsi, - zinu Lai muˇ , nodz-ıvoju.

All earth’s little beetles Await for my death, You’ll have to wait, dears, I have my life to live.

These examples illustrate that in Latvian lyrical folk songs imagination and vision play an important role in apprehending Being. The sense of rhythm and order is a special temporal felling present in Latvian folk songs in juxtaposition to the 20th–century rashness and temerity. In Latvian traditional culture man has to obey temporal vicissitudes and order. One has to live in harmony and compliance with Nature’s laws and the living requires special wisdom. Living one’s life doesn’t mean existence in the present temporality, it entails preparation for the future. Folk songs assist man in the comprehension of the existing essent (Heidegger’s term) and in sustaining belief in non-existent, but possible and desirable reality, the presence of which is significant for the future development of the essent. Harmony is a significant category in the system of ethical values in folklore. If something in this world has sense and value, then it has to have its

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functional meaning and use. This lies at the basis of being harmonious, wellmatched and consistent. Harmony and consistency provide a delight to live in concord with oneself and other living creatures. Harmony in folk songs might be interpreted in terms of the relations of living beings, their environment, God and goddesses in charge of fate. Harmony is a category of utmost experience of comfort and delight, the expression of spiritual well-being. Though not so often encountering it in the mundane world, man should aspire for its actualization. A folk song presents a bucolic picture: - -ıju ozolinu Iedest , T-ırumina , vidin, a: - nas San bit -ıtes, dzied masi , - manu rudzu lauku. Apk art

I planted an oak-tree Amidst a field of rye: Bees are humming, my sisters singing All around me in the field.

The sense of harmony emerges while contemplating nature’s beauty, the wealth and generosity of a lived life. Living in itself is an event which death cannot bring to an end. Here one has to recall Heraclitus’ interpretation of bios or life as a harmony of opposites. Death is the inevitable continuation of one’s being in the totality of harmony. The song says: Kas kait man negulet Balta- smilˇsu kalnin, a: - puta, - me zˇ i sˇalca, Veji Piegu ,lnieki stabulej!

I’m delighted to lie In my grave on a hilltop: There I hear winds blowing, forests humming, And shepherds playing their pipes.

Latvian folk songs exhibit a holistic view with regard to human beings and the surrounding world. It is the approach that could be designated as a true unitary pattern of life in which the person and his environment are interwoven and their coexistence is realized through interaction. We, educators, have to inspire and educate our youth to reach out for this goal. We have to resort to the resources of the traditional cultural values, literature and contemporary philosophy for mapping the human universe. University of Daugavpils N OT E S 1

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Ontopoiesis of Life as the Measure for the Renewal of Education,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 9. 2 Ibid., p. 7.

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W. Kim Rogers, “On the Ontology of Life: The Recent Contributions of Tymieniecka, Gibson, and Shotter to the Development of an Ecological Approach to Philosophy,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 89. 4 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Ontopoiesis of Life as the Measure for the Renewal of Education,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 9. 5 Ibid., p. 11. 6 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Nature and Culture in the Unity-of-everything-there-is-alive,” (Roma: Herder – Universita’ Lateranense, 1993), p. 287. 7 Heraclitus. The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge VP, 1954), Fragment 10. 8 Frans Soontiens, “The Intrinsic Value of Life,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), p. 119. 9 David Hume. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In: The Empiricists (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. [1961]), p. 362. - M., Kulis, 10 See Kule, R. Filosofija (R -ıga: Burtnieks, 1996, 1997), 630. lpp. 11 R. A. Kurenkova, J. A. Plekhanov and E. J. Rogacheva, “‘Methodologos’ of Life as the Basis of Contemporary Education,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 32. 12 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Ontopoiesis of Life as the Measure for the Renewal of Education,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 5. 13 Ibid., p. 6. 14 See White, R. D., “Spirit in Flames,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), p. 524. 15 Skaidr -ıte Lasmane, “Balta- pasaules izjuta,” Liepu laipa: tautasdziesmu izlase (R -ıga: Zinatne, 1989), p. 12. 16 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Moral Sense: The Individual and the Human Meaning of Life,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXIX (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986), p. 3. 17 Nel Rodriguez Rial, “The Moral Act,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXI (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), p. 125. 18 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Ontopoiesis of Life as the Measure for the Renewal of Education,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), p. 6.

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I N T E N T I O NA L I T Y A N D T H E “ B E I N G - I N - T H E - L A N U G AG E ” O F M I C H E L F O U C AU LT

We would like to present Michel Foucault’s main thesis concerning his critique of the Husserlian notion of “intentionality” and – linked with this – the poststructuralist reformulation (proposed by Foucault) of the Heideggerian concept of “Being-in-the-World” (In-der-Welt-sein) into “Being-in-the-Language.” We describe the ways in which the World (universum) for Foucault becomes the World of Language and how the consciousness as a place of constitution of objects is replaced by language. I

The two fundamental concepts in Michel Foucault’s thought are Knowledge and Language (Discourse). Foucault in his conception refers mainly to the ideas of Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem. From Bachelard he takes the idea of epistemological acts, which explain discontinuity of our knowledge by means of certain ruptures; as for Canguilhem’s ideas, Foucault enriches his description of epistemological history by choosing Canguilhem’s conceptual shifts and transformations as well as the necessary “distinction between the microscopic and macroscopic scales in the history of sciences” (Foucault 1969, pp. 28–29). Such enrichments of methodology allow us to embrace both the process in which a certain idea, dominant for some time, is created out of the dispersion of ideas and, at the same time, different levels and scales of this dispersion. This dispersion of ideas for Foucault constitutes mainly the dispersion of descriptions as the linguistic treatment of facts, expressing them in words, decay or creation of concepts. The notion of discourse, understood as a certain historical continuity composed of various utterances, in Foucault’s thought, is connected with the concept of discursive practice, i.e. the fact of practicing discourse of a given time or cognitive domain. Discursive practice forms, in a regular manner, a conglomerate of its own elements which are indispensable for a given science, although not necessarily indispensable to its introduction – that is knowledge. “Knowledge is what can be spoken of in a given discursive practice, which thanks to this practice becomes separate. It is domain constituted by different objects which reach or do not reach 349 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 349–362. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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scientific status (…), it is also the space in which the subject can assume various positions in order to discuss the objects it meets in its discourse” (Foucault 1969, p. 238). Foucault defines knowledge not only as a place of co-existence and interdependence of utterance, but as a place where “concepts appear, define themselves and find uses for themselves” and also undergo transformation (Foucault 1969, p. 238). Thus the crucial point of reference here is language which forms discourse and it is language that defines the possibilities of making use of knowledge. Knowledge is a component of the aforementioned episteme of Foucault, understood as a non-enlightened form of thinking, a kind of epistemological a priori defining the cognitive space in a given culture. II

Utterances (énoncé) build up discourse, and thus also knowledge; they are the basic element of episteme. What is an utterance and what does it refer to? Foucault clearly distinguishes between the utterances of his own conception and the utterances in the logical and grammatical sense. He points at the different ways utterances exist, to which he ascribes the aspect of invisibility in opposition to the visible images, which are exactly the visual equivalent of the utterance. This aspect of the existence of the utterance is given to us (according to Foucault we ourselves are in discourse, in language) and clearly distinguished from the way of existence of things. In the presence of the existence of things we are not exactly cognitively helpless, but rather deprived of tools necessary for producing certain and verifiable judgments about their existence. The only criterion of their verifiability is the discourse itself, these two mutually interconnected elements – utterances and images. The right thing to do is then to abstain from giving judgments about the existence (or nonexistence) of things. Foucault admits that the existence of utterances is already constituted in language (not the sense, but the existence of utterances, because there is a clear emancipation of the connections between utterance and their sense understood transcendentally, the connections with truth). Foucault introduces the concept of a “correlate of the utterance” (instead of the phenomenological correlate of consciousness). He writes that it is not a concrete thing, but a combination of contexts (areas), in which given “objects can appear and in which such references can be shown” (Foucault 1969, p. 120). The existence of discourse as a linguistic practice together with its networks – relations and conditions – is thus primary to the existence of an utterance.

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What, according to Foucault, does the utterance refer to? To what is visible – but it is not a sphere of any graphia (“writing”: an utterance made visible by writing), but a certain mental sphere. According to a clear interpretation proposed by Gilles Deleuze, the equivalent of a statement is the image. It is only thanks to this mental act (imaging to oneself) that the utterance gains (together with its discourse and language) the fullness of its power over the human being. This power can in turn be used by those who have knowledge, above all the knowledge about the language, those who shape it and watch over it. The utterance plus the image, correlated with each other, linked in a certain historical whole, constitute the whole of human perception (and it is a certain vision of the human being which is anthropological in a traditional sense). The image comes from imagination and it seems that for Foucault imagination is an essential cognitive power of the mind, which takes part in a cognitive process. In Foucault’s theory, the acts of concretization take place on the level of imagination – the words acquire their content and transform themselves into visible shapes. Hence originates, so important for Foucault, the concept of a figure – a figure of language and a figure of imagination at the same time. The figure is this whole constructed of the words and imagined objects, which seems to build our perception of the world, which actually is the world for us. It seems that Foucault himself uses the method of constituting the figures, when he tries to reconstruct and describe the facts from the past, when he tries to build their picture (e.g. the picture of medical practices). So, the element equivalent to the utterance, in a sense the other side of the coin, is that which is visible, which constitutes the visual perception of the world and which cannot be reduced to the utterance, i.e. to the discursive language. III

The research knowledge, therefore, is composed of utterances, but on the basis of the visual cognition of the world, its perception, and does not concern the world directly as something primarily given. Foucault, as Deleuze points out, writes of the actualization-integration (Deleuze 1986, p. 84) of the speakable (le dicible) and the visible (le visible). The utterance about the things requires its visual confirmation in the sphere of the picture (perceived, but also imagined to oneself); the picture (the figure) in turn requires adequate utterance on its subject. We can speak about a certain “form of reception” in every discursive formation, which constitutes what is visible,

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and about a “form of spontaneity,” which constitutes what is speakable (cf. Deleuze 1986, p. 84). The utterance requires its visual actualization, the picture (the perceived and the image) – its actualization in discursive utterance. Foucault writes that “the world is knowledge,” but throughout the center runs a fissure, which on the one side delimits the visual pictures, and on the other, the sound curves. This fissure is the border dividing the speakable and the visible, two irreducible forms of knowledge, the Light and the Speech, two vast centers of exteriority; where the pictures and the utterances gradually gather, two forms of knowledge interwine on both sides of the fissure. “How else would the two forms of archive link with each other, would the utterances appear under the pictures and the pictures illustrate the utterances?” (Deleuze 1986, pp. 128–129). An aspect of visibility can be ascribed to knowledge in Foucault’s theory, because as it is “maximally similar,” it requires visible examination. Phenomenological visibility seems to acquire the form of visibility in Foucault’s theory, the form which guarantees the verifiability and certainty of knowledge. Power (so important a concept in Foucault’s philosophy) would be tightly connected with what is invisible. It happens because: 1.

2.

the networks of discourse and its language as a tool of communication cannot be controlled at the moment of their use (we are conscious of what we speak and write, but not of the instruments, i.e. the language which we use at the moment). So, the units, the figures of discourse which rule over us, are invisible, but also invisible are the figures of power itself, exercised over us by means of discourse. There is a bilateral relation here: The discursive formation forms the executed power, which shapes the discourse, changes the language, power being understood as external to the language and discourse.

It is for the presumed separation of the world of things (as the source of representation) from the world of language that Foucault criticized phenomenology with its idea of intentionality. He understands this idea as a failed attempt to combine the subjectivity of language, i.e. the expression of consciousness with the objective state of matter (cf. Deleuze 1986, p. 116). Foucault believed that perception and labelling happen simultaneously and are an element of the cognitive process, as “to see and to speak is to know, but not to see what one says and not to say what one sees. (…) Everything is knowledge and this is the first reason with regard to which there is a lack of primary experience; there is nothing prior to knowledge and nothing above it.

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But knowledge is irreducibly double-sided; to speak and to see, language and light” (Deleuze 1986, p. 117). This also pertains to the self-cognition of the human being, who names himself by means of a concept changing itself together with knowledge, with epistemes; what is constant in his relation to himself is his “feeling on oneself by oneself” (Deleuze 1986, p. 111), which Foucault calls subjectivization. The episteme together with knowledge determines and lets us understand the relation to the world (perceived) as well as to oneself. Discursive knowledge in this way ascertains the comprehensibility of the visible, whereas the invisible, thanks to the image, can be understandable. IV

Comprehensibility is a requirement for orientation in the world, and in Foucault’s theory this refers to the world of discursive language and the perceived world as the image (representation) of things. The comprehensibility standing on the basis of cognition of the world makes knowledge indispensable for experience in it. Knowledge appears to be the way of accommodation to life; the function of comprehensibility seems basic for knowledge and its subsequent epistemes (cf. Canguilhem 1967, p. 245). The comprehensibility of certain expressions at a given time allows them to be included in episteme. Foucault points out not only the compulsion of comprehensibility, because comprehensibility is in the interest of every speaker, everybody using the language, but also this primacy of episteme – of the cognitive context. Incomprehensibility, on the other hand, makes it impossible for a certain utterance to function in the sphere of its contemporary episteme, i.e. in a cognitive context. Since it cannot be understood, it is not included in the granted state of knowledge, thus it does not exist as an element of communication. Foucault emphasizes not so much the compulsion of comprehensibility, which is how comprehensibility appears to the interest of each speaker, but the primacy of the episteme – the cognitive context. There are certain instances which determine that state of episteme, i.e. certain authorities in a given domain of knowledge, which (authorities), however, at the same time have power. As for the aforementioned relation between the utterance and image (representation, including our visual perception and imaginations), the conjunction of knowledge and power is unbreakable and can be compared with two sides of a coin. Knowledge gives a certain power; authority, power, on the other hand, gives access to knowledge, as well as the possibility of deciding its distribution. Foucault in his Archéologie du savoir reveals how

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certain discursive formations that constitute discourse, and thus knowledge as well as its historical state – episteme – shape our way of thinking about the world and our perception of it and how discursive language exercises power over our thinking, over ourselves. At the same time, Foucault shows that there are certain centers of knowledge distribution, both in the form of discursive language and visual perception. Distribution of knowledge is also the accessibility of these, but not other, spaces, images perceived by people. In Surveiller et punir Foucault reveals how power ensures itself maximum access the various social spaces, to the biggest possible scale of the visible. This pertains above all to the accessibility of private spaces, as access to it gives a chance for observation, i.e. also to control. Foucault also indicated the way concepts, descriptions of a certain episteme of a given epoch in cognitive history, dragged behind themselves imaginings, representations, this visibility (visibilité), which allowed for a certain understanding of a sentence about convicts or for a different description and discussion about them. The images of man found their reflection in language which, in turn, shaped these images. Communicative reality, interpreted by Foucault not as the world in the Husserlian sense, but as the linguistic world, is the only point of reference for particular representations. This linguistic, communicative reality remains an authority as the presumed truthfulness (or falsity) of visual representations, or discursive comments about it. The role of that function of comprehensibility thus grows in importance, because it becomes the very condition of consistency or inconsistency of two representations under comparison with the comments made about them. What can be true under such conditions is the most frequently persuaded as it concentrates around itself other kinds of representations and influences the consistency of the text (message) in such a way that a participant of communication after the preliminary “I don’t understand” is able to say “Now I do understand.” We must mention a polemic of Jürgen Habermas with Michel Foucault concerning a conception of rationality of communication. Habermas reproaches Foucault with autonomization and individualization of the language as such considered, first of all, as the particular speech acts (cf. Habermas 1985). This Foucaultian supposed understanding of language excludes any possibility of imagining the community of communication as the primary condition of our reasonable and understood existence. However, in the context of interpretation of Foucault’s ideas proposed here by us, we can state that his conception of language has many common points with the idea of rationality of communication characterized by Habermas.

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Foucault opposed the vision of cognition in which the order of language was separated from the order of things in such a way that it assumed the supposed, primary to our perception and description, existence of the world and things (hence his mentioned criticism of phenomenological intentionality), while the language was made into the expression of subjectivity separated from the world of things. The strict distinction between the words and the things Foucault found, among others, in the conception of the language of French experimental writer Raymond Roussel. Roussel presumed the unequal relationship between the things, with their excess, and the words, systematized and imperfect in their articulation of the richness of the world of different and diversified objects. But at the same time Foucault took note of the incorrectness, the falsity of the world image where just the represented exists and thus where one can supposedly bring to life the beings represented although evidently not existing. This is the reason why he cites the example of Cervantes as an author who was aware of this kind of danger and the fight with the windmills rendered in a mocking form of folly (cf. Foucault 1966). The law of representation was, in this case, resemblance, the principle of mimesis, where the represented was true by virtue of its similarity to the existing thing. Therefore, what had already been represented (and also what was only an illusion) must have existed. These two kinds of danger, mentioned above, appear when one forgets that speech itself is nothing else than a certain case of representation (which it was for the classical thinkers) or meaning (which it is for us), therefore it is a notation of the extralinguistic. If, however, language as a form of representation simultaneously becomes what is communicated – if it makes language itself an announcement – the danger of illusion still holds. The tool used for the description of the visible – the perceived world of things – replaces what it was meant to serve. Language makes references to itself, focuses attention on itself and loses a chance for verification, as is the case when the order of language is severed from the order of things (which is the case with phenomenology according to Foucault). This also leads to the transformation of the objective language into a metalanguage, which can only make pronouncements about language. The critique of representation done by Foucault assumes that the discourse (utterance and image) is the source of cognition, but there is a lack of transition, i.e. adequacy, between words and things understood as existing autonomously, independently of human perception. The critique of representation has two consequences in Foucault’s philosophy. It is the critique of the concept of intentionality and phenomenological conceptions of representation. According to

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Foucault, the intentionality can be de facto reduced to the linguistic relations described by him – the relations of utterances to what is imagined (conscious and unconscious). As Foucault notices, the intentional reference to things is not possible and the attempts to constitute the objective sense cannot succed. The critique of phenomenology also embraces the critique of transcendental ego as of that which is primary. Foucault is inclined to recognize as primary the sphere of intersubjectivity, which for Husserl was the product of particular individual ego. At the same time it is a critique of such a depiction of representation, in which the representation itself is taken for the only and true reality (Cervantes). That is why in Foucault’s conception the linguistic correlates (which substituted for the phenomenological correlates of consciousness) refer to the sphere of their use, to the linguistic and discursive context (practice). This context is, on the one hand, the structured one and constantly changes networks of discourse and discursive formations; on the other hand, it is their situatedness in practice, in use. The theory of discursive formations is de facto the theory of discursive practice. This reference to the intersubjective sphere of discourse is to save the cognition from subjectivization, from the excessive trust in representation. We can speak about a certain coherence of representation in Foucault’s philosophy, which consists in referring reciprocally to the speakable and the visible. This coherence serves the aforementioned trust. Such a trust, however, weakens the situatedness of the speakable and the visible in practice, which in a sense demands the agreement of the individual, particular representation with the intersubjective sphere of discourse. The menace of the autonomization of representation shown by Foucault can, however, also concern his own conception of representation. I mean such a change of attitude, in accordance with which a higher probability can be ascribed to the reality experienced every day. The authority of the communicative environment is higher in this case than the authority of one’s own view of the reality, which Husserl called the natural attitude. This natural attitude defended the phenomenological conception against the charge of the complete subjectivization of the view of the world. The natural attitude, though assumed in the reductionist phenomenological method, still remained a certain instance, to which one could refer. But for Foucault the role of such an authority would be played by the discursive practice, the social practice, the contractual reality created in language. However, nothing allows us to verify that linguistic practice. We can claim the existence of a certain supremacy of language in the thought of Foucault and certain return of epistemological dualism, the solution of which, according to Husserl, was supposed to be his phenomenology and his concept of intentionality.

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Interpreting Foucault’s thought, we can say that in discourse and for every discursive formation, there is a requirement, which can be called the threshold of comprehensibility. It is the aforementioned function of comprehensibility. The reality of discourse (including communication), being the only point of reference for representations, remains as the authority, because the supposed truthfulness (or falsity) of representations (both verbal and visual) is tested by reference to other representation, or to the commentaries about them. The role of that function of comprehensibility increases, and the ultimate point of reference appears to be precisely comprehensibility, instead of truth of judgments or the rightness of conviction. It is the condition of coherence or incoherence of compared representations together with the commentaries uttered about them (reference to the coherential definition of truth). In his opinion, truth, just like other concepts connected with cognition, are the categories which in a certain discursive formation have been appropriated by those who have access to knowledge. That is why Foucault, in Canguilhem’s opinion, introduces the aforementioned function of comprehensibility as dominant. The function of comprehensibility allows the discursive formation to exist, because comprehensibility is its necessary condition, and at the same time to fulfill the condition of cognitive coherence (cf. Canguilhem 1967). V

Foucault writes: “between the already codified perception [regard] and reflexive knowledge [connaissance], there is a middle region which generates order through the very nature of its being” (Foucault 1966, p. 12). Manfred Frank supposes that what Foucault is referring to, when he talks of this middle order “are those culture and epoch-specific interpretations of the world which are on the one hand ‘more confused and obscure’ than what he calls the level of knowledge [connaissances] – that is, scientifically guaranteed knowledge; yet are on the other hand more concrete and more rich than the ‘primary codes’ which uniformly determine our language, our modes of intercourse, our perceptions and our social nature. They could be seen as being in part related to Husserl’s Lebenswelt (‘world of life’), and in part also in terms of the orders traditionally called Weltanschauungen (‘world-views’) or ‘ideologies’ (…); they are, so it seems to me, quite comparable to the Heideggerian Welt (‘world’) – understood as the articulation of Bewandtniszusammenhang ‘connections of relationship,’ and they are also ‘pre-ontologically’ prior to the knowledge of signs and forms of life” (Frank 1992, p. 106).

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According to Husserl, living in the world, we are always conscious of the world as a horizon of our life – the horizon of “things” (of real objects), the horizon of our factual and possible interests and actions. In the horizon of the world there is always a distinguished horizon of our neighbours, fellow creatures, whether they are present or not. Before paying attention to somebody or something, we are conscious of this open horizon of the community of our neighbours. We are conscious of the people, of our external horizon as “others.” I am always conscious of them as “my” others, with whom I can have factual, potential, direct or indirect relation of Einfühlung and the reciprocal comprehension. Thanks to this relation I can come into contact with them, to create different forms of community, and next to have habitual knowledge on this common being. The language as such has its place in the horizon of mankind and we are conscious of mankind primarily as a given community (mediate and immediate) of the language. The Husserlian horizon of mankind can happen infinitely open only thanks to the language and to its many consolidations in the documents as potential texts of communication. So, mankind is – for every man, as a horizon of “we” – the community of possibilities of potentially understood articulation for all its members mutually. In this community every human being can define all objects, which are in the world surrounding this human society, as something existing objectively. All objects have their names or can be named, i.e. can be articulated linguistically. The objective world is primarily the world of all people, the world which every human being has as some worldly horizon. According to Husserl, the condition of the objective existence of the world is the human beings, the subjectivities, having the language as such. However, from the point of view of a particular human being, the language is a function and a taught skill referring to the world, to the universum of objects, whose being and features can be linguistically articulated. Finally, the human beings, the community of neighbours, the world about which we can talk and the language, are inseparably connected one with another in the unity of the relations given implicite as the horizon. The Husserlian concept of the world, i.e. a certain sphere of intersubjectivity, has as its point of issue the primacy of the individual consciousness and the constitution of ego as a particular identity. In the Foucaultian conception we find absolutely diferent presuppositions concerning, among others, the language, epistemes and discursive practices as primary in the relation to individual, particular subjectivity. According to Foucault, the language is not a part of the world of a human being, but it is the condition of constitution of the world, worldly objects, and of us as such. This is a relation

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of mediatisation so close to the role of speech, discourse in the Heideggerian conception of the hermeneutic circle. In the context of Foucault’s dilemmas we must explain more precisely the Heideggerian term of “world” and its relation to the concept of intentionality. “There are at least three crucially important and crucially different notions of intentionality and world for Heidegger. There is [1] the intentionality and world of the theoretical subject (the passive observer or traditional knower and the objects observed or known), [2] the intentionality and world of the practical subject (the active, involved participant and the objects utilized), and [3] a more primordial intentionality and world (Heidegger would prefer ‘worldhood’), which precludes any use of the subject-object model and without which the understanding of the other two sorts of intentionality and world are necessarily misunderstandings” (Hall 1993, p. 124). After Foucault the relation of intentionality (between the consciousness and the reality, ens reale), is mediated by the intersubjective sphere of language. The place of constitution of intentional object (ens intentionale) is not the consciousness, but the language; the sense is constituted there. In no way can the sense refer to the certain ideal meaning (Husserlian Bedeutung), because – according to Foucault – no ideality of meaning exists. According to Foucault the sense is constituted in the intersubjective practices of discourse (social, cultural practices supraindividual), but it is not the Husserlian Objektivität. Husserl “finally argued that studying the way in which these intentional correlates are ‘constituted’ in mental acts is equivalent to an elucidation of the ontological status of whatever exists, because the world is nothing but an intentional correlate of consciousness, whereas the latter exists in itself as a transcendental substance” (Philipse 1998, p. 117). According to Foucault the individual, subjective consciousness is also the certain object of the aforementioned linguistic constitution – it is secondary in relation to the sphere of language, but always strictly connected with discourse. “Discourse is not – and this is well known – the effect of a subject, but – and this is less well known – it doesn’t dismiss the subject that participates in it, and to a certain extent is formed by it, from his subjectivity” (Visker 1999, p. 51). The constitution of the individual ego cannot find its point of reference in the supposed transcendental ego as the transcendental condition of possibility. The place of the transcendental ego as the transcendental condition of possibility. The place of the transcendental condition of possibility is occupied by the language which is the condition of possibility of any object of our knowledge. We need to stress that the polemics of Foucault with the Husserlian conception of the transcendental ego is at the

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same time the polemics with the transcendentalism and anthropology of Kant. Foucault criticizes the Kantian doublet of the empirical and transcendental ego. He acknowledges the Kantian anthropology as the legitimization of view of the human being as the being incoherent, because finished and unfinished at the same time, as the being which is mortal, but with unlimited possibilities. VI

Jean Zoungrana in his book Michel Foucault, un parcours croisé: LéviStrauss, Heidegger indicates some inspirations and influences of the Heideggerian thinking on the concepts of Foucault. Among others he writes about inspiration of the Heideggerian Daseinanalyse. However, first of all he stresses the knowledge of Foucault on Sein und Zeit and on a text written in 1950 concerning the modern view of the world (Zoungrana 1998, p. 280). This text was published in France in 1962 and is entitled L’époque des conceptions du monde. According to Hubert Dreyfus, this text had a principal influence on the interpretation of modernity and contemporary times, proposed by Foucault in his book Les mots et les choses. He characterizes modernity as a time of autonomization of representation and of the gradual growth of importance of the cultural and social instruments of manifestation of representation (discursive and iconic language). In order to describe the Foucaultian concept of the world, we need to refer to the Heideggerian interpretation of the modern view of the world as a certain image (it is not the image of the world, but the world as an image – what is stressed many times by Heidegger). In Les mots et les choses Foucault specifies this concept of the world precisely as a certain representation which claims a right to be the reality and the being as a whole. We can say that Foucault makes Heidegger’s thought more radical. Heidegger’s thought concerns the world as an image and the primacy of representation (of language). First of all, Foucault refers to the early works of Martin Heidegger, to the concept of language and speech (discourse) and its role in the comprehension of the ontological structure of being. Foucault refers, not directly, but in the presuppositions of his own conception – to the Heideggerian hermeneutic circle (cf. Behler 1991, p. 143), proposed in Sein und Zeit, to the primacy of language (speech, discourse) in the comprehension of being, and to the apriorical “Being-in-the-World” (In-der-Welt-sein) in the process of linguistic comprehension of being. “Every human project is a taking up of a culturally available possibility and presupposes the culturally determined

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background of skills and familiarity that Heidegger calls the world. This world makes possible the encountering of specific entities (‘beings’), and it embodies our implicit sense of what it is for them to be. So human being, by virtue of its inseparability from the world (human being is ‘being-in-theworld’) necessarily includes a sense (‘understanding’) of what is to be, that is, of being” (Hall 1993, p. 135). Heidegger writes: “Of course Being-inthe-world is a state of Dasein which is necessary a priori” (Heidegger 1993, p. 79). “Our analysis of the worldhood of the world has constantly been bringing the whole phenomenon of Being-in-the-world into view, although its constitutive items have not all stood out with the same phenomenal distinctness as the phenomenon of the world itself. We have Interpreted the world ontologically by going through what is ready-to-hand within-theworld; and this Interpretation has been put first because Dasein, in its everydayness (with regard to which Dasein remains a constant theme for study), not only is in a world but comports itself towards that world with one predominant kind of Being. Proximally and for the most part Dasein is fascinated with its world. Dasein is thus absorbed in the world” (Heidegger 1993, p. 149), but first of all “Dasein understands itself proximally and for the most part in terms of its world” (Heidegger 1993, p. 156). Foucault interpreting Heideggerian thinking equalizes: 1. the world as an image (the world as a representation with the intentional character), with 2. the world considered as a universum of language (of Heideggerian speech and discourse, i.e. of Foucaultian discours, “discourse”). Heidegger understands the Being-in-the-World as an apriorical, necessary condition of the constitution of Dasein as the being conscious of its existence, as the being for which it is given a comprehension of the being. The language (speech, discourse) is, at the same time, an instrument of this comprehension as well a place of the expression of comprehension. But Foucault equalizes the language as a place of comprehension of being with the Beingin-the-World as the condition of possibility of this comprehension. So, we can describe this equality as the “Being-in-the-Language” which is the condition of the possibility of any comprehension, i.e. of any constitution of object (also of constitution of the individual consciousness, this comprehension as a constitution called by Heidegger “Dasein”). We can say that the Heideggerian world as an image seems to be the Foucaultian worldlanguage which is concretized subjectively and individually in the images (mental representations).

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This interpretation of Foucault’s thought in the context of Heidegger’s conception of the world (1. the world as an image and 2. the “Being-in-theWorld”) permits us to understand a certain coherence of this philosophy, which separates – in its critique of the Husserlian intentionality – the individual consciousness from the thing. The Foucaultian “Being-in-theLanguage” seems to be the condition of possibility of the subjective consciousness (Dasein as the being conscious for which it is given a comprehension of the being), but also of the “reality” of things of which being is given for us as something comprehensible thanks to the Language – discursive and iconic – the Words and the Pictures. In this sense, the things “are” in the Language, i.e. they are given for us in the primary context of the Language, and the Husserlian separation between words and things, so criticized by Foucault, is annulled. Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw BIBLIOGRAPHY Ernst Behler, Confrontations: Derrida, Heidegger, Nietzsche, trans. Steven Taubeneck (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). Georges Canguilhem, “Mort de l’homme ou épuisement du cogito?”, in Critique, 242 (July 1967), pp. 599–618. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (Paris: Minuit, 1986). Michel Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1969). Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). Manfred Frank, “On Foucault’s concept of discourse,” in Michel Foucault Philosopher, ed. François Ewald, trans. Timothy J. Armstrong (New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), pp. 99–115. Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985). Harrison Hall, “Intentionality and world: Division I of ‘Being and Time,’” in Heidegger, ed. Charles B. Guignon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 122–140. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie, Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). Herman Philipse, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Rudi Visker, Truth and Singularity. Taking Foucault into Phenomenology (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). Jean Zoungrana, Michel Foucault, un parcours croisé: Lévi-Strauss, Heidegger (Paris, Montreal: Harmattan, 1998).

W. N . A Ç E R Ó N

O U T L O O K I N G : N OT E S A N D D R A F T S O N A B S T R AC T I O N A N D M E M O RY

… aut Lacuna aut orsa … Das Ganze scheint, die Illusion zu sein. Was real ist, sind die Stücke von Gedanken. Das Ganze wird zu eine Zusammenfassung gemacht. It seems then that the whole is not that which explains, but the fragmentary. And the truth seems to be so artistic like a beautiful assumption. Hvad er mageløs især grammatik der hvor den gigant er ikke lært? … WN Açerón (Rhetoric and Being, 1997)*

I contend that the idea of being alive has its symptoms in recognizing the progress in the visual that results from abstracting world experiences and from apprehending an outlook on the world. The following study dwells on the (in)completion of a recalling memory in relation to the (in)completion of a search for meaning. I

Outlook as State I concern myself at first with the experience of what I shall term outlooking. The difference in outlook as an action (verb) and outlook as a state (noun) can be seen when we recognize that upon request for an outlook, we not only imagine an end-result but also we engage in the illustration of such an end-result – revising and extending, to a point when we say, “… there, that is the outlook.” If by way of paraphrasing I call a first premise L, I shall name the subsets as L1, L2, etc. If L were the phrase: The outlook I have envisioned …,

I offer the following rewordings.1 L1 What shall happen next is this … L2 What I would like to happen next is this … 363 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 363–372. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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W. N . A Ç E R Ó N L3 My standpoint on the matter is this … L4 Out of nowhere, I saw this (future) …

That an outlook is the experience of abstracting on future matters seems to be only one aspect of L. Having asked, “What will the outlook be?”, we try to foresee not only that which is not2 but that which is of high and preferable3 probability. L1 and L2 would indicate this. The external world that is being described4 is an instance that stems from the uses of the historical situation and present alteration.5 By present alteration, I mean simply the changing and conscious transformation of the now so as to hold a future circumstance tenable. This abstraction allows us to create a moment that is objectively likely and that is to our liking.6 Since we know of other outlooks we could not have arrived at (thought of by an Other), we agree to the possibility and plausibility that our particular outlook may not happen. An “Other” could not have thought of a certain outcome that “I” as well would later try to accept or alter yet again.7 L3 announces a different use of the word “outlook.” The validity of the usage can be arrived at if we were to take the point of view of the person as a result of introspection and abstraction of the present. That is, My opinion is such that …

becomes another rewording so as to historically situate a future. Consider the phrase (M, henceforth): My outlook on the situation is that the world moves on, and so should I.

Here we can realize the outlook not as a seeming-package, resulting from analytic consideration of the past and present, but as just a general feeling of nonchalance. The temporality of existence is such that the outlook is at once as yet to be and (as it has been) just will be; and with phrase M, the outlook is manifested through a feeling overlooking the whole self. L4 shall not be dealt with in this paper for the claim of ignorance. I can relate neither to the phenomenon of clairvoyance (which is what this author takes L4 to be) nor to the psychological manifestation of or reasons for why one would deceptively assume precognition (in the sense of L4.) I move on to the act of outlooking with the consideration of its particular nature – the likes of which are phrases L1 and L2. Outlook as Action To speak of what will happen next introduces our thoughts8 to a hopeful outcome suitable to our predictive tendencies. Must this always be hopeful?

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The propositions on the existence of the world are never really convincing when a sense of immediate danger is involved.9 It is of certainty that our thinking whether the world exists or not shall not destroy such a world within the next moment. At least this author has confidence in the implausibility of such a circumstance. The neutrality, by this I speak of the non-emotional weight, of a foresight extends its hope when we recognize that such an outcome or foresight extends or clarifies our existence and the existence of our life-actions in the next moments. But these are the tendencies in our habits of prediction. I leave to the cognitivists an explanation of why this is so. I shall say, however, that because we recognize that our outlooks with great likeliness shall not be equivalent to Others’ and shall be contrary to some Other, there is instability in holding such outlooks. This can, however, be a positive in that if introspection were not fluid,10 we would not be the way we are. And yet the unstable abstraction does result in a negative visualization that we would like to think capable of being changed by the thinker or the outlooker. We notice the possibility of outlooking for the purpose of simply finding what may happen (with consideration to historical context) but also, as in L2, what we wish to happen. If we wish it, we allow the positive outcome and we allow hope to enter in it. If however we recognize a possible/plausible outcome and not wish it, we then creatively abstract to transform such an event to our liking, perhaps by transforming in readiness the present which holds a more accurate bearing on such an outlooking. Considering the number of times we may have outlooked, we notice that our outlooks have changed over time. Indications of this can be realized in claims like “the future of …,” “end of …,” and “post- …” We recognize them in religious and philosophical conversions. We recognize them in the simple propositions such as “I’ve changed” or “Things change.” What vision exists that I cannot like, I transform. I claim that there is the idea of progress in the visual. My brain may remain seemingly unchanged but I recognize there to be a change when transforming my present for the future in the act of outlooking.

Outlooks with Visual Progress Consider a series of pictures on a wall in a room in which a ship is seen sailing away. The other illustrations are showing it sailing even farther. The last of the series portray a barely-seen sail of a ship at the horizon. But we

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have to conclude, of course, that the ship in actual sense is still in the room and has never moved or moved farther from the wall. The ship seems to be forever on the wall (until re-moved.) Since the abstraction alters, triggered by the question “What is the oulook,” as we alter the moments and our preferences, there is a noticeable and insightful progress in that visual.11 Should the experience of this outlooking be allayed by the occurence of the content of an outlook, we foresee a mode of existence external to ours. Should the experience of the outlooking never result in the occurence of the contents of the outlook, then any other considered-actual becomes untenable. For how could it exist when it never happens?12 This, however, gives impetus to the notion that the “Why we think it would” is more to the point. By analogy, we seem to be the ships of illustrative works trying to escape from the works themselves. There is a gap between a reality of this type and of one I may refer to as “mine.” It is this hearkening13 that could not have otherwise driven me to the realization of my existence. How this translates to a style or a resolving mystery14 in a life is the path of thinking in the following parts of this paper. The interrelation of outlook and persuasion is a key to understanding this “how” and “why.”

II

We can recognize the totality of our thoughts or of our visual memory, particularly (those that we recognize pictorially in our heads, so to speak) with their parallelisms in rhetoric as puzzle. I further elaborate threefold. Digressions and Deviations Consider the phrase (N, henceforth), I digress.

Also consider an element of our rhetoric that is prevalent in growth: deviations. What occurs when we utter and follow through on the claim, “I digress”? We interest ourselves in the nature of persuasion as it relates to compounding layers of its sub-concepts. By digressing, we put ourselves in the mode of argumentation by announcing premises, in the hope that the Other understands the proposition or imagery-like propositions.15 By introducing another premise, one relegates the previous proposition; but the

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nearness of the second to the first attaches an immediate correlation or sense. That is, it seems. A conclusion or a “therefore” finds a compelling agreement that is similar to the nature of persuasion-experience. The deviation I speak of here is of two separations. Firstly, there need not be a relationship between the first premise and the next. Their connections are awaited lastly when the Other has the luxury (since not an obligation) of finding them compellingly. Each of the layers or puzzles of concepts are digressions that allow ourselves to part from any thought objectified.16 Secondly, what of deviations, for example, from society, authority, or in master-relations? Are these relevant to the discussion? We do not concern ourselves much with what has been further termed in socio-anthropological schools. I would, however, say that I liken these deviations with digressions in discourses, especially as they relate to convictions. Convictions What occurs in the delineation of one’s thoughts upon transformation into a belief?17 There exists the experience of convincing oneself. We are not necessarily convinced immediately of a claim even when the results are considered flawless. There exist phrases like … O1(henceforth) It’s too good to be true. O2(henceforth) I still don’t think so.

O1 recognizes a break from what makes sense even if the sense is common enough. It is as if truth is seen where it should not be. And O2 simply rejects, for example, a truth that by and in itself makes sense. What then occurs when we agree, for example, on the existence of something? The elucidations (or laying out, so to speak) of the terms, concepts, or sub-concepts involved must stand out for the Other as a clear layer of concept that suits one’s outlook (of the L3 sense). Convictions or beliefs are not only challenged but new convictions or beliefs, it seems, are arrived at for the purposes of being conspicuous. What do we consider to be worthy of consideration in our past or present that to outlook would mean consideration as such – for the sake of the future? Our psychological past or framework cannot be denied to influence our claims regardless of how foundational the claims may be. I contend that there is a visual characteristic of mind that progresses and persuades. I am speaking of mind as memory.

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Reminiscing and the Like We do not concern ourselves with the particulars of psychological content but rather the nature of the experience of reminiscing. Is it possible, because of the fluidity of consciousness, to demarcate what counts as introspection (e.g. philosophical investigations) and what counts as reminiscences (particularly, in old ways of thinking no longer perpetuated)? That we can recognize the two, introspection and reminiscences, and their relation to be similar is an indication of differences. What we then concern ourselves with is the way we remember the particular layers or sublanguages18a that are involved in an Other’s thought (like illusion, the actual, or even falsity). I can say then that conscpicuous beliefs do not always equal true insights into the truth of a matter. The meaning of the intentions of an Other can be understood not only through the recognition of that Other, but through the context of the deviations in that Other’s memory. What truth can be gathered through investigation or introspection hovers over the re-construction of our personal intuition. Intuition becomes problematic, however, when the style of the deviation in our memory is not a style that is in consideration of what intuition is.18b The experience of existence is such that the infinite possibilities of images entering our minds is indicative of a world that transcends. The re-formation of an Other’s introspection on a matter or theme is like the reminiscing through the memory of an Other’s inheritance of re-constructed or translated convictions. Rhetoric becomes and is a crucial part of being that affects what intuition is. It can be said to effect intuition. What persuasive experience leads us to is a certain resolving of mystery or an aporetic life. III

Aging with Visual Progress I offer now an apprehension of the world that is descriptive and is in usage of its comparison to writing drafts of a written work. This will help us, as the purpose of this whole discussion, understand “being” or “existence” by elucidating what an outlook is and its general nature in praxis. We shall now, with purpose, recall our convictions or our way of thinking when we were younger, whether in teens or late twenties. It is of high plausibility that we no longer maintain what we held then as our points of view.19 And it is of high plausibility that we no longer can say that the totality of all that we believed in those times to be true.20 Compare what may be such a

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totality with our present personal outlook on existence. We recognize the notions or claims that we hold as either evolutionary results from our past or perhaps as radically different perspectives. But the nature of that difference, I claim, is to be inherent as well in the new layers of perspectives that were around one week ago, for example, or a year ago. For if it were possible to conceive of a whole philosophy or ontology clearly in one moment of introspection, there would not be, of course, two thousand years of adversarial philosophizing. Meaning, there are thoughts that are at first conceived then changed, evolving from previous thoughts. I contend that these are firstexperiences that overlap or weave with other thoughts that are like first, second, or further drafts. The (in)adequacy of metaphysical, speculative, or idealist statements is symptomatic of older experiences compounding and simplifying the actual that we see. Memory and consciousness are at once a hearkening21 to evidence and recalling/recreating of such an evidence. The like-vision or likeimage, then, of the outlook in the sense of L1, L2, and L3 progress as the temporality of mind ensues. We are offered here a moment when our knowledge of the external world becomes prescriptive just because we can make it so. Investigation into the existence of any X can turn into proselytizing of the Other’s inheritance of what foundation is, or, for our discussion purposes, what existence should be. How our praxis22a [the outlook of which is simultaneously recognizing further hearkening to future from past22b] turns into a style that an Other can find (ir) relevant but I, for example, could not see as incorrect, is the making sense, for example, of the incompatibility23 of truth in the subjective and in the logical. Phrases M and N have an equivalence that is relentlessly differentiated by that same compelling abstraction. CONCLUSION

It seems I cannot then deny that the idea of progress exists in either one. That is, “I” cannot deny the progressive in phrases such as I outlook.

and I digress.

Why a characteristic of the world should be the way one would want it to be is indication of metaphysical claims becoming social creations24 – their

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untenability deep-rooted in a disregard for a satisfactory definition of evidence. Their resolution turns into a (choice of) preferability. However, in so asking “What is the outlook of the world?” we liberate through the awareness of how we vacillate between present and past; and how we waver upon the sight of the future. Making sense of outlooking is making sense of essence – of the visual or of life, and the idea of progress within it. Paris, France N OT E S * From an unpublished volume, revised 2000. See my “Inspired to Analogize” paper for Leuven (2003) at the LEST-IV Conference on Religious Experience and Theological Epistemology, as a supplement to this volume. 1 My “Outlooking and Ethical Rhetoric” (paper forthcoming) to be presented at the XXIst World Congress of Philosophy of 2003, utilizes this approach similarly. I consider rewordings of phrases as becoming interpretations. And those new phrases themselves can be re-formed to regrouped words, causing some shifts in meaning. This, however, not only does not negate the point of the exercise (which is to find meaning in propositions through a.) re-arranging the words and therefore meaning, b.) describing the re-arranged thought-concepts, and c.) introducing and/or creating newer words – the effects of descriptive investigation), it supports it. 2 That “which is not” I mean, within the context, to be that which is not tangibly known (… is not corporeal) in the way the present empirically can be sensed. “That which is not” refers as well to inanimate thoughts (e.g. fear or ambivalence). 3 To arrive at a particular outlook, not only is the sense of what is logical involved, the feel for what one likes best becomes as influential. The probability of a particular outlook occurring is somewhat forced upon the future so as to present it present(ly) (and presentfully). 4 We can arrive at the realization that the future and that which seems external from mind are both founded upon a comprehension of “I.” The source of that understanding of future and the here-of-now is born from the same originator. 5 If I were to remain stationary indefinitely or not, a sense of an external that exists and an external that dramatically changes remains in me. By speaking and being heard, or moving and being seen, I transform an Other’s vision and present. The future, next(ly), exists as present(ly) altered or sensed. 6 That an undesired outcome occurs is an indication of an abstraction of an abstraction separate from that which seems external. It is beyond the scope of this paper, however, to elaborate on why feelings have evolved, if this is at all tenably correct, in such a way that a sense of want or need contradicts at times what is internal but seems external from us. Meaning, for example, why do I a.) feel alone when I see others, and b.) conclude furthermore that they are still in me (in my imagination)? 7 The Other is that which is apart from my consciousness which (through my comprehension and perpetual hopeful surmising) has a likeness to my consciousness. I challenge my being as “is” by introspectively realizing my constant a.) contradiction of an Other and b.) agreement with that Other. And this in turn relates to my wishes of a.) finding my views clearly and/or b.) estimating my views as sufficient.

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8 Needless to say, I do not posit the claim of a picture hovering in mind. The “visual,” however, that I speak of throughout the paper is not of a technical-sense usage. It merely refers to what we mean by visually-in-mind generally in life. What that (really) is, I would have to relegate for a later discussion on consciousness. 9 If I “know” the world shall cease to exist in the next moments in the way I would “know” I will be around to witness/experience it, I have no further reason to grapple with existence as mystery. Not only would it be because I shall myself cease to exist, but more importantly, because how I know the information to be true is my sense of truth already – so it seems. Meaning, “I” have difficulty apprehending the existence of “I” precisely because “I” am. If “I am” changed empirically and noticeably, I may realize my “I.” But “I am” still; therefore, I can know that “I am” can never be “I was.” (Until I die – in which case, the mystery then remains unresolved to me.) 10 I cannot conceive of the Other as such if that Other was at once like-consciousness and notlike-consciousness. The linear(ness) of an Other’s being suffices to be that Other’s standard of being. 11 Insightful, based on my contextual connotation, bears a characteristic beyond what knowledge is. Whereas knowledge provides data for a point-driven judgment, insight bears a logical feel of sufficiency and contentment upon conclusion. 12 I offer here a call for a study on the nature of the coincidental – a conspicuous feeling that this author has not focused on regarding its bio-anthropological attributes. Is a feeling of the coincidental a socio-evolutionary aspect of humans? 13 Originally, “hearks back.” I manipulate with the variation “hearken to.” My use of “hearkening” bears only a slight similarity with Husserl’s bracketing. The difference is: upon hearkening, one is partly driven by something, whereas in bracketing a voluntary mental action is pursued. 14 The mystery referred to here is the mystery of living – where the question of existence is asked by the questioner in that existence. Can one escape a mode or style that if quantified would number equivalently with the number of Others conceiving that sought-after uni-world? 15 I take it as presupposition that mental-like (stuff) of the picture-type is as much of a force in argumentation as a clearly symbolically expressed logical statement. Even such a statement of the former type requires a human comprehension expressed visually by example. 16 I accept the similar comparison to the term “reified” in place of “objectified.” I accept as well the critique that their differences are wide; and so I remind the reader that I use the two very loosely. 17 Regarding “delineation”: though it seems that the term is too specific, I entertain the idea of including non-linear descriptions/comprehension of one’s thoughts. Regardless of the mode of comprehension, social beliefs require wider understanding not only on the knowing of present “truths” but also the remembering of past premises and conclusions driven by uncertain mental forces. 18a What are sub-languages? From the perspective of a non-linguist, I merely allude here to a.) dialects within major languages, b.) Wittgenstein’s sense of language-games (though he does not use the term sub-language), and c.) past ways of thinking in the sense of L3. Recall: My standpoint (outlook) on the matter is this … 18b What is intuition? I realize that “what intuition is” can slowly turn into an argumentative circular event. I maintain that even intuition speaks at times (so to speak) in a grammar of its own. If intuition plays a role in life-conclusions, for example, and if life-conversions occur, then intuition not only is dynamic, but is also unstable.

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19 Indications of such changes of points of view are marked in phrases such as “My philosophy is …,” “These principles of mine …” and “I live by these rules …” The reasons for these are not only for philosophical and/or sociological reasons but also biological reasons. New physical attributes do become sources of knowledge. 20 I entertain the possibility that a totality of an outlook may have never existed in a person. It is certain, of course, that fragmented lives abound in the history of humanity. But one may consider a set (totality) whose members survive by reason and personal preferability. Those that are tenable, stay. Those inappropriate (at the very least) morph, are redefined, become misappropiated, or disappear. 21 “Hearkens,” though this seems more correct, is not used. I term “hearken(ing)” differently to keep the balance with “outlook(ing).” 22a An example of a particular study on said-praxis is an unpublished paper, The Missing Worldly “We,” W.N. Açerón. The paper concentrates, for example, on the question: What occurs inside an Other when its respect for a deity is (re)transformed against another’s conviction of a similar type-respect? 22b If one were to use extremism as an example: The Other’s terrorizing becomes an extreme withholding of its own truth – the greater comprehension of which is lost to the terrorized. 23 Rather than quickly thinking of social constructs, I refer to a comparison to incommensurability. In context, neither a sense of what is really real or what can be scientifically-based would withstand a subjective analysis. The giants of analyticism are replaced not neccesarily by greater reason, but also the minute claims of unusual thought. 24 It seems then that human provisions are nevertheless creations – the external that can be attributed to truth is, in context of this paper, irrelevant. Though philosophy has been claimed to have ended, perspectivism has not claimed to have done so.

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Dream and myth are two phenomena characterized by a great complexity and it is difficult to define their nature exactly. The purpose of this contribution is to analyse the relation between myth and dream, on the basis of the comparison among different conceptions worked out through the help of critical literature: myth and dream and their connections will be analysed, in relation to some meaningful phases of the philosophical western reflection. I’ll try to study the cognitive and ontological value of these two realities, choosing Plato’s philosophy and psychology of depth (in particular Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology) as preferential references. Because of their complexity, myth and dream have been studied in various fields, such as philosophy, history of religion, psychology of depth and cultural anthropology. For the choice of the references of this research, I will follow the method of identifying some spheres of research and the authors who tried to find the existence of a connection or to establish a relation between myth and dream. In fact, if the Platonic theory can begin such a reflection, psychology of depth could represent its final stage as it develops and carries out some of its fundamental aspects. In order to compare oniric and mythological realities, it can be useful to join together the problems and the results emerging in the researches worked out by the subjects, different from one another, dealing with these problems (each of them with a particular purpose and method of inquiry). Besides, in order to understand the type of relation existing between dream and myth, it will be necessary to point out the main differences between them. In this way, we’ll be able to point out their possible analogies and to identify the gnoseological and ontological value, by discussing a still opened and topical problem. 1 . C O G N I T I V E A N D O N TO L O G I C A L VA L U E O F M Y T H A N D D R E A M I N P L ATO ’ S P H I L O S O P H Y

As far as Plato’s thought is concerned, I’m going to point out the possibility of associating myth and dream (even if we can’t find a relation of real conjunction between them) and particularly to emphasize his metaphysical-dialectic 373 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 373–386. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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conception of dream. On one hand, I’ll try to identify the cognitive value of dream which can bring us to consider it as an alternative way of knowledge (if compared with rational knowledge) and as a privileged way of access to supreme realities. On the other hand I’ll try to underline its ontological value and its relation with the state of wakefulness. This choice can be explained through the possibility of seeing Platonic thought as a meaningful phase within the reflection on the problem studied in this contribution, as it carries out the process of constructive consideration of myth. In Platonic thought we can’t find a unitary theory of myth, as the Greek philosopher ascribes it various meanings. Plato gives several evaluations of myth; some of them are decrying, while the others emphasize its ontological and cognitive value. Even if it is difficult to work out a univocal definition, according to Droz, Platonic myth presents the following fundamental features:1 – it represents an imaginary story; – it marks a split with dialectic demonstration, as it looks like an “imagined and narrative speech,” which differs from rational speech. In fact it appeals to imagination and religious feeling more than to reasoning, but at the same time it replaces logical argumentation, which is not suitable for dealing with an object we can’t easily translate into concepts; – more than a method to look for truth, it is a means to express probability; – it can’t expect to take to certainty, however it contains a deep sense, a message which has to be interpreted; – there is a pedagogic message in it, as it leads to reflection and comprehension and in some cases it has also a moral or spiritual value too. Within Platonic thought, sometimes myth looks like the expression of probability, that is to say as a means which can explain the world of becoming, in opposition to logos expressing universal concepts. However, at the same time Platonic myths often express lofty concepts and prove to be able to define the results obtained by logos, through their “imaginative speech.” In many cases Plato makes use of myths in order to explain some complex philosophical concepts and problems and gives them an aid function when rational processes are not adequate. The Platonic concept of myth was widely discussed by giving rise to various interpretations. As Brochard2 pointed out, we can assume two different attitudes towards myth: we can refuse it as opposed to truth and philosophy or we can see it as probable and so compatible with philosophy.3 Regardless, most modern critics agree in asserting the great value given to myth by Plato, aware of the important role but also of the limits of human

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reason; he would assign imagination (in other terms myth) the function to express fundamental subjects. According to Ceccarini, Plato conceives myth as “the possibility to speak of becoming with a certain foundation or of vital things for human being.”4 Heidegger’s school too conceives myth as the real expression of Platonic metaphysics, as it asserts that “logos, belonging to the field of Ideas, proves to be capable of understanding the being, but it is unable to explain life. It’s myth which becomes a help to explain life, in a certain sense, it goes beyond logos and becomes myth-ology. In mythology we have to look for the real sense of Platonism.”5 Myth is not seen by Plato as opposed to philosophy and dialectic: it is a supplement to it. Stormer too talks about the coexistence of mythos and logos, in relation to the constitution and meaning of myth in Platonic philosophy: “Plato’s use of myth is a departure from any previous use of myth; and … myth functions for Plato as an extension of dialectic and is therefore essential to his philosophy.”6 And besides: “The myth conveys in imaginative and symbolic terms what cannot be known in rational terms … and the relationship between dialectical method and poetic myth is one of mutual dependence; neither can exist without the other.”7 In fact rationality and imagination, in other terms logos and mythos, are deeply linked: “Sa pensée, dite dialectique, ne saurait se passer de la pensée mythique. Le mythe intervient dans le corps de l’enseignement philosophique de Platon pur l’étayer, le contrer parfois, faire rebondir la pensée, soutenir l’attention. … Il supplée la raison dans le domaine où il est bon qu’elle n’aille pas s’aventurer de peur de perdre sa validite.”8 Stewart too sees myth as an essential part of the epistemologic process, as it lets him talk about “the most important things”: “myth serves as the medium through which is made possible any discussion of the ‘first principles’ of philosophy.”9 According to Romano, in Plato’s philosophy logos and mythos have different objects and myth can’t replace logos, as it always needs images in order to express what it means to represent. Anyway, we cannot speak of a real separation, but only of a distinction between them: “Logos is the logos of myth, as it represents its realization, its rationalization and logical solution, but all this means that mythos is not extraneous to logos.”10 For Plato, dialectic always remains his fundamental method of research, but, especially in his last works, he often makes use of myth and he gives it an important cognitive value. From this point of view, myth looks like an invaluable means of research and knowledge, as far as supreme truths and eternal realities are concerned.

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In this way we can see the real “force” of myth within Platonic thought and we can explain the great value he gives it; in fact, Plato sees myth as a way of supplementary knowledge which joins the rational one and which sometimes looks capable of “supporting” it in relation to some particularly important concepts. The ambiguous nature of myth and the dual-purpose tool Plato seems to give it, can be explained through the complex structure of myth, which is characterized by an exceptional richness because of its imaginative nature. We can see it as the most perfect expression of semantic multivalence and its original nature consists in its inborn duality, in its ability of hiding and disclosing at the same time. The Platonic myth of the “cave” is extremely symbolic both from gnoseological and ontological points of view; it is based on the opposition between darkness and lightness: in fact in the cave there is the unreality, what belongs to the world of generation, while outside there is the sun, the reality, that is to say the world of ideas and therefore the intelligible knowledge. For Plato the good is the supreme idea, which is in the middle of the generative theory of knowledge; it creates and brightens visible things. He supposes the existence of a specular relation between the shadows fallen on the walls of the cave and the external things: “in fact the image of the shadows … corresponds to dream. In such a way the myth of the cave is not a fiction.”11 As psychology of depth shows, the onirical experience makes possible the fulfilment of desires which are unrealizable during the state of wakefulness; in fact, it represents the “order of the night” as opposed to the “order of the day.” These two aspects can be found together in myth; in it we have the coexistence of the sphere of dream and the sphere of reality. As Fornari pointed out, in relation to the myth of the cave, we could make an interesting comparison between dreams and the process of human knowledge. In fact, if outside the cave man can make progress as far as his knowledge of ideas is concerned, we can say the process of human knowledge begins inside the cave, that is to say in dreams: “The almightiness Plato placed beyond the sensible world is gotten back but it is also upset. The onirical almightiness, as the almightiness of natural thought, is placed in the cave and becomes the beginning of human knowledge.”12 For this reason, if myth can be seen as the foundation and the achievement of logos, dream too shows to have an essential positive value. As it is not a rational creation, myth can be seen as inadequate in order to express some particular concepts and in this sense it is oftening dependent from logos. But at the same time, as Plato shows, it sometimes proves to be the only means on which man can rely in some spheres of research.

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Within Platonic philosophy, dream too has many different meanings and functions. Plato works out some different concepts of dream, without coming to an organic theory of oniric phenomena; we could speeak of “many conceptions” more than of “a Platonic conception” of dream. Besides, we can’t find a critical literature on the Platonic handling of dreams. Anyway, I’ll try to identify and analyse the various meanings given to dream by Plato, referring to Vegleris’ distinction.13 The first Platonic conception of dream is the descriptive-phenomenological one. Plato asserts the unity of an experience, which consists in the mixing of sensible reality and its appearances, and represents the essence of dream. Dream is the expression of an opinion which consists in considering what does not exist as real; it is an illusion, but it can also communicate a truth, that is to say, “it is opened to the dual possibility of truth and error.”14 The second platonic conception of dream is the psychological one. The onirical experience can be defined as the place of pleasure and pain; in fact, it is animated by vital instincts and makes possible the manifestation of repressed desires and needs: “The dream, which is the product of desires opposed to reason and also to heart when it is enlighted by reason, has the purpose of satisfying the inclinations which caused.”15 The third Platonic conception of dream is the physiological one. In such an outlook, dream is seen as a psychosomatic phenomenon which takes origin in the concupiscent part of the soul and keeps a continuous relation with reason, as it is composed of images, words and opinions. For example, in oracular dreams the phantasma is sent by gods; in them we can find a direct manifestation of divine will.16 The account of the two dreams Plato assigns to Socrates during the period of his imprisonment is emblematic. The first one informs the philosopher of his future destiny, as it is a clear manifestation of divine knowledge and contains “a metaphysical truth which is expressed through images.”17 The second is the passage of Plato’s Fedone,18 in which Socrates, obeying a divine order received in a dream, begins to write poems; we can see the divinatory nature of the onirical experience, which lets Socrates realize the gods want him to create myths and not only philosophical speeches. This last Platonic conception of dream is the metaphysical-dialectic one and is also the most important as far as this contribution is concerned: it lets us analyse the onirical phenomena from two different (and at the same time connected) points of view: the gnoseological one and the ontological one. From an ontological point of view, we can see how in some passages of Plato’s Repubblica, dream is seen as the antithesis of wakefulness and of

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reality; ònar and ùpar look like two parallel worlds, even if they are deeply opposed. The condition of “living in dreams” is that persons think they are awake, but they keep on living as if they are dreaming, that is to say in a passive way; on the contrary, the philosopher chooses reality and lives in an active way. His main concern is to well govern and to pursue the common good, as he has the real knowledge and can see things as they are and not as they seem to be, by approaching lofty truths.19 The most representative example is the despot, who “lives in dreams” and becomes more and more unable to control his deep instincts through reason. At this regard, we have to point out that, as we can see in Teeteto, Plato emphasizes the difficulties in distinguishing the onirical condition from the real one, and links dream to other phenomena like illness or madness. From this point of view dreams look like a condition of life far from reality and truth. Dream and wakefulness seem to be one as the “ontological antithesis of the other”; anyway, it is difficult to find a clear distinction between them: “And when in dreaming it seems to us to tell some dreams, the similarity between dreamt things and things lived in wakefulness is unbelievable.”20 And then in Plato’s Filebo, we can read: “As you say, neither in dreams nor in wakefulness, neither in madness nor in delirium, there is anybody who thinks to enjoy but doesn’t enjoy, or who thinks to suffer but doesn’t suffer.”21 From a gnoseological point of view, Plato defines dream as opposed to rational knowledge. In a passage of Teeteto, we can read: “Dear friend, there is a correct opinion followed by an explanation and we cannot call it ‘science.’”22 In this case, according to Plato, we are not in front of real knowledge; we could say “we were rich only in dreams, when we thought to have the real definition of ‘science.’”23 In this way we can see the deceptiveness of our reasonings when we dream, as they seem not able to take to real knowledge: dream becomes the model of sensible knowledge which takes us away from truth, instead of approaching it. In Plato’s Repubblica too, the two different conditions of “living in reality” and “living in dreams” are opposed.24 The condition of the philosopher who lives in reality and can approach the real knowledge (the epistème) is opposed to that one of persons who live in dreams and can achieve the sensible knowledge only (the doxa). However, Plato touches on the “dream-visions” in which man seems capable of understanding “truth at the highest degree.”25 But it is above all in Plato’s Timeo, that we can see the ability of dreams to show themselves as a particular way of knowledge in relation to extremely

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complex subjects. In the cosmologic speech of Timeo, which is a sort of “realistic fable,” Plato analyses the structure of the universe and distinguishes between two fundamental genres: the intelligible Ideas (that is to say the eternal essences) and the sensible things (which are perishable).26 But in order to explain the cosmos, it is necessary to appeal to a “third genre of being,”27 defined by Plato in various manners (hide-out, eternal substratum, material principle, etc.); it is the place of the being-in-becoming, which exists as an image and represents a way between the phenomenal being and the intelligible one. Plato assigns this genre he calls chora a bipolar structure; in fact it is a formless, incomprehensible and undifferentiated reality, which shows itself as not-being. Because of its dual nature (spatial and material at the same time), it can be seen as a union of different principles: being and not-being; limited and unlimited; definite and indefinite. The first genre of the universe (that is to say intellegible Ideas) is studied by rational knowledge; the second genre (the phenomena) is studied by sensible knowledge; the third one (which can be considered “the absolutely undetermined”) can be understood only through “dreams.” Plato talks about the possibility of perceiving truth by means of dreams, as the expression of what remains hidden both to the senses and to the intellect. If chora, the receptive genre, is the domain of images,28 it seems unavoidable to use dreams in order to approach it. Dream, conceived as a night dream or as a vision in the state of wakefulness, is the peculiar form of mental activity in a situation of interruption of conscience. To understand the nature of the receptive genre which seems to show itself in dreams, according to Plato (as far as its knowledge is concerned) it is necessary “to dream in the state of wakefulness.”29 From this point of view, dream seems capable of disclosing those truths which can’t be understood rationally, that is to say the “obscure and difficult things” which are the essential principle of all realities. Among the various meanings Plato assigns dream, the metaphysicaldialectic one is particularly interesting as far as the thesis exposed in this work. In fact it lets us consider dream as a particular way of knowledge, which is in a dialectic relation with logos, that is to say with rational knowledge. In such an outlook dream is shown to be the most meaningful human experience, as it approaches man to a “different” world, to truths which go beyond human knowledge. It can also represent a source of real knowledge, as it gives man the opportunity to try to understand supreme truths and so to approach the “undetermined”; in fact the onirical experience can be seen as a way to grasp subjects which are rationally unknownable in an immediate way.

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We can see dream as an important gnoseological source, that is to say as a “third way of knowledge,” which is supplementary to the rational knowledge and the opinion and which we can compare to myth, as they are both founded on the use of images. Dream proves to be a fundamental experience with a cognitive value, a sort of “revelation” which follows an a-logical way. It is shown to be able to balance the conscious elements of rationality with the unconscious ones of creativeness and imagination. As a manifestation of what is invisible to our senses and our intellect, it seems to be a real hermenutic structure. If the Platonic world emerges in sensible experience as an illusiondream, the philosopher tries to go beyond the appearances through a different dream which proves to be capable of understanding truth.30 In such an outlook, the philosopher can choose alternative ways; in fact, man can learn to be awake only if he tries to listen to the messages given by dreams. As already pointed out, according to Plato dream has many different aspects and functions, which can also seem opposed to one another. It looks like the expression of human limitation, but it also proves human similarity to the intelligible world; in fact, dream can be seen at the same time as an illusory way of knowledge, but also as an instrument for the understanding of the loftiest concepts. What seems fundamental is in fact the distinction between dream seen as a merely human and instinctual experience and or conceived as a meaningful experience, that is to say a source of knowledge in which the divine presence is revealed. In the light of this analysis, within platonic thought we can find neither an explicit handling of the relation between myth and dream nor a real conjunction between these two phenomena; regardless, we can suppose the possibility of a comparison both from ontological and gnoseological points of view. The fundamental passage in which Plato seems to associate dream and myth is contained in his Fedone,31 concerning Socrates’ dream which carries him to compose myths to obey a divine order. If until that moment Socrates had always devoted himself to philosophy as “the loftiest music,” now he begins to think that his dream means to induce him to “become a poet” and to write myths. In such a context, dream is seen as the foundation of myth, as it makes possibile its production. Anyway, we have to bear in mind the differences between dream and myth; in fact, myth looks like the “tale of a vision,” that is to say a literary transposition of real experiences or imagined events. In other words, we can say it is the result of a process of rationalization and therefore it can be considered as supplementary to dialectic and logos: we can talk about “an existential and ethical truth, concerning either the common destiny of man

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in the world or human soul’s destiny in another place reason couldn’t imagine.”32 What equalizes dream and myth is their capability of speaking through “images”; in fact, they can both hide and disclose their deepest contents at the same time. In such an outlook, the essential gnoseological value can be identified in the Platonic conception of the dream, conceiving it as an important way to approach metaphysical realities and therefore as a source of real knowledge. In a certain sense we can see dream as “an unavoidable way to turn to the eternal source of all image-thing.”33 In Plato’s cosmologic speech of Timeo34 it seems necessary to appeal to dreams in order to understand what is absolutely indefinite, that is to say the third genre of the being. Also in his Menone,35 Plato seems to suppose that in some cases the human soul can learn without using logical reasoning, that is to say in a more immediate way, like in onirical phenomena. Besides, as Christodoulidi-Mazaraki points out, Plato seems to use the terms “dream” and “reality” in order to show the two opposed conditions of “certainty” and “uncertainty”: “il met sous le signe du rêve tout ce qui est de l’ordre de la pensée incertaine, de l’imagination ou même de l’erreur. Il y a aussi un nombre de textes où Platon présente comme un rêve ses idées les plus chère.”36 From this point of view, dream looks to be capable of carrying out a function of compensation, in order to balance the conscious values of rationality (of logos) with the unconsious ones of creativeness and imagination (of mythos). The relation between dream and wakefulness seems to be traced back to the correlation “mythos-logos.” According to Plato, dream proves to be the main way of accessing “the most difficult things”; at the same time, it’s only through myth that Plato explains some of the important themes and problems dialectic isn’t able to expose or to solve. 2. DREAM AND MYTH IN PSYCHOLOGY OF DEPTH: POIETIC P OT E N T I A L I T Y A N D C O G N I T I V E VA L U E

The second part of this contribution concerns a comparative analysis of dream and myth within psychology of depth, particularly in Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology. Both Freud37 and Jung38 dealt with dream and myth, by trying to compare them and look for their analogies. After analyzing the Platonic conception which gives us the opportunity to associate onirical and mythological phenomena both from ontological and gnoseological points of views, the fundamental aim of this contribution is to try to point out the poietic potentiality and the possible cognitive value of

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myth, on the basis of its similarities with dream and of the analysis worked out by psychology of depth. In fact, according to Freud and Jung, dream and myth are put together by their common origin in the unconscious, by their “original creativeness” and the “poietic potentiality” which characterize them and which give us the opportunity to associate them as far as structure and language are concerned. Psychology of depth considers dream and myth as unconscious creations between which we can find both differences and analogies. Dreams can be seen as individual fancies similarly to myths, which are however collective fantastic creations, in which we can identify the model of a culture or of the common destiny of the whole mankind. Psychology of depth finds a relation of conjunction between dream and myth and analyses the essential characteristics of mythological creations on the basis of their analogies with onirical phenomena. It asserts the living and acting presence of myth in man’s thoughts, through the various ages and civilizations; it can also re-emerge in present-day man’s life. Mythological tales take origin in man’s need to express his hidden and often unconscious desires and sometimes to communicate them by their transposition into a narrative form. Besides, we have to point out the analogies existing between the onirical symbolism and the mythological one. Both in dreams and in myths we can find a figurative language, characterized by the use of symbols and images and so by a great multiplicity of meanings. Dreaming seems to make possible the dialectic renewal of the union of the individual with the mythical origins of society and culture and therefore to give birth to the original events of myth. Dreams and myths can be associated as far as their poietic (transforming) potentiality and their original creativeness are concerned. Psychology of depth asserts the existence of a common substratum, of an original collective heritage: in mythological creations, like in onirical phenomena, is dealt the complex “world of man’s soul” which becomes an image. Particularly, Freudian psychoanalysis considers dream and myth to be creations of human psyche, as disguised satisfactions of children’s unconscious desires suppressed or removed by the individual as opposed to the ideals and the conducts of conscious life.39 If dreams and myths can be seen as preferential means of fulfilment of the deepest human instincts and needs, their interpretation becomes “the principal way which takes to the knowledge of the unconscious in psychical life.”40 All these psychical creations are symbolic representations of the individual’s inner demands and the process of repression has a fundamental

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purpose in them. According to Freud they are the results of a falsification of reality, that is to say of a sort of compromise between the original human desire for incest (which the Oedipus complex is based on) and the prohibitions of society. The psychical impulses and the children’s fancies are essential for the understanding of psychical creations, both from an individual and a collective points of view. At this regard, he asserts the existence of a deep comparison between dream and myth: “As far as myths are concerned, they are absolutely likely to correspond to distorted remains of fancies and desires of whole people, that is to say to the ancient dreams of young mankind.”41 The analogies between dream (as a disguised fulfilment of a suppressed desire) and myth (as an ancient operating way of human psyche, which makes possible the imaginary satisfaction of insuppressible needs and instincts in particular moments of human life), as results of the unconscious world characterized by a symbolic language, give us the opportunity to trace a deep link between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, that is to say between psychological individual structure and collective culture. The creation of myths, as formations capable of expressing the deepest emotions and desires in a disguised way, lets Freud affirm the existence of a collective psyche, which can explain the different human activities and conducts. By developing some fundamental theses worked out by Freudian psychoanalysis, Jungian analytical psychology of depth asserts the complete reality of the psychical human world and the existence of an ancestral life which goes beyond the individual. Jung works out the concept of “collective unconscious,” that is to say a psychical substratum, a common heritage which every individual psyche is founded on. It is the original source of all forms of knowledge and culture, of the universal human experience; “it consists in the archetypes, that is to say pre-existing models which can become conscious and give a particular form to some psychical contents.” 42 The archetypes are “instinctive patterns of behaviour,” which represent the original source of universal human experience. In fact the unconscious is conceived as a developing creative energy of human psyche, which is in a dialectic relation with conscience. That’s why Jung considers psychical creations, and particularly dreams and myths, as demands of the unconscious towards conscience; in all these creations, which give images and meanings to the deepest human impulses, symbols have a central function. In fact, both dream and myth are characterized by a symbolic and archaic language, which is an expression of the original mythological heritage of mankind made up of universal archetypes.

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Through the method of amplification, consisting in the development and enrichment of an onirical theme with all its possible meaningful connections and other similar elements (mythological images and symbols), Jung goes back to the ancient and collective origins of mankind. He sees imagination as a fundamental activity of human psyche, which is at the same time feeling and thought. The Jungian conception differs from the Freudian one, as it emphasizes the archaic elements: fancies look like original forms of thought, results of unconscious instincts. Fairytales and myths are expressions of unconscious processes and instincts, but also creations of human collective psyche. They are conceived as a totality of “instrumental symbols,” that is to say representations of some typical forms of the process of human “individuation,” or selfrealization, consisting in the progressive union between the conscious world and the unconscious one. Myth looks like a manifestation of the complex activity of human psyche and a fantastic concealment of man’s deepest needs.43 Human psyche carries out a continuous conversion between conscious and unconscious through the use of symbolism, which has a function of mediation. That’s why it is possible to compare the onirical themes and contents with the mythological ones; in fact, in myths and in fairytales, “archetypes show themselves as ‘forming, transforming and eternal play of the eternal mind.’”44 A fundamental role is performed by the capability of transformation of libido expressed both in individual dreams and in collective fancies, which are essential psychical creations directed to the future and to the construction of the world. Jung works out a psychological interpretation of myths; in fact, he links the individual fancies to the great variety of different cultural creations (myths, artistic representations, literary and religious compositions, etc.) and also their processes of comprehension. Then we have to bear in mind that both in dreams and in myths we can find a great number of symbols, which are able to transform psychical energy and can be seen as analogies of libido. They are products of unconscious creative imagination and let us connect dreams and myths, by tracing them back to the collective unconscious, the universal heritage of the whole of mankind. In fact according to Jung, psychical creations are able at the same time to both hide and disclose the unconscious world, containing the universal elements of human psyche. Between dream and myth we can find a relation of conjunction and the use of a common symbolic language that always carries man back to the fundamental themes of his existence. Their main differences can be found in the individual nature and in the regressive inclination of dream opposite to the collective nature and the progressive inclination of myth.

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We can say both Freud and Jung emphasize the main features of unconscious processes, consisting in the absence of temporality and in the replacement of external reality by means of the psychical one. According to psyhcology of depth, dream and myth can be associated both from the structural point of view and from the linguistic one.45 As far as their structure is concerned, we can see the existence of similar processes and the possibility of turning individual aspects into collective elements and vice versa. As far as language is concerned, as already pointed out, both dream and myth are characterized by the presence of a symbolic language, that is to say of expressing ancient contents through symbols and images. Particularly, in Jung’s analytical psychology we can find an interesting conception of dream and myth which lets us see them not only as a way to satisfy unconscious desires and needs, but also as an important means in order to express the complex human reality in all its aspects and to favour our approaching the loftiest truths and the increasing of our knowledge. As we already saw in Plato’s philosophy, which assigns myth and dream an important cognitive value (in a certain sense dream can be considered as a “third way of knowledge”), in the outlook worked out by psychology of depth, psychical creations can be seen as the dialectic synthesis between individuality and totality, determined and undetermined, logos and mythos. In conclusion, dream and myth could represent a sort of “reason which goes beyond reason”: perhaps it’s just through “dreams” and the fantastic psychical creations we have the opportunity to approach the deepest nature of the universe and some of the loftiest concepts. University of Macerata Department of Philosophy and Human Sciences

N OT E S 1

Cf. G. Droz, Les mythes platoniciens (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992), pp. 92 ff. Cf. V. Brochard, “Les mythes de Platon,” in Etudes de philosophie ancienne et moderne (Paris: Vrin, 1926), pp. 46–47. 3 The term mythos was often interpreted within platonic thought as a “fictitious speech” in opposition to logos as a “true or rational speech.” 4 L. Ceccarini, Il mito in Platone (Genoa: Marietti, 1991), p. 16. 5 G. Reale, Storia della filosofia antica (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1976), Vol. II, p. 48. 6 G. D. Stormer, “Plato’s theory of myth,” Personalist (1974), p. 217. 7 Stormer, op. cit., p. 221. 8 J.P. Hammel, L’Homme et les mythes (Baume-les-Dames: Hatier 1994), pp. 237–238. 2

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9 R. S. Stewart, “The Epistemological Function of Myth,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 22: 4 (1989), p. 77. 10 F. Romano, Logos e mythos nella filosofia di Platone (Padova: CEDAM, 1974), pp. 40–41. 11 F. Fornari, Letture introduttive alla lettura della “Repubblica” di Platone (Milan: Unicopli, 1980), p. 40. 12 Fornari, op. cit., p. 48. 13 Cf. E. Vegleris, “Platone e il sogno della notte,” in Il sogno in Grecia, ed. G. Guidorizzi (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1988), pp. 105 ff. 14 Vegleris, op. cit., p. 105. 15 Vegleris, op. cit., p. 109. 16 Cf. Platone, “Apologia di Socrate,” in Platone, Opere complete, ed. G. Giannantoni (RomaBari: Laterza, 1990), 33c. 17 Vegleris, op. cit., p. 112. 18 Cf. Platone, “Fedone,” in Platone, Opere complete, cit., 60d–61c. 19 Cf. Platone, “Repubblica,” in Platone, Opere complete, cit. 20 Platone, “Teeteto,” in Platone, Opere complete, cit., 158c. 21 Platone, “Filebo,” in Platone, Opere complete, cit., 36e. 22 Platone, “Teeteto,” cit., 208b. 23 Platone, “Teeteto,” cit., 208c. 24 Cf. Platone, “Repubblica,” cit., V, 476c–d. 25 Cf. Platone, “Repubblica,” cit., IX, 572a. 26 Cf. Platone, “Timeo,” in Platone, Opere complete, cit., 27c–47d. 27 Cf. Platone, “Timeo,” cit., 46a–53b. 28 Cf. F. Mignini, “Un sogno divino apparso a uomini desti,” Bollettino dell’Istituto Italiano di Micropsiconalisi 15: 2 (1993), pp. 21 ss. 29 Mignini, “Un sogno divino …,” cit., p. 25. 30 F. Mignini, “Il sogno dei filosofi, uomini desti,” Bollettino dell’Istituto Italiano di Micropsiconalisi 19 (1995), p. 76. 31 Cf. Platone, “Fedone,” cit., 60c–61b. 32 Vegleris, op. cit., pp. 113–114. 33 Mignini, “Un sogno divino …,” cit., p. 22. 34 Cf. Platone, “Timeo,” cit., 48–53b. 35 Cf. Platone, “Menone,” in Platone, Opere complete, cit., 85c. 36 A. Christodoulidi-Mazaraki, “La notion fonctionelle du rêve dans la pensée platonicienne,” Philosophia 13–14: (Athens: 1983–84), p. 247. 37 Cf. S. Freud, Opere, ed. C. L. Musatti (Turin: Boringhieri, 1966–80). 38 Cf. C. G. Jung, Opere, ed. L. Aurigemma (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1970–92). 39 Cf. S. Freud, “L’interpretazione dei sogni,” in Freud, Opere, cit., III, pp. 154 ss. 40 Freud, “L’interpretazione dei sogni,” cit., p. 553. 41 S. Freud “Il poeta e la fantasia,” in Freud, Opere, cit., V, p. 382. 42 C. G. Jung, “Il concetto di inconscio collettivo,” in Jung, Opere, cit., IX (1), p. 44. 43 Cf. C. G. Jung, “Fenomenologia dello spirito nella fiaba,” in Jung, Opere, cit., IX (1), pp. 207–208. 44 C. G. Jung, “Simboli della transformazione,” in Jung, Opere, cit., V. 45 Cf. E. Drewermann, Psicologia del profondo ed esegesi, trans. A. Laldi (Brescia: Queriniana, 1996), pp. 90 ss.

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The classic problem of epistemology is knowing whether scientific theories grant knowledge of the world or they are only working hypotheses interpreting the world itself. In particular, we need to see whether we are within realism or within instrumentalism. In the first case we would have a real objective knowledge of the world, while in the second case we would have only hypotheses useful for changing the world, to make it better suited to our needs. This situation, which we have tried to illustrate in the terms of contemporary epistemology, was already present in E. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by a gnoseological point of view. In this regard, it will suffice to reflect on the question of the “scientific nature of physics,” to be globally understood as a science of nature. In this situation Kant’s idea is that the limits and the possibilities of our knowledge create an image of reality of phenomenal type; this image takes shape on the level of appearance as the data from experience are collected, organized and coordinated according to the transcendental forms of the knowing subject. In this framework, therefore, the image of the world, deriving from scientific knowledge, results from the cognitive patterns of mankind’s mental structure. This conception, in fact, concludes modern age philosophy of knowledge, which had stopped to a debate about the objectivity or subjectivity of knowledge. As is known, this debate is the arrival point of the gnoseological controversy separating rationalists from empiricists. Therefore, the fundamental problem concerning knowledge, of which we are necessarily heirs, is the Cartesian one, opposing subject to object, consequently theorizing the idea of truth as correspondence or reflection. This historical controversy involves the two fields of philosophy and epistemology alike, while, in contemporary thought, philosophy and epistemology diverge, since they concern the two levels of philosophical ontology and scientific thought. In fact, if we want to express the question using the categories of one of the most famous epistemologists, active in the last part of the XX century, namely K. Popper, we find that distinction characterized by the so-called “principle of demarcation.” This principle places metaphysics with its dogmatizing and universality on one side, and science with its critical rationality and its falsification principle on the other side. 387 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 387–392. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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The interpretation of the terms of the problem from which we started is susceptible of a radical interpretative change, in light of E. Husserl’s phenomenology, where there is no longer a distinction between science and philosophy, according to a methodological ideal presenting philosophy as a “rigorous science” within a “prime philosophy” which follows Aristotle’s interpretation. The other radical difference derives from the substitution of the relation between subject and object, interpreted as a contra-position to be resolved through the cognitive act, while the continuous relation between the two terms is given by the intentional conscience which opens to the other from itself. This is realized in a situation in which the other or, better, the outsider, is already within the ego in a primordial sense. These two transformations propose an interpretation of the cognitive act in which philosophy and science proceed together in a common “gnoseological awareness.” Thus knowledge goes beyond the description of the “phenomenon,” taken in a Kantian or Hegelian sense, to reach the “essence” of the reality which is being examined by the act of knowing. Then, from this point of view, the cognitive act gives rise to ontological assumptions which condition all the philosophy of knowledge. What we’ve said so far can be seen in Husserl’s two attempts of schematization of the cognitive act operated by the ego’s intentional conscience, that is to say, the “epoché” one and the one of the “eidetic reduction.” In this case, it is possible both to go beyond Kant’s position, which influences Husserl through 20th century neo-kantism, and to go beyond the distinction between philosophy and science, which requires proposing again the gnoseology of the cognitive act, having both ontological and epistemological connotations. That is possible since reality, in Husserl’s phenomenology, cannot be resolved in Kant’s noumeno which is conceivable but not cognizable, but on the contrary gives rise to the essence which might be at the root of the objectivating representations in the theory of knowledge proposed by phenomenology. Moreover, the reproposition of the traditional gneseological problematics forces phenomenology to recover the unification of all the aspects of the cognitive act which places the intentional conscience in front of the object in a relationship of both representation and presentification of the world. But it is clear that Husserl’s phenomenological conception cannot be accepted in its philosophical linearity in order to solve the problem from which we started. As a matter of fact, that conception is based on an attempt at creating a universal ontology, but, in light of our post-modern and postmetaphysical philosophical culture this attempt does not seem to be useful

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any more for our becoming aware of the questions which are the substratum of both philosophical and scientific theories. From that point of view, then, we must try to update the interpretative categories in light of two fundamental assumptions: 1. Knowledge of the world favours more the scientific field rather than the philosophical one, in the sense of excluding the ontological tie with reality, checking instead the logical coherence of the assertions and empirically verifying the propositions. 2. The inquiry on the essences is not as important as the systematization of the phenomena to be coordinated for an elaboration of a theory of the world. This involves using phenomenology as a method of research on reality, rather than elaborating a philosophy capable of building a universal ontology of reality itself. Therefore, the fundamental question is the realization that phenomenology is today susceptible of methodological integrations and of integrations concerning the content, of a hermeneutic nature, since we cannot avoid two implications inferrable from contemporary philosophy: a. the analytical dimension of culture; b. the primacy of language in philosophy. These assumptions require a radical reconsideration of the questions concerning knowledge, to be related, first of all, to an “inditial ontology,” according to P. Ricoeur’s hypothesis. The ontology can be constructed as the biblical metaphor of the “promised land” which Moses was allowed to see from far away, without being able to enter. Moreover, we need to bring out the moment of man’s finiteness; man is to be thought of as an existential subject who, through his limitations, exercises his intelligence and freedom. What we said shows that philosophy needs to use caution with the ontological assertions and with the totalizing ones of a universal nature, while science needs to bring out above all the idea of perspective with all its implications of contingency, relativism and temporariness which it implies. The above considerations translate into a radical interpretative transformation of the terms of the original problem. As we have seen, the cognitive act is a complex universe involving subject and object in a continuity of relation; the world, in its turn, is a complex system of assertions and empirical observations, constructing and deconstructing itself in a changing and temporary representation of causes, effects and phenomena. Then, from this point of view, the decision on whether the world is indeed an objective representation of real phenomena or a product representing our modalities of knowledge, creates a question which is not well put. It can be characterized, in fact, as an apparent problem or, in different terms, as a pseudo-problem.

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Therefore, it is a situation in which the crisis of the metaphysical universals, which are the product of philosophy, and the crisis of the worldly absolutes, a product of scientific thought, develop a new cognitive synthesis. In this synthesis it is necessary to adopt an epistemological category which is halfway between the extreme categories of realism and instrumentalism. This middle position, in K. Popper’s epistemologically allusive language, is called “modified essentialism.” This is produced in a situation in which the philosophical inspiration is again derived from Kant’s gnoseology, with the intent of elaborating an idea of “tendential realism and objectivism.” These considerations definitely bring us to conclude that the world conventionally intended and constructed both by philosophy and science, presents itself as an entire and complex system in which there are present and integrated together both objective elements of a realistic nature and subjective elements of an instrumentalist nature. Within the framework of these considerations, phenomenology, taken as we have seen in its methodological contributions, is without doubt the philosophical reference needed for the individuation of the cognitive act, to be assumed as a dynamic process “in fieri,” always in movement and never completed. We must not forget that this act is placed in a situation in which the overcoming of the gnoseological assumptions of classical metaphysics is realized together with the overcoming of the naïvely realistic objective assumptions of Newton’s classic physics. In this sense, then, both hermeneutic philosophy and the philosophy following the non-Euclidean geometries and Einstein’s relativity become integrated, trying to overcome the so-called “philosophical and epistemological crisis of the fundamentals.” We are, of course, making considerations into which converge, in a methodological unification, philosophical and epistemological assumptions deriving from differentiated points of view. However, the question under scrutiny, concerning whether the objectivity of the cognitive representations of the world is valid or not, is already in itself a complex problem, susceptible of non-univocal meanings. According to this interpretation, we need to see how a philosopher and a scientist, after elaborating specific and articulated representations of the world, inquire in fact on the possibilities and on the limits of the validity of this representation, both in the sense of determining its content and in the sense of a real possibility of providing a clear articulation of the representation itself. The various interpretations of the problem from which our investigation started depend on this; as a matter of fact, the question concerns the characterization of the decisions regarding the potentiality of man’s cognitive act considered in itself, and the semantic

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implications regarding the categories through which the idea of the world as well as the theories about the world are expressed. Actually, Western thought has crystallized the problems of the philosophy of knowledge of this sector on the solution proposed by Kant in the transcendental dialectics concluding his Critique of Pure Reason, in which the metaphysical limits of rational cosmology had arrived at the antinomies of reason concerning the idea of world. As a matter of fact, our starting point has been expressed in relation and in a close connection with these antinomies, since it would become philosophically unsolvable in the light of the antinomies themselves. Thus, considering the philosophical impossibility to decide, we are in a situation where the epistemological propositions, reflecting on scientific thought, have led to many solutions, often divergent and contradictory ones. Whence the need to reflect on the problem expressed in an antinomic sense, concerning the existence or non-existence of the world. This problem leads us to see if the analysis of that question, done on the logic level of the coherence of the assertions and on the semantic level of the congruity of the meaning of the terms used, helps us out of the trouble caused by the antinomic reading of the problem itself. We are, that is, in a problematic situation which urges us to clarify two relevant questions: a. whether it is possible to overcome the divergence and the incommensurability of the philosophical interpretation with respect to the scientific interpretation; b. whether it is possible to express the problem in the sense of its reconsideration, to find a suitable solution which might get us out of the antinomic solution blind alley. In other words, we need to see if we are facing a real problem, therefore solvable, or an apparent problem, therefore senseless, or, finally, if it is an aporia rather than a problem, therefore a limit of knowledge rather than a moment in its investigation. The new elaboration of the problem under scrutiny proposed by our phenomenological-hermeneutic hypothesis leads us, through an analysis of its various logic-semantic articulations, to a clarification of the terms of the question in the sense indicated. This question requires the use of a “middle way,” based on the criterion of untenability of the universal totalizations of knowledge, favouring the “finiteness” and the “perspectiveness” of human knowledge. We are, that is, in a situation in which the combined contributions of phenomenology and hermeneutics allow us to advance on the way of knowledge, through the method of analyses and clarifications concerning the many and complex problematics which emerge in the vast horizon of human thought as we go along. To use Ricoeur’s words

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once again, this means beginning on a “long way,” which is better suited to understand the various moments of the emerging situation. This methodological process makes it possible to express the terms of the situation in a way which is different and more capable of rendering incisive the cognitive consequences through it produced. University of Perugia, Italy

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O N TO P O É T I C A D E L S I G N I F I C A N T E : E L PA L P O D E L S I G N O

Husserl abstrae el signo verbal de la unidad compleja de la communicación, donde aún vale el campo de la señal con sus motivaciones. Al señalar, A remite a B como unidad de experiencia y, por tanto, “merced a la palpable mutua implicación de las partes y aspectos de la objetividad aparente”, según dice él mismo de la “conexión palpable” – “ein fühlbarer Zusammenhang” – de las unidades asociadas (IL I: 322).1 Este palpo es algo nuevo y creado en el instante de la conexión o “momento abstracto”. Existe, pues, podemos decir, un tacto conceptual.2 La manifestación de la experiencia receptiva de las cosas, sus partes, lados o incluso disposición relacional suya, presupone en Husserl, en cuanto unidad fenoménica, un contacto sensible. Al experimentar, se produce un campo de relaciones tendentes a una organización unitaria, como si el objeto fuera el resultado de la imanación sensible de cada una de las impresiones recibidas. La unidad así formada en el nivel de la experiencia constitutiva ya presupone entonces un orden de conocimientos, aunque nos movemos en los preámbulos del conocimiento propiamente dicho. El tacto aquí aludido es, por ello, algo más que una conexión simple. La señal de la palabra referida al sentido que le es propio difiere de aquella otra señal comunicativa. Cabe decir incluso que cuanto acontece en el palpo indicativo de ésta, al ser notificado el signo verbal, procede de un cambio radical efectuado en la vivencia del sonido, cuando se constituye en expresión. La expresión es la apertura creada en el sonido en cuanto éste tiende a algo diferente de la intención intuitiva que lo caracteriza como sonido simple. Al despertar en la vivencia que de él tenemos un carácter intencional alterativo, su intención tiende hacia otra cosa que no es él mismo. Esa tendencia hacia otro de sí convierte su simple materia sonora en tensión fónica o campo intuitivo del sonido articulado. Se abre en él, y tal apertura es una creación, un acto nuevo o “acto de significar” (IL, I: 333), “ein Akt des Bedeutens” (LU, I: 47). De momento, sólo percibimos la tensión alterativa, intencional, pero ya presupone, desde antes, una “modificación fenoménica esencial” que confiere un sentido diferente a su pura esencia sonora. Ya es significante y lo es por el hecho de tender a otra cosa diferente de sí mismo o 393 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 393–418. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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porque está inmerso en un fenómeno que lo trasciende desde su pura esencia sonora. Luego vendrá el objeto de la tensión, el blanco de su flecha, pero de momento nos fijamos en esta transición alterativa y dinámica, en el cambio del “carácter intencional de la vivencia”. Sucede que la materia sonora adquiere este sentido al formar parte de un acto que la integra relacionalmente en una referencia a un objeto mentado. En tal acto, la intuición objetiva de la conciencia – ir hacia un objeto – ha convertido la dinámica fónica, y fórica, del sonido en tensión intencional. Tal tensión es el nuevo espacio significativo: la dirección y distancia comprendida entre el mentar algo la conciencia e intuir el objeto mentado. El mentar acontece articulando la tensión consciente como sonido. Puede verificarse, o no, el cumplimiento intuitivo de esa tensión, pero el origen del espacio tensionalmente intuitivo ya queda así fundado. Es el espacio de la significación. A él pertenece el sonido como expresión del acto que mienta. Expresión o apertura presionada por la mención tensionalmente alterativa. Desde entonces, todo acto significante comporta, como “sostén” suyo, este “contenido intuitivo de la representación verbal”, diferente, por supuesto, “de la intención intuitiva dirigida a la palabra misma” (IL, I: 333). Tal contenido le pertenece, no obstante, desde la base de una tensión sonora reconducida e incluso, podríamos decir, como aquello que acude en la ausencia aún presente de la incompletud del acto significativo respecto del objeto intencionado. La intuición del signo, dice Husserl, no se confunde con el objeto del acto significativo, pero realiza su posibilidad en concreto por ser el de la significación un acto aún no cumplido (IL, II: 411; [619]. Aunque el signo sea un complemento – “Anhang” – de la intuición fundante, es también su posibilidad realmente concreta: dotar al acto significativo de una nueva esencia intencionalmente transitiva, ya que el objeto intuido se trasciende más allá de sí mismo y tal tra(n)scendencia es el rasgo propio y esencial del signo.3 He ahí su posibilidad fundacional o posible sonoro. Existe, pues, un acto intuitivo fundante que encierra una posibilidad formalmente sonora y tal acto resulta entonces significativo. De ahí que toda significación implique un fondo resonante y materialmente alterativo como posibilidad suya. No sólo la resonancia fónica de la articulación actual, sino también aquella otra interna de la retención del sonido recordado en cuanto fondo de tensión hacia un objeto actualmente evocado. El espacio de la donación de sentido ya no puede excluir esta tensión resonante de fondo. La expresión pertenece a la intención significativa como tensión intuicional del espacio evocante. La intención se la otorga el acto de dar sentido o animar el sonido verbal (IL, I: 330) – “sinbelebter Wortlaut” (LU, I: 44), pues en esto consiste el acto de

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intención significativa. Animamos el sonido tendiendo intuitivamente hacia un objeto y esa tensión es la intención significante, que ya subtiende también la posibilidad de la tensión sonora. Lo sensible se anima conceptualmente y el concepto expresa el espacio de su concepción ya creadora, pues nace ahí, en ese instante, y no antes. La evocación del espacio tensional pertenece asimismo in nuce al acto articulatorio primigenio, pues se trata de un espacio dicente, orientado a la dicción. Evoca lo audible, ya oído o aún por oír, en cuyo caso se trata de una creación sonora espontánea. El carácter audible y, por tanto, articulable, de la intención significativa es su posibilidad esencialmente interna. Contiene una tensión interpretativa, pues sucede entre. El de fenomenológico de la intuición obedece a un entre, en cuyo intersticio táctil acontece el fenómeno de la articulación sonora: entre personas, entre los labios, entre cosas. Por ello, si a tales actos podemos caracterizarlos como unidades de experiencia procesual de relación entre partes, y aquí se da aquella “conexión palpable” que “presta un nuevo carácter fenomenológico a los contenidos, no valiendo ya estos por sí, sino para representar un objeto distinto de ellos (IL, I: 322), cabe hablar entonces del palpo del signo. Su taxia acontece en el espacio resonante del sonido recordado, que no es otro que la tensión del fondo sonoro que subtiende a la intención significativa. El significante se ha conceptualizado. Es el sonido recordado más su tensión significante en el espacio de la nueva evocación intuitiva. Así entendemos nosotros el “pensée-son” de F. de Saussure, un pensamiento sonante cuyo guión marca el espacio de una tensión “misteriosa”, no consciente, pero tampoco, al parecer, inconsciente, aunque espacio energético e imante, pues la fuerza del pensamiento es naturalmente caótica y amorfa, dice Saussure, si bien se precisa descomponiéndose, como la del sonido, también amorfa como aquélla, en unidades recíprocas. El lenguaje sirve de intermedio “entre la pensée et le son” (Saussure, 1983: 156). He aquí, de nuevo, el entre del lenguaje, surgido ahora “entre dos masas amorfas”. La filosofia y la lingüística han prestado poca atención a este irracionalismo cósmico y a la fe natural que presupone en la moción misteriosa de la naturaleza del lenguaje. Le corresponde a él lo que el pensamiento y la fuerza puramente locutiva no consiguen por sí mismos. Cada palabra es un articulus, un miembro de un nuevo órgano surgido en la naturaleza del pensamiento como brotan y se engendran, se supone, entes vegetales y animales, por generación espontánea de la energía oculta y misteriosa del cosmos. Lo articulado es también forma, un valor nuevo, ya no una sustancia, dice Saussure (1983: 157).

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El guión intermedio del “pensée-son” define, por sí solo, el intersticio de la articulación y del misterio de la unidad lenguaje. Pero está pensado a posteriori del ser amorfo del pensamiento. Por eso cabe aún la duda de si no será, como guión, el signo de la emergencia, de la aparición del pensamiento mismo en cuanto sonante, o de la voz en tanto pensativa. Nos surge la duda de si el pensamiento articulado no acontece en el entre del encuentro óntico del hombre en el mundo, donde se hace ontológico, un ente con logos o un logos entitativo, con palabra, vital, un logos de la vida o la vida del logos, Logos and Life, con título de A.-T. Tymieniecka (1988). La articulación es el lugar durativo del ente como pensamiento. Incluye un guión, una cesura, el recubrimiento de un vacío cósmico con el hálito invisible de la dicción sonora, anterior a todos los dichos imaginables, pues se insinúa en el roce del aliento y en las vibraciones que timbran y tensan el espacio temporal del inicio sonoro, hasta ahora en silencio. Desde entonces, el vacío de la existencia cósmica se dota de afecto y sentido, en la palabra. La intención signitiva recae indirectamente, volviendo a Husserl, sobre el sonido y esto es también una puesta en forma, un alzamiento formal que resulta a su vez, sin embargo, materia respecto de otro nivel formalizante. Percibo el sonido como referencia a un significado asimismo intencional respecto de algo que puede o no cumplirse. Tal puesta en forma del sonido ya es locución vivificada por el sentido (IL, II: 533), “sinnbelebte Rede” (LU, II: 736), y, por tanto, encierra un acto de conocimiento, una formalización predicativa, como sucede en toda captación receptora, según leemos en Erfahrung und Urteil (1999: 240). El significante sonoro participa, pues, de esa tensión signitiva y en suspenso de las palabras. De este modo, Husserl remite la función expresiva del lenguaje no a la materia simple de las palabras, sino a una “nueva materia” o “expresión mental” que es la significación encarnada verbalmente (IL, II: 330).4 Y en esto consiste, creemos, el nuevo ser material de la expresión convertida ya en “imagen de la percepción” o “ex-presión en la materia significante” (IL, II: 453).5 Nace en el instante mismo, en el intersticio o entretiempo de la materia sonora afectada o presionada por la intención suspensiva del signo y la transforma en nueva materia o materia significante. Una presión que viene, sin embargo, desde dentro de la materia misma, ex, pues el sonido o materia inicial recibe la moción signitiva del nuevo fenómeno ahora emergente. Por eso comenta Husserl que “Puedo oír el sonido, pero no el ser sonoro. El ser no es nada dentro del objeto … Pero el ser tampoco es nada fuera de un objeto” (IL, II: 461).6 Acontece en la relación nominativa. Surge como forma de forma, nombrando la percepción del objeto, no el objeto mismo, sobre el que recae

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un resto de significación interpretante (IL. II: 411, 454) [619]. La forma del acto significativo, en el que se nombra el objeto percibido, se expresa, dice Husserl, en la forma del nombre (IL, II: 345) [558]. Significar equivale entonces a conocer. Conocemos el objeto aprehendido en el acto de conexión sucesiva de vivencias, donde la expresión “es de un modo particularmente íntimo una sola cosa con el acto clasificatorio”, a su vez fundido en la percepción, de tal modo que la expresión pasa a ser un recubrimiento o “vestidura” “superpuesta” a la cosa (IL, II: 346) [559]. He ahí el palpo: un tacto conceptual del signo. En esto consiste vivir en la comprensión de la palabra (IL, I: 327), “in seinem Verständnis leben” (LU, II: 423): palpar su íntima relación perceptiva, la conexión objetiva de las vivencias. Aquí, en el interior del signo, no remite una parte existente a otra unida con ella como señal suya. No hay en ello existencia real de partes, sino objetividad surgente, una materia nueva expresada, nada menos que el ser mismo de la cosa, su comprensión objetiva: el alcance o palpo del sentido. En el significante existe también, lo estamos viendo, un nivel de acto fundado. De simple objecto intuitivo-sensible, en cuanto correlato material, sonoro, del significado, pasa a ser forma animada de aprehensión o acto fundamentalmente relacionante. Le corresponde, entonces, alguna forma categorial por ser enlace sintético (IL, II: 506) [710]. Los tipos fónicos abstraen notas, retienen y categorizan la sensación sonora como articulación espacio-temporal de la voz. La transforman en acto fundante de la significación. Este atributo le viene tal vez del carácter género del sonido mismo, entendiendo aquí género – “Gattung” – como el resultado generativo de una fuerza natural que engendra en filiación o forma proporcionada, pues intuir lo concreto ya comprende situarlo en el género de su esencia, es decir, en una forma de universalidad (IL, II: 502).7 Entonces, todo significado se concreta, como concepto, en el aquí-ahora mundo del sonido. La esencia intuitiva es universal si y sólo si aprehende carácter de acto mundano, material, aunque éste individualice, como diferencia específica, la región concreta de mundo. Ahí está la base de la materia, los Mundarten. El sonido del significante dice también, como los objetos de los actos fundamentantes, el ser relativo de su materia a una forma nueva (IL, II: 507) [711] surgida en la dirección tensa de la intención hacia un objeto intuido, cuyo espaciotiempo direccional ya lo constituye y le dona sentido significante. El sonido no nace en el intersticio de la intención, pero sí adquiere, en tanto intersticio articulado del espaciotiempo de la voz, un sentido que antes no tenía. Al menos, esta nueva forma es congruente, y así la veía también W. von Humboldt, con el pensamiento (Humboldt, 1985: 123).

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Congruencia asimismo de intimidad creadora para Husserl, pues, aunque superpuesta a la cosa, nace como piel suya en el acto fundante de la comprensión o conocimiento objetivo.8 El acto expresivo del nombre palpa la vivencia cognoscitiva fusionada con la percepción del objeto. Si digo, por ejemplo, mi tintero, el objecto percibido, que ya supone una clasificación realizada de notas y atributos en actos específicos, actualiza una vivencia percipiente, palpablemente vivida como mía. Sucede igual en los casos de representación imaginada. El tintero imaginado “es palpable depositario de la expresión nominal” (IL, II: 347) [560]. Lo palpado se refiere aquí a la vivencia percipiente en cuanto expresa el conocimiento del objeto. El vivir la percepción de algo como conocimiento suyo lo expresa, por tanto, nominalmente. Lo remite fuera, ex, bajo la presión dinámica de la acción cognoscitiva que concluye en acto. Dar o evocar nombre significa entonces ser algo presionado hacia fuera o constituido en ese instante como objeto animado. De tal animación participa el sonido en cuanto significante. Significar remite, pues, a la presión fórica del conocimiento en tanto nombre. Pero ese significante no es el sonido en sí, aislado, sino su referencia a un sentido fóricamente presionado por la dirección hacia el objeto que se presenta como percibido. Sólo así se comprende que el conocer sea en el nombre intuitivo “un carácter de acto intermediario entre el fenómeno del sonido verbal (o de la palabra entera vivificada por el sentido) y la intuición de la cosa” (IL, II: 347) [560]. Husserl sobrepone la “unidad intencional” a la mera asociación o coexistencia de una intuición tanto con un sonido como con una “palabra llena de sentido”, es decir, la relación existente entre el sonido transformado en relación significante de un significado o intención hacia un objeto intuido, cumplida o no esta intuición (IL, II: 348–349). Tal unidad es algo creado: “brota como algo notoriamente nuevo” – “sie erwächst erst als ein offenbar Neues” (LU, II: 562) – y la palabra ya pertenece entonces a lo nombrado: “Llamar rojo … y conocer como rojo son en el fondo expresiones de idéntica significación”.9 He ahí una fusión de actos en cadena cuyo resultado germina como el sonido mismo. Sus ondas fisicas resultan animadas en la vivencia o “momento vivificante de la significación”, que es, a su vez, el instante en que el conocimiento se caracteriza como intención intuyente de lo nombrado, se cumpla – percepción – o no – representación – lo intuido. El sonido verbal va implícito también en el conocimiento de algo en cuanto pertenencia propia y diferenciada de una unidad común a distintas lenguas. La significación dada en el sonido y el acto de conocimiento

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correspondiente son universales para Husserl, si bien cada comunidad idiomática vive, expresa esa unidad de modo particular y diferente. Esta diferencia es lo extraesencial (IL, II: 350) [563]; sin embargo, aquella pertenencia de la unidad concreta del conocer pleno sí integra al sonido particular. El nombre es, por tanto, la pertenencia comunitaria de un conocimiento universal. Lo singular se une y funde en lo universal, y viceversa, éste se determina en lo concreto de la voz. Así pues, la significación es un momento del acto cognoscitivo, el instante o unidad íntima de la palabra plena, es decir, del sonido animado por una intención objetiva, y de la cosa. Dicho de otro modo, si la significación no fuera en sí misma cognoscente, tendríamos un acto fundado ajeno al conocer mismo. Por eso sostiene Husserl que todo nombre conoce nombrando (IL, II: 351) [564]. Conoce la capacidad objetiva que contiene en tanto posibilidad de extensión intuitivamente múltiple, facultad de nombrar algo actualmente bien como lo concreto y propio suyo bien, siendo también propio, como clase cuya comprensión admite una extensión plural de intuiciones concretas a modo de miembros de la clasificación establecida (IL, II: 352–353) [565]. Nombrar es referir la intención a un único y mismo objeto susceptible de múltiples intuiciones. Esa referencia consiste en elaborar una o varias síntesis perceptivas al tiempo que conoce el objeto. La significación propiamente dicha es esta síntesis en cuanto tiene ante sí, intuido, el campo objetivo en el que aparece la cosa o la situación ya por ello también objetivada. Y tal conocimiento es el acto de nombrar. Ahora bien, para que haya concepción propia se requiere además que la síntesis perceptiva, por una parte, y la congruencia de los actos intencionales e intuitivos, por otra, sobrepasen la unidad de vivencia íntima con lo nombrado y refieran también la identificación relacionante – Akt beziehenden Identifizierens (LU, II: 569)-, es decir, que la unidad vivida se manifieste en la conciencia intencional como identidad objetiva. Uno es el conocimiento unitario de la vivencia de los actos y otro el conocimiento real y relacionante de la identidad del objeto intencionado e intuido. La forma de unidad fenomenológica se muestra distinta según se trate de una coincidencia o de una donación simultánea o incluso de una identidad objeto ella misma de la conciencia intencionalmente relacionante. La relación identificadora es aquí una categoría ya propiamente cognoscitiva. Tal conocer se sobrepone al percibir sintético del nombrar también cognoscente por cuanto aquél añade a éste el cumplimiento de la esencia fenomenológica de la significación. Husserl distingue entre el instante fragmentario de la síntesis unitiva de la intención y de la intuición y la relación

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identificadora de ambas (IL, II: 357) [569]. A lo intuido le corresponde casi siempre un suplemento complementario de la intención significativa o un implemento intuitivo de lo insinuado por la intención vacía (IL, II: 409): “Erfüllung einer leeren, d. i. rein signitiven … Intention” (LU, II: 616). Significamos más de lo que intuimos o intuimos más de lo que inicialmente intendemos. Hay un plus dicente en la presentación objetiva de los hechos o un incremento objetivo de lo dicho, aún dicente. Parece, pues, que la intención es subsidiaria de la intuición impletiva en tanto conocimiento más pleno e integral. Sin embargo, tan pronto la intención se integra indivisa en la unidad plena de conocimiento, su dirección objetiva es asimismo intuición significante. La intención intuye tan pronto coincide su dirección con la del objeto intuido. Esa coincidencia la “sujeta” y fija reduciendo a “indiferencia” la libertad que antes tenía como “representar simbólico vacío” (IL, II: 359) – “das leere symbolische Vorstellung” (LU, II: 571) – o simple mentar algo de la significación. Se trata de una sujeción aún no realmente determinada, pero circunscrita a una dirección posible. Este carácter indiferente sobrepuesto a la determinación procesiva de lo intencionado confiere al sujeto una suspensión predicativa. El predicado será su complemento o, más bien, la exigencia de “un complemento no plenamente determinado, sino solo de una esfera definida por alguna ley”, tal como explica Husserl la indeterminación de las intenciones intuitivas (IL, II: 360) [572–573]. De hecho, y según vimos, el acto significante adquiere un rasgo creador ya señalado, una vez más, por W. von Humboldt y suscrito por teóricos del lenguaje como G. Gerber y G. von der Gabelentz. Husserl recoge también esta plusvalía significante: “una significación sólo es posible cuando hay una intuición dotada de una nueva esencia intencional, por medio de la cual el objeto intuitivo señala más allá de sí mismo en el modo de un signo” (IL, II: 411). 10 Por tanto, aunque indiferente a lo que la significación significa, el signo sería el incremento o “más allá” del objeto intuido en cuanto dotado “de una nueva esencia intencional”. Ya encierra en sí un complemento de orientación predicativa, pero dado, como veremos, sobre un fondo de resonancias sombrías. Husserl considera la posibilidad de que las intenciones signitivas tengan también un apoyo sensible como plenitud intuitiva suya. Sería plenitud, dice, del acto fundamentante, mas no del signitivo (IL, II: 418) [626], pero resulta que en tal acto fundamental, que no es otro que el de la relación del sonido, ya significante, al significado, o viceversa, se constituye el signo “como objeto intuitivo”; es decir, como objeto que remite a “una intuición dotada de

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una nueva esencia intencional”, según veíamos anteriormente. He aquí, de nuevo, el palpo intencional del signo. No obstante lo dicho, Husserl señala por otra parte que “el conocimiento de la situación objetiva intuida tiene lugar adecuándose la intención expresiva con los sonidos articulados asociados a ella” (IL, II: 534) [736–737]. ¿No será esta adecuación la plenitud sensible de la intención significativa, es decir, su acto fundante? No queremos decir que él funde la intención, pero sí que le dé un fundamento a su vez adecuado al acto significante que convierte aquella moción en fenómeno esencial o acto significativo. Lo adecuado de base adquiere, en cuanto unidad vivida – motivada o congruente-, confirmación objetiva de identidad relacionante al unirse con una intuición que transforma a la intención significante en propiamente intuitiva. Transforma el porque vivencial de la conexión motivada, no casual (IL, I: 317, 320),11 ni necesaria (Ibid.: 319), en fundamento objetivo de una identidad entre el acto resultante y el objeto que aprehende. Es entonces cuando la cosa dice más allá de sí misma a modo de signo y resulta objeto propio de conocimiento. El sonido elevado a significante en razón de una intuición significativa “vive” de algún modo la adecuación que lo funda. Participa de una experiencia anterior a la reflexión que lo explica, experiencia “fundadora” e intersubjetiva, que tiene tipos de efectuación sintáctica aún exentos de la formalización conceptual y gramatical de las categorías del juicio. Existe una sintaxis antepredicativa con analogías en la afectividad fundante (Husserl, 1981: 188). Hay también una materialidad común en la unidad sintética de experiencia. ¿No participa el sonido de ella en cuanto plenitud sensible de la intuición significativa? Si es así, el palpo del signo ya antecede materialmente a su fundamentación significante o es ésta misma en cuanto materia recurrente y resonadora. Husserl abstrae esta materialidad previa de experiencia sintácticamente antepredicativa. Lo hace en aras de la intuición dinámica dirigida a un estadio intuitivo, siendo así que, en tal dirección, ya constituye el lecho de la objetividad cognoscente. La intuición actuante y objetiva no puede conocer nada, sino sólo presentarlo, sin ese recorrido interno de la intención significativa. A su vez, ésta se queda en el vacío o en representación pura, imaginada, “como cáscara vacía sin el núcleo intuitivo” (IL, II: 533) [736], sin el tacto objetivo o alcalce impletivo de su dinámica. Tal es el campo objetivante del signo. Ahora bien, a la materialidad de la síntesis antepredicativa y sintáctica de la experiencia previa pertenece la reconducción adecuada del sonido hacia

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un significado posible. Husserl deja fuera la materia puramente sonora y sólo retiene su imagen o eco temporal en cuanto expresión ya no dotada del carácter de existencia real, carácter sólo propio del signo comunicativo, que es también señal. Pero un sonido recordado ya es, viene a decir Nietzsche (1973: 68), tal vez con eco de G. Gerber, un concepto sonoro, y crea, como vio Ortega y Gasset partiendo de J. Stenzel y W. Schapp (Domínguez Rey, 2000a: 276–277), una profundidad perceptiva, un fondo de resonancia temporal. En este punto, se impone recordar las distinciones analíticas que Nietzsche introduce en la percepción sonora, coincidentes, de algún modo, con el primer plano de la reducción fenomenológica que Husserl hace también del sonido. Para Nietzsche, el sonido expresa, en cuanto volumen dicente, el genio de la existencia – “der Genius des Daseins an sich” – y la entidad de la cosa – “das Wesen des Dinges” (Nietzsche, 1973: 67, 68). Ahora bien, al recordarlo en la memoria, el sonido pierde por entero su realidad vibrante, la eferencia anímica del aliento – debemos entender nosotros – y de él sólo queda en el recuerdo la imagen o representación concomitante de los gestos de la boca al articularlo como voz sonora. Tal imagen es apariencia de la esencia – “die Erscheinnung des Wesens”. El sonido recordado como límite y diferencia marcada por los gestos fonadores – los rasgos fónicos de la lingüística – ya es un concepto, pues se distingue de otros y designa sus unidades. Aquello que el hombre designa y distingue, lo concibe, concluye Nietzsche: “Was man bezeichnen und unterscheiden kann, das ‘begreift’ man” (1973: 68). He aquí, pues, la esencia de la Sinnesartikulation y la base conceptual de la lingüística moderna a partir de Saussure y del estructuralismo. El significante lingüístico reduce la actitud natural de la voz y retiene los gestos o figuras corporales que lo articulan. Son éstas marcas precisas del recuerdo que perfilan los límites de unos y otros sonidos. Las comparamos delimitando sus contornos y perfiles y, al hacer esto, ya conceptualizamos la articulación sonora. El momento conceptivo del significante lo sitúa, por tanto, en un orden de significancia. Por eso Nietzsche considera al sonido, en otro texto, como metáfora segunda de una imagen que ya metaforiza, a su vez, una excitación nerviosa, pues, al sentir y percibir, saltamos de uno a otro orden nuevo y diferente de cosas: “Und jedesmal vollständiges Ueberspringen der Sphäre, mitten hinein in eine ganz andere und neue” (Nietzsche, 1973: 373). La realidad estimula en nosotros una excitación nerviosa que traducimos en imagen, primera metáfora, y a ésta, a su vez, en sonido: segunda metáfora. Parece, pues, que haya algún momento o instante de desconexión ontológica

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al saltar del influjo excitante de la realidad a su representación constitutiva. Esta continuidad entre el flujo nervioso, dependiente del contacto con lo real, y el dinamismo genético de la representación como figura interna de las sensaciones, contraparte del sonido, aunque también le afecta, la recibe Nietzsche, parece ser, del círculo humboldtiano a través de G. Gerber (Conill, 1997: 40). El lenguaje queda en medio como una red que atrapa al pensamiento. La metáfora sonora viene a ser una creación perceptiva originada por el lapso y la desconexión óntica del entendimiento respecto de la realidad que lo impresiona. Conocer sería entonces crear en un vacío intermitente. Ahora bien, ¿es el salto metafórico una grieta o una imanación generada por el impulso de los sentidos? Quede en suspensión, por el momento, este interrogante. El salto metafórico de Nietzsche es, de algún modo, el correlato perceptivo de la transcendencia fenomenológica de Husserl. Lo perdido u olvidado en un caso, la transcontinuidad fenoménica en otro, dejan tras de sí una huella perceptiva que induce una moción profunda en el conocimiento. Atraen o convierten el tiempo durativo en fenómeno, como dice Husserl en Die Idee der Phänomenologie (1973a: 68). Su conversión pasa, no obstante, por una fase de ensombrecimiento – “Abschattung” – que el presente de su duración continuamente variada contiene. Husserl tampoco explica el fermento de las sombras acústicas en la fase perceptiva del conocimiento. El fondo del presente sonoro en la conciencia es sombrío. También queda él de algún modo reducido, pues el fenómeno sólo retiene la apariencia, el resultado final que se manifiesta y delinea como escorzo. Sería ello algo similar a la lenta configuración de la imagen recuperada en el fondo oscuro de una pantalla virtual. Quedan ausentes para el conocimiento los intersticios de las sombras, sus ecos. Descubrimos así otra fase impensada de la reducción obtenida. Sobre ella acaece el salto de la metáfora nietzscheana y la constitución fenomenológica de Husserl. Se entiende, pues, que lo objetivo no sea trozo real – “kein reelles Stück” – del fenómeno surgente, pero que sí se exponga en él: “Es stellt sich darin dar und ist darin als ‘seiend’ evident gegeben” (1973a: 68). Tal evidencia acontece, sin embargo, como veíamos, en un lecho de sombras intermitentes. Sólo es evidente el resultado, el escorzo final de la apariencia, no el proceso constituyente.12 Husserl educe un punto sonoro en el ahora recordado, duradero, del sonido y lo transforma en un ver – “das Schauen” – que lo sobrepasa. La conciencia ve sobre la capa de los ecos, de las sombras sonoras, y lo realmente alcanzado como visión es “lo no más ahora siendo en cada nuevo ahora”, ausencia vivida con certeza evidente de pasado, de la cual

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surge la intención retencional y la evidencia de lo dado: “Und liegt darin [en la duración] nicht wiederum, dass das Schauen über den reinen Jetztpunkt hinausreicht, also das nicht mehr jetzt Seiende im jeweiligen neuen Jetzt intentional festzuhalten und einer Vergangenheitsstrecke in der Weise evidenter Gegebenheit gewiss zu werden vermag?” (1973a: 67). La evidencia fenomenológica es la certeza del pasado, de lo que ya no hay, y este no ser está siendo en la conciencia. Algo lo proyecta o subtiende, por tanto, y en ello acontece la intuición. ¿Sobre el vacío? ¿De dónde le llega, entonces, el ser constituyente? Dura el sonido y dura el fenómeno en que aparece. Pero tal fenómeno es ya una distensión retroproyectiva. El sonido muta en tiempo concipiente. Correlaciona un fuera-dentro resonante, pues, al recordarlo, sigue siendo un cúmulo de ecos sombríos más allá de la frescura inicial del origen y más acá de la fantasía. Se crea así un nexo, el nudo del signo, que pide duración tensional, continuada. La cuestión sigue siendo este rasgo tensional que afecta incluso a la intención objetiva. El no ser ya más ahora de lo que está siendo fenómeno es también en Husserl lo trascendente del acontecimiento transcendental. La evidencia acaece sobre una duración sombría de intersticios. Nos quedamos con la donación de su certeza, algo subjetivo al fin y al cabo. Pero parece que esto sucede en toda conciencia transcendental: estamos seguros del paso del tiempo en cada ahora perceptivo. La intención donada salta sobre el tiempo y el salto es su evidencia. Ahí iniciamos la constitución de las formas. Así se presenta, pues, el quid esencial de la significación en cuanto tránsito perceptivo de la duración y extensión sonoras. Tal concepto contiene la moción propia de su realidad internamente conceptiva. Va hacia alguna parte y no sólo hacia la vivencia vibrante que lo excitó, sino hacia algo diverso, estimulado por algo distinto de sí mismo, naciente en ese espaciotiempo. El sonido no existe como tal fuera de la percepción que lo constituye. Su ser sonoro es concebido, no sólo oído. La pérdida de frescura sonora activa una frecuencia que sirve de fondo percipiente. La tensión de fondo a que aludíamos es el tiempo, incluso biológico, de la conciencia. Cuando Nietzsche dice que el sonido recordado es ya un concepto, supone una transmutación de valor sonoro al entrar el sonido en la órbita transcendental de la conciencia dicente y anunciarse, en cuanto dado, como otra cosa. Adquiere un “indicio” nuevo, pues remite a una conceptualización suya y, al mismo tiempo, a un pasado de ecos y sombras aún resonantes en el recuerdo. La remisión está concibiendo y esta concepción mienta algo sobre el espaciotiempo así abierto en la conciencia. Tenemos,

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pues, un concepto anterior al significado propiamente dicho y al concepto lógico de la palabra. Se da en ello la distinción ya citada de Husserl entre transcendental y trascendente – lo dado en la conciencia (1976: 142). La donación incide, es índice de otra cosa ya diferente del sonido reducido: la constitución significante. Lo retenido protiende y apresenta induciendo una moción nueva en lo recordado. Aunque haya una neutralización posicional de existencia y frescura originaria, la moción es real y protiende en el significante un valor de signo. Su modificación específica aporta realidad emergente. Es hylética, el momento hyle de la significación, un continuo emergente de transformaciones acotadas como significados. Husserl se acerca así a una consideración noemática del significante y de su unión solidaria con el significado, siendo el signo primeramente una modificación de la cosa (1976: 210) y después una unidad expresiva de cuerpo – “Leib” – y alma – “Seele” –, un objeto animado: begeistetes Objekt (1952: 236 ss). La articulación de sentido o Sinnesartikulation termina para Husserl en proceso emergente de cuerpo rítmicamente animado (1952: 240–241). Pero tanto la expresión como la materia animada reciben su moción significativa de un sentido espiritualizante: Der geistige Sinn (Husserl, 1952: 238). Aquélla transparenta y conceptualiza el significado en las primeras Ideas de Husserl (1976: 257, 258–259). Le corresponde incluso la función de recortar el sentido o núcleo noemático trayéndolo al reino del Logos, es decir, generalizándolo, pero el recorte no supone ninguna plusvalía por más que confiera expresión a todas las demás intencionalidades sin ser ya un barniz o revestimiento suyo. El cuerpo es animado en el segundo libro de las Ideas – “Leib” – por la aparición rítmica de aquel sentido. Reconoce entonces que la unión fenoménica del sonido y del sentido, que son, a su vez, unidades reales en sí mismas, forman otra unidad irreal. En la percepción hay una capa procesual de conformación expresiva anterior a la donación propia, de tal modo que las formas nodulares de unidades más altas dependen de otras inferiores (Husserl, 1952: 245). Esta prelación se corresponde también con el reconocimiento de una capa irreflexiva de yo vivo, ein unreflektiertes Bewusstsein (Husserl, 1952:248), donde estarían, a nuestro juicio, los ecos y las sombras de la duración sonora y resonante del sonido recordado. Y aunque cambia el lenguaje empleado y Husserl se inclina por la sensación eferente, el transfondo fenomenológico de la significación sigue respondiendo al de las Investigaciones Lógicas. El tacto aquí considerado anuncia la cadena de unidades correlativas hacia una expresividad que funciona después como presupuesto de la constitución fundante de la realidad y descubre asimismo la presencia anticipadora del otro (Husserl, 1952: 245).

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También se esboza aquí el dinamismo interno que está actuando en la intuición husserliana como movida por una fuerza no evidente y que luego se mostrará, en la capa afectiva previa a la reflexión, como una alegría – “Freude” – impensada (Husserl, 1952: 248). Las implicaciones hasta aquí reseñadas nos permitieron situar el intersticio impensado de la relación significante del pensamiento, lo que F. de Saussure denominó, sin resolver el enigma, a pesar de la imagen acústica, “penséeson”, la unidad conceptual perceptivamente sonora. Al traerlo a presencia, el sonido resuena internamente de algún modo: hacia fuera, donde fue motivado, y hacia dentro, donde busca algo que no tiene. Resuena en una dinámica preconstituyente, convocado por una voluntad refleja y expresiva. Posee, por tanto, una doble condición de fuera-dentro previa a cualquier determinación de significado. Funciona como a priori perceptivo que convierte la materialidad del significante en sustancia y fondo resonante de la objetividad significativa. Es algo más que simple “imagen acústica”, denominación de Saussure para caracterizar la sustancia sonora formalizada. Al ser convocado por la voluntad dicente, parece, pues, que ya está dotado, en cuanto sonido, de una potencia o disponibilidad significante. La voluntad no precisa reconvertirlo en moción conceptiva cada vez que lo convoca. Ya viene moldeado, concebido. Esta donación previa actúa también en su carácter interno de posibilidad expresiva de la significación concipiente. La búsqueda no está siempre, sin embargo, motivada por la intuición intencional, sino que ella misma obedece a la dinámica interna de la moción conceptiva que atesora, como es el caso en la creación poética del lenguaje, por ejemplo en la generación fónica de significados. La cualidad sonora del sonido verbal no procede del objeto que notifica o intuye, sino de la sustancia corpórea que lo articula. Es voz y contiene, por ello, una referencia apelativa y expresiva anterior al significante considerado como relativo de una significación determinada y propia. El significante se constituye incluso en esa referencia apelativa del sonido. El hombre se da cuenta, en cierto momento, de que los sonidos corporales emitidos en relación con las cosas del entorno a mano pueden designarlas. Supone ello una conversión de la imagen del propio sonido, o del ajeno, entre otras ya dadas – olfativas, táctiles, visuales-, en vehículo representante de la cosa. El sonido se transforma entonces en voz y continúa metonímicamente la percepción natural ya codificada. La voz responde como expresión a la taxia sensitiva y es figura sensible y espontánea de la impresión del mundo en el cuerpo, mutado también en voluntad cognoscente. Se da una transubstanciación, un recubrimiento de la materia sonora en voz expresiva,

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principio real del significante del signo. La voz es el sonido natural del cuerpo humano y comporta una dirección expresiva que contiene, a su vez, no sólo una congruencia, sino una taxia específica con el medio articulado y percibido. Es la taxia fundante del dinamismo kinésico y de la apropiación hermenéutica que todo aprendiz de una lengua presupone. La hermenéutica fenomenológica ya asiste al proceso originario del lenguaje. El poeta español J. Ramón Jiménez, Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1956, vio y sintió con armonía cósmica este a priori fenomenológico y hermenéutico de la voz y de la palabra. Escuchémoslo: Palabra mía que hoy eres a mi alma igual que el azul a los ojos, que a la nariz la rosa, que la fuente al oído, que la granada al gusto, que al tacto la mujer … Mañana te miraré con mi cuarta cara de demonio, y serás cual nube de oro y de armonía que el sol poniente – corazón- cayéndose -palabras mías sin mi lenguahizo ceniza. (Jiménez, 1999: 54).

Sin la vivencia de la voz, el ocaso convierte la “profondeur” de la palabra en resto ceniciento de un instante congruente de plenitud cósmica. Pero aún consumida, la palabra surge, como el Ave Fénix, de sus propias cenizas. Y esta resurrección continua en el habla le otorga carácter universal dentro de su coto o parcela individualizada de existencia. Alcanza el concreto universal o la universalidad concreta. Ningún otro fenómeno del ser humano o de la naturaleza dispone de este don extraordinario. Escuchemos de nuevo al poeta citado: ¡Palabra, cáliz único, único pecho, urna sola, el olor de una rosa es en ti el de todas las rosas, la voz de una mujer, la voz de todas las mujeres, el de una luz, el de las luces todas … palabra, eterno olor, eterna luz, música eterna! (Jiménez, 1999: 55).

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Todos los atributos quedan contenidos en una única exclamación, como la eternidad misma. ¿Qué es, entonces, o en qué consiste esa duración momentánea que dura eternamente aunque sea consumida con la luz del ocaso? Esta pregunta sólo obtiene respuesta desde el significante ontopoético, donde el signo palpa la realidad con taxia de vibración eternamente resonante. Pero esto presupone recuperar el mundo perdido en la retracción mercantil y consumista de la palabra. Requiere devolver a la voz su energía fundante, el ritmo vibrátil que la crea. Y esto no es fácil, porque nos movemos ya en las cenizas del ocaso, perdidos entre los restos del origen, ausentes de la llamada originaria y ontopoética. La creación poética la aviva de vez en cuando recordándonos con memoria creativa que el ente del lenguaje es rítmico. La donación significante previa favorece el acto significativo porque la voz articula sonidos anteriormente donados, dotados ya de una expresividad y fecundidad conceptiva. Husserl concibe una primordialidad kinésica y constituyente en protogrado desde el seno materno. Las cosas nacen para el niño kinésicamente (Hurssel, 1973b: 604–605). A ese orden pertenece también el sonido del lenguaje y fundamenta en su período de aprendizaje un arco hermenéutico de gran importancia para la fenomenología del sonido (Domínguez Rey, 2000b: 21–25). La referencia apelativo-expresiva no la recibe el significante de una intención abstraída de su fondo resonante, pues éste ya la precede. Cuando intuimos algo, queremos presentarlo como objeto y en este acto subyace otro de constitución objetiva de cualquier presencia determinada. La intuición no procede ni requiere resonancia de fondo, pero su conocimiento sí, porque no hay intuición cognoscitiva sin intención significante. Y al significante pertence aquel grado o protogrado de llamada expresiva en el contexto de una experiencia fundadora y antepredicativa. Por mucho que abstraigamos la señal comunicativa del signo para determinar su esencia significante, el carácter resonador de la expresión conceptual no anula la fonación alterativa de la intención significante. Al contrario, se constituye en ella. El significante es sonido apresentado, traído a presencia en el instante mismo de conocer “la situación objetiva intuida”, según veíamos antes (IL, II: 534) [736–737). Pero el conocimiento no puede darse sin esa dimensión de llamada fuera de su propio campo interno. En tal llamada acontece como fondo resonante la expresividad alterativa. El objeto resuena y su vibración es la voz articulada que lo anuncia y presenta. El carácter dinámico del signo choca en Husserl con la subordinación de la palabra al pensamiento, como si la formación de aquélla quedara acotada con relación al proceso de éste. Una cosa es, cierto, el pensamiento realizado al

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formar una palabra y, otra, el pensamiento que le corresponde a tal palabra ya construida como significado. Pero al formar una palabra, algo queda en ella, y en sus partes, del pensamiento que la constituye. Se da aquí una forma formante. Pensar una palabra supone introducirla en un conjunto verbal de significación homogénea. Al pensarla, no le otorgamos el pensamiento que contiene. Al pensar la palabra conejo, no constituimos el objeto conejo, pero sí un objeto verbal que entra en una relación homogénea en la que el conejo es significado por ella. Al decir vo, es cierto también que aún no determinamos un pensamiento específico de lengua, pero reconocemos una unidad formante y perteneciente a un conjunto, diferenciada de otros conjuntos sonoros, como el chino, el sueco, etc. Reconocemos en ella un campo de pertenencia y presencia posible en algunas palabras: vo-luntad, volar, vo-cerío, etc. No es raíz propia, dotada de una fuerza implícita conectora, presintáctica o incluso propiamente sintáctica, pero va incluida en un proceso dinámico de voz. No formamos la palabra y, “cuando ya está lista, acude el pensamiento”, como dice Husserl (IL, II: 108),13 sino que, al constituirla, fundamos un campo creciente de sentido en el que se dará un pensamiento determinado o significado suyo. Ya estamos en un ámbito de pertenencia de sentido. Si no existiera esta orientación originaria de campo pertinente, la sílaba vo no se daría, como no se da wo en español, por ejemplo. Este presentido procede de la unidad sintética de experiencia antepredicativa, que ya incluye una relación entre sujetos, la apelación o llamada del otro, que también la precede. En esto se verifica asimismo una unidad concordante de experiencia según la comunidad de esencia o sentido dado en “la unidad sintética de la experiencia”, que Husserl antecede como implícita conveniencia material entre el sujeto y el predicado anterior a la identidad que éste sanciona como cualidad objetivante (Husserl, 1981: 194–195). Al abstraer esta pertinencia alterativa para determinar la unidad esencial del signo, aún nos movemos de acuerdo con la moción expresiva que ella comporta como fecundación de la mente o concepto. El sonido apresentado es acorde corporal y kinésico de aquel concierto de la experiencia. Los poemas antes citados de J. Ramón Jiménez lo confirman. La doble articulación lingüística nos muestra, por tanto, unidades básicas aún no significativas – los fonemas y sílabas premonemáticas – que, sin embargo, se inscriben en un campo de presentido o sentido antepredicativo de la experiencia. Pero esta esfera o dominio de resonancia ya comienza en la formación del feto, que recibe las ondas sonoras de la madre o del entorno a través del cuerpo de ésta, según demuestra la psicolingúística (Locke, 1995. El sonido táxico es primordial respecto de la onda fotónica y de la imagen

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especular. Se forma kinésicamente en la misma “unidad concordante de experiencia posible”, antes citada. Siendo esto así, la moción significante ya actúa en la conformación del pensamiento como resonancia de aquella síntesis de experiencia. Descubrimos las unidades esenciales en un fondo resonante de afecto predicativo. Este fondo precede como “evidencia” antepredicativa a toda forma de juicio (Husserl, 1981: 186). Su protogrado alterativo aún perdura e induce mociones cuando la reflexión lo reduce y educe la identidad relacionante que contiene y promueve. Tal es el efecto re de la reflexión mental al re-pre-sentar(se) algo. En sus pliegues acontecen las cadenas procesivas y retroyectivas – sintagmáticas y paradigmáticas – del lenguaje. El efecto re muestra la presencia del pasado ya disminuido en tensión aún sonora de futuro. No copia lo sido, sino que aviva en presencia de pensamiento el rescoldo de lo que fue función viviente. Presenta como apresente un pasado que induce nuevo presente de sí mismo. Así sucede ya en el acto articulatorio de la voz significante. El aire inspirado es respirado como voz dicente que articula un espacio y tiempo kinésicos en forma sonora que remite sobre el cuerpo que la produce. Se crea entonces el arco fenomenológico del sonido articulado. El cuerpo mismo recibe lo que ha producido en una simultaneidad kinésica de emisión receptora. El hablante oye al tiempo que articula. Pero esta simultaneidad incluye además una recepción doble, la efectuada como resonancia interna del sonido en el cuerpo y la recibida a través del aire por el conducto auditivo. El arco acústico produce una unidad receptiva que atesora en su dentro el fuera que hace un instante había sido. He aquí un fenómeno de síntesis alterativa en la mismidad del acto articulatorio. El hablante reconoce además su pertenencia al orbe comunitario de habla y pensamiento al saber que articula según la síntesis de experiencia ya donada como enseñanza intersubjetiva. Su sonido es el sonido de Otro en comunidad de existencia que descubre otra esencia. Más que la mano sobre la mano que transfiere la huella de su tacto al de otro que la toca – transferencia aún alter ego de la Leiblichkeit husserliana (1952: 144–147)-, el arco acústico reconoce en el vano de su entredós la voz propia como de Otro, o viceversa, la de Otro como propia. Las ondas de su voz transcurren siendo a la par un propio-otro y un propio-mismo. Otro en cuanto salen del cuerpo y retornan a él vibrando; mismo en tanto salen resonando en el cuerpo que las produce. Son sensaciones que aún duran y vibran: “Berührungsempfindungen, die noch nachklingen”, dice Husserl de la mano tocada y ya distante (1952: 146). Los niños conocen este efecto repetitivo de la cualidad sonora mismamente

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ajena. Ahora bien, el reconocimiento de la articulación correcta supone el reconocimiento de Otro, la otra voz, en uno mismo. Hay tacto, contacto y contagio de la voz alterativa. Tacto del aire común respirado por todos, al margen de la diferencia verbal de las lenguas. Contacto de ondas, vibraciones y resonancias kinésicas en el sentir común de la percepción singular, donde el sujeto hablante que se escucha se extraña al mismo tiempo del otro que lo visita. Contacto del movimiento común, en consonancia con Hegel en la Phänomenologie des Geistes (1998: 377). Y contagio de la escucha receptiva, en la que la desaparición del sonido es su permanencia, “su saber de sí como de uno que ha pasado a otro de sí mismo, que ha sido escuchado y que es universal”, en contacto con aquellos “para los que existe” y con quienes coexiste (Hegel, 1998: 376). Si hay una acción simultánea entre los actos del conocimiento de una situación objetivamente intuida y de la adecuación de la intención expresiva con los sonidos articulados y asociados a ella (IL, II: 534) [737]; si, por otra parte, la significación comporta una “intuición dotada de una nueva esencia intencional” y ésta induce el “más allá de sí mismo” del objeto intuido (IL, II: 411) [619], parece, entonces, que lo objetivamente intuido conlleva una intención que lo altera expresándolo. En tal alteración expresiva se produce el sonido como concepto o significante de la “nueva esencia intencional”. La expresión une y funde lo que la flecha intuitiva parecía reducir y separar objetivamente. Mantiene tenso el extrañamiento alterativo. Al significante le corresponde, en tal caso, su parte conceptiva en cuanto sonido recordado, a-presentado en función de una resonancia expresiva. El trozo de palabra “carece, en efecto, de toda significación” (IL, II: 108) – “er ist eben bedeutungslos” (LU, I: 316)-, pero está inmerso en la consonancia expresiva. En el espacio o entretiempo del “pensée-son” saussureano se abre así un abismo de interpretación perceptiva, un mundo subliminal de síntesis recurrentes y superpuestas de actos en sucesión traslapada. La onda intrauterina subtiende un fondo kinésico de percepción irrefleja. Es un significante de vibraciones metonímicas incrustado en la carne sentiente o Leiblichkeit que nos predispone a unos gestos y sonidos más que a otros. A este significante se sobrepone otro prelingüístico u onda sonora dotada ya de un presentido de pertinencia, como en el caso de la repetición fónica y del “babillage” del niño. A él se une el significante colingüístico, sinestésico y semiótico, dotado de una taxia múltiple: auditivo-gustativo-olfativo-táctilvisual-kinésico. Tendríamos, por último, el significante propiamente lingüístico, en el que la metonimia de fondo se metaforiza y el sonido recordado articula una huella resonante de significancia. Nace, entonces, el

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sujeto (des)codificador y la reducción fenomenológica, que ya es metalingüística. Veíamos más arriba que Husserl concibe un momento de “unidad en sí indivisa” en la coincidencia cognoscente de la intención significativa y de la intuición impletiva, cumplimentadora. Unidad, por otra parte, fragmentaria respecto del conjunto complementario e hipotético que las dos partes pudieran formar. Los complementos signitivos e impletivos no coinciden, ni sabemos en razón de qué lo intuido cumple la intención, como si ésta fuera un molde donde encajara el perímetro y relieve del objeto. Hay un momento intuitivo de la diferencia operado por el conocimiento integrador de la coincidencia de la intención significativa de la expresión y de la intuición. De ella procede la dispersión diferenciada como “miembros desplegándose en el tiempo” (IL, II: 358),14 donde hemos de situar, entendemos, la articulación tanto sonora cuanto sintáctica. El acto complejo de conocimiento reduce, por otra parte, según veíamos anteriormente, la libertad de la “intuición significativa” del “representar simbólico vacío” – ya se han fundido las dos flechas, la intendente y la intuicionante – a “indiferencia” “sujeta” en el instante coincidente (IL, II: 358) [571]. Nos extraña que la unidad indivisa retenga indiferente a una de las partes así unidas, como si el sujeto no difiriera del predicado, o viceversa, como si fueran iguales, siendo así que, por principio, lo intencionado e intuido son real y existencialmente desiguales: mentado uno, intuido como existente otro. Ahora bien, ¿cómo pueden unirse si una de las partes resulta indiferente? Ya sabemos que sólo la cosa objetiva lo es, no la propiedad que la caracteriza. Hegel entrevió esta indiferencia de la igualdad en el juicio idéntico, “en el que una y la misma personalidad es tanto sujeto como predicado”, sin que tengan nada que ver entre sí “y sin unidad necesaria” (Hegel, 1998: 385). Husserl relaciona semejante indiferencia con la indeterminación intuitiva de las intenciones (IL, II: 360) [573]. La tensión de éstas, que no coincide con la de una expectación (IL, II: 361),15 se apaga en la percepción estática y sólo se aviva con la fluencia del movimiento perceptivo, abocado a la presencia neutra de la cosa (IL, II: 361–362) [574]. La intención intuye cuando ya está ordenada previamente a un todo o conjunto, como sucede en el caso de la melodía. Y la intuición intenciona, pero su potencia cognoscitiva reduce y aplana la tensión indiferenciándola. Husserl reconoce “cierta modificación” derivada de este cumplimiento identificador, pero no es una moción elativa como la que transforma el sonido en significante, sino, en realidad, una absorción de potencia intuitiva. La intención cumplidora de una intención es una intuición (IL, II: 360) [572]. En el acto que cumple e implementa otro

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acto intencional se da un ver intuitivo. Vemos la conexión y este ver es un tacto intelectual. La cosa se presenta así como una fundición de escorzos en el perfil, perímetro o volumen de su presencia. Es kinésica, sinestésica y ontológica. Trasmentamos lo percibido. Pero ese tránsito se reduce a descubrir la ley implícita en el horizonte ya abierto por la parte en él incursa. Son horizontes ya previstos, pero encubiertos por la niebla perceptiva. La indeterminación afecta, nos decía Husserl, a la exigencia de “un complemento no plenamente determinado, sino solo de una esfera definida por alguna ley” (IL, II: 360) [573]. Son sinécdoques. La parte contiene el todo implícito como frontera suya complementaria. Por eso trasmentamos la cosa. La trasmentamos intención tras intención, siendo este tras momento fundante de una conexión intuitiva, donde se da la cosa. Hay, por tanto, un entretiempo en el trasmentar, un salto en el vacío ontológico de la intuición, cuyo ente u ontos consiste más en la vivencia de salir hacia que en el término de la salida. La indiferencia de la intuición “sujeta” en la igualdad del cumplimiento es desmayo en el fondo “indistinto” de la conciencia identificadora, pero hay que saber a cuánto renuncia la tensión de la intención para aquietarse intuitivamente viendo o sintiendo el instante fragmentario del tacto así vibrante. ¿Es la cosa el aquietamiento intuitivo de sus intenciones significativas? ¿No remite una intención a otra más allá de su completud intuitiva? El desmayo aludido sería más bien una caída o cadencia, una inmersión o conexión ontológica con el flujo abierto como horizonte. La sinécdoque de la parte responde a una metonimia o proceso emergente en principio indiferenciado, pero poco a poco sujeto en razón de la taxia o cesura del ritmo así constituido: articulación fónica, onda tonal, sintagma procesivo y acumulado – paradigma-, campo de atribuciones, nódulos categoriales, ámbito predicativo, etc. La sujeción acontece en proceso e implica estancias interiores que descubren parámetros rítmicos en sintonía fenoménica con la situación objetivada, lo cual no quiere decir que se iguale o confunda con ella. La ley antes aludida no es otra cosa que la regulación existencial del proceso en el hay básico u óntico de cada instante del cuerpo animado o Leiblichkeit. De ello derivan las implicaciones biológicas de la conciencia y las ontológicas del cuerpo. Así entendemos el lenguaje como órgano del pensamiento, en sentido humboldtiano. En realidad lo subtiende, como dice Nietzsche, un “Ello piensa” y tal ello ya implica una interpretación que no forma parte del proceso (Nietsche, 1968: 25). El tema se forma rematizado y la hermenéutica asiste al parto del ser y su explicación o plegamiento antropológico.

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Si las cosas coincidieran con sus intenciones, anulada la “nueva esencia intencional” que las cubre (IL, II: 411) [619], todos entenderíamos lo mismo en lo mismo que vemos. Si la igualdad lógica supone el desvanecimiento de la intención significativa por fusión abductora suya en el objeto intuido y correspondiente, la identidad relativa supondría la subsunción del fondo alterativo que traslapa a la igualdad como signo y también la reducción anuladora de la distancia y del tiempo articulado. He aquí, pues, otro arco cognoscitivo que tiende, esta vez, a cerrarse en círculo o esfera, según prive el nivel lineal del conocimiento o la vibración sentiente de la vivencia. Husserl admite una anticipación o posibilidad a priori de “identificación relacionante” en toda “vivencia de unidad” de una “coincidencia identificadora”, y ello “aunque falte la intención consciente hacia la identidad” (IL, II: 357) [570]. La vivencia de lo coincidente, superpuesto o imbricado, abre un acceso franco a la conciencia volente que busca la identidad impletiva. Alguna moción comporta, pues, esta vivencia abocada a un complemento intencional que se funde trasmentando. Husserl está presuponiendo una energeia predicativa del sentimiento vivencial orientado, como dice Ortega y Gasset (1983: 259),16 a la búsqueda de un sujeto, donde descansa y repone su fatiga voluntariosa, hasta el punto de perder, en el caso de Husserl, su individualidad (IL, II: 359) [572]. Al expresar lo que sentimos, predicamos la identidad estática y determinamos la distinción diferenciada. Hay un punto de conexión o palpo fragmentario. Al vivir la síntesis de coincidencia o congruencia de actos perceptivos, se abre una panorámica hacia la frontera de su enlace identificador. En el mismo punto de vivencia sentiente, viéndo(se) sentir, surge un arco iris que pliega la voluntad a la ley implícita de cuanto sucede. Ese despliegue de la vivencia ya intencionalmente predicativa es el decurso del “nombrar cognoscitivo” (IL, II: 358), “des erkennenden Nennes” (LU, II: 570), por cuanto su moción complementaria va moldeando el carácter categorial de un acto fundente (IL, II: 357) [569], y fundante. El sentir concluye en ver indiferenciado cuya indeterminación sobrevuela el espacio hasta que cae presa o “sujeta” en las redes legales que las retículas del objeto tejen sobre las sombras como escorzos de su presencia. Se muestra así un objeto cosificado o un bulto cósico que se esclarece en el espacio y decurso objetivo, constituyente de la objetividad misma. La vivencia ata en término cuanto intuye y posibilita en origen. La desmembración de las partes, de la diferencia – la expresión dentro o al margen del conocimiento, como sonido o significante-, es la deuda del tiempo, nos decía antes Husserl (IL, II: 358) [571]. El tiempo desmembra la unidad de sentido y vivencia, pero también la funde y funda. Al desgranar en

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sonido la expresión significativa, también articulamos en el espacio corporal la unidad de su movimiento, temporalizándolo. El sonido articulado como voz no existe fuera del arco percipiente. Aunque no tengamos la imagen del jardín, al oír su nombre nace un paraje que lo sitúa y ubica, floreciendo. Teniéndola, al nombrarla, también brota, como conocimiento expresante, la síntesis kinésica que cada cuerpo emite ubicado en una unidad de experiencia. El sonido voz es el concepto vibrante de la carne sentiente, el palpo del tiempo, el relieve de la idea, anota el poeta Cl. Rodríguez analizando el ritmo de Les Illuminations de A. Rimbaud: “La palabra “significa” en la medida que “suena” (Cl. Rodríguez, 2001: 75).17 Y en ello consiste también la ontopoética del significante: vibración ontológica de la voz en ritmo de existencia. Sin el pliegue mínimo de una cadencia originariamente rítmica, aunque la caída se produzca entre los salientes de una grieta, por donde respira lo oculto o impensado, la sombra de un ritmo posible, no existe fundación del pensamiento. Sus significados son muchas veces ausencias rítmicas, búsqueda del fondo resonante. Pero a este ritmo siempre le falta la curva decisiva que lo cierre y clausure como repetición clónica de sí mismo. Es abierto, terminalmente discontinuo, pues ninguno de sus giros contiene totalmente la vibración que anuncia y libera. Cuanto más perfecto, más lejano aún de la fuente vibratoria. El ansia de búsqueda en la lejanía, pasada o futura, aun cuando se trate de una presencia viva, es uno de sus principales atributos. Madrid N OT E S 1

Citamos por la traducción española de las Investigaciones Lógicas (IL) añadiendo el tomo correspondiente, I ó II, según la referencia de la bibliografia general. A veces incluimos también la página del texto correspondiente a la edición alemana (LU, I ó II), que va entre corchetes cuando sigue a la española. “Alle Erfahrungseinheit, als empirische Einheit des Dinges, des Vorganges, der dinglichen Ordnung und Beziehung, ist phänomenale Einheit durch die fühlbare Zusammengehörigkeit der sich einheitlich heraushebenden Teile und Seiten der erscheinenden Gegenständlichkeit” (LU, I: 36). 2 La palabra fühlbar, “ein fühlbarer Zusammenhang”, dice Husserl (Ibid.), indica el carácter sensible, y táctil, de la conexión. Un tacto, no obstante, peculiar, porque refiere más el contenido interno resultante que un objeto propio de la sensibilidad externa. Husserl distingue dos momentos cruciales, la vivencia como contenido o contenidos vividos, que son la base real sobre la que se organiza el objeto ahí naciente de la conciencia ya en tanto unidad intencional de la implicación mutua, copertenencia y coexistencia de las partes. Hay, por tanto, un incremento

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fenomenológico, cualitativo, en la vivencia así dada de las cosas, en las que la asociación se muestra creadora: “in denen sich die Assoziation schöpferisch erweist” (LU, I: 36). La unidad intencional surge en el acto de la conexión, en el ir y venir señalando a una y otra parte “hacia delante y hacia atrás”, “Hin- und Rückweisungen”. Esta elación fenoménica aún pertenece, sin embargo, a la experiencia, si bien su manifestación ya es objetiva, algo más que simple contenido vivencial, y, por tanto, del orden de la conciencia. Advertimos esto porque nos encontramos en la frontera o punto decisivo del paso de un orden sensiblemente animado a otro ya perceptivo y consciente. Husserl parece confiar esta elación al proceso dinámico de la relación asociativa. Constata la emergencia, pero no su engarce interno. Tal es también en lo sucesivo, como veremos, la postura de la lingüística al circunscribir el área fenomenológica del significante. 3 “Eine Signification ist nur dadurch möglich, dass eine Intuition mit einem neuen intentionalen Wesen behaftet ist, wodurch der intuitive Gegenstand in der Weise eines Zeichens … über sich hinausweist” (LU, II: 619). 4 “Das Ausdrücken der Rede liegt also nicht in blossen Worten, sondern in ausdrückenden Akten: diese prägen die korrelaten, durch sie auszudrückenden Akte in einem neuen Stoff aus, sie schaffen von ihnen einen gedanklichen Ausdruck, dessen allgemeines Wesen die Bedeugtung der bettreffenden Rede ausmacht” (LU, II: 545). 5 “Der Ausdruck wäre ein bildartigues Gegenstück der Warnehmung …, obschon hergestellt aus einem neuen Stoff ein ‘Aus-druck’ in dem Stoffe des bedeutens” (LU, II: 658–659). 6 “Den Ton kann ich hören, nicht aber das Tönend-sein. Das Sein ist nichts im Gegenstande … Das Sein ist aber auch nichts an einem Gegenstande …” (LU, II: 666). 7 “Das Fundiertsein eines Aktes besagt nicht, dass er, gleichgültig in welchem Sinne, auf andere Akte gebaut ist, sondern dass der fundierte Akt seiner Natur, d. i. seiner Gattung nach nur als solcher möglich ist, der sich auf Akte von der Gattung der fundierenden aufbaut, und dass folglich das gegenständliche Korrelat des fundierten Aktes ein Allgemeines, eine Form hat, mit welcher ein Gegenstand überhaupt nur in einem fundierten Akte dieser Gattung intuitiv erscheinen kann” (LU, II: 706). 8 La coincidencia de Husserl con Humboldt en cuanto a las síntesis procesivas de los actos y del lenguaje, respectivamente, es notoria en más de un aspecto. 9 “Rot Nennen … und als rot Erkennen sind im Grunde genommen bedeutungs-idenditsche Ausdrücke” (LU, II: 562). 10 “Eine Signifikation ist nur dadurch möglich, dass eine Intuition mit einem neuen intentionalen Wesen behaftet ist, wodurch der intuitive Gegenstand in der Weise eines Zeichens … über sich hinausweist” (LU, II: 619). 11 LU, I: 32, 33, 35. Nietzsche se opone, por contra, a una deducción psicológica, gramatical y metafisica tanto de la causa como del motivo para fundar y detener el flujo del devenir, perceptivo y ontológico, y asignarle así una tesis, tema o sujeto: una fijeza. Y ello aunque se trate del predicado, pues tampoco éste contiene, en cuanto función signitiva, la duración que falsea al rematizar una tesis: “Causalität ist die Übertragung dieses Verhältnisses (von Sinn auf Sinnesfunktion) auf alle Dinge” (Nietzsche, 1978: 71). La vivencia de la causa, de las representaciones de un sonido, por ejemplo, que es posterior al instante o situación que se supone lo produce, la vivimos antes: el disparo llega después – “der Schuss folgt …”, dice Nietzsche (1969: 86). La asignación misma de causa o motivo no ahuyenta los fantasmas del mundo interno. La motivación husserliana del porque vivencial encubre aún los “fuegos fatuos” – “Irrlichter” – subyacentes e implícitos en el acto volitivo. El tiempo trascendente no coincide con el transcendental; lo desborda y extraña, perdido en la memoria irrecuperable de un pasado inmemorial, que diría E. Lévinas. Pero a la trascendencia del devenir le corresponde, en cuanto

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percibido, añadiría Husserl, y deviniendo, aunque sea con retraso, su instante y modo transcendental. Si hay una fluencia universal, y un fondo común de tono en todas las lenguas – “Tonuntergrund” (Nietzsche, 1978: 379)-, nada escapa, por principio, al desmayo de sus aguas, incluidas aquellas voces, pues el aire sólo se mueve en la tierra. El conocimiento no se sustraería a las corrientes más oscuras de lo conocido. 12 Traducir Abschattung al español por escorzo supone acotar el proceso sombrío de la emergencia aparente y anticipar la proyección de una perspectiva sobre el plano de la apariencia. El escorzo retiene la línea, pero ésta ya presupone en el trazo una relación conceptual de configuración imaginativa. Las traducciones españolas al respecto escamotean el intersticio de las sombras, el lapso temporal del salto nietzscheano. 13 LU, I: 316. 14 “Es liegt aber schon im Begriff einer Deckungseinheit, dass es sich hier nicht um eine auseinandertretende Zweiheit handelt, sondern um eine in sich ungeschiedene Einheit, die sich erst durch Verschiebung in der Zeit gliedert” (LU, II: 571). 15 “Intention ist nicht Erwartung, es ist ihr nicht wesentlich, auf ein künftiges Eintreten gerichtet su sein” (LU, II: 573). 16 La fusión sentiente de Ortega y Gasset, aunque fundada en autores alemanes, es más profunda y diluyente que la síntesis vivencial de Husserl, que funde en su término la diferencia individual del proceso. 17 El artículo “Anotaciones sobre el ritmo de Rimbaud” se publica en 2001 por primera vez, pero su redacción data de 1953. Claudio Rodríguez (Zamora, 1934; Madrid, 1999) lo escribió en edad temprana y como trabajo académico de estudios universitarios. Es una lectura crítica e intuitiva de deuda creadora entre poetas tocados por el don de la palabra. El propio autor lo daba por perdido, pero aludía algunas veces a él en conversaciones con otros poetas sobre el ritmo y la magia sonora de la poesía. Anota un momento transcendental en el ritmo de Rimbaud como música de “la pura palabra” por encima de los planos sucesivos del tiempo y el espacio, donde se articula la cadencia literaria del sonido en tanto a priori retórico de la creación poética.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA Conill, J.: El Poder de la Mentira. Nietzsche y la Política de la Transvaloración. Prólogo de Pedro Laín Entralgo (Madrid: Tecnos, 1997). Domínguez Rey, A.: “Predicado en busca de sujeto: La Nueva Lingüística de José Ortega y Gasset”, en A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.): Analecta Husserliana LXVIII (2000a) 255–286. —: El Decir de lo Dicho (Madrid: Heraclea, 2000b). Hegel, G. W. F.: Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998). Husserl, E.: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Erster Teil. B. XIX/1. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984). Tradc. spañola de M. García Morente y J. Gaos: Investigaciones Lógicas, I (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1967). —: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band. Zweiter Teil. B. XIX/2. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984). Tradc. española de M. García Morente y J. Gaos: Investigaciones lógicas, II (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1967). —: Die Idee der Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen. Hus. II. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973a). —: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. Hua. XV (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973b).

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—: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Huss. B. III/1 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhof, 1976). —: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch. Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Haag: Martinus Nijhof, 1952). —: Formale und transzendentale Logik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1981 [2a]). —: Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1999 [7a]). Jiménez, J. R.: Unidad (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1999). Locke, J. L.: The Child’s Path to Spoken Language (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard University Press, 1995). Nietzsche, F.: Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Zur Genealogie der Moral. (1886–1887). K. G, VI2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1968). —: Götzen-Dämmerung. En Nachgelassene Schriften (August 1888-Anfang Januar 1889). K. G., VI3 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969). —: Die dionysische Weltanschaung. Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne. En Nachgelassene Schriften 1870–1873 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973). —: Nachgelassene Fragmente. Sommer 1872 bis Ende 1874 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1978). Ortega Y Gasset, J.: “Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo”, en Obras Completas, VI. (Madrid: Alianza Editorial-Revista de Occidente, 1983), pp. 247–263. Rodríguez, CL.: “Anotaciones sobre el ritmo de Rimbaud”. Revista de Occidente, no. 242 (2001), Junio: 61–76. Tymieniecka, A.-T.: Logos and Life, B. 1. Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).

SECTION V T H E C R E AT I V E C I P H E R I N G O F R E A L I T Y B Y A RT

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Since the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel has been cleaned, numerous scholarly articles and books1 have been written about the wonderful things revealed: the brilliant hues, the subtlety of the color of modeling, the persuasiveness of the details, the working in of the pentimenti. But I can assure you that no one has written either about whether the Sistine Chapel exists or not, or whether Michelangelo or Julius II ever existed. On the other hand, in the clamorous debates about the efficacy of the cleaning, there has been discussion aplenty about the topics Professor Tymieniecka suggested for our meeting: “verifiability, falsity, illusion, deceit,” and especially about its “adequacy to the truth” of Michelangelo’s work. In the words of the most outspoken critic of the recent cleaning, James Beck, the Sistine Chapel ceiling has always been: one of those awesome human efforts that tends to defy total analysis. To compound this difficulty of interpretation, no contemporary evidence offering insight into Michelangelo’s and Julius’s intentions survives. Michelangelo never wrote about the project specifically, either out of purposeful secretiveness or such nonchalance that it never occurred to the artist that clues would be priceless nuggets to later commentators.2

Let me make my position clear from the outset. I think the cleaning of the ceiling has been beneficial to the intention of the ceiling. We can now see details that had been hidden by dirt and repainting, so we can better understand what stories are included. For example, one of the Genesis panels that had been much overpainted was usually identified as the sacrifice of Noah. The subject has been puzzling because it is read before, rather than after, the Flood. Now, because the characters and objects can be properly seen, Christiane L. Joost–Gaugier3 has identified the scene as the sacrificial rites of Abel, much as Ascanio Condivi stated in the biography that Michelangelo essentially dictated.4 So we no longer need to strain for arguments to justify its location. What is more, since the cleaning, the mood of the Last Judgment on the altar wall has become less glowering, and for Beat Wyss, it has become exultant.5 However, I was not asked to speak to you on the aesthetic controversies about the cleaning, nor, being neither a conservator nor a Michelangelo scholar, would I be adequate to that job. Professor Tymieniecka asked me to discuss a panel that is just offset from the center of the ceiling, The Creation 421 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 421–434. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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of Adam, that most famous scene which has by now become a sign of the whole ceiling, just as we think of the Michelangelo paintings as the sign of the whole chapel. Indeed, the abbreviation has gone even further, for the gestures of the major figures have become a synecdoche for the whole. 6 One would think that the meaning of the creation sequence in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling is simple enough to understand. Simple enough, indeed, to be taken in a “visibite” – the whole thing summed up in what has become its icon, God about to put the finishing touch on the man He made in His own image. It just so happens that this image was not isolated in the popular imagination until 1951 when the designer of the Skira Painting – Color History Series used this single detail for the whole image of the scene of the Creation of Man in their book about Michelangelo.7 We have come to reduce the meaning of the whole to the meaning of that gesture. It is the purpose of this paper to look at the Creation of Man hermeneutically, to place the reduced meaning into the context of the whole panel, the panel into the ceiling, the ceiling into the whole chapel, the chapel into its building, and the building into its world. We will move back and forth among those contexts, unfolding meaning as we go. To discuss the artist’s creation without referring to the matrix of culture from which he drew would show him as a poor man indeed, one who could not use all of his world to effect his art. First, a brief chronology and a comment. Chronology: The building was erected 1477–818 during the reign of Sixtus IV (Giuliano Della Rovere) who, in 1482, ordered the lower walls decorated with scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ and portraits of the early popes by a team of upcoming artists of the 1480s.9 In the early sixteenth century Julius II, nephew of Sixtus IV,10 asked Michelangelo to enrich the ceiling with portraits of the apostles. After determining that this would be too poor, Michelangelo worked out a more elaborate decoration. He painted the ceiling from 1508–12. Raphael was commissioned to design tapestries to cover the faux tapestries at floor level in 1515; they were not hung until 1519–21. The last painting done was Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, from 1536–41.11 Comment Michelangelo was a learned artist; he read Latin. The fact that there are debates about sources of meaning only shows that he orchestrated the images so well that we cannot “read” them like so many words in a dictionary. The Grove Dictionary of Art, now the standard reference in art history, devotes more than six inches of six-point type to the theories of the meaning of the Sistina decorations. Anthony Hughes explains that although “writers have continued to seek a hidden meaning in the work … the

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authority and force of the frescoes are irreducible to any verbal message.”12 What I propose is that a huge program of decoration cannot support an overly elaborate immediate message. Rather, there should be one overarching theme, simple to grasp in an instant – but not verbally. The theme would be apparent as a common thread that the many stories present in their various iconographic, iconologic, and anagogic levels. Meaning is hidden in the commonplace, so obvious it is ignored.

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The Creation of Adam is one of nine panels that illustrate the Genesis stories, the first four of which tell of the creation and the last five scenes of which – and here it is difficult to summarize – depict the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and subsequent events. These scenes are applied like pictures into the otherwise rather illusionistic expanse of Michelangelo’s design. Although painted after the side walls, they introduce the iconography of the whole chapel, which, traditionally has been defined as covering the ante lege (of Moses), sub lege (of Moses), and sub grazie (of Christ) dispensations. They culminate the space of the chapel, framed by trompe l’oeil architecture and bracketed by wonderful youths who hold garlands of oak leaves and acorns. The oak refers to the Della Rovere families of Sixtus IV and Julius II. For Joost-Gaugier, they symbolize the creatures of the first Golden Age who lived in an Eden of Ovid’s description: Then man was made, perhaps from seed divine Formed by the great Creator, so to found A better world, perhaps the new-made earth, So lately parted from the ethereal heavens Kept still some essence of the kindred sky – Earth that Prometheus molded, mixed with water, In likeness of the gods that govern the world – And while the other creatures on all fours Look downwards, man was made to hold his head Erect in majesty and see the sky And raise his eyes to the bright stars above. … The world untroubled lived in leisured ease Earth willingly, untouched, unwounded yet By hoe or plough, gave all her bounteous store; Men were content with nature’s food unforced, … [Strawberries, cherries, berries] And acorns fallen from Jove’s spreading tree.

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Springtime it was, always, forever spring (Metamorphoses, 74–108).13 Thus Michelangelo enshrines the biblical story of creation within the humanistic tradition. His Adam too – although not golden-hued like the ignudi who frame the Genesis panels – is heroic in body, and holds his head erect as he looks at his Creator. The narrative panels rest on images of the gifts of genealogy and prophecy. In the upper ranges are the ancestors of Christ14 and those Prophets and Sybils (another humanist interpenetration of pagan and Christian) who foretold His coming. Below is the early genealogy of the papacy: heroic portraits of the immediate successors of Peter up to the age of Constantine. 15 At the lowest painted figural level we are shown that the old laws of Moses prophesy the new law of Christ. For example, the old rite in The Circumcision of Moses’ Sons is paired with the new initiation rite that was to replace circumcision, shown in The Baptism of Christ.16 In the end, all would rest on Peter, for Leo X ordered Raphael to design tapestries of the life of the first pope to hang over the faux tapestries at floor level.17 While the order from the ceiling to the floor is not perfectly chronological, we get the sense that this place demonstrates the power and magnanimity of God in creating the world and in creating an order through which His plans can be understood. He created a way to continually save the human beings He put in the world: through Christ Who established the Church governed by a papacy. The legitimacy of that order is given in the non-Michelangelo paintings. Michelangelo’s section stresses the Christic: the genealogy of Christ in the lunettes, the Prophets and Sybils who foretold His coming in the brackets that support the framework of the narrative of the Genesis stories, which stories establish the reason for Christ’s coming. And if this display of God’s continuing generosity is not enough to convince, then Michelangelo was given the job of depicting Christ above the pope’s altar, now interpreted as a Savior Who would raise all into His heaven. Michelangelo’s work is the umbrella that unifies the whole, not only because he covers so much of the surface, but because his forceful design interlocks pattern and idea. And his design is set into a structure that echoes a long tradition of religious architecture, for the proportions of the Sistina correspond to those of the Temple of Solomon, whose dimensions were dictated by God Himself (3 Kings 6). Just before he ordered Michelangelo to paint the ceiling, Julius II signaled his desire to renew the Church and papal power by razing the old basilica of St. Peter to make room for a new church (1505). As Loren Partridge remarks: “Placement of the great dome over the tomb of St. Peter confirmed that papal

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primacy derived directly from Christ by way of St. Peter – and according to the doctrine of the Petrine Succession, his successors as well – His vicar on earth with the power of ‘the keys to the kingdom of heaven’ [one of the Sixtus IV scenes in the Sistina] to save and to damn (Matthew 16: 18–19).”18 The razing had practical consequences as well, for papal ceremonies were removed from the basilica to the Sistine Chapel – even today it is used for the conclave of cardinals that elects the pontiff. An important function of the decoration, therefore, is to validate the office and power of the pope by showing the continuity of Christ’s institution, the Church and its leaders. The validation is argued visually through the narratives of the stories and through Michelangelo’s forceful and expansive style, which, by lifting the parts into the whole, emphasizes the continuity of the tradition. Following the images from the Old Law of Noah and Moses to its upgrading in Christ, it is clear that God’s creation continues in His body on earth and its legitimate head, the pope. And so if there is a theme in the Sistine Chapel decoration, it is that continuity demonstrates the efficacy of God’s creation. And if Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam really is a sign of the whole, we should then see that the theme of continuity is contained within it. We shall see that such a continuity does exist, not in the flow of the stories, but in Michelangelo’s mastery of compositional flow, in the aspect of disegno, that is, design, whether it be the design of drawing or color.19 C O N T I N U I T Y I N M I C H E L A N G E L O ’ S C R E AT I O N O F A DA M

The scene of the Creation of Adam is divided in two. At the left, from the bowed shape of his body, Adam reaches out his muscular arm, so weak that it must be supported by his knee. His head and arm pass the bounds of the earth toward the outstretched hand of God, isolated against the white void of the sky. This half we all know well. Not so well the right half, where the body of God surges forward on a slight upward curve, the energy of which is emphasized by the intersection of God’s head with the billowing dark red cape, which echoes, as one of my freshman students observed, an apple. A bit of foreshadowing. Adam’s body is impressed with God’s image as is required by Genesis 1: 26–27, but it is the negative of an impression, concave and passive. God’s convexity is magisterial, emphasized by His bent right knee. Unlike Adam, God is not alone, but has with Him what appear to be children of various ages, and a young woman under His left arm, whose identity has been the subject of dispute. I doubt that there is a better reference for the

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upper children than their ruddy color: they are the seraphs who constantly sing God’s praises, here tagging along to witness creation. Leo Steinberg thinks that the shadowed, angry-faced seraphs in the shadow of God’s right arm are the angels who rebelled at God ultimately placing men higher than them; for the curly blond youth under God he posits Michael the Archangel.20 More important for my story is the large child behind God’s knees; notice how God rests the two fingers used for consecrating the Host in the Eucharist on the Child’s shoulder. For most critics, this is Christ, Whom God foresees will be necessary for man’s salvation. God’s arms, outstretched in both directions, are simultaneously reaching for Adam and ordaining Christ. Note that, while His head pulls away, Christ’s arm points toward Adam through God. The sloping diagonal from the right to the left, marking the flow of God’s energy, expresses the whole of the narrative and our inclusion in it, for the long movement from the right forces our eye, that is, requires our intentional participation, to complete the gap to Adam’s lax forefinger. The Gestalt forces our gaze, which is driven by God’s expansiveness pouring out life into Adam. God’s energy flows from Christ and around the young woman, whose identification has been controversial: she has been identified with Mary, Ecclesia, Holy Wisdom or Eve. Describing her phenomenologically may help us sort the question out. PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION

Compared with the other women in Michelangelo’s fresco, the woman under God’s arm is svelte, and her breasts are just developing (they are so small that some have identified her with a beautiful boy or an angel). For clarity, let’s call her a girl. Squatting in the shelter of God’s left arm, her hand curled over his forearm, she emanates from God’s side just as, in the next scene, Eve emerges from Adam’s. Her body in three-quarter view to the proper left (toward Christ?), her head turned in sharp contrapposto, she stretches her neck to watch the creation at her right. Her knee presses into Christ’s side, and over it lies a green scarf that flows behind God and beneath the flying figures. It flutters in a fan of drapery, with the feet at the right: a tail that helps in the illusion of flight. Its bluish-green pushes it out of the purple-red of the matrix of God’s field, so that it appears to pour out as a stream from the divine group into the void. In 1992 Leo Steinberg argued that the decorum of her nudity and her being in a crouching profane Venus posture eliminates Mary and Ecclesia from consideration.21 Relating her to Genesis 1:27: “Male and female he created them,”22 Steinberg argues that she is the future Eve slightly frightened

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(holding onto her Father’s arm) of what will happen to her. The flow of the green scarf with fluttering tail echoing the shape of the earth is a symbol of her tie to Adam’s world. My objection is that, except for her hair, she looks little like the full-bodied Eve who is born from Adam’s rib in the next panel. But then, if we make a Neoplatonic argument not unfamiliar to Michelangelo, some of the beauty and intelligence of a soul at God’s side must be lost when put in corporeal form. Let us leave the question open for now. Recently, Maria Rzepinska23 argued that the girl is Divine Wisdom, who was with God at creation. In Proverbs, Wisdom was recognized as an attribute of God; later in Sirach I:24ff, she was identified with the Spirit of God.24 Wisdom is a feminine noun in Latin (Sapientia), Greek (Sophia), ˜ Arabic (Hekma) and Hebrew (Hokmâ). At this point we enter the hermeneutic circle, where the interpreter needs especially a “lightness of soul.”25 To determine the meaning (Dilthey’s Bedeutung) of the girl, we will employ a guiding principle of hermeneutics: an interpretation is to be preferred to the extent it is more inclusive. Here the meaning of the girl which best fits the sense (Dilthey’s Sinn) of the whole program of the Sistina is the celebration of continuation.26 Let us consider who the girl might be in terms of both meaning and sense. Identifying the girl as a Platonic Eve corresponds well to the meaning of the Creation panel, and allows a narrative continuation to the other scenes. We may posit that the Creation of Adam panel shows the Elohist version of her creation in Genesis I:27 whereas the Creation of Eve panel would be an illustration of the Jahwist version of her creation from Adam’s rib in Genesis II: 21–22.27 Michelangelo might have chosen to do this for meaning, that is to accurately illustrate the texts; however, since the scenes chosen for the rest of the ceiling are episodic rather than inclusive, this argument is weak. On the other hand, he might have chosen to do this for sense, that is, to demonstrate that the variations in the story of creation are acceptable. But acceptable variance is hardly the sense of the whole. One only need think of the scenes that follow – The Expulsion from Eden and The Flood where variation from the rule are severely punished – to exclude this rationale as a possibility. There is another argument. The inclusion of Eve at God’s arm makes the sense of the whole no richer. It is unnecessary to the whole, and so violates the poetics of the design. Eve is not mentioned in Condivi’s sixteenth-century account (which Michelangelo “dictated”): “In the fourth (panel) is the Creation of Man where God is seen with arm and hand outstretched as if to impart to Adam the precepts as to what he must and must not do, while with the other arm He gathers His little angels around Him. In the fifth is when He draws woman

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from Adam’s rib” (emphasis added). It is just this sense of handing down precepts to Adam that makes identifying the girl as Wisdom appropriate. One of the great lyric images of the Old Testament, the figure of Wisdom surely would appeal to Michelangelo, a poet himself. As we shall see, by reading her as Holy Wisdom, the meaning and sense are much enriched. S A P I E N T I A , T H E P E R S O N I F I C AT I O N O F D I V I N E W I S D O M

Wisdom, Sapientia or Sophia takes on a number of roles in the Old Testament. Each can be related to the sense of the Sistina. She is the personification sages traditionally associated with the divine act of creation. 28 In Proverbs 8 she tells us: “[22] The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning. [23] I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. … [29] when he balanced the foundations of the earth.” The gestures of God and Adam are recalled when, imparting the precepts of God, she says: “[23] Turn ye at my reproof: behold I will utter my spirit to you, and will shew you my words. [24] Because I called, and you refused: I stretched out my hand” (Proverbs 1). Also, in the way that the figure of the Child Christ sits before that of Wisdom, her words look forward to the opening of the Gospel of John.29 Her next words foretell the narratives following the Creation of Adam. One cannot help but see The Flood in: [25] You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions. [26] I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock when that shall come to you which you feared. [27] When sudden calamity shall fall on you, and destruction, as a tempest, shall be at hand: when tribulation and distress shall come upon you: [28] Then shall they call upon me, and I will not hear: they shall rise in the morning and shall not find me: [29] Because they have hated instruction and received not the fear of the Lord, [30] Nor consented to my counsel, but despised all my reproof.

The long-suffering Job knew the desirability and the elusiveness of Wisdom: Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold to be refined. … But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? … It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air. … God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. … When he gave to the wind its weight, and apportioned out the waters by measure; when he made a decree for the rains and a way for the thunderbolt; then he saw it and declared it, he established it, and searched it out. And he said to humankind, “Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Job 28: 1, 12, 23–28).30

Proverbs 8 tells us where she may be found. “[30] I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times; [31]

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Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.” In this passage we encounter God’s creative wisdom and delight in designing the physical universe. This phraseology is a grand description of what goes on in an artist’s mind. There is an internal dialogue, a debate between – and sometimes among – equals that brackets the singular self. Its main concern is the quality of the product and of the production. This is the delight of creativity, whether it be parental or artistic (hence the English Romantic painter, Joseph Mallard William Turner, considered his paintings his children). The reverse is also true. As a product of God’s Wisdom, we can find a path to God through it. In a critique of this passage, Richard J. Clifford, S.J. points out that Wisdom bases her authority not on the “historical” fact that she saw or even worked with God, but “solely on her intimacy with Yahweh.”31 Now let us look again at the two creations of humans. In The Creation of Eve, Eve walks out of Adam’s side ready to be independent. Not so with the girl at God’s side in The Creation of Adam. Michelangelo renders her as an equivalent of Athena born full-grown from the head of Zeus. She leans away from Him, distinct, but she does not remove herself from Him. She was with God from the beginning, so she can bring those who love her into His very being. The search for wisdom in Proverbs 8 becomes more than performing or avoiding certain actions; rather, it is the search for Wisdom herself. To court her is to touch a quality of Yahweh the Creator, and to enter into a relationship with her is to receive every divine blessing. This cosmogony explains how life may have a more profound meaning; it may be not only life in the sense of the enjoyment of health, good name and family happiness, but also “life with,” association with, Yahweh.32 And so we may infuse into the meaning of the title The Creation of Adam a richer sense, for by passing Wisdom to man, God gives him more than biological life. In His divine prescience, He has foreseen the human need for His Wisdom. With it passes the key to eternal life. The key includes all that Wisdom has meant: the personification of God’s design, which includes Christ, His Mother, and His Church, with its pope as its earthly guardian. In other words, He passes on His continuing creation.

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In this way, the act of creation is not limited to one event, one place or one time, but rather it continues through all human time. Creation is not limited to the physical world, but, becomes continuous at the point of the creation of

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human beings. Wisdom enters Michelangelo’s imagery at this point, for it is through Wisdom that imperfect human beings can be remade.34 Metaphorically, from Wisdom comes Mary the Immaculate, from whom comes Christ, from whom comes the Church. As the visible heads of the Church the popes are instruments in the continuum of creation. Any interruption in the series cuts off the lifeline of creation. Any threat – and there were many for Sixtus IV and Julius II – was a threat against the wisdom of the divine order of creation and redemption (another creation). In Professor Tymieniecka’s terms, Michelangelo’s accomplishment was to visualize “the primogenital matrix of generation … in its context,” and to orchestrate the imagery of the Sistine Chapel to proclaim the efficacy of this continuous creation through the transmission of wisdom, that is, the “primogenital logos.”35 Michelangelo leaves Adam’s creation open, just as he leaves Christ immanent in His ancestors and in the prophets and sybils. Aptly, the prophets and sybils are enthroned under medallions of Old Testament kings or the Ten Commandments – interpretations vary – carried on the oak garlands of the Della Rovere family. The present order of the Church carries the wisdom of God’s ordination of old. The Wisdom of God’s creation is that it is open, on-going. It will end only when we undergo the Last Judgment when Christ/God with Mary/Ecclesia completes His creative act as Wisdom predicted: Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord: But he that shall sin against me, shall hurt his own soul. All that hate me love death. (Proverbs 34–36) Siena College, Loudonville, New York, United States N OT E S 1

The bibliography on the Sistine Chapel is overwhelming. Listed below are those works consulted specifically for this paper. 2 James Beck, The Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 180. 3 Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, “Michelangelo’s Ignudi, and the Sistine Chapel as a Symbol of Law and Justice,” Artibus et historiae, Vol. 17/34, 1996, pp. 19–43, 208, esp. p. 36. JoostGaugier argues that what is being passed are animal viscera that constitute the first part of appropriate sacrifice, and therefore, the subject is the sacrifice of Abel. 4 Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, translated by Alice Sedgwick Wohn and edited by Hellmut Wohl (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), (Original edition: Vita di Michelangnolo Buonarroti raccolta per Ascanio Condivi da la Ripa Transone [Rome: 1553]).

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Beat Wyss, “The Last Judgment as an artistic process: The Flaying of Marsyas in the Sistine Chapel,” Res, Vol. 28, August 1995, pp. 65–77. This is a beautiful account of the interpenetration of Christian and Classical sources starting with Michelangelo’s self-portrait as the flayed St. Bartholomew. A sample: “The Sistine fresco is merely a satirical play on the Last Judgement, of which it has been written that no one knows the day or hour, not even the renowned master Michelangelo. Before the Supreme Judge, the artist accuses himself of the vanity of his creative endeavors” (p. 66). 6 Leo Steinberg used this apt terminology in his witty “Who’s Who in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam: A Chronology of the Picture’s Reluctant Self-Revelation,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. LXXIV/4, December 1992, pp. 552–66; hereafter “Who’s Who.” 7 In his search to identify the characters, Steinberg, “Who’s Who,” op. cit., presents the history of the photography of the painting. He begins with Vasari’s identification of “alcuni Putti,” saying only that it is “an inadequate observation to which Condivi had nothing to add” (p. 553), about which see below. For the history of the popular image, see Ghislain Kieft, “Anderson 3789. De grafische geschiedenis van een detail van de Sixtijnse Kapel,” in “ ‘That Special Touch’ vormgeving tussen kunst en massaprodukt,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, Vol. 39, (1988) (Bussum: Fibula-Von Dishoek, 1989), pp. 165–202. 8 Loren Partridge summarizes the pertinent facts: the foundation of the first chapel, documented only in 1368, determined the size of the building. Baccio Pontelli (c. 1450–92) incorporated its foundations and walls into the new building; the new chapel was fortified with sloping walls and battlements. The chapel is 133 × 46 × 62 feet (40.5 × 14 × 19 m). It was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin on 15 August 1483. A painting of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin by Perugino (now lost) stood above the altar on the west wall. The barrel vault was probably painted about 1479–80 following a design by Pier Matteo d’Amelia, active 1467–1503/8. (Loren Partridge, Michelangelo: the Sistine Chapel Ceiling [Rome, New York: George Braziller, 1996], pp. 9–10). 9 Botticelli, Perugino, Signorelli, Ghirlandaio and others. It is not the authors but the subjects that are of interest to this paper. They are juxtapositions of the lives of Moses and Christ, that is the Old Law and the New. The Moses Cycle runs left from the altar, tituli in parentheses: The Finding of Moses (now lost for it was sacrificed to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment), The Circumcision, The Youth, Crossing the Red Sea, The Descent from Mt. Sinai, The Punishment of Korah, The Testament of Moses; the Christ Cycle: The Nativity (lost), Baptism, Youth, Calling the Apostles, The Sermon on the Mount, Christ Giving the Keys to Peter, The Last Supper, and the Resurrection. Note that the last emphasize the role of the Church in continuing the New Law. Carol F. Lewine lists the scenes with the tituli inscribed beneath each scene; words and phrases emphasizing continuance abound: regenerationis, recepturi, accepturi, promulgatio, replicatio. She reminds us that the walls “were not to be viewed in silence.” She finds that the scenes echo liturgical texts and ceremonies between Lent and Pentecost (The Sistine Chapel Walls and the Roman Liturgy [University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993], p. 2). 10 Both were Franciscans (see Rona Goffin, “Friar Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel,” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. XXXIX, 1986, pp. 218–62). Sixtus (Francesco Della Rovere) had made him a cardinal in 1471. Julius II’s (Giuliano Della Rovere) policies were nearly identical with those of his uncle but “with much greater scope, dynamic, and aggressiveness. … His commission of the decoration of the Sistine ceiling, for example, was a typical extension of an earlier Sistine project, but characteristically far grander, offering an unrivaled opportunity to Michelangelo” (ibid., p. 14).

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11 Just as in filmmaking, the chronology of the narratives does not coincide with the chronology of the execution. The only congruence is in the Last Judgment. On the ceiling, the images of God creating the universe were painted last. The scenes from Genesis of the ceiling were painted after the scenes from the lives of Moses and Christ below. Narrative time for the creators of the Sistina depended on position in the container. 12 Anthony Hughes, “Michaelangelo,” section therein on the “Sistine Ceiling,” Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (London: Grove, 1996), Vol. 21, pp. 443–445. 13 Joost-Gaugier, “Michelangelo’s Ignudi, … , op. cit. 14 Andrea Pappas (“Observations on the Ancestor Cycle of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling,” Source, Vol. 11/2, 1992, pp. 27–31) discusses the importance of these figures, obscured for about 500 years. He notes that while the ceiling program abounds with references to the Babylonian captivity, one of the most important events in the Old Testament, it never appears directly in the chapel. I will excerpt the major points of the argument, for he finds in the images he discusses the political reasons for the theme of continuation in the Sistine. Only a “structural feature in the program – the break in the alternating pattern of the ancestor cycle–alludes to the captivity. … The peculiar position underscores the continuity of the tribe of Judah and of Christ’s line – a matter of potential importance for Julius II.” There is also an emphasis on the “enduring tradition” of “priestly authority. … Renaissance thinkers drew the parallel between the popes and the Levites. … The army commander of Judah often has command of their tribes, and it is the Levite priests who bestow this authority. Significantly, this honor falls on a leader who typically appears in the genealogy of Christ. … Rather than in relation to their husbands, the women in the genealogies of the Old Testament usually appear as mothers. … thus the primary relationships in the lunettes are not nuptial, but maternal, in keeping with the chapel’s dedication to the Virgin. … [She] is a metaphor for the church. Lactation forms a crucial part of this metaphor:” the divine milk of Mary-Ecclesia will become the Sacred Blood that gives life to the faithful. “These all represent the Church as an institution and complement the allusion in the fall frescoes to its dynastic origin. … Julius II’s ongoing difficulties with the pro-conciliar factions in the church certainly would warrant – as it did for his uncle, Sixtus IV – a reminder of the doctrine of papal primacy. Given at least one attempt to use a council to depose him (that engineered by Maximilian of Spain and Louis XII in 1507), the presence of discreet references to the proper relationships between kings and high priest in the decorative program of the ceiling is not surprising. The Babylonian captivity is uniquely suited to this message since it was punishment for disobedience to ecclesiastical law – in particular, violation of the proper relationship between king and high priest. Such disobedience resulted in the removal of the papacy to Avignon, referred to at the time as the “Babylonian Captivity.” 15 This and the article cited just above about overlooked aspects of the Sistine Chapel decorations caused me to seek the broader theme of continuation. See Margaret Franklin (“Forgotten Images: Papal Portraits in the Sistine Chapel,” Arte cristiana, Vol. 84/775, July–August 1996, pp. 263–69), argues that the series of papal portraits acts to justify the supremacy of the pope, so needful in the reign of Sixtus IV. “Canonists realized that papal prerogatives required a secure foundation based on law if they were to compete with imperial claims to legal powers. This foundation … was based on Greco-Roman ideology concerning the nature and function of law. Under the influence of Cicero and the Stoics, the concept of law as being reason which is in everlasting agreement with nature came to signify obedience to the godhead and divine law.” In this way, “God used the Old and New Testaments to guide mankind’s actions according to natural/divine law: ‘Jus naturale in libris Novi et Veteris Testamenti continentur.’ ” (Rufinus, Summa Rufini, ad Dist. ix, 19, ed. Johann Friedrich von Schulte [Giessen: 1892], quoted by Franklin, note 37).

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Both are painted by Pietro Perugino and Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto di Biago). Both are childhood initiation rituals, baptism first conceived as a replacement for circumcision (George L. Hershey, High Renaissance Art in St. Peter’s and the Vatican [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993]). 17 The first payment to Raphael for the cartoons of the tapestries is in 1515. Although Raphael’s tapestries for the nave walls were designed before Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment on the altar wall (1535–41), they had little effect on the design of the interior space for they covered faux draperies in fresco. Naturally the texture of the tapestries had greater visual “weight” than the painted ones, and so the frescoes above had a visually more “solid” base. Raphael’s designs were turned into tapestries in the workshop of Pieter van Aelst in Brussels. The completed tapestries were in place before the death of Leo X on 1 December 1521. That they should have been pawned immediately after Leo X’s, death gives an idea of their future peregrinations. They were last seen in the positions that Raphael intended during the Sack of Rome in 1527. After many, many vicissitudes, they have been at the Vatican since 1808. Seven of the ten cartoons survive in the English Royal Collection, and since 1865 have been on permanent loan to the Victoria & Albert Museum. See John Shearman, Raphael’s Cartoons in the Royal Collections and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London: Phaidon, 1972), pp. 138–143. 18 Partridge, op. cit., p. 15. 19 It is only because of the recent cleaning that we are able to understand Michelangelo’s color in this way. And only since the cleaning can it be seen that for Michelangelo, color is form. 20 Steinberg, “Who’s Who,” pp. 560–66. 21 An anonymous contributor to the debate finds, behind the girl, a woman’s face. She has, at her neck, a line of red paint that looks like a Raphaelesque bodice. “I wonder if she could be Holy Wisdom, cautioning Eve to be careful?” – Marcia Hall and Leo Steinberg, “Who’s Who in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam continued,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 75/2, June 1993, pp. 340–44, esp. 344. 22 She was identified with Eve as early as 1871; see Leo Steinberg (“Who’s Who”). 23 Maria Rzepinska, “Ewa, Szechina czy sophia?: przyczynek do interpretacji freskow sykstynskich Michala Aniola” (“Eve, Shekina or Sophia?: Contribution on the Study of the Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo”), in Fermentum massae mundi: Jackowi Wozniakowskiemu w siedemdziesiata rocznice urodzin, in (Warsaw: Agora, 1990), pp. 414–22, and then, “The Divine Wisdom of Michelangelo in the Creation of Adam,” Artibus et historiae, Vol. 15/29, 1994, pp. 181–87. Rzepinska prefers Sophia, arguing against Jane Schuyler’s assertion that the Neoplatonic readings of the ceiling should be supplemented by cabalistic ones. For example, since in the Cabala God’s nature has male and female elements, the girl at God’s left (sinister) side is the Shekinah. For Rzepinska this identification is unsuitable because, in the Book of Zohar the Shekinah is a personification of sin, judgment and expulsion. J. Klaczko first identified the girl as “Sapientia, identified by the Church with Mary to whom the Sistine Chapel was dedicated” (Jules II, Rome et la Renaissance, [Paris, PlonNourrit, 1898], p. 355). Rudolf Kuhn reiterated the identification: Michelangelo: Die sixtinische Decke. Beiträge über ihre Quellen und zu ihrer Auslegung (Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1975) pp. 28–29. 24 Henry George Liddel and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) p. 1622. 25 Friedrich August Wolf, Vorlesungüber die Enzyklopädie der Altertumswissenschaft, 1831), p. 273. ed. J. D. Güntler (Leipzig: Lenhold, Thanks to Siena College librarian Sean Maloney for this reference.

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26 W. Dilthey, Selected Writings, ed. H. P. Rickman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 27 The Elohist version merely states that God created man and woman and blessed them. In the Yahwist version, God formed man from the dust of the ground, and because it was not good for man to be alone, He made a helper from Adam’s own rib (Genesis 2: 18–23). Steinberg (1993) argues that dual Eves suits the dual creation stories in Genesis I and II. 28 Ibid. 29 “[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. [4] In him was life, and the life was the light of men. [5] And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. … [10] He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. [11] He came unto his own, and his own received him not. [12] But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in his name.” 30 In this case, I use the New Revised Standard Version because while the meaning does not change that of the Vulgate, the expression is clearer and more poetic. 31 Richard J. Clifford, S. J., “Introduction to Wisdom Literature,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. V: in Introduction to Wisdom Literature; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs; Book of Wisdom; Sirach (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 9. 32 Ibid. 33 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), The Origins of Life. Vol. 1: The Primogenital Matrix of Life and Its Context, Anatecta Husserliana LXVI (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000). 34 Steinberg, 1993, had asked why Wisdom appears only in the Creation of Adam, when she was with God from the beginning. 35 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the LifeStrategies of Reason, Analecta Husserliana vol. LXX (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001).

GLORIA VERGARA

A RT I S T I C A N D A E S T H E T I C VA L U E S A S T H E O N TO L O G I C A L F O U N DAT I O N F O R T H E WO R L D O F T H E L I T E R A RY WO R K

All interpretation … is the counterpoint of a mystery. –Baricco Words are the seeing eyes of the secret. –Vladimir Khlebnikov

In this paper we shall examine, on the ground of Roman Ingarden’s aesthetic theory, how artistic and aesthetic values function as an ontological foundation for the world that comes forth from the literary work of art at the moment of reading. We will discuss first artistic value in relation to the world at large, then aesthetic value and the world of the reader, and then the process of the “concretization” of the work of art, all, in order to point out some aspects of what could be seen as a phenomenological aesthetics. Inherent to this proposal is the apprehension of Ingarden’s notion of “opalescence”1 as it directly relates to reflection on the subject of time. Prior to entering into the world of the literary work of art, it is necessary to realize that the world as such is inseparable from time, for it is this that determines its degree of mystery and marks the sound of our footsteps as we either draw near, or distance ourselves from it. Because of this the world is determined by time’s different modes of being, by different edges that manifest or hide themselves in the phases of our approach, in the trials we endure to reach its essence. Roman Ingarden, in his work The Controversy over the Existence of the World,2 distinguishes three basic types of objects interrelated with time: 1) those that endure in time, 2) determinate processes, and 3) relatively shortlived events – in general, all that is inseparable – from the becoming of the temporal (real) world (the characteristics of things, for example).3 To these basic types, the Polish philosopher contrasts the “purely intentional” mode of being in the world, within which he further distinguishes two variants, which essentially take place either in contingency (pure consciousness) or in the inseparable (experience as “real”).4 Based on these considerations, we may speak of the absolute, the temporal (real?), the ideal (extratemporal), and the 435 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 435–445. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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purely intentional modes of being (Time 162). And this being so, Ingarden asserts, consciousness cannot be separated – existentially speaking – from the real world or its components. Therefore, all knowledge is related to the modes of being, that is, with the time that penetrates these temporal layers. From this perspective we may understand that temporality is what forces us to see the world through a melting pot of simultaneities, for, in fact, as Ingarden insists in The Literary Work of Art: The primary purely intentional objects usually acquire their intendedness in the intentional acts that are interwoven with various other conscious experiences. Thus the intentional act is usually constructed on the basis of various intuitive contents and is frequently interwoven with various theoretical and practical attitudes. It is also frequently accompanied by diverse emotions, acts of will, etc. As a result of all this, the corresponding purely intentional object achieves vividness and richness in its content and in time is provided with diverse feeling and value characters which surpass what is projected by the mere meaning content of the simple intentional act. (126)

In this sense, time becomes a system of references “whose fundamental coordinates are linguistic,” as George Steiner points out in After Babel. And so, being temporal-intentional, the word conveys characteristics of the given objects in the world, for, in fact, “in everyday life, because of our natural tendency to at tune ourselves to ontological autonomous objects, we tend to extend the objective structure found in them to all objectivities in general” (Steiner 144). 1 . A RT I S T I C VA L U E A N D I T S R E L AT I O N S H I P W I T H T H E WO R L D

Ingarden considers time in the literary work of art to be analogous to the way things happen in the world, for in its schematic structure too, determined in part by the author’s acts of consciousness and in part by those performed by the reader at the moment at which the concretization of the work occurs, purely intentional objects projected by the units of meaning convey traits of real objects that are discovered in the actualization. Thusly, the world is “still visible, despite this exclusion from the Literary Work” (Literary 26), for owing to that temporal foundation, basically reflected in artistic and aesthetic values, the “idea” of the world also reveals itself to us. Ingarden declares this an essential function of literature in his book The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art,5 with which we will deal later. Now, it is necessary to say that we are entering into the polyphonic harmony of the work through the interdependence of the layers that structure it.6 We also begin to configure the present of that sphere that presupposes the multiplicity in which the scheme vanishes. This happens

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because, as ontologically autonomous objects, those matters represented there belong to a doubly infinite multiplicity of groups of circumstances. This multiplicity may be seen because: “(1) to each temporal moment of its existence there belongs an infinite manifold of fused states of affairs and (2) there is an infinite manifold of temporal moments in which the given object exists” (Literary 198). Because of this, time, as it is represented in the literary work of art, is analogous to real time; it is inter-subjective, without being identical to real time, neither in its phases, nor in its structure. In fact, Ingarden demarcates the difference between the represented time, the author’s time – wherein the work was written – and that of the reading. Following Husserl, he demarcates the difference between “(1) homogenous, ‘empty’ physicomathematically determined world time, (2) concrete intuitively apprehendable intersubjective time, in which we all live collectively, and (3) strictly subjective time” (Literary 234), and states that “in the world of the literary work of art there is only an analogy of inter-subjective or subjective time, because these do not allow homogeneity or the insensible vision of the void” (Vergara 76). In this sense, the time of the work has a habitus of reality and is seen as a modification of real time, insofar as it manifests itself as being intentional and heterogeneous, and insofar as it sustains a “particular world” that, without being ontologically autonomous, shows a peculiar, unique way of being. In that way the world of the work presents itself to us precisely as a temporal process whose parts may not be changed or combined – according to Ingarden – unless the structure itself permits it or even suggests it. There are nonetheless works that declare their sense of newness precisely in a flexible structure, as is the case with Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar, and with Octavio Paz’s poem Blanco. But even in these kinds of works that constantly play with the temporal structure, “these changes which are derived only from changes in the order of parts in a work, can also have a great effect on the literary work, especially when they concern those characteristics of the work which determine its artistic and aesthetic value” (Cognition 96). This is also because, in the poem above all, we find temporal scherzos that work as essential points in the simultaneous and dispersed networks that make up the metaphor and that provide the represented objects with a series of values inherent to the work. At this point, following Roman Ingarden, we can assert that the work presents a double temporality,7 and that this allows the construction of the aesthetic object – that is to say that it helps in the recognition of the artistic and aesthetic values the work embodies and allows, to a certain degree, the retrieval of that projected world’s mystery. The time we perceive in the

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literary work of art is a synthetic, analogous, modified time that, yet, always maintains a referential relation to the world from which it has sprung. The word, as such, contains this reference within it through its directional factor. Thanks to that referential capacity, poetry maintains an empathy with the world and the objects represented in the work are projected by the units of meaning as if they were real. They are “marked” in such a way that only when we read or listen do we approach the meaning of the work because we create a correlate of that which is represented there schematically, through the stratified formation of the work. […] For, on the one hand, the work demands of us that we go towards the intrinsic qualities that are manifested within it, and, on the other, those qualities provoke the re-description of a world that has at least a sigh of the truth that we carry in our consciousness and that we could now call a “notion of the world” or cosmic outlook. (Vergara 96)

In this collision of perspectives the aesthetic object is manifested and truth is revealed as a valuable quality that emerges in harmony with certain “real” information in the moment of concretization. We then render and transpose the groups of circumstances from the work to our reality as concrete, primary facts, and thanks to that we achieve their reconciliation with the world that surrounds us. What Is an Artistic Value? When we speak of a literary work, we may do so because, as readers, we attribute to it a certain artistic value. It is then that we recognize ourselves as prosecutors of strategies that will help us confirm our intuitions about that value. But how do we identify that which is “valuable”? Ingarden answers this question by differentiating the foundation of an artistic value in the strata of the units of meaning of a work. That is to say that what we think is a value in a work is not always anchored in its text. We often make attributions that come from our experience. We impose our dimension of the real upon a work’s world as if the words in it had only our content and did not have a suggested, intermittent world, one that is nevertheless rooted in the shadow of that which is represented: The reader often uses the literary work of art as an external stimulus for evoking, within himself, feelings and other psychic states he considers valuable, and he allows the work of art to come into view only to the extent that it is indispensable for the performance of this service. He gives himself over to his experiences, he luxuriates in them; and the deeper, stronger, and richer his own states of mind (above all, the feelings that are released and yet at the same time only phantasied), the more they allow him to “forget” everything else (including the work of art and its inherent value), the higher is the value he is inclined to place on the given work of art. But in fact he does not value the work for its inherent value since, due to his attitude, this is not at all perceived but rather is concealed by the profusion of his subjective feelings. He considers it “valuable” only because it is a means of evoking pleasurable experiences. (Literary–24).

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And this happens because, in fact, as Ingarden asserts, the true value of the work never makes itself totally clear. We only manage to see a few qualities and, why not, a few dead ends too, that lead us to the intuition of a total value of the work. Owing to that, in order to speak of the artistic value in the work, it is necessary to say that a sort of scaffolding rests on the text, a series of nets that, as readers, we tie and color as we set our worldview over against the represented world. Only in this space of a setting can we recognize the foundations of the artistic, for there poetic ambiguity can be recognized as proceeding from the ambiguity of the world. There, art sees itself as a symbolic structure because, as Vattimo states: “The symbol is a form that man has by which to appropriate the world” (Vattimo 259). 2 . A E S T H E T I C VA L U E A N D T H E R E A D E R ’ S WO R L D

Aesthetic value is recognized as a quality when the world of the work becomes actualized in a necessary reference to the reader’s reality. And so we may say that this kind of value is closely related to the metaphysical qualities that Ingarden ponders in The Literary Work of Art. Even though aesthetic value appears precisely owing to the base that is constructed by artistic value, we cannot say that each strategy that we recognize as valuable in the field of creation corresponds to an aesthetic value. Instead it is possible to see the display of aesthetic value in a network of strategies and elements that make up the metaphoric platform. In a poem, for instance, aesthetic value practically embodies itself in the image that it tears from the metaphoric web. We must distinguish the image as strategy from the image as the “idea” of the world that the reader builds amid that conflict of qualities that emerges at the time of reading. As Roman Ingarden asserts in The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, we succeed in the apprehension of the work owing to a series of simultaneous operations in which the strata, given their heterogeneity, “are adapted and adjusted to one another as parts of a single whole […] organically constructed” (Cognition 73). For Ingarden there exists an analogy between a literary work and a living body, insofar as the first is viewed as an organic structure, with a series of functions that organize themselves in hierarchical fashion. But all these independent functions subordinate themselves in turn to the main function that is only accomplished in the organism as a whole. “The individual organs determine one another, supplement one another’s functions, and aid the other organs in fulfilling their functions” (Cognition 74–75), so that there is a “selfregulation” that does not allow for the isolation of any organ. Ingarden points out that this idea may only be applied in a metaphorical sense to the work of

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art because “it is not, of course, a living organism and also has no ontically autonomous being” (Cognition 76). If we look at the different functions accomplished by the work, we have to realize that these remain subordinated to the appearance of artistic and aesthetic values. In these values may be revealed in turn social, cultural, and religious values that present us with certain information regarding a historical period, the author’s way of seeing the world, “a truth” about the world in which we find ourselves immersed, certain “real confessions” of the author, etc. Nevertheless, the error that is often committed when confronting the literary work of art is to see it simply as a document and to then forget its main function: “When we value work highly in spite of the ‘purpose’ which it may have, we do so not because of the social or ethical values which it may embody but because it embodies certain specifically artistic or aesthetic values or leads to the appearance of such values in concretization” (Cognition 83). Because of this, “independently of the question as to whether the work actually ‘expresses’ something distinct from itself, we must first consider whether there might be something which we could conceive of as the ‘idea’ of the literary work of art in the work itself or in that which is determined by it and belongs to it in an essential way” (Cognition 83). According to Ingarden, if this happens, the “idea” of the work can only be apprehended in the adequate concretization of the work. Because of this, we can see in the main function of the work the projection of the aesthetic object. The fact that the work does, or does not, project other values in its secondary functions does not damage the nucleus that carries the qualities that are artistically and aesthetically valuable. Furthermore, Ingarden recognizes that this nucleus can also be conceived of as the “idea” of the work of art. In fact, in the works of Latin American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, and Salvador Elizondo, to mention just a few, we constantly see this phenomenon that leads us time and again to reflect upon the creative act. In this sense the novel, the short story, the poem become the embodiment of the reflection, the space that sees itself as being projected by a series of qualities inherent to the process of literary creation and reception. The secondary or “ancillary” functions, as Professor Nyenhuis calls them in his translation, reveal themselves insofar as the work presents itself to us in the process of actualization as being “unique.” In this respect Ingarden is very close to stylistics. The brothers Amado and Dámaso Alonso, as well as Alfonso Reyes, share the idea that a work is like an organism and, try as we may, we will never discover the answer to its mystery, that hermetic x that José Luis Martín speaks of in his crítica estilística. In Ingardenian theory we

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may see that each masterpiece is “generally distinguished by such a thoroughly integrated ‘organic’ structure that overlooking or incorrectly apprehending any detail, even a subordinate one, can or even must result in a concretization which gives only a disfigured torso of the work instead of a specifically structured whole” (Cognition, 89). Because of this it is important to say that the aesthetic attitude, seen as an immersion in the work, is the necessary condition for the value qualities’ coming to have phenomenological visibility because, according to Ingarden, the aesthetic attitude is not a rational attitude: “As a result of such an analytical stance the elements of the work which are value qualities do not achieve phenomenal visibility. Hence it is possible for the literary work of art to be directly given in various ways: once in an aesthetic attitude – in its value-quality elements – as carriers of these aesthetic values” (Literary 25). For the aesthetic object to come forth it is therefore necessary to keep in mind certain characteristics inherent to the work and let ourselves be carried away by the text without the pretension that our knowledge of the world be rational. If there is some rationality, this happens indirectly, for some artistically valuable characteristics determine in turn another sort of value, besides the aesthetic. The qualities of value are in all the layers of the work. In fact, Ingarden points out that if any of these did not have this kind of valuable qualities, the polyphony of the work would be spoiled. Aesthetic value presents itself in that harmonious totality. It constitutes itself with elements that modify each other, through the melding of qualities that emerge from the scheme of the work. Let us say that here is the essentially phenomenological nature of the work, because it constitutes metaphysical qualities and is essentially temporal. A new time appears there, melded from other primary times (that of the author, of the reader, and of represented time). And so, aesthetic value emerges as a metaphysical quality of artistic value, but the stratum of the units of meaning is the fundamental basis for the reader’s discovering that “loose connection” that allows for the “opalescent” character of the work. 3 . T H E C O G G I N G O F T WO WO R L D S : TOWA R D S T H E H O R I Z O N O F C O N C R E T I Z AT I O N

To enter the realm of creation, the author of the literary work starts out from his worldview, from its image made up of little bits of the reality he perceives. From there, he creates a series of strategies that set the metaphor’s stage, where nets of perception that shape the image as the “idea” of the work are tide together.8 That is how we may speak of the image before the creation of the

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work and of the image after its reading. This is that which would correspond to the aesthetic object, that which recovers its lost nature and returns the reader to that other shore Octavio Paz speaks of in El arco y la lira. This aesthetic image, then, is the place where the world of the creator and that of the reader submerge themselves in a new horizon, in a simultaneous time frame that belongs to concretization, where real time is contained, narrowed, modeled by represented time and vice-versa. Artistic values are temporarily harnessed to real time insofar as the reader only actualizes some of them. But all the other values (moral, social, etc.) also remain harnessed to the “temporal situation” in which the work reveals itself as an aesthetic object. Concretization is a process – and is therefore temporal – that is related to the two moments of knowledge of the work mentioned by Ingarden: 1) during reading and 2) after reading. In the latter there may be seen how the aesthetic experience shows us the world-idea of the work. According to Ingarden, only in the last phase of reading is the complex world of the work revealed, through the whole series of values in what, following Bergson, he calls “the temporal point” and which we could now relate to the “situated instant.” If we focus on the process of concretization, we can see that the reader’s time is “contained” by the scheme of the work. In a poem this occurs more intensely owing to the synthetic and opaque or ambiguous aspects of the work. But no matter how synthetic time may be and no matter how many edges of simultaneity it presents, the reading process marks instants that stretch out more than others or that synthesize more than others, as long as the dialectical relation is established between the text’s horizon and the reader’s. In this sense, the time of reading holds in its essence the analogy of the loose nexus that we find in the world represented in the work. This analogy takes us to the contemplation of instants that dilate and irradiate to all the metaphorical net. This fact also suggests the need for a phenomenological aesthetics based, not in transcendental objects that emerge out of the projection of the work and which many times we take as being ontologically autonomous, but rather in the immanence supposed by the simultaneous temporal irradiation that issues from opalescence and multivalent expressions. 4 . E S S E N T I A L F O U N DAT I O N S O F A P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L A E S T H E T I C S

The poem strings its arrow and aims (as in the original) at the world owing to the fact that a word does not leave behind its primary significance on entering the realm of multiple signification, and is as ambiguous, unstable and mysterious as always insofar as it hides its everyday tentacles. “The word

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hides more than it confesses, blurs much more than it defines, separates much more than it relates. The space that stands between the speaker and the listener is unstable, filled with traps and peopled by illusions even when dealing with interior discourse, when ‘I’ speak to ‘myself’ this duality that is in itself a product of alterity” (Steiner 263). In this simultaneous spider web, opalescence happens and multivalent expression presents a time fleshed out in other values that shape the event. “It is the opalescence of this state of being transposed into the world and yet being only suspended somewhere, of this inability to be truly grounded in reality, that produces, in conjunction with this type of quasi-judgmental assertive proposition, the special charm of these works” (Literary 169). The ambiguity we are referring to comes from an “obscurity” that lives in the same intentional and heterogeneous order in which the work was set. It has to be seen as an integrating element that while hiding certain qualities and rhythms, highlights others. Because of this, when we speak of opalescence in the full meaning of ambiguity, we have to identify it, at the time of the appearance of the aesthetic object, as an aesthetically valuable quality, as the opaque shining that acquires flight to explode in the collision of perspectives caused in the reader by the perception of a series of values of all kinds. In that way, opalescence ends up being a mediation between the world of the creator and the world of the reader that becomes synthesized in an image that does not close itself but takes shape as a net, a chameleon – like labyrinth that displays different reflections with each passing moment. In those reflections, which are temporally located, the world of the work – with all the implication of the reader’s world – rises above the notion of the real world and always modifies the expectations that may be had of its apprehension. Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico Translated by Pablo García.

N OT E S 1

This term, extracted from the theory Roman Ingarden developed in The Literary Work of Art, can be seen as “the result of the concretization we do of that ambiguous world that poetical language marks for us. The term has to do with experience, with the aesthetic moment. But it is also related to the artistic side. It is a bridge that relates both, for opalescence comes forth at the exact place where the work, as literary work, has its making” (Vergara 89–90). 2 Selections from this work were published in English under the title Time and Modes of Being, all following citations of which are made under the designation Time.

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3

“[I]t must be noted that we obtained three different varieties of modes of being for both the present (IVa, Va, and VIa) and the past IVb, Vb, and VIb). It is also significant that within the sphere of temporal being it is evident that some three types of basic objects can be distinguished, whose form is connected with the fact that their modes of being are somewhat dissimilar. And now the supposition can be put forward that the modes of being IV (a, b) are appropriate for objects enduring in time, that V (a, b) are appropriate for processes, and finally, VI (a, b) for events, although perhaps not only for them, but in general for everything which is inseparate (for example, as we shall see, the properties of things) within the compass of the temporal (real) world” (Time 162). 4 Hereinafter cited as Cognition. These variants display a close correspondence to what Ingarden, in The Literary Work of Art, calls the purely imaginational and the derivative, when he speaks of correlates in the stratum, of units of meaning. 5 Ingarden says therein: “The primary function proper to the literary work of art consists in enabling the reader who has the correct attitude toward the work to constitute an aesthetic object which belongs to the aesthetic objects permitted by the work and to bring to appearance an aesthetic value which is appropriate to the work. The function of its elements or properties should be subordinated to this chief function if the work is to achieve its highest effectiveness” (83–84). 6 According to The Literary Work of Art, we may speak of the work as a schematic structure built by linguistic formations of sound, units of meaning, represented objects, and schematized aspects. From these layers proceeds another that would be interesting to develop, that of metaphysical qualities. 7 “The first corresponds to the order in which objects appear with that feeling of continuity with which we perceive them; the second is visible in the temporal nature that represented objects have when they are recognized as intentional objects” (Vergara 79). 8 This image, which takes the form of nature in the work, corresponds to the imago of the Cuban author José Lezama Lima. In his thesis Lezama Lima entre la poética, la estética y la hermenéutica, Manuel Monroy speaks of the poet’s imago as a temporal mark, as the image that comes to make sense through time and embodiment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Vattimo, Gianni. El sujeto y la máscara: Nietzsche y el problema de la liberación. Trans. Jorge Binagui (Barcelona: Península, 1989). Ingarden, Roman. La obra de arte literaria. Trans. by Gerald Nyenhuis from the English version (Mexico City: Taurus/UIA, 1988). —. Time and Modes of Being. Trans. Helen R. Michejda (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1964). —. The Literary Work of Art. Trans. George G. Grabowicz (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). —. The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. Trans. Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993). —. “Valor artístico y valor estético,” in Harold Osborne (ed.), Estética Breviarios 268 (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura, 1976). Iser, Wolfang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1978).

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Ricoeur, Paul. La metáfora viva. Trans. Agustín Neira (Madrid: Ed. Europea, 1980). Steiner, George. Despues de Babel. Aspectos del lenguaje y la traducción (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura, 1981). Vergara, Gloria. Tiempo y verdad en la literatura. Trans. Adolfo Castañón and Aurelio Major (Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2001).

DIANE SCILLIA

A WO R L D O F A RT, P O L I T I C S , PA S S I O N A N D B E T R AYA L : T ROT S K Y, R I V E R A A N D B R E TO N A N D M A N I F E S TO : TOWA R D S A F R E E R E VO L U T I O NA RY A R T ( 1 9 3 8 )

It is my intention to demonstrate that the intellectual context of the 1938 Manifesto: Towards A Free Revolutionary Art was collaborative, with Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera and André Breton each making important contributions to its content.1 My approach will focus in on works of art since I am an art historian and since the two signatories to the manifesto were artists, but I will also bring in the writings of Trotsky. Much of my evidence is visual and I hope to shed some light on the tensions and rivalries between Rivera and Breton. In so doing, we need to trace developments of earlier decades. Furthermore, we cannot omit the personal relations between the three couples – Trotsky and his wife Natalia Sedova, Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Breton and Jacqueline Lamba – who spent so much time together in the Spring and Summer of 1938. When he wrote to Herschel B. Chipp, in 1962, clarifying the authorship of this Manifesto, Breton was the only one of the three men involved still alive.2 He had a vested interest – both in his prewar role as “Pope of Surrealism” and in his postwar role as public intellectual – in claiming that he and Trotsky wrote it and that Rivera “took no part in its inception.” By that time, Breton may have also harbored some residual animosity towards his friend and host Rivera, who (after 1941) had made his peace with the Stalinists and had been allowed to rejoin the Mexican Communist Party in 1955. Trotsky’s ideas on revolutionary art, stated in his Literature and Revolution, were published in 1924.3 But we can already see how, as head of the Red Army during the Civil War, he used art – in the form of posters – to recruit men and build morale. Red Army posters from c. 1918 to 1921, were produced by ROSTA (the Russian Telegraph Agency) and were based on traditional icons of St. George and other warrior saints. These have received little attention from scholars looking for Trotskyist aesthetics. 4 Although he was of Jewish origin, Trotsky knew the power of the image – and the emotional and religious identifications involved – and as director of the Red Army he employed the image in calling uneducated young men to defend the highly abstract ideal of the October/November Revolution. Icons were the only artistic images these recruits knew, and their “re-invention” to serve as 447 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 447–466. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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symbols for the new regime was a masterful appropriation. 5 As Trotsky states, “The Christian myth unified the monumental art of the Middle Ages and gave significance not only to the temples and the mysteries, but to all human relationships. The union of the religious point of view of life with an active participation of it made possible a great art in those times.” 6 No wonder then that variants of these compositions were used to make “icons” of Trotsky himself in the early 1920s.7 And no wonder, too, that this early revolutionary art would lose out to the Stalinist Socialist Realism by 1927 – as being too nationalistic, too Russian, as well as too conventional – or that Diego Rivera would be hustled out of Moscow in 1928.8 By the time of the Kharkov Conference in 1930, Socialist Realism was the official art of the Soviet Union and of the Third International and Trotsky was in exile in Turkey.9 This conference also attacked Surrealism, Freudianism and Trotskyism as forms of idealism. No deviation by party members was allowed. Diego Rivera was especially sympathetic to both the traditional arts of Russia and to their revolutionary variants, in part because of what his teacher Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo) had taught regarding how folk traditions reflect the soul of the people.10 This romantic view was coupled, in Rivera’s mind, with Élie Faure’s socialist ideas on how medieval and early renaissance frescos functioned as both didactic and popular art.11 Rivera met Faure, a Parisian doctor and art historian, in 1916, and it was Faure who directed Rivera to study the frescos of Giotto and his contemporaries. According to Faure, the true role of the artist in the next age of collective art (which was to be born in the twentieth century) was to decorate the buildings thrown up by the genius of the people; just as Giotto, the great genius of the medieval collective period, had decorated the churches and cathedrals of Tuscany, Umbria and the Veneto.12 Trotsky and Rivera both understood that the image was powerful in teaching a doctrine. Where they differed was in their conceptions of the nature of a nationalistic art tradition. For the cosmopolitan Trotsky, the “eternal revolutionary,” nationalism was a thing of the past, to be rejected and overcome. He used the icon form for his Red Army posters because they were there, already known, and therefore accessible to his recruits. They were “a means to an end,” and they were directed at young peasants rather than that at members of the proletariat.13 The distinction between these two groups is significant, although contemporary scholars frequently ignore it.14 Rivera, on the other hand, had a mission to bring into being a specifically Mexican art that attained the level of European art.15 This had been the focus of his early

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education before he was sent to Europe in 1907, and this mission was reconfirmed upon the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. Rivera returned to Europe to study (1911–21) the latest artistic developments, finally rejecting the more avant-garde styles in favor of the postwar classicizing style derived from Renoir. It was at that point that he turned to frescos of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to find inspiration with which to fulfill governmental commissions for didactic paintings that could relate the historical precedents of the Mexican Revolution to the largely illiterate peoples of his country, like those at the Secretariat for Education in Mexico City (1924).16 In spite of this basic difference, both Trotsky and Rivera thought that art should carry more than an ideological message, that it should be open to the individual’s responses and experiences as well as to the artist’s idiosyncratic interpretation. In other words, both Trotsky and Rivera saw the function of art within the revolution as more than propaganda directed at the proletariat, or “agit-prop.”17 As we shall see, Rivera loved to incorporate politically charged figures and scenes into his frescos (both in Mexico as well as in those he painted at Rockefeller Center), but he usually made his imagery more universal than strictly propagandistic. He understood that public imagery had to succeed as art, just as the late gothic and early renaissance frescos decorating Italian churches functioned as didactic images but were also works of art that reflected the hopes and fears of the society and culture. Perhaps the best example of Rivera’s reworking of these traditional forms are the frescos of the Chapingo chapel, done in 1926: the naked figure painted on the wall over the former altar represents the fertility of the earth (or The Liberated Earth with the Powers of Nature Controlled by Man), an image in keeping with the former Jesuit complex’s rededication as a School of Agriculture.18 Here and there in the vaults of the ceiling, Rivera painted the hammer and sickle, but the overall theme of the repainted chapel concerns the cycle of life on earth (Song to the Earth and to Those Who Till It and Liberate It). The agrarian imagery – couched in the sensual forms of Lupe Marín (his then wife, pregnant with their second child) and Tina Modotti (with whom he was having an affair) – allow for several different readings simultaneously, especially by those of us fully aware of his personal history.19 These allegorical images of “natural evolution” are didactically countered on the facing wall with idealized scenes from recent Mexican history (illustrating “social revolution”).20 This imagery, together with that in his frescos of colonial history painted for the American ambassador at Cuernavaca (1929–30), transcends propaganda, although it certainly

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functions in that way too. Rivera’s frescos were criticized by the Stalinists within Mexico as being too highly personal in nature and too capricious. Rivera had been one of the first signers of the 1922 Manifesto issued by the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors in Mexico City (here the word syndicate can be translated as guild), of which the final sentence reads: “We proclaim that this being the moment of social transition from a decrepit to a new order, the makers of beauty must invest their greatest efforts in the aim of materializing an art valuable to the people, and our supreme objective in art, which is today an expression for individual pleasure, is to create beauty for all, beauty that enlightens and stirs to struggle.”21 In 1922, he, along with many of his colleagues in the Syndicate, also joined the Mexican Communist Party (MCP).22 Rivera’s experiences in Moscow in 1927–28, where he had lectured on fresco painting at the School of Fine Arts, led him to question some of his earlier ideas, and also brought him into opposition to Stalinist Socialist Realism.23 Rivera’s The Commune, made for the cover of the Octoberist journal Red Field (no. 12, 1928), is based upon Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (of 1830) and shows men and women (and all age groups) defending themselves in some unspecified urban setting (Paris? Mexico City? Moscow?).24 This image used a well-known and charged political image (and title) from the 19th century to represent the embattled October group (which he had joined while in Moscow) defending themselves against the official forces of the Central Committee. The irony of the title was not lost on contemporaries: Anatoly Lunacharsky asked him to leave the Soviet Union.25 Upon his return from Moscow, Rivera ran afoul of his colleagues in the Syndicate and in the MCP. They followed the party line dictated by Moscow, and he did not; he was expelled as an “individualist” in 1929.26 Moreover, his success and his growing personal artistic reputation (both in Mexico and in the United States after 1930) triggered attacks on his political orthodoxy by less successful, but more orthodox party members. Rivera, by his nature, could not adhere to any orthodoxy: he had a self-destructive need to reject any doctrinal narrowness – whether Catholicism, Cubism, Communism, Trotskyism or Surrealism – coupled with a pathological need to try (in the sense of “to test”) the patience – and love – of those closest to him.27 Of the works he painted in the U.S., the twenty-one frescos on portable panels, entitled Portrait of America and painted for the Lovestonist New Workers School in New York City, were the most propagandistic in execution. 28 Rivera had used the money paid to him by the Rockefellers (in fulfillment of his contract for his Man at the Crossroads fresco in Rockefeller Center,

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painted in 1933, and destroyed in 1934) to paint the frescos for this school on West 14th Street.29 The irony of this appealed to him. The idea for Portrait of America came from Bertram D. Wolfe, the former chair of the MCP who then headed the school, and who would be Rivera’s biographer as well as his major contact with the Trotskyites. 30 Rivera’s ties to opposition circles continued after his return to Mexico in 1934, and he added Trotsky’s portrait to that of Lenin in his second version of Man at the Crossroads, painted in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. 31 From 1932 to 1935, Rivera published several articles in Trotskyite publications on art and revolution or on revolutionary art, including one illustrated with a photo showing him painting his Trotskyite frescos in New York.32 In the Summer of 1936, Rivera petitioned Lázaro Cárdenas, the Mexican President, to allow Leon Trotsky to enter that country and guaranteed that Trotsky would adhere to the restrictions of his exile – including that he would refrain from any political activity.33 Because of his own idiosyncratic opposition to Stalin, Rivera was in increasing danger, and there were at least two attempts on his life even before the 1937 incident in which Frida Kahlo, his wife, faced down armed assassins in a Mexico City restaurant. Despite that, he was the only sympathetic individual in Mexico having the personal resources (including those of his extended family, in-laws as well as former in-laws) with which to house and to protect the Trotsky household, and he did that generously, even hosting and helping to fund the Dewey Commission investigations into the allegations raised at the Moscow Show Trials.34 Rivera lived by the proverb, “Mi casa es su casa.” The affair between Trotsky and Frida Kahlo – which has been recounted in at least two movies and a play, as well as in various books – took place in June and July 1937 and was already over when she painted her Self-Portrait for his 56th birthday in November 1937.35 Rivera would not find out about the affair until after October 1938, and this knowledge contributed to his break with Trotsky early in 1939. There were other causes as well – political ones – including Rivera’s own confession to Trotsky that he was an anarchist at heart.36 In the Summer of 1937, Rivera took Trotsky and his wife Natalia to see his frescos in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Chapingo. While accompanying Trotsky as he collected cactus specimens for his garden, Rivera painted landscapes with fantastic plant forms.37 He also talked about his frescos for the Hotel Reforma in 1936, which had been “damaged and repainted” by the ungrateful patrons.38 Trotsky asks, in “Art and Politics”: “Do you wish to know what revolutionary art is like? Look at the frescos of Rivera.”39 In his

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next paragraph, Trotsky repeats claims about the Hotel Reforma frescos that Rivera had made in his own writings.40 Was Trotsky just being a genial guest and complimenting his host, or did he and Rivera discuss art and its role in the revolution before Breton arrived in early 1938? André Breton and Jacqueline Lamba came to Mexico on a lecture tour in Spring 1938.41 Because of some mix-up at the French embassy, they had no place to live in Mexico City and Rivera put the couple up, first with Lupe Marín, his ex-wife, and then at the Casa San Angel, Rivera’s own house.42 Breton and Lamba returned to Paris in August 1938. Photographs show the Bretons socializing with Rivera, Kahlo and Marín and their friends. Other photographs show the interaction between Breton, Rivera, Trotsky and Lamba; or record Breton and the Riveras at a picnic or on an outing into the Mexican countryside with the Trotsky entourage; some published photographs depict only the three men. It was during one of these outings, to Pátzcuaro, that Manifesto: Towards A Free Revolutionary Art came into being.43 It was first published in Mexico City, in French, on July 25, 1938.44 The Spanish, English, and Russian translations followed later that year. That the Manifesto was written in French literally means that Rivera had no part in its writing: his French was the language of the street and of the tavern rather than the literary language; he felt uncomfortable discussing abstractions with the cultured Breton.45 Breton certainly wrote out the text of the Manifesto, but Trotsky was the author of its vocabulary.46 As Patrick Marnham writes, “Breton produced a manuscript written in green ink and Trotsky got to work on it, employing his habitual and highly original method of prose composition. He erected a large pin-board to which he attached the manuscript and scraps of his own work, together with relevant news cuttings or other extracts. He would then move these passages around the board until they could be assembled in the appropriate order.”47 For the most part, Breton carried out Trotsky’s orders in the writing of the Manifesto, much like a secretary or amanuensis rather than a coauthor. Or much like a subordinate carrying out a superior’s orders. These discussions, at Pátzcuaro and elsewhere, undoubtedly took place in a mix of languages: Rivera understood Breton’s French and could express himself in Russian to Trotsky. It is a mistake to leave out the distaff side of the three couples: Frida Kahlo and Jacqueline Lamba were both artists, while Trotsky’s wife, Natalia Sedova, was an art historian. Each of the women would have had a strong opinion about art.48 With Frida, Rivera could speak Spanish (she spoke to Trotsky in German), but with Natalia, Rivera would use Russian or French, and with Jacqueline he would speak French or

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English.49 They all (Rivera, Kahlo, Lamba and Sedova) were interested in art and they all could follow a conversation in French, but even Frida was uncomfortable speaking French in front of Breton. She was bored with Breton’s arrogance and pretensions, and she was not at ease with Natalia, who knew about the affair with her husband. Frida and Jacqueline (who spoke English together) acted out while the men talked of theoretical things, and they enjoyed annoying Trotsky with their smoking (he did not smoke and thought that women should not smoke or wear makeup).50 Nevertheless, Matthew Gale concludes that Frida is “the very embodiment of the creative revolutionary envisaged” in the Manifesto of 1938. Things were not completely harmonious between Breton and Trotsky. The two had different opinions about specific literary works as well as about art, which is to be expected given the differences in their ages (Trotsky was almost 57, Breton was 42), in their educations and in their life experiences.51 Moreover, Trotsky objected to Breton’s stealing retablos – small votive panels – from local churches, for his upcoming Parisian exhibit of Mexican folk art.52 Given the tensions between Frida and Natalia about Trotsky’s affair with the younger woman (of which Rivera was still ignorant), Trotsky’s ongoing dogmatic rulings regarding smoking, etc., by Frida and Jacqueline – as well as the Old Man’s flirtations with Jacqueline, Breton’s jealousy of Trotsky’s attentions to his wife and his forced subservience to Trotsky during the actual writing of the Manifesto – it is easy to imagine how Rivera’s contributions (along with those of the women) were forgotten. Rivera’s openhanded generosity in supporting, protecting and entertaining the Trotsky entourage at the Casa Azul at Coyoacán and the Bretons at his own house were worrying him: these expenses came close to bankrupting him. Between 1936 and 1940, Rivera took on no major fresco commissions; no wonder Rivera declined to join in the theoretical discussions about the artistic policy of the Fourth International. Breton and Rivera were early members of the International, joining shortly after its announced founding in 1936.53 They both understood, as practicing artists, the need for a clearly stated definition of the role of art within the movement, but Rivera also knew he could never adhere to any finalized aesthetic doctrine, no matter how sympathetic he found it; it was not in him. Rivera was a man of action – including seduction and argument – and he loved being the center of attention, but he was never a theoretician.54 He never wrote his version of the events at Pátzcuaro, and he makes only one passing reference to Breton in his autobiography when he lists Breton with Ehrenburg and other writers he knew in Paris in the 1910s who loved Charlie

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Chaplin’s movies.55 Hence, we can best see his thoughts in the woodcut Communicating Vessels (Homage to André Breton, 1938).56 It was made for the poster of Breton’s lecture on Surrealism at the National University in Mexico City on May 13, 1938 and was printed in black and red ink on beige paper. It shows a man’s head with the upper part of the skull removed, exposing the brain. Nerves fall from the brain and become as tree roots at the bottom of the image where they flank the half-opened mouth. To either side of the mouth, a hand holds a clear vessel topped by an eye. The right eye (to the left) is closed, while the left eye is opened and looks out at the viewer. A vein runs between the vessels, linking the red liquid (blood?) in each. While this woodcut can be called Surrealist in style, it is different from those normally included under that category.57 Clearly, this image relates to Breton’s work by the same name as well as to the events of the Spring of 1938, but its exact relation to the Manifesto may never be uncovered. In various passages in the Manifesto of 1938 Breton’s definition of artistic freedom overshadows Trotsky’s theories about how art should function in a revolutionary context: “The free choice of these themes and the absence of all restrictions on the range of his explorations – these are possessions which the artist has a right to claim as inalienable. In the realm of artistic creation, the imagination must escape from all constraint and must, under no pretense, allow itself to be placed under bonds.”58 The overall tone of the Manifesto, however, is very different from that of pronouncements written by Breton in 1935, and it does not fit into Breton’s oeuvre (especially not with his L’Amour Fou, written in 1937), contrary to what Dawn Ades holds. One wonders if Ehrenburg’s name came up during the discussions on Revolutionary art, particularly when the passages influenced by Breton’s theories took shape. Ilya Ehrenburg, an old friend of Rivera’s days in Paris, had delivered a devastating critique of the Surrealists in 1933, calling them deviants, pederasts and onanists (among other things), while championing Socialist Realism as the true art form of the Third International.59 Before the start of the 1935 Paris Congress on Franco-Soviet cultural ties, Breton slapped Ehrenburg, which resulted in Breton’s not being allowed to address the congress. Breton never forgave Ehrenburg for precipitating the suicide of Crevel, another Surrealist poet, and he joined the Fourth (or Trotskyite) International shortly afterward. Ehrenburg (who died in 1967) remained Breton’s nemesis. For Trotsky to have signed the Manifesto of 1938 would have been a violation of the terms of his exile (for that very reason he had been expelled from Norway), hence only Breton’s and Rivera’s names appeared on it. This

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was, nevertheless, a betrayal of the promise he made to President Cárdenas and to Rivera in coming to Mexico. 60 But to negate Rivera’s role in the production of the Manifesto, as Breton did, is to betray both the friendship Rivera felt towards Breton as well as to betray Rivera’s generosity in supporting Breton and his wife in Mexico. Why was Breton so ungrateful towards Rivera in 1962? We know the Bretons reciprocated when Frida Kahlo traveled to Paris early in 1939, giving her shelter while she arranged for an exhibition of her paintings. Frida is less than kind to Breton in the letters she wrote to Ella Wolfe and to Rivera before the left Paris; but she sent Jacqueline an intimate letter on her return to Mexico.61 Many have assumed that Frida and Jacqueline had started an affair in Mexico and continued it in Paris. Jacqueline and Breton divorced in 1942, while in exile in New York, and she later married the sculptor David Hare.62 By that time, there were far more important concerns than outlining the aesthetic policy of an opposition political party, let alone untangling the intimate relationships between and among these six individuals. The signing of the Non-Aggression Pact between Hitler and Stalin in August 1939 and the outbreak of war in Europe early in September finalized the chasm between the Stalinists and the Trotskyites. With the collapse of France before the invading Germans, Breton and many of his colleagues fled into exile, where some of them worked with the Voice of America or did relief work; but many Stalinists stayed in France and, eventually, joined in the Resistance.63 The Fourth International died with Trotsky in August 1940. The Stalinists spread stories at the time that Rivera was directly involved with either the assassination of Trotsky itself or the earlier failed attempt on Trotsky’s life in May of 1940, a classic example of disinformation. 64 He had fled to San Francisco, with the help of the actress Paulette Goddard, upon learning of the May attempt.65 His break with Trotsky early in 1939 (for many reasons, including the Old Man’s affair with Frida) now left the exile stranded and vulnerable. Rivera was isolated and in danger, a fact underscored by the continuing campaign directed against him by the Stalinist Communist Parties in the United States and Mexico.66 When he and Frida returned to Mexico in 1941, he began to make amends with his old comrades of the MCP. By 1948, Frida, whose health was failing, had rejoined the MCP, although Rivera was not allowed back in until 1955.67 Breton’s break with the French Communist Party was complete in 1939; he did not attempt to rejoin it when he returned from exile in 1946. In April 1947, he and some of his colleagues stormed out of Tristan Tzara’s lecture at the Sorbonne on “Surrealism after the War” when Tzara condemned

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Surrealism in the name of art engage and rallied his audience to Communism. The following month, in an article in Les Temps Modernes, Sartre declared the Surrealist revolt to be basically abstract, metaphysical, and ineffective, and said that the Surrealists were incapable of action when the moment came.68 This was Ehrenburg’s critique in new clothes. Perhaps Rivera’s final betrayal, that sole mention of Breton in his posthumous autobiography (published in 1960) as just one of several writers he had known in Paris (including Ehrenburg), triggered Breton’s 1962 letter to Chipp in which Breton wrote: “Rivera took no part in [the Manifesto’s] inception. This text, in its entirety, was drawn up by Leon Trotsky and me, and it was for tactical reasons that Trotsky wanted Rivera’s signature substituted for his own.”69 And, significantly, in 1963, Bertram D. Wolfe reissued his biography of Rivera, expanding upon the earlier accounts of the Portrait of America frescos for the New Workers School (1933), but omitting, in his text, any reference to Breton in Mexico.70 But this brings us close to another tale of art, politics, passion and betrayal, one which I will leave to others. Perhaps it is time to exorcise the ghost of Trotsky that is said to haunt the Casa Azul in Coyoacán.71 Kent State University, United States N OT E S 1 André Breton and Diego Rivera, “Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art,” Translated by Dwight Macdonald, in Partisan Review (Vol. 6, no. 1) Fall 1938, pp. 49–53. Also see “Leon Trotsky to André Breton” in Partisan Review (Vol. 6, no. 2) Winter 1939, pp. 126–127. Dawn Ades, “Rivera and Surrealism in Mexico, 1938–1940,” in Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes/The Cleveland Museum of Art/Landucci Editores, 1999), pp. 314–315, uses quotations from an English translation other than Macdonald’s. 2 Herschel B. Chipp (Editor), Theories of Modern Art. A Source Book by Artists and Critics. With Contributions by Peter Selz and Joshua C. Taylor (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1968) pp. 483–486, reprints the Macdonald translation. Chipp, p. 457, n. 1, cites Breton’s La Clé des champs (Paris: Sagittaire, 1953) p. 40. Ades, pp. 313–315, briefly mentions the collaboration between Breton and Trotsky and then discusses the Manifesto as if it had been written by Breton. Also see, Mark Polizzotti, Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), pp. 461–464, who includes Rivera at first, but then focuses on the actual writing of the text of the manifesto by Trotsky and Breton. 3 Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (New York: Russell and Russell, 1957), p. 240. This book originally appeared in 1924. Compare Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Trotsky (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1977), pp. 271–275, for an overview of Trotsky’s ideas on art and the revolution between 1920 and 1924. Leon Trotsky, “Art and Politics. A Letter to the Editors of Partisan Review,” in Partisan Review (Vol. 5, no. 3) August–September 1938, pp. 3–10,

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incorporates some of the ideas he had been working out during his exile; the letter is dated June 18, 1938. Trotsky’s letter to Breton (cited above in n. 1), also gives us some insight into his ideas about art and revolution. Moreover, see Dwight Macdonald, “Trotsky is Dead. An Attempt at an Appreciation,” in Partisan Review (Vol. 7, no. 5) 1940, pp. 339–353, esp. pp. 345–347, on Trotsky’s literary style. 4 A photo essay in Evergreen Review no. 46 (April 1967), illustrates several of these posters. Also see, David Elliott, New Worlds: Russian Art and Society. 1900–1937 (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), pp. 74 and 75; and Robert C. Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant–Garde, 1905–1925 (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977). 5 Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky, The Eternal Revolutionary (New York: The Free Press, 1991), pp. 51–52, and Payne, p. 129, on Trotsky’s association with Adler in Vienna (before 1916) and his sophistication. Also see Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson, Lenin’s Embalmers. Translated from the French by Barbara Bray (London: The Harvill Press, 1999), p. 11, for Trotsky’s objections to making an icon of Lenin by preserving his body. 6 This translation is from Payne, p. 271. Compare Trotsky’s remarks from The Problems of Life (1924), repeated by Payne, p. 273: “The Workers’ State already had its festivals, processions, reviews and parades, symbolic spectacles – the new theatrical ceremonies of State. It is true that in the main they are too closely allied to the old forms, which they imitate and perpetuate. But on the whole, the revolutionary symbolism of the workers’ State is novel, distinct and forceful – the red flag, the red star, worker, peasant, comrade, International. But within the closed cages of family life the new has not penetrated, or at least has done so but little, while individual life is closely bound up with the family. This explains why in the matter of icons, christenings, Church funerals, etc., the balance is in favor of custom. The revolutionary members of the family have nothing to offer in their place.” 7 For Trotsky’s use of propaganda, see Volkogonov, pp. 163 ff. An illustration featuring V. Deni’s poster Trotsky Slaying the Counter-revolutionary Dragon faces p. 316. 8 Patrick Marnham, Dreaming With His Eyes Open. A Life of Diego Rivera (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 201–202, who states that Rivera was sympathetic to the Union of Former Icon Painters at Moscow; compare the references in Diego Rivera, My Art, My Life. An Autobiography (with Gladys March) (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960, repr. 1991), pp. 87–94; and in Bertram D. Wolfe, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera (New York: Stein and Day, 1963), pp. 221–224 and 421. Neither Rivera’s autobiography nor Wolfe’s biography should be taken as authoritative. Both accounts omit too much and have to be corroborated by other sources. For additional biographies of the artist, see David Craven, Diego Rivera as Epic Modernist (New York: G. K. Hall and Co., 1997); Pete Hamill, Diego Rivera (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000), Andrea Kettermann, Diego Rivera, 1886–1957. A Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1997), and Laurance P. Hurlburt, “Diego Rivera (1886–1957): A Chronology of His Art, Life and Times,” in Detroit Institute of Arts, Diego Rivera. A Retrospective (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1986), pp. 22–115. These works each include excellent bibliographies. 9 William S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, exhibition catalogue (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1968), pp. 208–209, and Matthew Gale, Dada and Surrealism (London: Phaidon, 1997), pp. 299–301. Also, see Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party. Art and Radicalism in Crisis, 1918 to 1936 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 166–167, for Rivera’s responses (1932) to the “direct and undisguised refutation of Trotsky’s 1924 pronouncements on the place of art in revolution,” and pp. 168–170, for how George Grosz and Max Eastman responded to the Kharkov Conference.

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10 Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. viii and 22–23; and Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 108–112. Marnham, pp. 46–47, 75, and 143; and Kettermann, Diego Rivera, pp. 9–11, further elaborate on Dr. Atl’s influence on the young artist. 11 Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 108–113; and Marnham, pp. 141–148. When one visits Frida Kahlo’s studio in the Casa Azul, Faure’s books are visible among those on the bookshelves. 12 Marnham, pp. 143–144. 13 Trotsky’s personal taste in art was somewhat conservative, but unlike his politburo contemporaries Trotsky sat for a portrait by Yuri Annenkov in the “cubo-futurist” style in 1923. For this now lost work, which was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1924, see David King, The Commissar Vanishes. The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997), pp. 92–93. When it came to Red Army posters, Trotsky was aware, however, that traditional religious images were linked to the peasant culture and would be more “accessible” to prospective recruits, as we have seen above. It is a mistake to assume that Trotsky was an adherent of Prolekult or of Socialist Realism, as Payne does. For Prolekult, see Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1997), pp. 435, 737, 742, and 745; and John E. Bowlt (editor), Russian Art of the AvantGarde. Theory and Criticism, 1902–1934. Revised and Enlarged Edition (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988), pp. xxxiv and 176–182. 14 The proletariat were primarily urban workers, although it was governmental policy to proletarize the agrarian laborers (or peasants); see Figes, pp. 594–603, especially 596–597 and 600–601. During the Civil War, great numbers of men recruited into the Red Army were from the cities rather than from the countryside. However, in 1919, the Red Army grew to some three million men, mostly from the countryside, many of whom deserted to return to their farms or to join the counterrevolutionaries. Here, we can see how his conversations with Adler shaped how Trotsky directed propaganda to specific audiences. Even if he was not always successful, Trotsky was a subtler, and more dangerous, propagandist than Stalin. Compare Leon Trotsky, The Russian Revolution. The Overthrow of Tzarism and The Triumph of the Soviets. Selected and Edited by F. W. Dupee from The History of the Russian Revolution [in Russian, 1931] trans. Max Eastman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959 [1932]), especially Chapter 3, “The Proletariat and the Peasantry.” 15 Antonio Saborit, “Diego Rivera Among His Own,” in Art and Revolution, pp. 195–216, esp. 206–216. 16 For these, see Diego Rivera. A Retrospective, pp. 241–251. Marnham, p. 188, quotes from Anthony Blunt’s article on Rivera: “If Medieval art was the Bible of the Illiterate, Rivera’s frescos [at the Secretariat of Public Education] are the Kapital of the Illiterate.” He does not cite the source of this quotation. Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 440, lists the Blunt article in Section VIII of his Selected Bibliography. 17 For Trotsky’s ideas on agit-prop (one of the tools of Socialist Realism), see Trotsky, “Art and Politics,” pp. 5–7. McCloskey (as cited in n. 9 above), pp. 166–167, especially in the quotation on p. 167, recounts Rivera’s definition of how art functions in a revolution. Moreover, Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 118–122, countering the accusations that his Detroit frescos were propagandistic, exults over the response of engineers and auto workers to his Detroit frescos, but emphasizes that they understood and appreciated these works because the frescos were true to life and true to the production process he was depicting. 18 Now the Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo; see Diego Rivera. A Retrospective, pp. 253–259. 19 Marnham, pp. 188–189, and 192–195, gives the most readable account of this time in Rivera’s life. Compare Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 188–192; and Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 81–83.

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In setting the scenes on the opposing walls of the former nave, Rivera followed traditional conventions. In medieval and renaissance churches, scenes of the Old Testament (or “Old Law”) appeared on the left wall (as you faced the altar), while scenes of Christ’s life and the events of the New Testament (or “New Law”) appeared on the facing wall. Here “the old law” of natural evolution appears on the right wall (which means that the focus of the interior was shifted from the former altar to the entrance of the chapel), and “the new law” of social revolution on the left. The change in focus within the space denotes its new use as an assembly hall. 21 Chipp, pp. 461–462. Significantly, an excerpt from Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution (1924) immediately follows this text in Chipp. The famous photograph showing Rivera and Kahlo marching under the banner of the Syndacio de los peinturas en escriptores in 1930, indicates that he joined other Marxist associations as well. 22 Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 151; Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 78; and Marnham, pp. 165, 168, and 172–173. 23 Primary among the ideas he began to question were those about the “collective” nature of medieval art, especially frescos. He knew from his own experiences, in 1923–26, that in fresco painting there had to be a single artist “in charge” of the commission, with the others carrying out his ideas: to work otherwise was to court chaos and disaster. His Moscow students, however, insisted that each artist involved should work independently to produce the collective or communal work. Moreover, Rivera seems to have felt limited by the restrictions placed upon him by various committees that were drawing up commissions for him. See, Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 220–223 and 421; and Marnham, pp. 200–203. 24 Bowlt, p. 275, reproduces this image, but does not discuss it. Bowlt, pp. 273–279, gives a translation of “October – Association of Artistic Labor Declaration, 1928,” which program seems to parallel the earlier Prolekult and constructivist movements. Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 217–218 and 221–224, discusses Rivera’s ties to the October group and gives the following account of Rivera’s address to his Moscow peers (p. 221): “In his lectures he pointed out the weakness of easel painting for immediate mass consumption. A score of artists rushed to reply as if he had denied the role of easel painting altogether. The Russians had erred, he said, in not seeking to fuse the developed technique acquired in Paris with the peasant and popular tradition of Russian folk art. ‘Look at your icon painters,’ he bade them, ‘and at the wonderful embroideries and lacquer boxes and wood carvings and leather work and toys. A great heritage which you have not known how to use and have despised!’ Voices answered charging him with glorifying icons and the Church, admiring backward peasant handicrafts, underestimating the role of the machine, of industrialization, of the economic plan.” 25 Anatoly Lunacharsky, People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, had commissioned Rivera to decorate the Red Army Club in Moscow. This commission was canceled even before the final act of “individualism” on Rivera’s part that led to his leaving the Soviet Union. See Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 217–218, 220–221, and 421; Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 92–93; and Marnham, pp. 201–203. Rivera was in Moscow from late October 1927 until May 1928. In January 1928, Trotsky was taken by force and sent into exile in Alma-Alta, but Rivera did not include any mention of this in his autobiography. 26 This expulsion was one of several that had occurred between 1922 and 1929, but this one would last until 1955, see Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 225–239. Rivera, in My Art, My Life, pp. 98–100, and 141, gives his expulsion from the party as his rationale for supporting Trotsky in Mexico. 27 Perhaps the women who were married to him best understood this need to challenge authority and its limitations and to test their love. Although he had betrayed each of them by

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having affairs with other women while they were married, his former wives and current wife still loved him for his best qualities – his intelligence and his generous spirit. Or as Angeline Belloff concluded: he was an amoral man, but not an evil one. See their statements appended to Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 183–190. Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 425, likens Rivera’s behavior (both to his wives as well as to figures of authority) to the Freudian “Death Wish.” 28 For these, see Diego Rivera. A Retrospective, pp. 299–301; Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 333–338; and Alberto Hijar, “Painting After Trotsky,” in Art and Revolution, pp. 261–269. Add, McCloskey, pp. 157–168, especially pp. 158–159 and 162, with fig. 54, which author clarifies the links between Wolfe, Lovestone, and Rivera. Rivera’s writings from c. 1932, demonstrate the influence of Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution; see McCloskey, pp. 166–168. King discusses briefly a photographic source for one of the panels of the New Workers School frescos (p. 48). 29 For the Rockefeller Center commission, see Diego Rivera. A Retrospective, pp. 295–297 and 303–304; and Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 335–337; Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 129–130; Marnham, pp. 257–258; Irene Herner, “Diego Rivera: Paradise Lost in Rockefeller Center, Revisited,” in Art and Revolution, pp. 235–259; and Hijar, pp. 261–269. 30 See Bertram D. Wolfe, Portrait of America, with Introduction by Diego Rivera (New York: Covici Friede, 1934). This book was a best seller. Also, see McCloskey (pages cited in n. 28) for Jay Lovestone; Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War. The CIA. And the World of Arts and Letters (New York: The Free Press, 1999), pp. 87, 147, 154, and 329–330, wherein are told Lovestone’s later activities with the CIA; and Sam Tanenhaus, “Ella Goldberg Wolfe, b. 1896. A Tale of Three Centuries,” in The New York Times Magazine, January 7, 2001, pp. 28–30. Rivera finally broke with Wolfe in the late 1940s when his links to the CIA became known and when Frida Kahlo rejoined the Mexican Communist Party; see Bertram D. Wolfe, “The Strange Case of Diego Rivera,” Arts Digest 26 (January 1, 1955), pp. 6–8; and The Letters of Frida Kahlo. Cartas Apasionadas, compiled by Martha Zamora (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995), especially those written between 1934 and 1940 to Ella Wolfe and Lucienne Bloch. Frida’s last letter to Ella is dated 1946. In addition, see Wolfe’s autobiography, Bertram D. Wolfe, A Life in Two Centuries (New York: Stein and Day, 1981). 31 See Diego Rivera. A Retrospective, pp. 303–304; Herner, pp. 235–259; and Hijar, pp. 261–269. 32 Selected bibliographies of Rivera’s writings appear in both Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 436–437, and at the end of Diego Rivera. A Retrospective. In addition, French translations of his writings appeared under the title, Diego Rivera, Ecrits sur L’Art (Selection and translation of texts by Catherine Ballestro), (Paris: Editions Idées et Calendes, 1996). As a public intellectual, Rivera wrote for the popular media, newspapers and magazines. Until recently, these resources were little studied by scholars, who preferred to limit their researches to academic journals and books. One of Rivera’s articles, “Lo que opina Diego Rivera sobre la pintura revolucionaria,” which appeared in Octubre (Mexico City), October 1935, and in Claridad (Buenos Aires), February 1936, suggests that he and Trotsky had much to discuss before Spring 1938. Hijar, p. 263, refers to this article as “Rivera’s Defense and Attack against Stalinists.” McCloskey (cited in note 9 above), p. 166, states that, in 1932, Rivera “claimed Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution as the basis for his own convictions about art’s revolutionary importance”; therein on p. 162 (fig. 54) the issue of Worker’s Age with the photograph of Rivera painting the frescos at the New Workers School is reproduced. 33 Volkogonov, pp. 384–387; Payne, pp. 385–386 and 391–393; Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 141; and Marnham, p. 277. 34 Volkogonov, pp. 387–389; Payne, pp. 395–398; Marnham, pp. 277–279. Neither Wolfe nor Rivera mention that the Joint Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials, under the

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chairmanship of John Dewey, met at the Casa Azul in Coyoacán (Frida Kahlo’s family home) in April 1937. 35 Marnham, pp. 280–281; and Hayden Herrera, Frida. A Biography of Frida Kahlo (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), pp. 208–214. The Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky, 1937 is in the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and was given to that museum by Claire Booth Luce. Also, see Andrea Kettermann, Frida Kahlo, 1907–1954. Pain and Passion (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1993), p. 41, who quotes André Breton: “I have for long admired the self-portrait by Frida Kahlo de Rivera that hangs on a wall of Trotsky’s study. She has painted herself in a robe of wings gilded with butterflies, and it is exactly in this guise that she draws aside the mental curtain. We are privileged to be present, as in the most glorious days of German romanticism, at the entry of a young woman endowed with all the gifts of seduction.” Is it any wonder Natalia Sedova insisted that Trotsky leave this painting at the Casa Azul when they left in early 1939? Also see, Margaret A. Lindauer, Devouring Frida. The History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo (Hanover, NH and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1999), pp. 36–40. 36 Marnham, pp. 285–289 and 293; and Volkogonov, p. 394. Compare Herrera, p. 247; Volkogonov, pp. 394–395; and Payne, p. 409. Even Herrera credits political differences between Rivera and Trotsky for their falling out, pp. 247–249. Her main evidence appears in the letter Trotsky wrote to Frida early in 1939 in which he states: “The only thing I could extract from him was his indignation at my reluctance to recognize those characteristics in him which would make for a good revolutionary functionary. I insisted that he should never accept a bureaucratic position in the organization, because a ‘secretary’ who never writes, never answers letters, never comes to meetings on time and always makes the opposite of the common decision is not a good secretary. And I ask you, why should Diego be a ‘secretary’? That he is an authentic revolutionary needs no proof, but he is a revolutionary multiplied by a great artist and it is even this ‘multiplication’ which makes him absolutely unfit for routine work in the party.” Also see Jean van Heijenoort, With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 136–137; and Anthony W. Lee, Painting on the Left. Diego Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco’s Public Murals (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California, 1999), pp. 201–205, esp. 203–204, for the political differences between Rivera and Trotsky in early 1939. The Rivera – Kahlo marriage ended in divorce in 1939, but the couple remarried in San Francisco in December 1940. Neither ever cited the affair with Trotsky as a reason for this divorce. Ella and Bertram Wolfe, who knew the couple best, remained silent on this matter, too. Marnham, p. 288, quotes Trotsky: “He has the full right to make one more political mistake instead of one good painting.” Marnham, pp. 287–288 and 293, holds that “Rivera’s break with Trotsky was personal,” and, on pp. 294–298, he discusses the aftermath of Rivera’s finding out about Frida’s affair with Trotsky, including their subsequent divorce and remarriage. Also, see Lindauer, pp. 40–44. 37 These six paintings, three of which appear in Diego Rivera. A Retrospective, including the Copalli landscape now in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, were done from life near Taxco. They are among Rivera’s works usually described as Surrealist, and have been discussed as having been painted while Rivera was under Breton’s influence. Since their execution predates Breton’s arrival in Mexico by almost six months, they are more probably works of Rivera’s own imagination. Compare, Ades, pp. 318–320. Moreover, Frida Kahlo’s paintings of 1938–1940 are also called Surrealist, see Gale, Dada and Surrealism, pp. 367–368, although, as she emphatically stated: “I did not know I was a Surrealist until Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me that I was one.” Nevertheless, Frida was happy to exhibit with other Surrealist painters in

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New York, Paris, and Mexico City. And both Rivera and Kahlo furnished works for the Surrealist exhibition of 1940 at the Museum of Modern Art. 38 Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 133–135; compare Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 349–352; and Marnham, pp. 267–269. Also see Maltby Sykes, “Diego Rivera and the Hotel Reforma Murals,” Archives of American Art (Vol. 25, nos. 1–2, 1985), reprinted in Archives of American Art (Vol. 30, nos. 1–4, 1990), pp. 101–112, especially, 111. Sykes assisted Rivera in the painting of the Hotel Reforma frescos. Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 238–239, quotes from Trotsky’s “Art and Politics”; see especially p. 239, where Wolfe adds to the statement about the damage’s having been done by Stalinists: “So far as I have been able to observe, this charge is not justified.” 39 Trotsky, “Art and Politics,” pp. 4–8. Moreover, according to Marnham, p. 288, Trotsky had often stated that he “could convince people of socialism by the ones and fives, but Rivera, with his paintings, could influence them by the scores and hundreds.” 40 Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 133–134, but articles also appeared in Mexico City and American newspapers decrying the damage to his Hotel Reforma frescos throughout the Summer of 1936 (cited in Wolfe, Fabulous Life, pp. 349–352, esp., 352, and compare, pp. 238–239). Also see Sykes. Rivera undoubtedly communicated these charges (which sound very like those Frida makes in some of her letters to Ella Wolfe at this time) to Trotsky during the early months of Trotsky’s stay at the Casa Azul. Moreover, Diego Rivera, “Protesta contra el Vandalismo en la Destruccion de los Pintura de Juan O’Gorman,” in Clave-Tribuna marxista (Mexico City), December 1938, decries damages done to O’Gorman’s airport murals by governmental workers. 41 Only Polizzotti, pp. 453–454, gives the exact dates of the Bretons’ departure from France (April 2, 1938) and arrival in Mexico (April 18, 1938), and, pp. 464–465, of their departure from Mexico (August 1, 1938) and their arrival back in France (August 11, 1938). 42 Marnham, p. 282; and Polizzotti, p. 454, who states that Rivera met the Bretons when their ship docked at Veracruz and upon hearing of their plight, invited them to stay in his house for the duration of their visit to Mexico. 43 For Pátzcuaro in Michoacán and the nearby sights, see the Michelin Guide to Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, p. 237; Michael D. Coe, Mexico from the Olmecs to the Aztecs (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), pp. 154–156 (who discusses the pre-Columbian heritage of the area – which would have delighted both Rivera and Breton); and Marnham, pp. 283–284. Payne, pp. 399–400, does not specifically name Pátzcuaro or the presence of Rivera, Frida, Jacqueline and Natalia. Compare Polizzotti, pp. 461–462. Ades, p. 313, note 3, adds “The photographs of Breton, Rivera and Trotsky are poignant documents of their relationship, and of the awe Breton felt for Trotsky. It was a male union – Frida Kahlo and Jacqueline Breton were excluded from their debates.” Ades seems unaware that some of these photographs were cropped to leave out Jacqueline. 44 Polizzotti, p. 462, who cites van Heijenoort; and Ades, p. 314. 45 Rivera lived for almost fifteen years in France, but within artistic circles, mainly those connected to the resident Russian emigrant community. Although he “hung out” at La Rotonde, he must have known that his French was inferior to that of Breton. Rivera learned to speak Russian with his first wife, Angeline Belloff, and her associates, and with his mistress Maverna Vorobiev and her friends, which included the poets Ilya Ehrenburg and Maxim Voloshin. 46 Marnham, pp. 283–284. Plus, favorite phrases of Trotsky’s appear throughout the Manifesto of 1938. Anyone who reads the excerpt of Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution in Chipp, pp. 462–466, and Trotsky’s “Art and Politics,” pp. 3–10, along with the Manifesto of 1938 will immediately recognize the same vocabulary in each. Compare Polizzotti, pp. 461–464; Ades, pp. 313–320, and Gale, Dada and Surrealism, pp. 366–367, who discuss the text as a Surrealist

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document reflecting mainly Breton’s style. Both Ades and Gale use an English translation different from Dwight Macdonald’s, printed in the Partisan Review. One’s perception of “Bretonian Surrealism” in the Manifesto of 1938 may depend upon whose translation of the Manifesto one is reading. For Breton’s other writings, see André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism. Translated from the French by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1972); and Polizzotti, pp. 625–626. 47 Marnham, p. 284; and Polizzotti, p. 462, who cites van Heijenoort. 48 Of the six individuals at Pátzcuaro, Natalia Sedova is the least well known. She met Trotsky in Paris, where she was living in exile with her first husband and taking courses in art history at the Sorbonne. The Louvre was the site of their courtship in 1903. It is inconceivable that someone who did not speak or write French would take courses at the Sorbonne. Compare Marnham, p. 283. After the 1917 revolution, Natalia Sedova worked to set up some of the collections in the major museums in Leningrad and Moscow; Titian was her favorite artist. While living in exile in Vienna, c. 1908–1914, Natalia and Trotsky were friends of Alfred Adler and his wife, and they enjoyed the cultural life of Vienna – including attending the opera and visiting the museums. The Trotskys were museum goers whenever opportunities arose in exile, after 1933, in France, Norway, and Mexico. My source for this information is Payne, p. 490, who cites Isaac Don Levine and Ruth Levine. 49 Exactly who could speak which language can be traced through the literature. Only Andre Breton was limited to his native tongue, although Polizzotti, pp. 11–12, mentions his study of both German and English while a student in the early 1910s. Also see Polizzotti, p. 503, on Breton’s refusal to “learn” English while in exile in New York. 50 Marnham, p. 283. Gale, Dada and Surrealism, p. 368: “She was, as such, the very embodiment of the creative revolutionary envisaged in ‘Towards an Independent Revolutionary ‘Art.’ ” Perhaps scholars should focus more on the reasons why Frida and Jacqueline Breton were so bored by the theoretical discussions in Mexico and less on their acting out in response to the restrictions placed on them by Trotsky and Breton. The low regard with which the women Surrealists were held by their male counterparts, especially Breton, may have been a factor. See Lindauer, pp. 98–103, for a discussion of Breton’s attitudes towards women Surrealists. Lindauer cites additional authors concerned with Surrealism and women. 51 These disagreements in taste are interesting, but less significant than might be imagined. Trotsky’s literary tastes were conservative, far more conservative than Breton’s, or Rivera’s; see Marnham, pp. 283–284; and Polizzotti, pp. 457–458. Trotsky’s study of Celine, which so distressed Breton, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, and is cited by the editors of the Partisan Review (Vol. 5, no. 3) August–September 1938. 52 This is, perhaps, the most endearing thing about Trotsky, and it speaks to his understanding of what these retablos (or icons) meant to the largely illiterate Mexican peasants who painted them and donated them to churches. To Breton, they were merely folk art paintings that shared some aspects of his own Surrealist images and which he wished to include in his upcoming exhibition in Paris. Compare Herrera, p. 227; and Polizzotti, p. 460. 53 Trotsky called for the institution of the Fourth International from Norway in 1936 and both Rivera and Breton joined at that time. According to Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 338, in 1934, “When Diego had finished his murals in the New Workers’ School, he still had a little Rockefeller money left, so he moved into the headquarters of the New York Trotskyites and did two small panels there representing the Russian Revolution and the ‘Fourth International,’ which Leon Trotsky was then beginning to proclaim.” McCloskey, p. 170, states that the participants in the March 1934 Symposium held at Madison Square Garden in New York engaged in an attack

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on the CPUSA (Communist Party in the United States of America) bureaucracy and “called for the foundation of a new International.” The Fourth International was officially inaugurated in France in September of 1938 and the wide publication of the Manifesto of 1938 coincided with this official event. Trotsky in “Art and Politics,” p. 10 (dated June 18, 1938), states: “The ideological base of the conflict between the Fourth and Third International is the profound disagreement not only on the tasks of the party but in general on the entire material and spiritual life of mankind.” He goes on to call for “the overthrow of the domination of the Kremlin bureaucracy,” and ends, “May your magazine [Partisan Review] take its place in the victorious army of socialism and not in a concentration camp!” Compare, Herner, p. 259, and Hijar, pp. 261–269. 54 Rivera’s reputation as a colorful figure in Paris is well known and documented. During his Paris years, Rivera had joined the Section d’or group of Cubist painters, who had a more theoretical bent than others, but rather than talk about how the fourth dimension is depicted in his paintings, Rivera invented a device (he called it “le chose”) that allowed him to construct his pictorial space; see Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 107, quoting André Salmon. Moreover, Rivera’s differences of opinion with one of the Cubist critics led to a fistfight between them and to his rejection by the more theoretically disciplined French painters; see Marnham, pp. 126–130, and William H. Robinson, “Cubist Heresies: Diego Rivera and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 1913–1917,” in Art and Revolution, pp. 105–127, but especially, pp. 121–124. Rivera’s argumentative streak can be seen in the articles (published in the popular press, some of which are cited above in n. 32 in which he countered Siquieros’s accusations throughout the 1930s as well as in his attack on Stalin, published in the May 1940 issue of Esquire magazine. 55 Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 146. 56 Ades, pp. 313–315, reproduced on top of p. 314. Could this be a portrait of Andre Breton? Breton’s Les Vases communicants, which strived to demonstrate that Marx and Freud are not incompatible, was published in 1932. Also see Gerard Durozoi, “Les Vases communicants: Marx – Freud,” in Surrealism et Philosophie (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1992), pp. 31–48. Rivera issued a defense of Breton’s lecture of May 13, 1938 in his “More Literature Before Bread: The Europe-loving Stalinist Clerics and the Case of the Great Poet Andre Breton,” in Novedades (Mexico City), June 23, 1938. 57 See Ades, pp. 316–320, for Rivera’s impact on Breton. Rivera’s Surrealist period works are usually dated to 1940, although he had been exploring the special, almost lunar, landscape of Mexico from early 1937. 58 Breton and Rivera, “Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art,” p. 51 and Chipp, p. 485 (compare the translation given in Ades, pp. 314–315). 59 Ehrenburg’s critique of 1933 was reprinted under the title, “The Surrealists,” in Partisan Review (Vol. 2, no. 9) October–November 1935, pp. 11–16. For Ehrenburg, see Ilya Ehrenburg, People and Life: 1891–1921. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962). Ehrenburg’s Julio Jurenito (1921) was based on Rivera. Gale, Dada and Surrealism, pp. 338–339, gives a short account of the dispute between Ehrenburg and Breton. For Breton’s version, see Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism, pp. 244–245; his Les Vases communicants (1932); and Polizzotti, pp. 367–369. In addition to his woodcut of 1938 (mentioned above in n. 56), Rivera also wrote a defense of Breton, published in Novedades on June 23, 1938, in which Breton’s Mexican critics are called “Europe-loving Stalinist clerics.” Moreover, in a letter to Breton (dated December 22, 1938), published in Partisan Review (Vol. 6, no. 2) Winter 1939, p. 126, Trotsky asks: “Why speak of the Aragons, the Ehrenburgs and other petites canailles?” Louis Aragon had attended the Kharkov Conference (1930) and had signed the condemnation of Surrealism issued by that

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conference. In the post-war years, Breton will still be hampered by Ehrenburg, who figured in the World Congress of Peace, held in Paris in April 1949, and by Aragon. According to Saunders, Cultural Cold War, pp. 67–68, the World Congress of Peace was a “Cominform affair from start to finish” and Aragon was one of its organizers. 60 For the terms of his exile, see Payne, pp. 385–387 and 392–399; and Kettermann, Diego Rivera, p. 58. It is clear that Trotsky intended to be politically active while in Mexico; see Volkogonov, pp. 372–394. 61 Polizzotti, pp. 471–472; Herrera on Frida’s letters from Paris, pp. 241–244 and 251–253. Also see The Letters of Frida Kahlo, pp. 95–99 (to Ella and Bertram Wolfe) and p. 100 (to Jacqueline Breton). For Breton’s initial appreciation of Rivera, especially the letter he wrote in September 1938 (cited by Marnham, p. 284), see “Souvenirs du Mexique” in Minotaure 12/13 (1939). This issue of Breton’s journal included two contributions by Rivera as well as reproductions of two of the landscapes the artist painted in 1937. 62 Compare, Polizzotti, pp. 511–512, on the breakup of the Breton marriage and on Jacqueline’s affair with David Hare, whom she married in 1944. 63 Breton had been called up for military service in the Fall of 1938 (the Reserves) and in late August 1939 and had served until he was demobilized in July of 1940; see Polizzotti, pp. 469–470 and 476–483. Breton had also served in the medical corps in the First World War. He was one of the francophone exiles who worked for the Voice of America; Gale, Dada and Surrealism, p. 382; and Polizzotti, pp. 509–510. Breton’s work for the Voice of America, together with the cover for his Young Cherry Trees Secured Against Hares (1946), designed by Marcel Duchamp and showing the Statue of Liberty with its face cut away to expose Breton’s (Polizzotti, p. 519), triggered Tzara’s criticisms in 1947; see Polizzotti, p. 544. 64 Marnham, pp. 292–296; and Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 140–143 and 148–149. Also, see Lee, Painting on the Left, pp. 210–205. Rivera’s article entitled “Stalin, The Undertaker of the Revolution,” appeared in the May 1940 issue of Esquire. This is cited (and quoted) by Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 386. 65 Marnham, pp. 288–289; and compare Hamill (as in fn. 8), pp. 192–195. Both give accounts of Paulette Goddard’s role (assisted by the United States Government) in Rivera’s escape from Mexico in May 1940. That both Rivera and Trotsky had made entreaties to representatives of the United States Government underscores the actual danger they were in between 1938 and 1940. 66 This point was made by Trotsky in a letter to Frida in early 1939; see Herrera, pp. 247–248, and Lee, Painting on the Left, p. 204. Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood. Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era (New York: The Modern Library, 1999), pp. 30–32 and 272–274, and elsewhere throughout the text, demonstrate the ongoing campaign by Stalin to eliminate Trotskyites. No wonder Frida Kahlo claimed “I was never a Trotskyite,” in The Diary of Frida Kahlo, An Intimate Self-Portrait. Introduction by Carlos Fuentes (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), p. 255. She wrote this on November 4, 1952 and follows it with a list of her five heroes: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung. In spite of these words – written when she was near the end of her life and in extreme pain – it is to her credit that Frida (along with Rivera) was active as a Trotskyite throughout the 1930s. Compare, Herrera, pp. 395–396. 67 Biographers of Rivera and Kahlo disagree on who was the more committed party member, but Frida was welcomed back first and her subsequent activities indicate that she may have been more committed to the ideas of Marxism and Communism. This seems to be confirmed in her diary, pp. 255–258, although the words were written while she was influenced by pain killers. I do not question that Frida is sincere in her statements. Also, see Herrera, pp. 395–396. Wolfe,

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Fabulous Life, pp. 383–390 and 415–426, tries to analyze Rivera’s Marxism and Communism, and concludes that he was actually a Mexican nationalist who held a romantic conception of the native agrarian worker as his ideal. Perhaps we should best describe Rivera as a pragmatic Marxist who also espoused nationalist views. 68 Rubin, Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage, pp. 196, n. 119, and 216; Gale, Dada and Surrealism, pp. 401–410, 412–413, and 415–418; and Polizzotti, pp. 544–545 and 550–557. 69 Chipp, p. 457; and Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 146. Also see Polizzotti, pp. 608–613, for Breton’s activities in the early 1960s. Breton’s insistence that “Rivera took no part in its inception” must be read with the knowledge that Rivera enjoyed unlimited access to Trotsky from January 1937 until after October 1938 (or for over 22 months), while Breton had eight to ten meetings with Trotsky between mid-April and July 31, 1938 (which includes the two sightseeing trips to Guadalajara and Pâtzcuaro). Polizzotti, p. 464, questions the “tactical” reasons for Trotsky’s wanting Rivera’s name on this Manifesto. He believes that the Old Man simply thought it would be better if two artists signed it. Moreover, here and there throughout his text, Polizzotti calls the reader’s attention to Breton’s manipulation of facts to conform to some hermetic ideal. One must read Breton’s words carefully. 70 Wolfe, Fabulous Life, p. 437, paradoxically includes the Manifesto of 1938 (giving Breton as the coauthor) in his listing of Rivera’s writings in the Selected Bibliography at the end of the book, but makes no mention of it (or of Breton) in the text. One should also look at Wolfe, A Tale of Two Centuries, for his own political reinvention. 71 Raquel Tibor, An Open Life. Frida Kahlo (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), p. 162.

V I C TO R KO C AY

F RO M H E G E L TO I N G A R D E N : A E S T H E T I C O B J E C T S A N D T H E “ C R E AT I O N ” O F T H E WO R L D

In modern philosophy the concern for truth has often taken the form of an inquiry into understanding or has become a quest for knowledge. Truth is not considered to be a given, but is seen as research performed with human effort in an attempt to explain or to come to terms with our relation to the world in which we live. In this context “truth” involves consciousness as the subjective element of human thought. Now this is different from truth as revelation because there, consciousness must play an active role, whereas the concept of truth as revelation would seem to involve a more passive role for understanding. Truth as knowledge, on the other hand, introduces a form of truth that implies understanding, but which minimizes the subjective element of consciousness: knowledge that can be accepted by all and can be demonstrated from a technical perspective as producing or arriving at the end desired is truth. In this sense knowledge is considered to be a form of objective or technical truth, as opposed to understanding as a simply subjective truth. In itself, as well as with respect to things and places, knowledge generally pertains to objects that can be clearly delineated. In order to understand things, we must first have an idea of what those things are. This does not mean that only real, concrete objects like trees, buildings or sculptures can be known or can give rise to knowledge. There are different types of objects that are delineated in ways other than by their separateness as distinct objects of perception. There are objects such as concepts that are linguistically determined, and there are objects determined historically as well as objects that are more precisely states of affairs that cannot be entirely grasped from one vantage point. Insofar as knowledge pertains to the object as object, however, whatever the type of object involved, it is knowledge of something. Further, in its basic form it is generally considered to include an accurate description of the object in question, be it a real object, a concept with a clear definition, or a state of affairs. In this paper I attempt to show that truth as knowledge, that is, as knowledge of an object, in all cases includes an aesthetic element. I also propose that the aesthetic element is a necessary part of knowledge, for it is what ultimately makes knowledge possible for human beings. That is to say 467 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 467–483. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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that the aesthetic nature of human thought constitutes the foundation of knowledge in the sense that it makes knowledge possible. At the same time, however, it limits our knowledge to incompleteness. Human knowledge is never absolute, but is rather constantly subject to modification and in some cases may involve a complete reversal of thought. The hypothesis presented here derives originally from reflections on Hegel’s notion of negativity, a notion that Hegel develops in the context of sense perception and the foundations of knowledge. It also derives from the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden. Ingarden’s notion of concretization as it applies to aesthetic objects is an affirmation of the object by means of reference to the qualities and properties of the object in question. In this way the aesthetic object is constituted by the activity of consciousness. Whereas Hegel’s notion of negativity is a means by which the object itself is demarcated and defined, Ingarden’s theory of concretization involves the constitution and fixing of the aesthetic object as an inherently, incomplete object of thought which, however, remains dependent on the art object itself. Ontologically, and logically, the demarcation of the object itself normally precedes the description of the object’s properties and qualities. I therefore begin with a presentation and discussion of Hegel’s notion of negativity. 1 This notion is central to Hegel’s understanding of the truth of objects.2 I will subsequently refer to Ingarden’s aesthetic theory in an effort to extend Hegel’s reasoning to the production and appreciation of cultural works and works of an artistic nature. Now Hegel and Ingarden differ in many ways, but from the perspective of aesthetics their philosophies manifest certain similarities, not the least of which is the fundamental notion of the “aesthetic nature” of thought which both philosophers would seem to share. This is apparent in their works, even though the philosophers themselves did not express their thoughts in this manner. Hegel begins with the object as perceived by the senses. In the Phenomenology he refers to the object of sense certainty as primary but only to reject sense perception as the basis of truth. He follows the same order of presentation in the Logic where he develops an argument similar in many regards to that of the Phenomenology, although the Logic gives more detail, at least with respect to the object of perception. However, Hegel’s order of presentation is in itself arbitrary. It perhaps represents an attempt to simplify the development of his thought, for it is conceivable that he began his treatise with a discussion of a real, concrete object because such an object is, initially at least, more accessible than an abstract conception. His order of presentation could also well derive from the philosophical context of his day, however, that is to say, in an era in which

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philosophical systems of an empirical nature had achieved prevalence. And it is clear from the beginning of the Phenomenology that Hegel rejects empiricism as the foundation of truth. The Phenomenology and the Logic together are the main focal points of my analysis of Hegel’s thought, although the earlier texts, the Logic and the Metaphysics of the Jena period, present a similar theory of perception.3 The Phenomenology itself was completed during the battle of Jena and was published in 1807. It was not reedited during Hegel’s lifetime, although Hegel did make preparations for a new edition towards the end of his life. For H. S. Harris, Hegel’s decision to republish the Phenomenology in the last years of his life indicates that he still considered this work to be relevant. Harris thus argues for continuity in Hegel’s thought, and claims that in 1807, Hegel’s “intellectual development was, in all essentials complete” (p. 42).4 The “Phenomenology” of the Encyclopedia is somewhat shorter and quite different from the earlier text, indicating at the very least that Hegel’s understanding of the role of the “Phenomenology” in his philosophical system had changed after the publication of the Logic. Contrariwise, there are several editions and forms of the Logic. The “greater” Logic dates from 1812 with the second volume published in 1816. The “lesser” Logic, as part of the Encyclopedia, was first published in 1817, with subsequent editions in 1827 and 1830. The later edition includes variations and additions made by Hegel during his lectures. Together, these texts represent Hegel’s main doctrine. In its encyclopedic form the Logic makes the same arguments as the earlier, and longer text, such that, for my purposes here at least, it is of little importance which text is cited. The first four chapters of the Phenomenology are of particular interest from the perspective of the constitution of the object of sense perception. These chapters in essence represent the “logic” that Hegel incorporated into the Phenomenology, or, at least, one could argue that the initial chapters of the Phenomenology are developed and presented more thoroughly in the text of the Logic. The three parts of the Logic, that is “Being,” “Essence,” and “Notion,” to some extent respect the initial chapters of the Phenomenology: “Sense-Certainty,” “Perception,” “Force and the Understanding,” and “The Truth of Self-Certainty.”5 In an indirect way the Phenomenology is more polemical than the Logic; however, as though in addition to presenting his theory of being, Hegel was also seeking to measure his thought against the ideas of his contemporaries, most notably Kant, Fichte and Schelling. In the first chapter of the Phenomenology Hegel takes up the empiricist standpoint, but only to reject it as insufficient. He thus prepares for the reader

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what one might call an “adventure” in idealist thought, although in the context of Hegel’s philosophy, “idealist” must be understood in an objective, as opposed to a subjective sense. Hegel’s focus is our knowledge of the object of perception, the thing-in-itself of which we can know nothing according to Kant’s more skeptical philosophy. Hegel will eventually show that it is possible to have knowledge of things-in-themselves in the sense that our knowledge of objects in the world is conditioned by those very things. 6 According to Hegel, thought and its object together participate in absolute spirit.7 Initially, however, Hegel takes up the perspective of sense perception. More precisely, he focuses on the notion of sense certainty. It becomes evident, according to Hegel, that our senses convey the properties and qualities of the object perceived to consciousness itself, although in themselves qualities and properties do not determine what is the object perceived. It is by means of thought that the object is identified as an object possessing specific qualities and properties. In terms of spatial dimensions, in so far as real objects are concerned, the object perceived can be determined as an object in itself only because it can be “detached,” so to speak, from its background, that is, by means of thought that distinguishes between what an object is and what it is not. The object itself is therefore determined by thought. That is to say that thought determines the boundaries of the object perceived. It would appear then that it is not sense perception that determines the “truth” of its object because the object itself is determined by thought, by means of a concept. The object at which I sit, for example, is a table. It is not understood as a concoction of sticks, although that may be what it is, nor is it a part of the floor. Further, it can be detached from the room in which it is placed. However, thought distinguishes this object as a separate object with specific qualities and properties, and as possessing a more or less precise function. This means that thought determines the object of sense perception by means of an implicit recognition of what the object is not, that is, by determining what does and does not belong to the object itself. Hegel: “Sense-certainty thus comes to know by experience that its essence is neither in the object nor in the ‘I,’ and that its immediacy is neither an immediacy of the one nor of the other; for in both, what I mean is rather something unessential, and the object and the ‘I’ are universals in which that ‘Now’ and ‘Here’ and ‘I’ which I mean do not have a continuing being, or are not” (Phenomenology, p. 62). The properties and qualities of the object of sense perception are not, however, solely determined by consciousness. Upon analysis the object itself

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reveals its properties and allows consciousness to understand what kind of object it is and how it is constituted, and/or constructed. Our understanding or knowledge of the object is therefore conditioned by the object itself. The “truth” of the object does not devolve solely from thought, nor is it entirely attributable to the object itself. Rather, it is in conjunction with consciousness that the object reveals its “truth.” In the first pages of volume two of the Science of Logic, Hegel gives a short summary of the first volume, entitled “The Objective Logic.” He writes that “the comprehension of an object consists in nothing else than that the ego makes it its own, pervades it and brings it into its own form, that is, into the universality that is immediately a determinateness, or a determinateness that is immediately universality” (p. 585). It is in this way that the object and consciousness participate in what Hegel refers to as absolute truth or spirit. In a manner reminiscent of Kant’s notion of forces that constitute objects in the world, Hegel describes the object and thought as mutually opposing forces.8 Thought is a force which meets its object, so to speak. The object is not passive, however, but constitutes a force that solicits thought, as thought requires an object in order to reveal itself as thought. Hegel: “[f]orce in its expression is this, that the determining which presupposes and the determining which returns into itself are one and the same. In so far then as inner and outer have been considered as form-determinations, they are first only the simple form itself, and secondly, because in this form they are at the same time determined as opposite, their unity is pure, abstract mediation in which the one is immediately the other, and is the other because it is itself” (Science of Logic I, p. 525). Hegel’s argument is conducted in an effort to enhance our understanding and our knowledge of the thing in itself. He attempts to go beyond Kant’s skepticism by making of the understanding a dialectical relationship between thought and its object. To that effect his reasoning requires some greater power or force than both that of the object and consciousness taken separately and in themselves. Not satisfied with Kant’s dualist perspective, basically a philosophical “dead-end” with respect to our knowledge of objects-in-themselves, Hegel proposes that the Notion is realized in the real world as Idea, implying that Kantian dualism is thus surpassed. 9 His reasoning in this context evidently owes a great deal to Kant, and to Fichte, but also shows a marked similarity to Saint Anselm’s ontological proof of the existence of God.10 Hegel makes numerous references to this proof in the course of his writings, and repeatedly rejects Kant’s criticism of it. His is more specifically, perhaps, an effort to go beyond Kant’s skepticism by

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attributing existence to a notion of thought. The realization of the Notion in the real world is the Idea, and the Idea exists as the realization of the Notion. In the Science of Logic, referring specifically to Kant, Hegel remarks, in a characteristic, satirical mode that he sometimes uses, “[w]ould one ever have thought that philosophy would deny truth to intelligible entities because they lack the spatial and temporal material of the sensuous world?” (II, p. 590).11 It is on this level that the aesthetic dimension of Hegel’s thought is most pronounced, and it is on this level that the notion of negativity is most instrumental. Now Hegel devoted several lectures to a theory of aesthetics, but from the perspective of sense perception the lectures are more of a categorization of art works than they are an aesthetic theory as such.12 Essentially, the notion of negativity, in the form of the recognition, by means of thought, of the limits of the object of thought, is an implicit recognition that the object of thought could be different from what it is. On one level, this means that rather than focusing on the table that is before me, I refer explicitly to the table top, as opposed to the legs or the drawer in which I keep my writing pad. I might also refer to other qualities such as the color of the table, or the books and notebooks placed on the table. On another level, my attention might be drawn to a defect in the production of the table, a defect which entitled me to a reduction in the purchase price. On a more abstract level, it is possible to imagine that this particular table could be different from what it is, were I, for example, to repair the defect, or have the top refinished in a different color or shade of wood stain. Because thought itself fixes the limits of its object, it is implicitly understood that those boundaries can shift or be shifted, and that consequently, the object itself could well be different from what it actually is. Initially, the notion of negativity is a recognition of the limits of the object of thought. It is by means of this notion that Hegel attempts to surmount Kant’s dualism, and in general it can be accepted that he succeeds in his attempt, although perhaps not in the manner he envisioned. The notion of negativity, or as some would prefer, the “emptiness” of consciousness, allows for a theory of understanding that relies both on thought as a force of desire, a desire for knowledge, and on the object itself that is “taken up” by thought, at once as an effort made by thought to understand the object, and as a mirror, one might say, of thought itself. For Hegel, knowledge is the “Aufhebung” of these two separate entities, an act of thought that takes the analysis to a higher level and enters into the realm of “absolute spirit,” a form of knowledge, it must be added, that in itself is incomplete and always

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changing, as our grasp of the world changes, from one generation to the next, or from one belief system to another. But the notion of negativity is also an implicit recognition that the object of thought could be different, and this implicit recognition represents the aesthetic impulse of human thought. Now on one level this impulse can be associated with error – in the case of a mistaken perception, for example. When I see a person from a distance that I believe to be a friend, but on approaching discover that the person in question is unknown to me, I have made an error in perception that stronger corrective lenses or better vision might have allowed me to avoid. I articulate this type of error as a misperception. But it is also possible to be mistaken in the description of the qualities and properties of the object of perception, or to subsume them under an inappropriate concept. This is more precisely an error of an empirical nature. The “errors” that arise from perception are not, however, solely attributable to “faulty” or misguided perception, for it is the ability to subsume objects under concepts of the understanding that makes knowledge possible, and that perhaps distinguishes human thought from a more basic type of thought that perceives objects, and the truth of objects, only in their immediate context. In this latter case, the “truth” referred to would of necessity be radically different from the concept of truth that we associate with knowledge. It would probably involve a direct participation in the world, a sort of unquestioning “oneness” with the world, whereas from current perspectives we would more than likely consider this to be a lack of knowledge. Paradoxically, error, or the possibility of error, must be associated with our efforts to achieve knowledge. This implies that our knowledge can never be absolute. The possibility of error that derives from perception is also a tacit recognition of the aesthetic, albeit on a basic or simple level, for error implies that the object perceived could be different, and in some cases is different from what our perception leads us to believe. When we understand an object to be of a particular type, we believe that our perception of it is just and accurate. When at a later time we recognize our error, we must adjust our perceptions accordingly. When it was discovered that the Earth was round and not flat, for example, people were forced to change their beliefs, and their perceptions were altered, although this took some persuasion. We continue, however, to perceive the world as essentially flat, as frequent two-dimensional representations of the Earth portray it, and as our notion of building a house on the level indicates. In this sense, error is a basic or simple manifestation of the aesthetic for it makes apparent that even wrong perceptions can become a

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part of our knowledge, or belief system. That is, we can perceive objects other than they are and can construct a worldview on misperceptions. Objects can become a part of our knowledge even though we have perceived them incorrectly, that is, other than they actually are.13 The ability to recognize difference as implicit in our perception of objects that are self-same objects or that are perceived as separate from other objects constitutes the aesthetic foundation of human thought. If I understand, even implicitly, that the object of my perception, in addition to constituting a selfsame object, is also constituted by its demarcation relative to other objects, it suffices to “alter” the boundaries of that object to make its transformation feasible, if not desirable. That is, if, rather than focusing my efforts of perception on the table in front of me, I were to focus instead on the table legs, as a part of the whole, I become aware that these objects, that is the table legs, are objects unto themselves. At this point I understand that the table in my study could well have different legs and still be the table in my study. I might even be so inclined as to have new legs made for my table, in order to replace the defect present when I purchased it. From the perception of an object to the demarcation of its boundaries implied by the notion of negativity, or by what the object is not, I am quickly brought to a point at which I can envision action on my part that would transform the object before me, presumably in a fashion that would be becoming to me, for whatever reason. It may be that my desire is to have a table with four, or five legs of equal length. I may want to change the shape of the legs from square to something more ornate that would attract the attention of my friends. Or I might wish to have the legs fashioned by a well-known cabinet maker whose artistic talents are well established, making of my simply functional table a work of art to be preserved in time. Hegel’s idealism is thus a form of ontology, and in this sense it must be specified that his idealism, according to his own understanding of it, is objective idealism as opposed to the subjective idealism of philosophers as diverse as Plato and Kant. As E. Harris remarks, Hegel’s “objective idealism” insists on the reality and self-externalization of the Idea, as Nature and finite Spirit (p. 64–5). For Hegel the term “objective idealism” still purports to describe a philosophy of thought, however, as opposed to empiricism, but it is a philosophy which focuses not on thought per se, but on the object of thought. The objective is to develop our knowledge of the objects of the world in their relation with thought. In this regard, Hegel’s philosophy is in fact a philosophy of all things that exist, insofar as existence is constituted by objects demarcated by the concepts of thought. It is in this manner that

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Hegel’s work on nature, on works of art, on history and religion are best understood, that is as different branches of philosophy determined by the type of object upon which they focus. The philosophy of nature is a classification and study of the objects of the natural world. The philosophy of religion is a classification and study of the objects of religion, or rather, religious forms are the object of this branch of philosophy, as philosophical and political forms are respectively the objects of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Right. It must be emphasized, however, that these works are not a “dry” account of historical forms as they existed, or of natural objects as they exist. In light of the preceding discussion it is evident that the forms or objects that Hegel’s works bring into focus, are objects that not only exist but which are also in a sense fashioned by thought, by means of concepts. For although Hegel’s philosophy can be considered a sort of “hymn to all things that exist,” it is also idealist, where this latter term is understood as a form of philosophy that deals with thought and the proceedings of thought, as opposed to things in themselves. In a sense, the object of thought, as distinguished from the object-thing-in-itself, is the creation of thought, notably in the form of a concept, although it is not a creation ex-nihilo, but is constituted at least in part by the thing-in-itself. Hegel says that the object conditions our concept of it, and therefore also the “truth” of that object. It is the role played by the concept in the determining of knowledge in Hegel’s thought that underlines the creative aspect of thought or the aesthetic aspect of human nature. For evidently concepts are a product of language. They differ from one language to another, and they evolve and change with time. More importantly, though, they most often depend on perception. For example, the concept of a forest means, among other things, several trees in a large area, that, taken together, constitute a larger object. However, trees are normally perceived as individual objects. They are separate in space. We can cut down one tree and leave the others standing, although it is likely that from the perspective of their root structures many trees of the forest are in fact one, as a single family can consist of several individuals. We do not generally consider the forest to be constituted by branches, however, nor of individual leaves, although trees as objects can be reduced to more basic components such as branches and leaves that can be considered separately from the whole. A dead branch that is removed from a tree may change the overall aspect of the tree, but does not alter its basic structure or nature. And nor does it destroy the tree. The aesthetic aspect of thought in general functions on the level of perception, that is, on the level of the relation of things-in-themselves to the

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concepts of thought. It is important, for Hegel’s philosophy at least, that this relation is not understood as univocal, for it involves what Hegel refers to as two forces that oppose each other, and cancel each other out. On the level of language itself, the aesthetic nature of thought is all the more apparent, that is, when the object of perception is not precise, indeed, not even present. In a literary text the object that the concept refers to is usually absent, the word itself implying the absence of the object for philosophers such as Sartre, and Derrida. In a literary text, therefore, understanding is limited to our knowledge of the concepts portrayed, but this too involves a creative element that can be considered part of the aesthetic impulse. As it applies to the experience and understanding of literary works, the notion of concretization is a main component of the philosophy of Roman Ingarden. It is important to recognize, first, however, that Hegel’s works too are literary works, defined as works composed of language.14 In this sense it is therefore necessary to emphasize the importance of the notion of concretization even for philosophers like Hegel who do not use this term and do not consider literary texts from this perspective. The best example of Hegel’s use of the literary text, as it applies to his philosophy of existence, is undoubtedly his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. In this work Hegel gives summary accounts of the work of other philosophers. He begins with the first known philosophers and progresses in time to his own era. This means that Hegel’s understanding of philosophy, that is from an historical perspective, is dependent on the existent texts of known philosophers. To insist on his own reading of these philosophers, Hegel must first give an account of what that philosophy involves. He therefore considers sources and information available to a philospher at a given time, that is by reference to the works of preceding philosophers. He then comments on the beliefs of the philosopher in question and contrasts those beliefs with his own system of philosophy. His main focus in all cases is the notion of Being. The questions he invariably poses, therefore, bring into focus our knowledge of the world, that is of existence, or of things that exist. The chronological progression of his work underlines the changing perspectives of philosophers with regards to the notion of Being. The different perspectives are formulated in texts, however. Understanding the written text is thus the first stage of Hegel’s history of philosophy. The text itself becomes an object, and it is only when the ideas of previous philosophers have been considered, and formulated as text-objects, that is, with respect to the notion of Being, that changes in philosophies become apparent. At this point, differences are manifest and new constructions are possible. In his introduction to his Lectures on the

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History of Philosophy, Hegel states, for example, that the “history which we have before us is the history of Thought finding itself, and it is the case with Thought that it only finds itself in producing itself; indeed, that it only exists and is actual in finding itself. These productions are the philosophic systems; and the series of discoveries on which Thought sets out in order to discover itself, forms a work which has lasted twenty-five hundred years” (p. 5). In a sense the development of thought is a creative endeavour which involves not only thought but the production of thought. Ingarden’s aesthetic theories were first formulated in his works entitled, The Literary Work of Art and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. These works also represent his initial work in the field of ontology, published subsequently, however, in Ingarden’s opus magnum, The Conflict Over the Existence of the World. The earlier works contain as well the basic premisses for his later work on the theory of aesthetic values, published in Erlebnis, Kunstwerk und Wert in 1969, as well as in other works on different art forms. Now, as was Hegel, Ingarden was primarily concerned with the perception of objects, that is to say that he analyzed objects from the perspective of the spectator or perceiver. Logically speaking, however, he represents a development or progression with respect to Hegel, for rather than focusing on the perception and knowledge of things-in-themselves, understood here as the objects of nature, Ingarden turns his attention to objects produced from the objects of nature, and by human efforts to create aesthetic works of cultural significance. Hegel’s ontology, by contrast, is an attempt to found the basic principles of our knowledge of the objects of the world. In this context, he introduces a capital notion in the history of philosophy, namely the notion of negativity. We have argued that this notion, in addition to being fundamental for the development of human thought – contemporary writers such as Heidegger, Sartre and Derrida, among others have exploited this aspect of Hegel’s thought – it is also an implicit recognition that human thought is essentially aesthetic, where the term aesthetic coincides with a creative impulse, a desire to change or to transform the world. Further, this impulse is present even in our attempts to give precise descriptions of objects and to define the truth of things-in-themselves. Our presentation of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy represents an attempt to show that the aesthetic impulse is present even on the level of cultural objects such as literary texts. This includes philosophical works founded in language. Once the object of thought is made precise, or once a text has been thoroughly read and understood, and positions duly noted, as in the case of philosophical works, possible differences and changes become immediately apparent. This is not a

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weakness attributed to written form, however, nor is it a manifestation of the shortcomings of various writers and philosophers. It is rather an indication that human thought involves an aesthetic impulse, a desire to change or to transform the world.15 This impulse does not necessarily involve grandiose schemes however. It may include a simple desire to grow a garden or to clean one’s dwelling. The aesthetic impulse is simply an aspect of human thought and does not necessarily require a self understanding effort on the part of individuals in order for it to manifest itself. It is on this level that Ingarden’s notion of concretization is best understood. Presented with a literary text, the reader must first read the words in sequence in order to be able to understand the text, but he/she also “concretizes” the work by means of the concepts referred to or specified by the text. The concepts could be simple or complex, but in all cases the reader forms an idea of the events and places presented by the text. The idea formulated could in turn be rather vague or more precise depending on the reader, and is completed to a greater or lesser extent according to the precisions given by the text itself. Undoubtedly, the reader concretizes the events and concepts presented in the context of his/her own life experience, but also with respect to common sense logic and certain expectations. In a “realist” work it is for example unlikely that characters can fly or be in two places at the same time. If a character places his eye-glasses on the table, then they are not to be found under the table without some other intervention. That is to say that the text is the primary source for knowledge of events and concepts presented, but these are completed or understood by the reader of the text as conforming with his/her life experience and knowledge of the situation presented.16 From the perspective of Hegel’s logic, the “truth” of the object of thought implies that the object as such could well be different from what it is. This implication derives from the demarcation of the object itself, or as Hegel says in the Science of Logic, from the “limits” of the object. In a sense the “limit” imposed by thought is somewhat arbitrary. It is based not only on the subject, but also on our perception of the object, and can change depending on the concepts used. When the real object is lacking, however, as is the case with linguistic representations, the arbitrary nature of the limit imposed by thought is emphasized for the actual object that might correspond to the concept cannot be made precise. The literary text therefore affords different and more varied interpretations. If, for example, a literary work portrays a character with a name, the reader completes this information, or concretizes it, by attributing to the represented character a human form, human senses, human

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thoughts, human organs, etc., even if all of these details are lacking. It is simply understood that the character possesses these attributes. Again, this is not a fault of literary works but an aspect of the medium they use. As Husserl pointed out, it is not possible to describe an object “completely,” even if the object described is present. The object itself is “inexhaustible.” This is even more apparent when the object described is lacking. In this latter case the concept is in a sense an open concept and can quite feasibly be satisfied by a variety of interpretations. On this level, the creative aspect of understanding is evident. In the context of Hegel’s logic, the aesthetic impulse of human thought was only implied, whereas in Ingarden’s phenomenology it is necessary for a sufficient understanding of the text, and it is manifest in the construction of the aesthetic object. For Ingarden, the aesthetic object is founded on the work of art, but is constructed by the perceiving subject. In this context, the importance of language is apparent on two levels. First, as just mentioned, on the level of the correspondence between words or concepts and the objects they refer to and that complete the concept, the “truth” of the object implies difference, and this difference can be attributed to the aesthetic nature of human thought which parallels the search for truth and in fact, makes the notion of truth intelligible. Second, the literary text is never grasped or perceived as a single unit, as a painting or sculpture might be. Rather, its object is created by successive phrases adding information to that already provided. Through the course of a work a character’s physical and emotional traits are more or less filled in or completed. They may also change as the work progresses. A careful rendering of the character, or a faithful depiction of the represented characters must consider all relevant details. It must be stressed, however, that completeness by means of linguistic representation is not possible. Any description or presentation of an object by means of language will leave many “variables” unspecified. If a woman’s hair is “long and clean,” for example, it is not known whether the woman is blond or brunette. It is not known whether her hair is straight or curly, shiny or dull. Missing variables of this sort may or may not be important for a sufficient understanding of the work. In a mystery novel these kinds of physical traits may be important for the correct identification of a character. In a horror novel they are most likely of little importance, and in a romantic novel they are quite possibly very important, although for reasons other than the correct identification of a character. According to Ingarden’s notion of concretization, the reader plays an active role in the construction of the aesthetic object. The work possesses

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certain specified qualities that become the foundation for aesthetic values in a concretization of the work. The aesthetic object is therefore not the artistic object in itself, but is founded on the artistic object (i.e. the physical object or the linguistic medium in the case of literary works). The aesthetic object is a construct of thought that is expressed in the form of the reader’s response to the work. In this sense the limits or boundaries of the aesthetic object are fixed by the reader/spectator. It must be noted, however, that even though the aesthetic object is a construct founded on the work, it is not synonymous with the work itself. Many concretizations of a work are possible, both by the same and by different readers. According to Ingarden, aesthetic values are founded on artistic qualities in the work, but exist only in a concretization, that is, a construct of the reader. Qualities of the work are concretized by the reader and aesthetic values are made apparent in this way. The aesthetic object is not occasioned by a different kind of perception or by a special attitude on the part of the reader. According to Ingarden, it is not the case that aesthetic values depend solely on the attitude of the reader. That is to say that aesthetic values are more profound and more complex, according to Ingarden, than might suggest the notion of a special sort of aesthetic attitude on the part of the reader or spectator, an attitude that in itself would allow for the perception of aesthetic values that otherwise would not be apparent. CONCLUSION

From the perspective of Hegel’s philosophy, the aesthetic impulse is implied by the use of language, and more specifically, by the understanding in its efforts to arrive at the “truth” of objects-in-themselves. In the case of the understanding of represented objects, as Ingarden’s work makes clear, the role of the aesthetic nature of human thought is more pronounced, essentially because the object of thought is not present to the reader and therefore is not in itself a complete object. The nature of thought is in both cases the same, however. Thought is an effort to arrive at the “truth” of objects-in-themselves in such a manner as to satisfy the understanding and its principles of logic. To the extent that truth implies difference, it follows that our knowledge of things-in-themselves is in part created by thought. This can lead to idealism. For Hegel, however, thought is not idealistic in the sense that it does not create things-in-themselves. Thought is rather conditioned by the objects of the world. Hegel refers to his form of idealism as “objective idealism” because thought ultimately rests on the objects themselves. In this sense, truth, for Hegel, is a study of the objects of the world.

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In the case of cultural productions or artistic works created by human beings, the relation between thought and its object is somewhat more complex. In the case of literary works composed of represented objects and characters, the objects themselves are incomplete and cannot condition our thought, that is, in Hegel’s sense of the term, to the same extent that an object of the real world can. The constructive element of thought, which I have also termed the creative element or the aesthetic impulse of thought, is therefore much more pronounced in the study of cultural productions. Essentially, however, it is the same aesthetic impulse that is operative in both cases. It is not, finally, an extreme position to state that our world is in fact a creation of thought, that is of the aesthetic impulse, and that human beings are fundamentally aesthetic beings. Truth itself, understood as the truth of objectsin-themselves or as our knowledge of the world, implies an aesthetic element. This is underlined by Hegel’s notion of negativity. And as Ingarden’s work makes apparent, artistic productions or cultural artefacts give rise to aesthetic objects that in turn constitute the “truth” of those objects for the perceiving subject. According to Ingarden the “truth” of the object is revealed in metaphysical values that contribute to or in fact constitute our understanding of our place and our role in the world. Although it is most likely incorrect to say that the world is the creation of thought, in true idealist fashion, for the objects of the world are simply there, present before us, in one form or another. It is most probable, however, that we do in fact create the world that we live in, for the very objects of the world that we encounter are “objects” for thought according to the boundaries that thought has established for them. This fixing of boundaries in essence constitutes the aesthetic nature of human thought. Its importance as a foundation for thought in general, as Hegel makes abundantly clear, and as Ingarden’s notion of concretization makes explicit, attests to what I have here termed the “aesthetic nature” of human thought. Saint Francis Xavier University N OT E S 1 This order of presentation is not necessary but respects chronological order and also involves a development of increasing complexity of the object of analysis. Hegel’s philosophy pertains more immediately to objects of nature and concrete objects whereas Ingarden deals more specifically with objects of human creation such as works of art. 2 Several critics have underscored the importance of the notion of negativity in Hegel’s philosophy. Quentin Lauer, for example, states that “[o]ne of the things that Hegel’s philosophy did succeed in doing was to emphazise the negating character of all thought” (p. 48).

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Composed in 1804–1805, these texts were published posthumously. This statement is echoed by other critics as well. E. Harris states, for example, that the “whole of the Logic is a demonstration in extenso of the same thesis [of the Phenomenology]” (p. 6), and F. Beiser points out that the dialectic as presented in the Phenomenology differs somewhat from that of the early Logic because it deals with the standpoint of consciousness as opposed to the understanding, although Beiser adds that in both texts “the basic structure and purpose of the dialectic are the same” (p. 19). 5 These chapter headings are taken from A. V. Miller’s translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology (see bibliography). 6 Emil Fackenheim writes that for Hegel phenomenal knowledge is not divorced from reality but is a partial grasp of it (p. 16); and Stephen Priest states that “Hegel repeatedly denies that there has to be a gulf between reality as it appears to us, and as it really is in itself” (p. 8). 7 It is interesting to note the original source of this notion. According to H. S. Harris the notion of the Absolute first came to Hegel as an aesthetic ideal he shared with Hölderlin (p. 46). The reference to an aesthetic ideal as an inspirational source places the aesthetic on a different level from that discussed here, but the relevance of the aesthetic in Hegel’s thought cannot be denied. 8 It must be stressed, however, that Hegel does not subscribe to Kant’s theory of forces that founds the objects of the real world. Hegel’s theory of forces seems to have attracted the interest of French scholars in particular. See for example, Charles Andler, “Le Fondement du savoir dans la Phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel,” dans Etudes sur Hegel, Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1931, pp. 41–64. For A. Kojève, the notion of force, that is in the form of desire, is central to Hegel’s thought (Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, 2e édition [Paris: Gallimard, 1947]). See also Hegel, Logique et Métaphysique (Iéna 1804–1805), présentation, traduction et notes de D. Souche-Dagues (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), pp. 28–29. 9 While it is true that Heidegger attempts to explain Hegel’s thought as dualist in the Kantian tradition, this reading has been contested. See for example Denise Souche-Dagues, Hegelianisme et dualisme. Réflexion sur le phénomène. Paris: Vrin, 1990. 10 The ontological proof of the existence of God is implicit in much of Hegel’s philosophy. In the Science of Logic, Hegel makes this explicit, however: “Of the Notion, now, we have shown to begin with that it determines itself into objectivity. It is self-evident that this latter transition is identical in character with what formerly appeared in metaphysics, as the inference from the notion, namely, the notion of God to his existence, or as the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God” (p. 705). 11 Hegel repeats this comment in his discussion of the Idea (Vol. II, Section 3, p. 756). 12 As C. Karelis points out, “Hegel’s predominant tendency is to judge [works of art] by content” (p. xxxvi). 13 For my purposes here, error is considered to be unconscious, or at least does not imply a desire to be wrong or to misperceive. I have left willful deceit out of the discussion because it does not involve error per se but a desire to mislead, to induce others into error, or at least to create a situation beneficial to oneself by fraudulent means. 14 Ingarden distinguishes between fictional, literary texts and texts purporting to describe the real world by means of the notion of “quasi-judgement.” Literary works contain quasijudgements, or judgements that look like real judgements whereas works that describe the world contain true judgements. This distinction is vague, however, and ultimately rests on the attitude of the reader. For this reason, the notion of quasi-judgement is invalid as a means to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. In fact both genres employ the same language forms and for this reason the notion of concretization is applicable to both. See V. Kocay, “Le 4

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Jugement chez Roman Ingarden et chez Saint Thomas: perspective référentielle,” Texte 11, (1992): pp. 135–147. 15 Reflecting on the first chapters of the Phenomenology, A. Kojève remarks that for Hegel, man is a negating Action which transforms Being and which transforms itself in the process (op. cit. p. 167, my translation). This is essentially Hegel’s notion of becoming. 16 My interpretation of Ingarden’s aesthetic theory is presented primarily in Forme et référence: le langage de Roman Ingarden (Mardaga, 1996). See also, however, “L’Axiologie d’Ingarden,” Philosophiques 22, (1995): 35–52.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Beiser, F. “Hegel’s Historicism,” in F. Beiser, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge University Press, 1993, 1996), pp. 270–300. Fackenheim, E. The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1967). Harris, E. An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (Lanham, New York; London: University Press of America, 1983). Harris, H.S. “Hegel’s Intellectual Development to 1807,” in F. Beiser, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge University Press, 1993, 1996), pp. 25–51. Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Trans. by E. S. Haldane (New York: The Humanities Press, Inc.; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1955). Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). Hegel, G. W. F. Science of Logic. Trans. by A. V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1969, 1991). Ingarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art. Trans. by Georges G. Grabowicz (Evanston: North Western University Press, 1973). Ingarden, Roman. Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. Trans. by Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). Ingarden, Roman. Time and Modes of Being. Trans. by Helen R. Michejda (Springfield Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1964). This is a partial translation of Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1964). Karelis, Charles. “An Interpretative Essay,” in Hegel, Introduction to “Aesthetics” (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1979). Kojève, A. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, 2e ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1947). Lauer, Quentin, S. J. Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971, 1974). Priest, Stephen, ed. Hegel’s Critique of Kant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Souche-Dagues, D. Hégélianisme et dualisme. Réflexion sur le phénomène (Paris: Vrin, 1990).

VELGA VEVERE

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE POETICAL

“Every life is a point of view directed upon the universe.” (Jose Ortega y Gasset)

These lines from “The Doctrine of the Point of View” by Jose Ortega y Gasset, the fragment devoted to the ever-existing antinomy between life and culture and their interpretations from the rationalistic and relativistic viewpoints, are the perfect opening for the present paper as they capture the sense and the mood of the philosophical endeavor taken upon by Anna-Teresa Tymienicka in Poetica nova and Book 3 of Logos and Life: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements into Onto-Poiesis of Culture. In short it could be summarized as the inquiry into phenomenology of the poetical with a special emphasis on literature as the prima facie human creative activity to be approached by the means of the phenomenological description. The description in turn is centered around the conception of mimesis, based upon the phenomenology of life, as the creative self-projection into the intersubjective life-world. The present paper falls into four subsequent parts: the prelude – stating the problem and its actuality in our complex and somewhat chaotic intellectual environment; the interlude – the philosophical conceptualization (with some historical references) of mimesis, mimetical action, and the three orders of mimesis; the theme – mimesis as self-projection; and the postlude. PRELUDE

The question of origins, of the primal generative impulses in the middle of the versatile and volatile contemporary culture production is one that seeks to put together anew somewhat scattered and fragmented images of the world and selves. Ours is the time when ever-so-new common-life objects are being dragged into the sphere of human creative activity, when the differences between the languages of everydayness and literature, everydayness and philosophy, and literature and philosophy is, if not non-existing, then almost imperceptible. The prime example of the non-differential inclusion mixed upon the philosophical prerequisites of the total immanence (as opposed to the strivings for pure transcendence in the art of high modernism) and the orgy of consumption (the culture of consumerism) is pop-art, with its emphasis upon radical de-personalization (Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup can 485 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 485–499. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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drawings and silk-screen series of Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, and Mao Tzedun, for example). But, paradoxically enough, this total inclusion reinforces some kind of exclusivism as it forces us to place the objects (if they are to be viewed as artefacts) in our idiosyncratic systems of reference. Art is everywhere, and everything is art. And we can ask together with the influential American culture philosopher Arthur Danto, speaking of pop-art: “what makes the difference between a work of art and something not a work of art when there is no interesting perceptual difference between them?”1 The answer, according to Danto, lies in the fact that in the course of 20th-century, art itself has been increasingly losing its authenticity, its definitive voice. “Once a question is brought to consciousness at a certain moment in the historical unfolding of art, a new level of philosophical consciousness has been reached. And this means two things. It means, first, that having brought itself to this level of consciousness, art no longer bears responsibility for its own philosophical definition. That, rather, is the task of philosophers of art. Second, it means that there is no particular way that works of art need to look, since a philosophical definition of art must be compatible with every kind and order of art.”2 Despite the apparent relativism this procedure entails, nevertheless there is a persistent urge embedded in the very crucibles of our human existence to recover the distinct voice of art, muffled at large by philosophical interpretations. This doesn’t entail the total isolation of phenomena, but rather the recognition of their essential characteristics in order to rethink the whole societal, cultural, philosophical context. But what happens to the philosophical discourse in the present age of transgressions and overlappings? Amongst many other qualifications let us concentrate upon one relevant for the purpose of the present paper, that is, the increasing use of narrative in philosophy that, in turn, is mixed upon antimodernism ambitions. As American philosopher Richard Bernstein puts it: “Recently, the question of narrative has been thrust into the foreground of philosophic controversy, and widely divergent understanding of narrative and its significance for philosophy have emerged. Thinkers as different as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Richard Rorty have argued that narrative and story-telling are central for any adequate philosophising.” 3 Though our interest is obviously philosophical, it should be noted that similar trends could be found in many spheres of scholarly practice, not the least among them history and literary criticism. In history this is signalized by the shift from a nomological to a doxographical mode of interpretation (nomos – law, custom; doxa – opinion). In literary criticism the narrative

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mode of presentation is championed, for example, by Harold Bloom’s theory of revisionism, the main idea of which is that the basis of interpretation is a “strong misreading” of a literary work, i.e. a voluntary imposing of the analytical framework upon the text in question. “The language of criticism shatters the vessels always prematurely, since the critic too becomes a Demiurge, perhaps despite himself. But the critic should be a de-idealizing Demiurge, unlike the belated poet, who can choose to deceive himself, if it helps him to do his work.”4 In philosophy the use of narrative amounts to the kind of poetical vision implying specific time configuration and direct involvement of the Self as the preeminent factors in the fabric of text. The specific time configuration in the philosophical discourse is doubly triadic. First, in the St. Augustinian sense of the immanent present – Augustine in his famous 11th chapter, on memory, from Confessions, ponders the paradox that the future which does not exist via present should pass into a past which no longer exists. “For these three do exist in the mind, and I do not see them anywhere else: the present time of things past is memory; the present time of things present is sight; the present time of things future is expectation.”5 The second triad applies to the three qualities of narrative time: the time narrated (time of the story), time of narration and time of things to be told about. As a result the philosophical discourse becomes ex-centered, non-disciplined, not so much intellectual reconstruction as the infinite play of words and literary surfaces. This is not to say that the outcome is lacking the philosophical core – rather, it is the case of philosophy using the medium of literature to express its innermost content. And, inevitably, during the process the philosophical message becomes masked or obscured. One of the writers who influenced the increasing use of narrative in philosophy is, without any doubt, Marcel Proust, with his Remembrance of Things Past. Proust’s method is reliving the past in the present by means of memory, and thus purporting to triumph over time. That is achieved by the endless series of re-descriptions of things and people met in the past. He did not see himself as looking down on the temporal sequence of events from above, but rather he provided the subjective description of events from within, while still keeping some often incomprehensible distance between temporal manifestations of Marcel – the narrator, Marcel – the character and the things to be narrated. But what about philosophical transposition of the method? It would lead to a more or less similar narrative mode of thinking and explication. So Jacques Derrida in The Postcard, which is a quite clear-cut example, has carried it through. The Postcard is a collection of letters written on the backs of identical postcards depicting Socrates and Plato

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in the reversed situation (Plato as master, and Socrates as apprentice). So the story replays the history of philosophy in reversal, at the same time maintaining some semblance of personal correspondence of the author with his wife.6 That brings to the fore the second qualification of the philosophical narrative, i.e., first-person narration embedded in a text. By no means is it a solely modern or postmodern phenomenon, the ironically narrative undercurrents of Socratic dialogues speak for themselves, as does Friedrich Nietzsche’s play with his signatures and names in the autobiographical work Ecce Homo.7 And not the least thinker of the kind is the great Dane, Soren Kierkegaard, with his employment of various pseudonyms in order to carry through the project of existential communication.8 It could be oversimplification to say that philosophy merely uses literature as a medium, though sometimes it seems (sic!) exactly the case. And the same is to be said about literature using philosophy as its medium. A great many literary works are pregnant with philosophical meaning as they embark upon the task of interpreting the essentialities of man’s existence. In other words, they are philosophically saturated, as can be seen in, for example, Albert Camus’ existential novels Rebel, A Man in Revolt, and Stranger, but, particularly, in his reflections on man’s and his creations’ (philosophy and literature among them) destiny in the world of the existence of the absurd.9 At the same time, literature using philosophy as a medium resulting in a form of philosophical novel, a marginal genre, is not unheard of. The example to be mentioned here is the work of the Norwegian writer Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. In the novel a girl name Sophie starts to receive strange letters in her mailbox containing different sets of philosophical questions to be reflected on, and before she knows it, she is enrolled in a correspondence with a mysterious philosopher.10 And, inevitably so, after all such encounters between philosophy and literature, each party comes out changed. Nevertheless, with all this the question about the unique inherent capacities of philosophy, as well as of literature, is of prime importance. Therefore it is legitimate to ask together with Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka: “Does literature have a vocation? To ask this question means to ask whether it has a unique task to perform for the sake of human life and culture. … The question of the vocation of literature means to ask whether there is a specific role which the exemplary – in Kant’s sense – great works of literature, or even literature as belles lettres, are called upon to fulfill the nurturing of the individual human being as well as of culture at large.”11 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s work Poetica Nova is entirely devoted

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to the answer to this fundamental question, and the originality of the approach is defined by her philosophy of life, in general, and by the application of the conception mimesis, in particular. But let us beforehand take a short detour and look into metaphysical and literary use of mimesis, as it plays a key role in the phenomenology of the poetical of Tymieniecka. “Does not all artistic creativity focus on the issue of ‘mimesis’ and its right proportion with respect to the ‘Real’? All art refuses the ‘brute’ reality of everydayness – even when it is taken as the ‘object’ of its ‘presentification’ – the rightful mode of ‘presentifying’.”12 INTERLUDE

The pre-theoretical and theoretical insights and the practical (literary critical and philosophical) applications of the notion mimesis have a long standing and rich history, starting from pre-Platonic associations with the oral or phonocentric culture, Platonic metaphysical attribution, Aristotelian philosophy of art, and ending with the inherent critique of the concept in post-classical theory. French philosopher Paul Ricoeur deals with the problematic of mimesis in his influential work Time and Narrative;13 more precisely, he sets off, first, to recover the concept, and, second, to introduce three orders of mimesis into the environment of the critical discourse. The concept to be recovered is the classical use of mimesis, though putting a special emphasis on the principle of action, and hence on the praxeos. Its double referentiality to the real (the field of everydayness) and to the imaginative (the field of poetics) determines the status of the “metaphorical” transposition of the practical field in the medium of creative activity (poiesis). The three orders of mimesis, according to Ricoeur, actualize by the means of mimetical action – the construction of quasi-reality, or, in other words, representation. But that, in turn, involves introduction of the time principle in the structure. The conception of the mimetical action stands in radical opposition to the copying that could still be possible in the framework of Plato’s metaphysics as a doubling of reality. It creates a tearing, a split that opens the space for specific human creative activity. Or, in other words, this particular split is the decisive factor that makes art art, literature literature, etc. The activity of mimesis in artwork is demonstrated by mythos – construction of - systasys. Ricoeur the intrigue or emplotment: mythos – e- ton pragmaton dwells upon the active character of Aristotelian mimesis as the representation in the representable works of art, or the metaphorical transposition, in other words. The object of Ricoeur’s analysis (in the context of mimesis) is the

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concrete process, activity which, aids the mediation between the prefiguration of the practical field and its re-figuration in the perception of the artwork. Thus accounts for the triadic structure, or the three orders of mimesis, i.e. pre-figuration (mimesis l), configuration (mimesis II), and refiguration (mimesis III). And it is exactly configuration that stands for the artistic representation. But before the explication of this figurative line, it could be necessary at first to clarify the ground assumption of Ricoeur’s approach to the question – the one of mimetical action in the Aristotelian sense. Aristotle’s conception of mimesis is defined contextually, and never directly, in various pages of his “Poetics.” “For the poet, imitating the same object and by the same means, may do it either impersonating other characters, as Homer does, or in his own person throughout, without change – or he may imitate by representing all his characters as real and employed in the very action itself.”14 This is the emphasis upon the active, procedural nature of the Aristotelian imitation in its triple accountability that interests Ricoeur the most. The threefold character of imitation is related to the means of imitation, the object to be imitated, and the manner of imitation. Still, only addition of the intrigue (mythos) in this theoretical construction, and the dynamics of interaction between the two factors (imitative process and intrigue) momentarily recall the understanding of mimesis as copy. “But of all these parts the most important is the combination of incidents or the fable. Because tragedy is an imitation not of men, but of actions – of life, of happiness and unhappiness, for happiness consists in action, and the supreme good itself, the very end of life is action of a certain kind – not quality.”15 Precisely this introduction of time – bound action, first, and, second, its extraction out of the metaphysical framework, as well as the understanding of mimesis as proportion of reality within the artwork, are the factors that constitute the background of Ricoeur’s conception. As such, it differs both from the Platonic possibility of doubling the ideal Forms and application of the concept in literary theory. Not concentrating specifically upon the historical development and differentiation of the concept it is necessary to mention a few things relevant to the present research, namely, the ambivalence of the conception in Piato and the seeming exhaustion of it in the literary criticism. This is important as Ricoeur draws back on the classical usage and attempts to rehabilitate the literary critical one, at the same time giving it a personal twist, that is, his reliance upon the trivia, or everyday experience. Plato speaks of two kinds of imitation – appropriate and inappropriate, or, ideal (entailing the possibility to imitate the forms of ideal beauty) and real (in words and pictures, or in superficial appearances – the

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so-called “dramatic imitation” that is doubly removed from the original). “Shall we assume that all poetic imitators, beginning with Homer, imitate images of virtue and of everything else to write about and have no contact with the truth?”16 This quotation goes along the lines of Plato’s well-known hostility towards poets and the poetical in his “Republic,” though to look upon it only in this light could be and actually is an oversimplified statement. This is due to the fact that besides quite negative comments on the matter of artistic (not ontological) imitation, Plato gives it a rather positive qualification as well. In what sense? First, he talks about three classes of poetical representation, which isn’t the object of his criticism, but rather he turns against the poetical identification (not in the face of the poet, but in the face of a potential listener): (a) mimesis; (b) digesis (direct narration in the third person form); (c) a combination of both. Second, mimesis as imitative activity stands out as the educational device of prime importance, and thus it gains more positive treatment in Plato’s thought. The main concern of the literary theory regarding the problem of representation is the one of depiction of reality in words in opposition to the pure descriptive mode assigned for scientific discourse. The problem of mimesis is central in the significant book written by Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.17 He presents the conception of mimesis in the course of development of European literature as the technique of retardation, that is, a backwards movement that differs from the tension with its inner and outer hypostases (inner as tension between content and form, outer between literary styles). But the specific manifestations of the retardation in Western literature is the conscious use of interruptions that disrupt the homogeneity of textual surfaces, at the same time creating specific narrative structures that are identical to neither physical nor story time. These structures are manifested through repeated detouring. Auerbach states: “To be sure, the aesthetic effect thus produced was soon noticed and thereafter consciously sought; but the more original cause must have lain in the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. Nor do psychological processes receive any other treatment: here too nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed.”18 This quotation grasps the very sense of Auerbach’s understanding of mimesis as maximums of verbal representation. On the basis of the strategies mentioned Ricouer works out his three orders of mimesis, or of representation, so to say: pre-figuration, configuration and reconfiguration. The first one (mimesis I) is concerned with

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pre-understanding of the narrative field, or, in other words, its relatedness to the everyday culturally preconditioned language experiences (hearsay according to Ricoeur). Whereas the second (mimesis II) represents the “discordant concordance” – that is, the transformation of facts into narrative entities by the means of emplotment or intrigue, bringing in the specific, personalized temporal settings and resulting in the work of art. The third order (mimesis III), in turn is the representative stage, interpretation, the breakthrough into the field of intersubjective communication. It represents the world of a text awaiting its fulfillment – the life-world of the reader, without which the signification of the d’oeuvre is incomplete. But it is certainly the second order of mimesis that plays the defining role in grasping the soul and the essence of the creative endeavor as it deals with the work of art in all complexity and relatedness to both the original pre-conceptual realm and the death of the author in his final creation, in Roland Barthe’s words. THEME

In one way or another these conceptions of mimesis are mixed upon the principle of representation of reality or, in other words, a kind of transcription of the world. But in contrast to that mimesis stands as one of the key notions in the phenomenology of the poetical by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Here, generally speaking, it stands for the self-interpretation (or self-presentation as opposed to re-presentation) in existence. “It is at this threshold of human functioning, which already marks man’s unique creative faculty as well as initiates his self-interpretation in existence that literary art and philosophy most intimately meet each other in the issue of ‘mimesis.’”19 That is, mimesis as self-interpretation, or self-presentation in existence, is most intimately linked to the creative function of man and to the essential unity of everythingwhich-is-alive. The distinctive feature of Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of the poetical is the recognition of the creative spontaneity origins which are to be sought already in the pre-intentional level. As thus they cannot be approached by means of the phenomenological eidetic reduction alone, that is, by “bracketing” contingencies of the empirical generalities, aiming at the “essences” (immanently regarded as the thought acts, and transcendently regarded as, for example, qualities of a person’s character or characteristics of a physical object). Edmund Husserl in Experience and Judgment writes: “The essence proves to be that without which an object of a particular kind cannot be thought, i.e., without which the object cannot be intuitively imagined as such. This general essence is the eidos, the idea in the Platonic sense, but

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apprehended in its purity and free from all metaphysical interpretations, therefore taken exactly as it is given to us immediately and intuitively in the vision of the idea which arises in this way.”20 After that, taking into account the results of the “bracketing,” it makes sense to look again to different variables of the same eidos or, in Husserl’s words to the particularization of one eidos. To illustrate the proposition Husserl uses the example of sound, and it goes as follows: we take the sound as our point of departure; obtain the eidos as that which is common to all “arbitrary” variants. Then we take another sound, but we don’t obtain another eidos – rather, in juxtaposition of the new and old we see that it is basically the same, just different variables, and so on and so forth. But, it works only in the case that this multiplicity is grounded in a higher level, i.e., the true seeing of the universal as eidos. Thus we are not constrained by the contingencies of reality. Another Husserlian example – if we see a house, let’s say, painted in yellow, we can think of it to be blue, green, with a slanted roof, etc. And, by all accounts, it is the house itself, “which in the realm of the possible, could have other determinations in place of, and seeing, there is the transition from the initial example, which gives direction and which we have called a model, to ever new images …”21 This means that this continuous coincidence is passively pre-constituted as such and that the seeing of the eidos rests in active intuitive apprehension of the pre-constituted. Thus, the eidetic reduction, starting with the descriptive model and following through with the consistent cutting off of all metaphysical referentialities is the way towards the immediate seeing of the phenomenon in the form of the pure thought-act. The phenomenology of life, developed by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, in its turn, brings in the quest for essentials the specifically human aspect (the Human Condition), whilst the analysis of the poetical brings forth as its existential and analytical precondition the creative faculty: “the knot in which human sensibility, emotional powers, cognition and the swing of the inventive and imaginative virtualities tie together: the creative faculty.”22 The poetical, in turn, manifests itself through the paradigm of mimetical action that is the locus of the present study. Poetics and the poetical in the most general sense interpreted as poiesis – creativity or action – are the axial, throughgoing conceptions in Tymieniecka’s Poetica Nova: “poetics as the vehicle through which philosophy enters into the crucibles of art and human existence, it is first the role of poetics with respect to philosophy that characterizes poetics itself as the philosophical reflection in its deepest.”23 But then again – don’t we contradict the very principle of the investigation, i.e., the attempt to locate the

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distinctively unique voice of each realm of human creative activity? Perhaps, from one side it could be stated, because in this case we inevitably run into the trouble of imposing the conceptual apparatus and cognitive structures of philosophy upon poetical experiences; but, on the other hand, no doubt, it is philosophy (phenomenology, especially) that works out the general and the special methodology approaching the essentials, i.e., eidos or thought-acts. Phenomenology aims at deep structures – the subliminal, pre-conceptualized, pre-thematized level (according to Husserl – “passive doxa, that exists in pregiven”). Whereas phenomenology of life emphasizes the “spontaneous activity” of the pre-given in all complexity of “everything-which-is-alive,” and, above all, the human being as the “creative agent,” the one which constructs himself from the material of the subliminal spontaneities. In this respect it perhaps might be called “the new universality,” though in a rather metaphorical sense. This universe mixed upon the creative spontaneities is the aestheticized one, like the work of art in the state of constant creation where human agents realize and re-create (cipher and de-cipher) the world and their selves via mimetical action or self-projection. It is literature, above all, that plays the crucial role in Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of the poetical, but literature in the widest sense of this word. And to answer the question of the poetical (creative) is first to answer the question of the vocation of literature. “The role or vocation of literature, whatever its affinities with philosophical concerns and issues is unique. Its role is not to present us with the cognition or knowledge of anything (e.g., the world, man, life, etc.) but to take up issues that lie at the much deeper level of human existence. The role of literature, that to which its means are geared, is not to explain the world and life as we discover it by positive, universally valid, intellectual means. It is to re-create the world and life after we have already lived it and come to know it in the positive sense, to transform what trivial and bare positivism yields through the creative vision.”24 The great literary works are moved by the three-fold intention – towards the sought “truth of things,” towards the original form of expression, and, finally, towards selfexpression. “This three-fold intention delineates the creative self as a projector of an entire network of new interconnections between and among the familiar framework of Nature/human subject/society-culture and human telos.”25 If the first one is a concern shared by all intellectual enterprises the second and the third are unique characteristics of human creative endeavors per se. What is to be attained in poetics is not (or at least not only) the judgements about the state of things in the world and modes of reconstruction, but the idiosyncratic visions that at the same time grasp (potentially or

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actually) the crucibles of human existence in general. The answer to the question of the special vocation of literature, phenomenology of the poetical, formulates in the form of five paradoxes, because the very existence of it among other genres and modes of presentation is paradoxical in its nature. (i) Literature doesn’t present the real life-world, real in the factual sense, let us say; for instance, we can’t use as a textbook on the history of 20th-century economics theory the brilliant biographical novel on the Nobel prize winner in economics John Forbes Nash, Jr., A Beautiful Mind, written by Sylvia Nasar. But at the same time no textbook can present us with a vision of the man’s life long fight with mental illness, combined with a genuine intuition for the social, cultural and intellectual atmosphere of the years, and, yes, even of his economical insights. It’s a fictitious life we get, more real than the real. But again, for us as readers to live in this imaginary world alone and follow the letter of the book could be quite dangerous, too. Therefore, it is a double responsibility, both author’s and reader’s, to stay afloat and not to lose sight of the horizon in the wild sea of imagination. (ii) Some point of reference exists. If it weren’t so, the book would be just another heap of printed paper for whatever use we prefer in the circumstances. The point of reference – be it historical, scientific or deeply personal, resulting in emotional involvement in the book – makes work communicable. (iii) There is no truth claim in the philosophically rational sense. Still, there is to be some truth involved unless we go by the parody or pastiche intention from the very start, as in the books by George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm. But even then, in this apophatic way, there is a message, believed to be true at least by the author, to convey to the prospective reader. And there is a truth of sense experiences, a truth of feelings that make us relate to the certain story. (iv) Detachment from the creator. To let the work go and not to claim the exclusive rights (in some way this wish is being fulfilled by © – the copyright symbol – though it has been by and large undermined by an increasing number of uncontrollable internet publications). The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that still some bond exists between the creator and creation – real real or imaginary, real being the case when, for example, the author personally re-writes his or her masterpiece for whatever reason he or she chooses to do that: to polish the style, to correct the politically incorrect statements, to pay a tribute to something or someone, or just for personal reasons. It could be a part of postmodern strategies of producing re-makes, assemblage of direct and indirect quotations of the earlier works. Or – simple and popular – making the novels or stories into screenplays. A quite fresh example is J. K. Rowling and her Harry Potter saga where she contributed not only to the screenplay, but also dictated the choice

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of starring actors. This all requires more or less direct involvement of the author himself or herself (though not always). Sometimes, speaking of an author, it is not the matter of worse/better quality of the literary material but of what the author is today and of what he or she was yesterday. An imaginary bond is formed by us – readers and literary critics – as any innovative reading (and everybody hopes for that) entails forming new links, causal sequences and interpretations in view of the present situation’s new facts, subversions of philosophical paradigms and discoursive structures. But the critical reading can also go against the grain of the text or texts in question, beating it into clichés of the critic himself, as is the case with the American neo-pragmatic (the Bloomian type) literary criticism, the engine of which is fueled by the current urge to fulfill the task at hand. Therefore, the decisive question the critic should ask of the text and of himself is as follows: “What purpose does this text serve for me, and for the socio-cultural needs of the times?” (v) The literary outcome is related to the surrounding societal world, but at the same time it should challenge the existing or prevailing tradition. In other words, this is a question of novelty that ensures the development, first, within limits of the certain tradition, and, finally, the breaking free from its limitations and obsolete forms of expressions. Otherwise the world would be entirely filled with literary clones or replicas. Still there is a price to be paid in any case. While the lack of innovative motifs or forms can lead and leads to the shallowness of the authorship and to culture consumerism on the other end, the radical breaking from tradition can end in the absolute intellectual isolation of the author. Though here the paradox exposes the double twist, as some authors have been rediscovered and included in the literary tradition, or the original “difficulties” have later come to be known as trademarks of the style. This is true of all times; the example to be mentioned is the symbolic and geometrical poetry of Guillaume Appolinaire, whose verses, though aesthetically appealing to the eye and intellectually sophisticated, seemed literary incongruent at first. Tymieniecka concludes on the matter: “In short, it is original and new with respect to what it is originated from and what it enters into as a ‘new’ element of the life-world.”26 In other words, the originality stems from the dissatisfaction with the given existential situation. The five paradoxes mentioned are vital existential characteristics of the role of literature in the life-world, each of them stressing some manifestation of the poetical as creative. But then, in this wider sense of the poetical, they (i.e. paradoxes) seems to be applicable to all human creative activity without any limitations imposed by the requirements of the genre. Because a lot of that pertains to cinematography or visual art, or music as well, and the examples

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could be interchangeable. So why literature in particular? Of course, it could be said that it is a matter of choice of the particular scholar where to start the investigation. In this case the starting point and the vast pool of examples is literary, and, strictly speaking, phenomenology of the poetical as an organic part of the phenomenology of life is philosophy or literature. This argument, though quite persuasive, lies on the surface, but nevertheless, it seems that it is Tymieniecka’s interest in the ability of literature to disclose, create and express the crucibles of specifically human existence that accounts for the choice. More specifically – it is, first, the quest for the common grounds of philosophy and literature, and then for the reasons of bifurcation of the respective fields and their directedness towards re-construction and construction. At this point the conception of mimesis comes into play as the differentiating element. In contrast to seeing it as the representation, phenomenology of life introduces a new interpretation of the concept. While lingering in the same mid-way position between reality and artistic production here it obtains the existential qualification, as it is projection into the world instead of projection of the world. “Here lies the crucial issue for the art – for literature in particular – concerning ‘mimesis’ and ‘reality.’ If art can accomplish this mediating role with respect to reality, by keeping it at a distance, maintaining a mid-air position, while at the same time plunging deep down into it, it is because of its intentional existential status.”27 Let us return for a moment to the term “transcription” discussed above in relation to the process of representation, where it stands for translation of the phenomenal world into the language of art. Of course, the use of the concept is rather metaphorical, as transcription means “the arrangement of a composition for a medium other than that for which it was originally wirtten.” Whereas the definition of mimesis as self-projection is tied to another notion – “transposition/transformation” in contrast to “transcription/translation.” It is the “transposition of the ‘signals’ received by our Elemental virtualities from the preconscious givenness into the intersubjectively conscious network of the human by endowing them with a specifically human SENSE.”28 In other words, it is multi-directional, simultaneous movement involving intentionality (ability to receive signals from the active, spontaneous, pre-conceptualized, pre-thematized realm); intersubjectivity (projection into the world of interpersonal relations); and creative transformation of the pregiven into the new personalized givenness that still bears the imprint of the universal. Each and every d’oeuvre unfolds the life-story of the creator and at the same time points beyond to something that is encoded into the very structure of human existence.

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The conception of mimesis as self-projection plays a crucial role in the phenomenology of the poetical because it is a juncture of many essentials of the specifically human existence – the realm of the pregiven and the activity of consciousness; the particular and the universal; the creative faculties and the artistic product; the individual and the societal. In this respect it differs from the understanding of mimesis as representation of the phenomenal world. But the situation at the end is quite paradoxical. In phenomenology of the poetical the conception of mimesis as self-projection gains almost universal philosophical validity, while at the same time it aesthetizes the philosophical system itself, turning it into a sophisticated artwork. University of Latvia N OT E S 1 Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 35. 2 Ibid., p. 36. 3 Richard J. Bernstein, American Pragmatism: The Conflict of Narratives in Rorty and Pragmatism. The Philosopher Responds to His Critics, ed. H. J. Saatkamp, Jr. (Nashville & London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1995), p. 54. 4 Harold Bloom, Agon. Towards a Theory of Revisionism (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 18. 5 The Confessions of St. Augustine (New York, Toronto: New American Library, 1963), p. 273. 6 The Derridean mode of narration, i. e. the erasure of difference between philosophy and literary criticism, has been put under critical reflection by Jurgen Habermas. Despite the fact that the two fields have a strong family resemblance in their function to translate the contents of their respective expert cultures into everyday linguistic practices, and in their rhetorical expressions, it doesn’t go further than that. Habermas writes: “If, following Derrida’s recommendation, philosophical thinking were to be relieved of the duty of solving problems and made to assume the function of literary criticism, it would be robbed not merely of its seriousness, but also of its productivity and capacity for achievement. Conversely, the literary-critical capacity for judgment loses its potency when, as envisioned by Derrida’s disciples in literature departments, it switches from appropriating the content of aesthetic experience into a critique of metaphysics. The false assimilation of one enterprise to the other robs both of their substance.” – Jurgen Habermas, “On The Distinction between Poetic and Communicative Uses of Language” in On the Pragmatics of Communication (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 398–399. 7 The genre of autobiography (including the one of the philosophical kind) is generically tied to the first-person position. The paradoxical nature of the Nietzschean life story lies precisely in the fact that he openly, in the first-person narration, speaks about his life from differing viewpoints, and does it simultaneously. Let us merely recall the chapters’ titles, for example, “Why I am So Wise”; “Why I am So Clever”; “Why I Write Such Good Books”; “Why I am a Destiny.”

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The Kierkegaardian “constructing self into” the text in the indirect manner (i.e., putting his own words into the mouths of differing pseudonyms) makes the task of deciphering into endeavor subjected to the risk of voluntary reading into the personal position of the scholar. Traditionally this use of pseudonyms has been regarded as Kierkegaard’s aesthetic authorship, though in the latest scholarship the emphasis is being put more on the holistic approach, i.e., the view that the pseudonymous works are specific, but not the only ones, manifestations of his strategy of existential communication. 9 In “The Myth of Sysyphus: An Essay on the Absurd” Albert Camus presents the exemplary human condition, that is, condemnation (by gods or by the human destiny) to the futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain – pointless strivings to achieve something; and with all this pointlessness never giving up. 10 “Sophie hurried to the gate and looked inside the green mailbox. She was startled to find that it contained another green envelope, exactly like the first. But the mailbox had definitely been empty when she took the first envelope! This envelope had her name on it as well. She tore it open and fished out a note the same size as the first one. Where does the world come from? it said. I don’t know, Sophie thought. Surely nobody really knows. And yet – Sophie thought it was a fair question. For the first time in her life she felt it wasn’t right to live in the world without at least inquiring where it came from.” (Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy, translation of Paulette Moller [New York: Berkley Books, 1996], p. 5.) 11 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Onto-Poiesis of Culture, Book 3 (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), p. 13., hereafter The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Onto-Poiesis of Culture. 12 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Poetica Nova: The Creative Crucibles of Human Existence and of Art, Part I, The Poetics of Literature (Dordrecht, Boston, London, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982), p. 18., hereafter Poetica Nova. 13 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, translation of Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, vol. 2 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985). 14 Aristotle, Poetics (London: J. M. Dent & Sons / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co, Inc., 1949), p. 8. 15 Ibid., p. 15. 16 Plato’s Republic (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1974), p. 245. 17 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953). 18 Ibid, p. 6. 19 Logos and Life, p. 20 20 Edmund Husserl. Experience and Judgment (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 341. 21 Ibid., pp. 342–343. 22 Poetica Nova, p. 6. 23 Ibid., p. 65. 24 The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Onto-Poiesis of Culture, pp. 17–18. 25 Poetica Nova, p. 73. 26 Ibid., p. 9. 27 Ibid., p. 18. 28 Ibid., p. 20.

SECTION VI T H E WO R L D S O F H U M A N I N WA R D - O U T WA R D E X I S T E N T I A L R A D I AT I O N O F R E A L I T Y

B I A N C A M A R I A D ’ I P P O L I TO

M O NA D E E T M O N D E . R É F L E X I O N S S U R L E S “ M É D I TAT I O N S C A RT E S I E N N E S ” D E E . H U S S E R L

Le texte des Cartesianische Meditationen1 est tissu comme un dialogue avec Descartes, Leibniz, Kant – sur l’escorte de S. Augustin. Ce colloque, constant et intime, se sait, chez Husserl, et se pose comme la substance primaire de son écrit: et c’est ça qu’il nomme ‘Meditation’. C’est en ce mot, en effet, qu’il recueille la modernité, son origine – qui est telos – et sa contradiction. La modernité – c’est la science: le discours objectif et exact sur le monde; le moi qui le conduit est axiome et catégorie. Pourtant, ce courant lumineux de clairté géométrique cache en soi la source d’une pensée différente: le moi dans son attitude de Einstellung, origine du sens et conscience de responsabilité historique.2 Le mot ‘meditatio’ se reconduit historiquement à un contexte d’inspiration religieuse: c’est le retrait de l’âme qui considère les propositions données de la foi, le monde et toute autre notion et en élabore la teneur et l’insère à l’intérieur de son propre vécu. Le motif décisif de la méditation consiste donc dans le double mouvement de la considération d’un conteste donné et de son appropriation par l’’âme’ ou l’esprit. C’est un travail qui exige et déplie un temps propre – l’intériorisation de l’extérieur, à travers la critique immanente du donné et la prise de conscience par le sujet du fait que ce qui est, est désormais entrelacé à sa vie, ‘porté’ par lui – le sujet, dès maintenant, transcendental.3 C’est pourquoi la dernière proposition des Cartesianische Méditationen réunit les mots: ‘Weltverlorenheit’ et ‘Selbstbesinnung’: il faut commencer par perdre le monde, pour pouvoir le retrouver dans sa liaison essentielle à la responsabilité du moi (Selbstbesinnung), dont la portée est universelle.4 Il faut souligner cette étroite liaison établie dans le texte husserlien entre prise de conscience et responsabilité: les deux ne forment qu’un mot: Selbstbesinnung. Le moi surgit pour lui même dans le mouvement et le travail qui suspend le monde en deça de l’être, et l’interpelle et l’évoque dans un espace dialogique. En ce sens, il n’y a pas, suivant Husserl, de sujet pour soi, si non à partir d’un monde, de sa dérealisation et de l’instauration d’une liaison spirituelle avec lui. On peut reconnaître dans ce propos une opposition entre ‘monde’ et ‘mondain’: la science du monde, en tant que ‘positive’, est ‘mondaine’; c’est elle qui nous fait vraiment perdre le monde 503 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 503–514. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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ou la ‘vérité’ du monde . C’est seulement dans la Besinnung de l’homme que le monde est soutrait à la ‘pesanteur’ de l’être et conduit au sens et à la possibilité. Mais, pour que ce chemin débute, il faut que l’enigme apparaît, qui est le premier signe de la marche de l’esprit, de la ‘phénoménologie’. Au niveau des Cartesianische Meditationen, la ‘phénoménologie’ est premièrement retour: un retour questionnant (Rueckfrage) à la double envergure. C’est-à-dire que la ‘chose même’ de la recherche husserlienne depuis les Logische Untersuchungen à travers les Ideen jusqu’à Formale und transzendentale Logik – moment central et accomplissement de l’eidétique – maintenant se trouve prise dans un contre-coup choquant, au virage du monde à l’intentionnalité meme, comme un regard qui prétend porter sur le voir même. Ce paradoxe, pourtant, représente la jointure qui unit la démarche husserlienne au noyau central de ce qu’on appelle ‘transcendental’: le ‘retournement’ (que Kant appelle ‘copernicien’) de l’objet à la modalité dont il est appris dans la connaissance. La question du ‘comment’(wie) chez Kant: comment se fait-il que la connaissance rejoint l’objet, se trouve ici élargie par la référence au cogito, qui n’a pas un statut strictement épistemologique, au contraire il désigne l’amplitude même de la ‘vie’. C’est ici que nous pouvons découvrir le lien de la phénoménologie avec la modernité et la manière dont Husserl lui-même interprète ce rapport. Et c’est ici que nous trouvons la fusion inédite entre les concepts du ‘transcendental’ et de la ‘monade’ – le premier désignant d’un côté la puissance formelle de la raison déracinée de l’ontologie de la nature (ce que Heidegger a appelé ‘neue Freiheit’), de l’autre côté le mouvement qui porte d’emblée ‘au dehors’, sur le monde – alors que la ‘monade’, plongés ses nerfs dans son fond d’univers, exerce un travail solitaire, exclusif, dans sa clôture digne d’un héros racinien. On ne peut se défendre de demeurer tout interdits devant l’étrange figure philosophique qui surgit, assemblage médusant, des pièces diverses de la modernité. Car ces moments que la Krisis ordonne comme un tracé historicoidéal, se trouvent ici, dans les Cartesianische Meditationen, comme reflets dans l’eau – qui parlent d’un modèle décomposé, dont pourtant la ruine est fruitière. Husserl ne craint pas d’évoquer ensemble le cloître monadique et l’ouverture transcendentale sur l’alterité, la multiplicité géométrique des mondes de Descartes et l’eidétique (avant la lettre) leibnitienne des vérités éternelles. Quel est donc l’enjeu de cet hazard? Qu’est-ce que nous revient de cette contamination, de ce trouble de la pensée moderne?

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Le projet de Husserl se comprend peut-être dans le jeu de renvoi et de rappel entre la conclusion des Meditationen et le commencement, la conversion de sens entre les deux: monde perdu et monde retrouvé; monde ‘de fait’, factice et monde reconduit au sens. Le projet – c’est la Selbstbesinnung – en tant qu’espace spirituel, espace du sens, dans lequel le monde n’est pas seulement un objet – structure inerte du regard cognitif neutral. Le monde retrouvé se réclame d’une praxis spirituelle consciente de soi. Le savoir qu’innerve ce monde n’est pas stérilisé: il est aussi ‘vie’, parce que la vie qui soutient le monde est ‘vie cogitante’ et n’a rien à faire avec le ‘vitalisme’. Le monde, lui, nous accuse, et exige notre aveu. C’est la raison pour laquelle Husserl insiste partout, dans son oeuvre, sur l’idée d’un monde unique: car nous en sommes. La voie qu’il indique, la ‘perte du monde’ (Weltverlorenheit) est la doublure d’une perte dont l’avènement a été passé sous silence – comme un crime inavoué. La positive Wissenschaft – qui affirme une réalité sans lien avec la praxis humaine et dont l’homme est irresponsable – est opposée ici à une idée de ‘science’ qui coincide avec le dessein de tisser à nouveau la liaison qu’on appelle ‘sens’. En tant qu’elle extrait de l’ombre et du silence ces liens et les illumine fil à fil, elle s’appelle ‘phénoménologie’. C’est pourquoi il faut ‘perdre’ le monde de la positive Wissenschaft avec son illusoire neutralité et suivre un chemin ‘à rebours’, ayant pour guide le fil d’Ariane d’une science nouvelle, dont le bout se trouve enraciné au coeur de l’homme comme sa destination propre et ‘innée’. Pourtant, la ‘destination’ dont parle Husserl s’avère être le contraire d’un ‘destin’ – de quelque chose comme une suite nécessaire d’événements et de causations. Le telos, au sens de Husserl, c’est la réconnaissance du ‘soi’ en tant que source du monde dans son objectité même, le long chemin du questionner, dont les Cartesianische Méditationen déployent le virage difficil qui porte la question sur la substance même de l’intentionnalité. Dès lors, ‘homme’ et ‘monde’, en tant que ‘concrets’ c’est-à-dire dans la plenitude de leur sens et dans la consistence de leur lien, s’avèrent être un résultat; ce qui prend tout son sens à partir d’un paradoxe essentiel, élément exquis de la phénoménologie. C’est ce paradoxe qui constitue le nerf de notre recherche. Le chemin rétrograde est le chemin de la réflexion. Dans la perception directe, nous percevons, par exemple, la maison, mais non pas le percevoir. C’est seulement avec la réflexion que nous dirigeons le regard sur le percevoir même, ce qui fait apparaitre son être-porté perceptivement sur la maison.5 Ici se produit un revirement capital du mouvement ‘phénoménologique’ – qui ne

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porte plus sur le ‘phénomène’ conçu comme “ce qui se montre par lui-même”, mais qui doit remplir une tache nouvelle, doit porter à la phénoménalité le mouvement intentionnel lui-même. “Le passage à cette attitude réflexive – écrit Husserl – donne naturellement naissance à un nouvel état intentionnel, état qui, dans la singularité intentionnelle qui lui est propre de “se rapporter à l’état antérieur”, rend conscient, voire évident, non pas quelque autre état, mais cet état lui-même”. Ce qui se produit ainsi, c’est le fait nouveau de la réference de l’intentionnalité à elle-même, dont la conséquence est énorme: “Et c’est par là seulement que devient possible cette expérience descriptive, à laquelle nous sommes redevable de tout savoir et de toute connaissance concevable touchant notre vie intentionnelle”.6 Il faut souligner, encore une fois, le fait que l’intentionnalité ainsi visée surgit devant le regard réfléchi en faisant tout un avec son objet – ce qui nous conduit à deux résultats. Le premier, c’est que l’objet assume et accomplit, tout le long de la recherche, le role de ‘guide transcendental’ (transzendentale Leitfaden).7 En tant que perçu, il nous conduit à l’intentionnalité perceptive, en tant que souvenir à l’intentionnalié de remémoration etc.; de façon que les différents moments de conscience se trouvent liées dans une typique structurelle (Strukturtypik).8 Le second résultat concerne la nature même de la ‘constitution’, et c’est que la liaison se déploye de manière continue, ce qui ne relève pas d’une substantialité fermée sur soi, mais d’un mouvement incéssant et régulier. Autrement dit, c’est l’inadéguation qui régit cet ensemble où la fixité de la règle se tient au service d’un mouvement en principe inachevé, qui s’appelle ‘synthèse’. Ici s’éclaire le caractère propre du transcendental au sens de Husserl. Il nous apparaÎt comme une tension essentielle entre évidence et incomplétude ou inadéquation. Dans l’évidence, écrit Husserl “une chose, un ‘état-dechose’, une généralité, une valeur etc., se présentent eux-mêmes, s’offrent et se donnent ‘en personne’. Dans ce mode final, la chose est ‘présente ellemême’, donnée ‘dans l’intuition immédiate’, originaliter”.9 L’évidence, c’est l’être qui accede à la vision et l’explicitation du ‘comment’ de cette rencontre entre l’oeil et la vérité est une phénoménologie de la raison – la raison étant la modalité des liaisons d’une multiplicité inachevable de l’apparaître dans ses modalités. Or, l’évidence est partout et nulle part. Dans l’expérience, la ‘présence’ est tissue dans un réseau d’intentionnalités qui, quoique ‘vides’, sont toujours des visées- de, anticipations ou retentions ou préfigurations du sens. La ‘chair’ de l’objet, sa consistance de chose ‘qui se donne par elle même’ s’installe sur l’échafaudage des potentialités et se découpe de l’archictecture

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des horizons – de manière que le grand théatre du monde est façonné avec du vide, dans les coulisses de l’absence, du renvoi, du souvenir et de l’attente. D’où vient donc qu’un tout petit morceau de ‘présence’ puisse se forger un ‘corps’ et s’accréditer d’une ‘personne’, si l’intentionnalité ne travaille qu’une matière vaine? Il y a là, selon Husserl, le sens de la transcendance: le renvoi à des infinités concordantes d’une expérience ultérieure possible, impliquées dans chaque expérience du monde “ signifie manifestement que l’’objet réel’ appartenant au monde – et, à plus forte raison, le monde luimême – est une idée infinie”.10 Cette idée se rapporte à des infinités d’expériences concordantes dont le corrélat est “l’idée d’une évidence empirique parfaite, d’une synthèse complète d’expériences possibles”.11 Ici se montre selon Husserl “l’originalité (Eigenart) de l’analyse intentionnelle”.12 Il ne s’agit pas de ‘diviser’ la conscience pour retrouver les ‘donnés’ ou ‘éléments’ (réels). L’analyse intentionnelle révèle l’implicite, l’immense jeu de synthèse qui est secrètement au travail autour de chaque “évidence”. Il faut ajouter: ce n’est pas le cadre rigide des catégories kantiennes soutenant un divers sensible inerte en soi; c’est le mouvement souple et vivant qui tisse le clair-obscur de la présence-absence. L’analyse intentionnelle doit ‘ouvrir’ pli à pli le noyau durci du ‘réel’ – libérer l’infinité de l’idée qui en est captive, et, en même temps, jeter la lumière sur le ‘comment’ du travail intentionnel. La méditation, dès lors, doit changer la direction du regard, doit se faire réflexion. C’est ici que nous pouvons comprendre le sens de la présence des figures philosophiques évoquées par Husserl – et surtout pourquoi les Méditations s’ouvrent sous le signe de Descartes. Selon Husserl, Descartes a reconduit le monde entier dans le cogito: “ Tout ce qui est ‘monde’, tout être spatial et temporel existe pour moi, c’est-à-dire vaut pour moi, du fait même que j’en fais l’expérience, le perçois, le rémémore, y pense de quelque manière, porte sur lui des jugements d’existence ou de valeur, le désire, et ainsi de suite. Tout cela, Descartes le désigne, on le sait, par le terme de cogito. A vrai dire, le monde n’est pas pour moi autre chose que ce qui existe et vaut pour ma conscience dans un pareil cogito. Tout son sens universel et particulier, toute sa validité existentielle, il les tire exclusivement de telles cogitationes. En elles s’écoule toute ma vie intramondaine, donc aussi les recherches et les démarches ayant trait à ma vie scientifique”.13 Ce que Husserl – le matématicien – veut dire, c’est que Descartes, en tant que savant, a compris le premier que ce monde de la science nouvelle – ce monde géométrique – s’enracine dans le cogito, dans la pensée, qui est inséparable de la vie, d’un moi. La géométrie, sans la méditation, déchoit de la pensée à la positive Wissenschaft.

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La portée de la rencontre, chez Descartes, de géométrie et méditation, est soulignée de la façon la plus claire par I. Toth: “ Le sujet fut pour la première fois introduit en géométrie par le géomètre Descartes et fut indiqué par lui comme Origo, origine d’un système de coordonnées choisi librement par le sujet de la géométrie. Peut-être ne fut-il simplement un hazard le fait que le géomètre Descartes aie vécu en union personnelle avec le métaphysique Descartes. Le sujet de la géométrie choisit, sur le fondement de sa décision, à son gout, un point sur le plan, et il élève ce lieu à la dignité de origo d’un système de coordonnées, auquel il rapporte la position de tous les autres lieus de son monde. Le lieu, l’origo, où se trove le sujet cognitif du monde, est indiqué avec la majuscule ‘O’. Le symbole ‘O’ signifie: “Je suis ici”. (…) Le point indiqué avec le nom ‘O’ du sujet est le centre du monde. Mais aussi à l’envers: le centre du monde se trouve évidemment partout où le sujet aie choisi son lieu d’arret. (…) Les Eléments d’Euclide représentent un roman du monde géométrique rédigé (…) par un ‘auteur divin’: il voit simultanément tout ce que se produit dans ce monde, le décrit avec précision absolue, mais il est lui-même absent de son texte. La géométrie analytique de Descartes décrit le même monde à la première personne singulière. Son texte est “moi-roman” du même monde géométrique”.14 Cette page éclaire le texte husserlien, bien qu’il n’y fasse acunément référence. Le point ‘O’, centre géométrique du monde, est aussi l’origine vécue, le corps humain avec sa cénésthèse qui équivaut au mot: “Je suis ici”. Le sujet dénonce sa présence, puisque l’espace où il se tient est l’espace géométrisé, espace cognitif, déployé par lui-même en tant que géomètre. L’attitude de Husserl envers Descartes est double, et double est la signification qu’il attribue à son pas philosophique: le ‘commencement’. Husserl adhère à ce mouvement de pensée qu’il appelle la ‘révolution (Umsturz) cartésienne’: sortir de l’édifice du savoir, abandonner l’échafaudage des croyances baties tout au long d’un temps qui reste au deçà de la pensée. Il faut déployer une distance entre la pensée et la ‘Selbstverstaendlichkeit’ des choses, le trait ‘naturel’ qui est si convinçant. Depuis Descartes, en effet, l’idée que la pensée, en ce qui tient à elle, se détourne du ‘naturel’ devient un trait propre de la modernité – chez Kant elle est meme ‘contraire aux sens’.15 Pourtant, “Il semblait naturel à Descartes que la science universelle dut avoir la forme d’un sisthème déductif, système dont tout l’édifice reposerait ordine geometrico sur un fondement axiomatique servant de base à la déduction”.16 Ici la grandeur de Descartes se joint à sa limite: la certitude du moi joue le role d’un axiome qui est le fondement de la science universelle,

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ainsi que l’axiome géométrique assure l’ordre nécéssaire de cette science. Husserl ajoute ici une notation très importante: “Mais le fondement est encore plus profond ici qu’en géométrie et est appelé à constituer le dernier fondement de la science géométrique elle-même”.17 Ici nous voyons le principe de la critique husserlienne à Descartes – au nom de la ‘révolution’ cartesienne même – ainsi que la reconnaissance de la portée immense de l’interprétation cartésienne du cogito en tant que fondement de la géométrie. De là, le choix s’impose entre la fonction axiomatique du cogito – ce que dans la Krisis Husserl appelera ‘automécompréhension’ (Selbstmissdeutung)18 et la dimension de profondeur où il se trouve et qui en fait un ‘fondement’ à l’égard de la géométrie. Le discours du cogito est métagéométrique. Autrement dit, le savoir se divise à deux niveaux: le niveau ‘tecnique’ des sciences ‘objectives’ – qui sont telles en vertu de la méthode déductive et axiomatique; et le niveau d’un savoir qui embrasse tous les moments de vie du cogito, c’est-à-dire “ une sphère nouvelle et infinie d’existence, que peut atteindre une expérience nouvelle, l’expérience transcendentale”.19 Ce savoir n’est pas un discours déductif, sa forme est la méditation: le ‘prendre sur soi’, la Selbstbesinnung. Dès maintenant, le cogito devient pour le phénoménologue “un champ d’investigation possible (ein moeglisches Arbeitsfeld)”.20 Ce champ embrasse une multiplicité infinie, la multiplicité des cogitationes avec leur référence intentionnelle, qui porte sur le monde. Le but de l’analyse phénoménologique est la mise au jour de la structure unitaire dont relève chaque conscience; son oeuvre est l’explicitation infinie de l’infinité renfermée dans la conscience; sa méthode, suivre le réseau des potentialitées, c’est-à-dire des intentionnalités ‘vides’, s’approprier à nouveau les mondes voilés par l’oubli et l’inertie avec le travail du ressouvenir et le renouveau de l’espoir. Ce que se produit maintenant dans la réflexion, c’est ce que Husserl appelle – avec une expression un peu barbare aux oreilles d’un kantien – ‘expérience transcendentale’. Il s’agit en effet de l’interprétation du cogito: chez Husserl il “ne se réduit pas uniquement à l’identité du ‘je suis’”,21 mais il est bien le champ de travail d’une explicitation infinie. Mais, s’il ne coïncide pas avec la simple identité logique, il est encore moins une ‘réalité’ au sens de la ‘res’, surtout le moi, après l’epoché “n’est pas une partie du monde (kein Stueck der Welt)”, ainsi que “ inversement, le monde et les objets du monde ne sont pas des parties réelles de mon moi”.22 Cela signifie que, chez Husserl, le statut du cogito est autre que celui de la ‘res’: c’est l’intentionnalité en tant que transcendence, que Husserl souligne de la manière la plus claire: “Ce dépassement de l’intention (Ueber- sich- hinaus-meinen)

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dans l’intention elle-même inhérent à toute conscience doit être considéré comme essentiel (Wesensmoment) à cette conscience”.23 L’intentionnalité à toujours cet ‘audelà’ (Mehrmeinung) comme son statut propre, elle est éloignement et distance, elle est le bois dont on fait la pensée et l’amour (Platon). On pourrait essayer, à ce moment, de questionner l’idée même de l’être chez Husserl, telle qu’elle apparait dans l’espace de la méditation. L’etre semble être compris, au premier abord, comme tromperie au sens de la Selbstverstaendlichkeit, c’est-à-dire de ce qui est ‘naturel’. L’être est ‘nature’: cela signifie: il n’a pas d’essence, d’intelligibilité autre que la quantité, et le moi qui s’y réfère est lui aussi ‘naturel’, il n’est pas ce-qui-se-questionnelui-même. La déréalisation mise en oeuvre par l’epoché découvre le cogito comme dépassement, et, en même temps, le monde en tant que visé: “ Si cette ‘transcendence’ d’inhérence irréelle (irreellen Beschlossenseins) appartient au sens propre du monde, alors le moi lui-même, qui porte le monde en lui à titre d’unité de sens (Sinneseinheit) et qui par là même en est une prémisse nécessaire, ce moi s’appelle transcendental au sens phénoménologique de ce terme”.24 Cela n’est, d’après Husserl, que le développement du cogito de Descartes – dont on a écarté l’’automécompréhension’ ‘réaliste’. Ansi entendu, le transcendental husserlien n’admet pas de ‘données sensibles’ hors de soi; il n’est pas le lieu de rencontre de la raison et du fait. Inversement, tout ce qui est ‘visé’ – espace, objet, monde – ne tient pas sa ‘raison’ d’une ‘forme subjective’, mais d’une structure idéale propre, qui demande à l’intention la modulation corrélative. Le dialogue husserlien avec les figures de la modernité s’accomplit lorsque la sortie-hors-de- soi qui s’appelle ‘transcendence’ se comprend aussi comme inclosion du monde dans la vie du sujet: ce qui sépare Kant et Leibniz. Pourquoi Husserl a-t-il voulu réunir l’ouverture au monde de la transcendentalité – en ce qu’elle a de blessant aussi–avec l’autosuffisance monastique de la monade? Et comment devra-t-on comprendre une ‘monade’ qui a perdu son enracinement substantiel et cosmique pour être toute entière conscience, clair-obscur du potentiel et de l’actuel, de l’explicite et de l’implicite? Ce qui manque à Descartes et à Kant, ce qui au contraire rapproche Husserl de Leibniz est ce trait décisif de la ‘monade’ d’être actio in se ipsum, c’est-à-dire le mouvement moyennant lequel elle se fait ce qu’elle est – ou, dans le language de Husserl, se constitue. La phénoménologie de la génèse éclaire ce trait, qui est l’essence même de l’intentionnalité – en tant qu’elle

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n’est pas la simple ‘flèche’ ou visée de l’objet, ni seulement le ‘réseau’ de l’intentionnalité comme conscience-temps (Zeitbewusstsein), mais action sur elle-même, mouvement de ‘subjectivation’.25 Dès lors on comprend que la phénoménologie ne pourrait se passer du ‘revirement’ trascendental – à peine de laisser à l’intentionnalité une fonction purement mécanique. La phénoménologie ne pouvait que ressortir à la théorie de la ‘constitution’ – mieux: des constitutions, puisque le mouvement intentionnel s’épanouit et se cristallise en couches multiples, dont la figure lisible héberge la mémoire involontaire de mouvements de conscience infinitésimaux. Ces thèmes sont présents à Husserl, et il les développe de manière explicite sous le titre de ‘réflexion’. “ Un état essentiellement différent vient remplacer ainsi, il est vrai, l’état primitif, et on peut dire en ce sens que la réflexion altère l’état primitif. (…) La réflexion a pour tache non de reproduire une seconde fois l’état primitif, mais de l’observer, et d’en expliciter le contenu”.26 Or, le caractère propre de la réflexion, en tant qu’intentionnalité, est de “se rapporter à l’état antérieur” (Rueckbeziehung auf das fruehere Erlebnis);27 et cela ne peut se comprendre que par le fait que l’intentionnalité est essentiellement aussi retour et rapport à elle-même. Certes, il faut observer qu’Husserl ne tire pas les conséquences de cette pensée; il semble au contraire en restreindre la portée, lorsqu’il interprète l’’altération’ comme ‘objectivation’ – ce qui en permettrait la ‘description’. Même si tout le contexte semble indiquer que le mouvement du “se rapporter” ne peut être qu’infini. De ce fait, on devrait parler de deux infinis – celui des ‘plis’ multiples de l’’implicite’28 et celui de l’intentionnalité ‘se rapportant’ au premier – qui se viennent à l’encontre sans pouvoir se recouvrer – souvenir, peut-être, de la diade infinie du Parmenide de Platon.29 Mais le sens nouveau, phénoménologique, de l’idée de monade ne peut s’accomplir qu’en relation avec l’idée de monde. Si Leibniz aime imaginer un ‘soliloque’ monadique, ou bien un dialogue de l’âme seule avec Dieu, 30 Husserl se propose d’enraciner dans le sol même de la ‘solitude’ de l’ego31 la transcendance: il s’agit de montrer, au sommet d’un long chemin d’analyse, l’homme ou la monade concrète comme ensemble constitué; il s’agit d’illuminer les sphères de sens qui s’instaurent sur le fond ‘sans nom’ (anonyme) de l’ego encore abstrait, et dessiner une stratigraphie de la réalité monadique. La réduction, en faisant éclater l’être à tous ses niveaux, montre qu’il n’est que sens cristallisé, ou, comme Husserl dit dans l’Origine de la géométrie, ‘sedimenté’.32 On peu reconnaître ce qui a un nom, mais alors il s’agit d’une

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couche ‘constituée’, c’est-à-dire dont on pu dessiner la typique. L’homme, en tant que réalité concrète et ‘mondaine’, est le résultat d’un long travail intentionnel auquel se doit la formation du corps (Leib), de l’âme (au sens de ‘psyché’), de l’autre moi. Le point décisif pour l’interprétation des ‘constitutions’ est aussi le sommet des Méditations et c’est la liaison entre l’ego et l’alter ego. C’est d’ici que commence tout sens concret à partir du moi lui-même. La réduction de la couche de sens liée à la présence de l’Autre nous conduit au terrein ‘primordial’ (primordinale Welt). Mais ce terrein est ‘anonyme’; le moi n’est pas le premier dans ce que Husserl appelle ‘l’expérience de l’Autre’ (Fremderfahrung).33 Le moi qui médite, qui sait de soi même, est le résultat de cette expérience. Celle-ci est en effet ‘accouplement’ (Paarung), une structure unitaire où l’ego et l’alter ego surgissent ensemble. Mais qu’est-ce qui rend possible le paradoxe d’une ‘expérience de l’Autre’ qui ne procède pas du moi? Husserl a donné le nom d’’association’ à la sinthèse la plus universelle de la formation du sens. Il s’agit de l’union structurelle entre une présence et son halo de potentialité, anticipations, figurations, enfin absence. Le halo, c’est ce qui est co-présent, et constitue l’épaisseur et la perspective, sans quoi le donné, bien que ‘présent’ ne serait rien. Cette sinthèse opère a partir du fond ultime, pre-egologique, qui est la conscience-(du)-temps, jusqu’au degré le plus abstrait et intellectualisé, c’est-à-dire la formation du nombre. Or, l’’accouplement’ (Paarung) a lieu au même niveau de profondeur de la conscience-temps; le vis-à-vis qu’elle mette en oeuvre est encore un mode specifique de l’intentionnalité. Il s’agit d’une transposition (Uebertragung) de sens, qui a sa condition dans le ‘point O’, à la fois lieu géométrique et corporel, qui fait surgir le sens Alter-ego. “Au point de vue phénoménologique,–écrit Husserl – l’autre est une modification de ‘mon’ moi (qui, pour sa part, acquiert ce caractere d’être ‘mien’ grace à l’accouplement nécessaire qui les oppose”.34 Mais cela signifie encore que le ‘point O’, le ‘Je suis ici’, qui chez Descartes suspend l’espace géométrique sur les profondeurs philosophiques de la ‘méditation’, ne peut même se poser sans poser le ‘là’; le corps vivant (Leib) même acquiert le caractère de ‘mien’ et son unité visible de chose spatiale moyennant la transposition de sens qui a dans l’Autre sa source. Que cet objet dans l’espace héberge un ‘moi’, qu’il soit origine (O) et source de l’espace et que moi je suis aussi un objet dans l’espace – tout ça forme une expérience unique, un seul et même mouvement intentionnel, c’est-à-dire “ le fait que l’ego et l’alter ego sont toujours nécéssairement donnés dans un

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accouplement originel”.35 Cet événement intemporel dit ‘apprésentation’ (Appraesentation) est le sol préalable qui soutient toute couche de sens objective, c’est-à-dire le premier degré de ce qu’on appelle ‘monde’. Monde ‘naturel’, ‘social’, ‘spirituel’ – tout ‘monde’ est monde au passage – au virage intentionnel du ‘couple’. Et c’est à partir du ‘couple’ que s’entrouvre un paysage humain, puisque c’est ici le vrai et premier dépassement (ueber-sich-hinaus). Maintenant le couple ‘monade’ et ‘monde’ reçoit toute sa signification: l’édification de l’’intérieur’ et de la ‘transcendance’ est un processus unitaire, une fondation qui substitue au fond cosmique de la monade leibnitienne la source intersubjective de l’accouplement. En meme temps, pourtant, un ‘monde intérieur’ ne cesse de se produire dans et par la transcendence – car l’intentionnalité est aussi bien ‘pli’ et déployement. University of Salermo N OT E S 1 E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortraege, hrsg. u. eing. Von S. Strasser, Husserliana I (Den Haag 1963) (dorénavant: C.M.); Méditations Cartésiennes. Introduction à la phénoménologie, tr. fr. Par Gabrielle Peiffer et E. Levinas (Paris 1953) (dorénavant: M.C.). 2 Sur la teneur théorique de la ‘méditation’ chez Husserl v.: Bianca Maria d’Ippolito, Il passo di colomba del pensiero occidentale. La fenomenologia e il pensiero dell’enigma, in “Segni e comprensione”, janv.-avril 1994, n. 21, pp. 20–32. 3 “Gehoert zum eigenen Sinn der Welt diese Transzendenz irreellen Beschlossenseins, so heisst dann das Ich selbst, das sie als geltenden Sinn in Sich traegt und von diesem seinerseits notwendig vorausgesetzt ist, im phaenomenologischen Sinne transzendental; die aus dieser Korrelation erwachsenden philosophischen Probleme heissen dementsprechend transzendentalphilosophische” (C.M., p. 65; M.C., 22–23). 4 Ib., p. 183; M.C., p. 134. 5 Cf.: E. Husserl, op. cit., p. 72; M.C., p. 28. 6 Ib., p.73 ; M.C., p. 29. 7 Cf.: ib., pp. 87–89; M.C., pp. 43–45. 8 Ib., p. 88; M.C., p. 44. 9 Ib., pp. 92–93; M.C., p. 48. 10 Ib., p. 97; M.C., p. 53. 11 Ib.. 12 C’est le titre du paragraphe 20, pp. 75–78; M.C., pp. 40–43. 13 Ib., p. 60; M.C., p. 18. 14 I. Toth, Aristotele e i fondamenti assiomatici della geometria, tr. it. di E. Cattanei, a cura di G. Reale, Milano 1997, pp. 220–221 nota n. 6. cf.: B.M. d’Ippolito, Geometria e Malinconia. ‘Mathesis’ e ‘meditatio’ nel pensiero moderno (Genova, 1992), pp. 30 sgg.

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15 Cf.: B.M. d’Ippolito, Viaggio al centro della ragione. L’analogia kantiana dagli scritti precritici alla ‘Critica della ragion pura’ (Napoli, 1998). 16 E. Husserl, op. cit., p. 49; M.C., p. 6. 17 Ib. 18 Cf.: E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phaenomenologie, hrsg. v. W. Biemel (den Haag 1954), pp. 80–8 (dès maintenant: Krisis) . 19 E. Husserl, C. M., cit., p. 66; M.C., p. 23. 20 Ib., p. 70; M.C., p. 26. 21 Ib., p. 67; M.C., p. 24. 22 Ib. 23 Ib., p. 84; M.C., p. 40. 24 Ib., p. 65; M.C., pp. 22–23. 25 Sur ce thème, v. le bel essai de Th. Leinkauf, Sostanza, individuo e persona nell’antropologia di Leibniz, in La filosofia pratica tra metafisica e antropologia nell’età di Wolff e Vico, a cura di G. Cacciatore, Vanna Gessa Kutotschka, H. Poser e Manuela Sanna (Napoli, 1999), pp. 131–156. 26 E. Husserl, op. cit., p. 72; M.C., p. 29 (c’est moi qui souligne). 27 Ib. 28 Sur ce thème v. le beau livre de G. Deleuze, Le pli. Leibniz et le baroque (Paris 1988). 29 Cf.: l’interprétation de l’idée platonicienne de la poursuite du plus jeune de la part du plus vieux chez I. Toth, I paradossi di Zenone nel Parmenide di Platone (Napoli, 1994), pp. 60 ss.; ID., Aristotele e i fondamenti assiomatici della geometria (Milano, 1997), pp. 365 s 30 Sur ce thème v. B.M. d’Ippolito, Geometria e malinconia. ‘Mathesis’ e ‘meditatio’ nel pensiero moderno (Genova 1992), cap. V: Il soliloquio dell’anima, pp. 111–129. 31 V. E. Husserl, op. cit., § 44, pp. 124–130; M.C., pp. 77–82. 32 V. E.Husserl, Ursprung der Geometrie, in Krisis, Beilage III, pp. 365–386. 33 V. ib., § 49, pp. 137–138; M.C. pp. 90–91. 34 E. Husserl, C.M., p. 144; M.C., p. 97. 35 Ib., p. 142; M.C., p. 94.

ARION L. KELKEL

L’ E T H I QU E P H É N O M É N O L O G I QU E D ’ E D M U N D H U S S E R L À MAX SCHELER De l’éthique comme “logique des valeurs” à une éthique personnaliste

“Es handelt sich um die Durchführung der Analogien zwischen reiner Ethik und reiner Logik, zwischen ethischem und logischem Idealismus und Absolutismus. Der Streit um die Idee eines Guten an sich, von Werten an sich hat dem Allgemeinen nach sein Analogon im Streit um eine Wahrheit an sich”. E. HUSSERL, Vorlesungen über Grundfragen der Ethik und Wertlehre 1914.x Der Geist der die hier vorgelegte Ethik bestimmt, ist der Geist eines strengen ethischen Absoutismus und Objektivismus. In anderer Richtung kann der Standort des Verfassers “emotionaler Intuitivismus” und “materialer Apriorismus” genannt werden. Endlich ist dem Verfasser der dargelegte Grundsatz, dass alle Werte den Personwerten unterzuordnen sind, auch alle möglichen Sachwerte … so wichtig, dass er im Titel des Buches seine Arbeit auch als ,,neuen Versuch eines Personalismus “bezeichnete”. M. SCHELER, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik.xx

Deux penseurs, Edmund Husserl comme Max Scheler, pratiquement au même moment, dans les années précédant la première guerre mondiale, face à la montée d’un scepticisme éthique triomphant dans un monde en proie au “désordre du cœur”, ont éprouvé le besoin impérieux de réfléchir sur la nécessité d’une radicale refondation d’une éthique philosophique. Au point de départ, l’un comme l’autre placent leur démarche sous l’égide de la philosophie pratique de Kant tout en élaborant leurs propres idées directrices fondamentales à partir d’une critique vigoureuse de l’éthique kantienne, l’un en s’interrogeant sur la légitimité de son principe fondateur, l’impératif catégorique dont il se demande s’il méritait réellement d’être tenu en si haute estime que l’a cru la tradition, l’autre en dénonçant le formalisme rationaliste abstrait qui l’imprègne de part en part, l’un et l’autre opposant à l’éthique formelle a priori de Kant une éthique matériale des valeurs. Husserl cherche à la concilier avec une éthique et une axiologie formelles tandis que Scheler lui oppose une éthique matériale des valeurs a priori fondée dans la perspective d’un nouveau personnalisme. Husserl restera obstinément attaché à l’idéal d’une raison à la fois théorique, pratique et axiologique tandis que Scheler privilégie l’intuition et les sentiments axiologiques, plaçant en haut de la hiérarchie les valeurs personnelles et les valeurs religieuses comme le Sacré et le Divin. Ce n’est qu’à 515 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 515–536. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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la dernière période de sa vie que Husserl tendra à renoncer à la primauté réservée (dans les Leçons sur l’éthique de 1914) à une éthique rationnelle au bénéfice d’une éthique des valeurs personnelles absolues, une éthique quasi augustinienne dont le télos serait une communauté éthique pensée selon l’idéal d’une communauté d’amour. I . E T H I QU E E T A X I O L O G I E C O M M E “ L O G I QU E ” D E S VA L E U R S : HUSSERL

A la différence de Max Scheler, Husserl lui-même de son vivant a peu publié sur l’éthique. Aussi la source principale de son éthique phénoménologique estelle à chercher dans les Vorlesungen über Grundfragen der Ethik und Wertlehre de 1914 (dont l’édition posthume réunit des textes de 1902 à 1914) même s’il existe encore un grand nombre d’inédits qui abordent différents aspects touchant au problème capital de la fondation phénoménologique de l’éthique. Contrairement à une opinion longtemps en faveur, Husserl dans les années de percée de la phénoménologie consacrée par la parution (1900 / 01) des Logische Untersuchungen n’a pas été exclusivement préoccupé de questions de logique, de théorie de la connaissance ou de fondation radicale de la nouvelle phénoménologie naissante; une année à peine après la publication en 1913 du livre premier de son oeuvre majeure, les Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, qui jetait les fondements d’une “philosophie phénoménologique”, il élargit son horizon d’intérêt en se tournant vers un domaine problématique fort éloigné de ses préoccupations initiales de philosophe logicien venu des mathématiques, uniquement soucieux d’élaborer une nouvelle méthode radicale de réflexion philosophique. En 1914, il consacre un cours important à des questions fondamentales relatives à l’éthique et à la théorie des valeurs. Tout porte à penser que le livre de Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, dont il venait lui-même de publier (en 1913) la première partie dans le “Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung” ait été pour lui un puissant motif d’encouragement. Un examen même rapide des Leçons de Göttingen qui ne furent publiées que longtemps après la mort du fondateur de la phénoménologie révèle encore à quel point resta prégnante à l’époque la problématique logique initiale. En effet, si ce texte de 1914 jette les bases d’une éthique phénoménologique, celle-ci demeure largement tributaire des principes qui régissent la conception de la logique phénoménologique, comme l’atteste le thème par lequel l’auteur l’inaugure: le parallélisme existant entre logique et éthique, tout son effort

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consistant à aller en quête des analogies pouvant se déceler entre la logique, y compris la logique formelle, d’une part, et l’éthique formelle conçue comme une axiologie (Wertlehre) et une “praxéologie” (Praktik) a priori, d’autre part, ou encore entre la raison théorique et la raison pratique, plus exactement entre la raison judicative (urteilenden) et la “raison axiologique” (werteden) au sens le plus large du terme, qui inclut tout autant le domaine esthétique que le domaine éthique.1 L’idée générale qui préside à sa réflexion (qu’il expose également dans de nombreux paragraphes du tome premier des Ideen, paru en 1913, semble avoir été celle de l’existence d’une étroite intrication de toute une série de disciplines formelles que la tradition philosophique a négligé de prendre en considération : ainsi entre une logique et ontologie formelles et une axiologie et une praxéologie formelles.2 Tel est le thème que Husserl semblait s’être assigné dans ses Leçons. Elles devaient en outre affermir sa conviction qui nourrissait sa conception de la philosophie à cette période marquée par une forte affinité avec la pensée kantienne et peut-être même néokantienne, à savoir que la phénoménologie avait pour mission d’édifier à son tour une nouvelle “critique de la raison” théorique et pratique. Cependant le souci majeur qui semble avoir motivé l’auteur dans ces années précédant la première guerre mondiale fut d’abord la réfutation du scepticisme et du relativisme éthiques, qui selon lui résultent inévitablement d’une éthique fondée sur de purs sentiments empiriques dès lors que ces derniers sont radicalement subjectifs et contingents et donc dépourvus de toute validité objective.3 D’où son rapprochement avec Kant qu’il crédite du mérite d’avoir tiré de l’échec de l’éthique du sentiment dans la philosophie morale anglaise depuis Hume la conclusion que pour sauver la validité, l’universalité et l’objectivité de la loi morale, il fallait fonder l’éthique sur la raison pure pratique et sa loi a priori qui est indifférente à tout sentiment et penchant subjectifs. Ce qui n’empêche pas Husserl de condamner “l’absurde formalisme” de la doctrine kantienne de l’impératif catégorique qui en est le fondement. Husserl entre de plain-pied dans la problématique par le biais de l’opposition entre empirisme et absolutisme éthiques: il note que l’éthique comme la logique est née elle aussi historiquement comme une discipline normative et pratique et qu’elle l’est restée de manière prédominante par la suite, comme en témoignent nos réflexions éthiques les plus courantes.4 N’avonsnous pas coutume de commenter nos propres comportements tout comme ceux de nos semblables par des jugements, des appréciations qualifiant notre conduite de “juste” ou d’“injuste”, de raisonnable ou de déraisonnable, de

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moral ou d’immoral ? Nous les approuvons ou les désapprouvons en raison de leur valeur ou qualité éthique que nous leur reconnaissons. Et comment faire pour que notre vie soit une vie heureuse et bonne ? Ce genre de questions, dès lors qu’elles se trouvent au coeur de la réflexion, conduisent tout naturellement à une éthique pratique qui trahit d’emblée son caractère empirique et anthropologique.5 Or, depuis l’époque moderne, on lui associe aussi une éthique apriorique, qui aurait pour tâche de définir un “système de principes” absolus et purs de la raison pratique, et qui, indépendamment de toute référence à l’homme naturel et ses conditions de vie empirique, serait à même d’établir, fût-ce de manière formelle mais aussi matérielle, des règles absolument impératives de l’agir humain. C’est là que l’analogie avec la situation de la logique saute aux yeux. En éthique aussi s’impose la nécessité selon Husserl d’une “Kunstlehre” de l’agir rationnel, dont les fondements théoriques résident non dans la psychologie des fonctions de l’affectivité, mais dans certaines lois et théories a priori à même de remplir le rôle de normes rationnelles, de guide à toute espèce de praxis rationnelle.6 Pas plus que l’idée de vérité ne saurait être tirée de la psychologie de la connaissance, l’idée de valeur éthique et de la validité pratique d’un acte de volonté ne saurait se déduire des enseignements de la psychologie des fonctions affectives et pratiques. Aux yeux de Husserl, la querelle entre apriorisme et emprisme éthiques touche à des problèmes hautement philosophiques. Car de même qu’en logique le psychologisme et l’anthropologisme conduisent au scepticisme théorique, l’anthropologisme éthique a pour conséquence inévitable le scepticisme éthique lequel conteste radicalement la validité a priori absolue des normes éthiques; il nie toute idée de devoir et d’obligation dès lors que des concepts comme “bien” et “mal”, raisonnable et déraisonnable, ne sont plus que des mots traduisant des faits empiriques et psychologiques de la nature humaine telle qu’elle est, telle qu’elle s’est développée au cours des siècles voire des millénaires en fonction de circonstances fortuites de l’évolution culturelle de l’humanité voire biologique de l’espèce humaine à travers son éternelle “lutte pour la vie”.7 Affirmer que des “normes éthiques sont valides” et inconditionnelles signifierait donc que, par une impérieuse impulsion et contrainte intérieures, les hommes se sentent poussés à se comporter de telle ou telle manière afin d’échapper soit à un malaise psychologique insupportable, soit à une sanction sociale. En un mot, tout est une question d’utilité biologique ou d’opportunité psycho-sociale qui a fait que chez les humains s’est formé quelque chose comme une conscience morale (Gewissen), une certaine manière de juger,

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selon les critères du “bien” et du “mal”, les intentions et la conduite de leurs semblables. Mais qui nous garantira qu’un jour cette fonction ne finira pas par dégénérer, demande Husserl, que les mêmes principes et catégories éthiques finiront par s’inverser, et que se produira une radicale “inversion de toutes les valeurs” ? Que de l’empirisme éthique résultent inévitablement les conséquences les plus néfastes qui ne peuvent qu’entraˆıner une attitude franchement anti-éthique, Husserl n’en doute point. Car pour quiconque tire toutes les conséquences de l’anthropologisme sceptique, parler du bien et du mal en soi ne saurait avoir aucun sens. Pourquoi donc se laisser déterminer par des valeurs aussi présomptueuses qui finalement n’expriment rien d’autre que des contingences de la culture et de l’évolution de l’humanité ? Pourquoi écouter la voix mythique d’une prétendue conscience morale tant vantée alors qu’elle n’est que la voix d’instincts ancestraux ? Cessons de nous laisser abuser par une fallacieuse “mythologie” anachronique ! Faisons ce qui nous plaˆıt et soyons des “esprits libres”!8 Ainsi pour Husserl les débats autour de l’idée de “bien en soi” et de validité absolue des normes éthiques ont leur parallèle dans les débats autour de l’idée de “vérité en soi” et de validité absolue des normes logiques. D’un côté comme de l’autre, on est confronté aux mêmes arguments dont use le psychologisme qui, au premier abord, paraissent défier toute velléité de réfutation. On se borne à alléguer que les règles de la pensée reposent tout naturellement sur la psychologie de la pensée et de l’intelligence, et les règles du vouloir sur la psychologie ou la biologie de la volonté. Et puisque tous les concepts proviennent d’une abstraction à partir d’intuitions de cas singuliers concrets, pour comprendre les concepts éthiques, il suffit de revenir à certains comportements affectifs, à certaines approbations ou désapprobations qui se rapportent à des actions, des volitions ou des intentions d’agir. Vertu et vice n’étant finalement que des noms inventés pour désigner des dispositions psycho-sociales naturelles.9 La méthode de l’analogie que Husserl propose le conduit à rappeler les arguments auxquels il a déjà eu recours dans les Logische Untersuchungen pour réfuter le scepticisme et le psychologisme en logique. Il lui semble cependant que la réfutation ne puisse se contenter de mettre en avant la contradiction théorique sur laquelle reposent l’une et l’autre doctrines car dans le cas du scepticisme éthique, on incline à invoquer plutôt les conséquences pratiques inacceptables qu’il entraˆıne. Seulement, elle a beau choquer notre sentiment, cette doctrine n’en est pas pour autant une faute contre la raison. Pourtant dès lors que l’éthique invite à suivre telle règle d’action parce qu’il est raisonnable de s’y conformer, le sceptique, qui refuse d’admettre la

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validité rationnelle de quelque règle pratique que ce soit, n’implique-t-il pas en même temps la règle qu’il est raisonnable de n’admettre aucune règle quelle qu’elle soit ? La réside selon Husserl l’analogie du contre-sens sceptique avec le contre-sens logique, qu’il dénonce.10 On ne saurait donc envisager de fonder une éthique rationnelle sans avoir au préalable tiré au clair le rôle de la raison dans le domaine pratique et d’avoir recherché les principes rationnels qui régissent la praxis. Ce qui enjoint d’explorer non seulement la forme la plus générale de la rationalité pratique, mais aussi la matière et les catégories et niveaux de valeurs pratiques; d’où l’exigence double d’une éthique formelle et d’une éthique matérielle. En quelque sens qu’on la prenne, l’éthique se rapporte à l’agir juste et rationnel et repose donc sur la raison pratique, tout comme la logique porte sur le penser rationnel concret et repose sur la raison théorique. Ainsi dans la logique comme dans l’éthique, l’enjeu porte sur la possibilité d’une fondation absolue des concepts rationnels et normatifs respectifs et des principes qui y correspondent. Dans les deux cas, le conflit se résout par le rejet catégorique du relativisme psychologiste et anthropologiste lequel ne peut chaque fois que déboucher sur un flagrant négativisme qui conteste l’existence d’une vérité en soi comme d’une valeur en soi. Or, sous le titre de “principes éthiques”, on a toujours en vue des propositions, des lois normatives qui prescrivent, de manière universellement valide, ce qui est le bien. Toutefois, si dans le domaine des valeurs pratiques et des valeurs en général, il y a une différence entre “le bien” et “le meilleur” de même qu’une différence entre “bien en soi” et “bien eu égard à autre chose”, ces principes visent à établir quel est dans le domaine des biens accessibles celui qui, en tant que fin en soi, raisonnablement, mérite d’être choisi pour lui-même et non seulement en raison d’autre chose tandis que tous les autres biens ne sont à prendre en compte qu’à titre de moyens en vue de ce bien éminent.11 Il s’ensuit que l’éthique prescrit, pour toute sphère pratique possible et pour chaque cas particulier, “ce qui est le bien et le meilleur du point de vue pratique” sans prendre en considération le cas singulier concret, la situation particulière dans laquelle j’ai en agissant à me déterminer hic et nunc. Sous le titre de “principes” universels, elle va en quête de critères applicables auxquels on peut partout se référer pour savoir dans quel cas la décisison à prendre est moralement juste et dans quel cas elle ne l’est pas. On observera qu’il importe peu que les principes éthiques posent comme fins pratiques suprêmes le plaisir, le bien-être général, la perfection ou qu’avec KANT on admette comme l’unique principe éthique valide l’impératif catégorique en

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ce qu’il est le “principe purement formel” par excellence et qu’il est fondé exclusivement sur la mise en valeur du principe d’universalité lequel détermine la valeur du cas particulier. Quelque “formel” que soit le principe qui à ses yeux doit exclure tout élément “matériel” relevant de la sensibilité et de l’affectivité, il s’agit d’un principe de décision valant et suffisant pour n’importe quel cas donné dans sa pleine et concrète singularité. 12 Si Kant, selon Husserl, a donné l’impulsion décisive à l’édification d’une éthique formelle a priori, son éthique formaliste ne pouvait valoir réellement comme analogon de la logique formelle dès lors que l’éthique matérielle, analogue de la logique matérielle, était sacrifiée et l’éthique formelle réduite à un principe formel qui exclut toute matière du vouloir et de l’acte d’évaluer, alors qu’il était pourtant censé prescrire, pour chaque cas particulier concret et déterminé matériellement, ce qui était le bien et le devoir moral. Contrairement à Husserl, Kant a méconnu le parallélisme absolu existant entre raison théorique et raison pratique, Husserl luimême se demandant même si la raison logique et par suite la raison pratique et axiologique ne sont finalement que des domaines d’application particuliers d’une seule et même raison qui exerce son empire sur la totalité du champ de l’expérience, ou bien s’il ne fallait pas admettre une pluralité de genres de raison correspondant à la pluralité de genres d’actes fondamentaux?13 La difficulté tient à la thèse de l’empire universel de la raison logique. Naturellement, le mot de “raison” n’est pas à prendre au sens d’une faculté de l’âme humaine, “raison” est le titre d’une classe cohérente d’actes et de corrélats d’acte. Or, la raison logique a ce privilège unique que non seulement dans son propre domaine de compétence, mais dans le champ global de toutes les intentionnalités, elle détermine ce qui est valide ou légitime et ce qui ne l’est pas. En revanche, par elle-même la raison axiologique et pratique est pour ainsi dire muette et aveugle, note Husserl, elle ne perçoit rien ni n’explique rien. Il faut donc que s’associent à elle des actes de la sphère doxique pour que des actes en général et ce qu’ils visent accèdent à l’état de donnée objective. Ce que Husserl exprime en termes quelque peu emphatiques : “Il faut brandir l’étendard de la raison logique pour qu’éclate en pleine lumière ce que la sphère affective et volitive cache de formes et de normes!”. Seulement, par eux-mêmes les actes logiques ne font rien d’autre que rendre visible et en quelque sorte lisible ce qui d’ores et déjà est donné.14 Abordant plus directement la problématique qui représente l’enjeu de l’éthique en tant que “Wertlehre” ou axiologie formelle, Husserl réfléchit sur le statut ontologique de la valeur en général et de la valeur éthique en

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particulier.15 Il commence par une distinction quasi formelle entre deux catégories de valeurs: d’une part “les valeurs-prémisses et d’autre part les valeurs dérivées, c’est-à-dire les valeurs eu égard à d’autres valeurs qui elles sont en quelque sorte des valeurs fondatrices”.16 L’axiologie formelle a certes besoin d’un concept général de “valeur” qui recouvre la valeur positive et négative, mais aussi d’un terme spécifique pour désigner le comportement et la validité axiologiques. Pour autant que des objets nous affectent et nous motivent affectivement, nous leur attribuons des prédicats de valeur, ce qui relève bien de la compétence de la raison axiologique et de ses lois. Or, si la raison axiologique est nécessairement et intimement entrelacée avec la raison théorique, c’est que chaque acte d’évaluation ou de valorisation a pour fondement des actes d’intellection, des actes “objectivants” à travers lesquels se donnent les objectités valorisées. Toutefois, au sens propre du terme, seuls des actes objectivants portent sur quelque chose d’objectif tandis que les actes d’évaluation eux portent sur des valeurs, positives ou négatives. Quant aux lois axiologiques qui sont fondées dans l’essence même de la valeur, elles sont purement formelles et reposent sur l’idée la plus générale de valeur et d’objectivité de valeur.17 Ce qu’il importe avant tout à Husserl (comme à Scheler), c’est défendre contre les attaques du scepticisme, qu’il soit relativiste, psychologiste ou biologiste, la thèse de la validité et de l’objectivité tant de la sphère intellectuelle que de la sphère axiologique et éthique, de souligner en particulier que “la valeur ne se dissout à aucun moment dans la subjectivité ni dans la relativité de l’acte d’évaluer”, comme si ce qui a valeur pour l’un pouvait ne pas en avoir pour l’autre et être indifférent à un tiers. Pas plus que ce qui est vérité pour l’un n’est erreur pour l’autre, dans le même sens ce qui un bien pour l’un ne saurait être jugé mal par un autre.18 Toutes les formules affirmant un relativisme axiologique du genre “ce qui pour l’un est une valeur, pour l’autre est une non-valeur”, renvoient en vérité au rapport de la valeur visée à l’acte de viser et à la personne qui la vise. Husserl comme Scheler admet qu’il y a une certaine hierarchie des valeurs entre lesquelles il peut exister des rapports d’égalité, d’accroissement ou de diminution. Naturellement, “on ne peut comparer que des valeurs appartenant à la même région” ou “catégorie”. Aussi n’y aurait-il aucun sens à comparer une valeur éthique avec une valeur esthétique. Ce n’est que dans les limites d’une même catégorie qu’on peut déterminer des rapports d’accroissement ou de diminution. De plus, toute comparaison de valeurs s’effectue sur la base d’actes affectifs originaux de la préférence (Bevorzugung) ou de la

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relégation, actes d’évaluation dont il faut se garder d’oublier que comme tout acte ils sont soumis à un jugement rationnel.19 Voilà explication qui nous renvoie au problème que Husserl juge capital pour toute éthique, à savoir le problème classique depuis Kant de l’impératif catégorique, qu’il aborde à nouveau dans le contexte des actes de préférence pratiques et dans le cadre de la loi très générale selon laquelle “des prises de position sont toujours fondées dans d’autres actes de prise de position”, axiologiques et pratiques, lesquels “se onforment à d’autres prises de position”, des volitions à des actes d’évaluation. Or lorsque, dans une situation donnée, par mon acte je choisis une chose qui me paraˆıt être un “bien en soi”, tant qu’il est “considéré en soi et pour soi”, il est et demeure un bien, mais dès lors qu’il entraˆıne des conséquences fâcheuses, il devient selon Husserl le substrat de valeurs négatives et perd par là même sa valeur éthique.20 C’est dans ce contexte que se formule la loi éthique et axiologique que Husserl nomme “la loi du meilleur”: “Dans tout choix, le meilleur absorbe le bien et le mieux tout le reste qui en soi et pour soi peut être estimé comme bien”, en un mot, la valeur suprême “absorbe” toutes les valeurs moindres. Cependant choisir le meilleur des biens ne devient pas pour autant un devoir “absolu”, mais seulement un devoir “relatif”.21 Pour qu’un impératif catégorique soit possible, il faut pouvoir imaginer un sujet idéal qui possède son domaine d’action pratique idéalement délimité, ce qui suppose qu’il puisse y vouloir et faire le bien à un quelconque moment de son existence. Il reste que ce bien qu’il peut choisir parmi tous les biens accessibles, on ne peut en décider formaliter pas plus que le vrai ne peut être déterminé par la seule logique formelle. Comment ne pas voir que le domaine pratique de chacun est différent, que par suite ce qui est le mieux pour chacun diffère selon la situation concrète dans laquelle il se trouve? et pourtant tout sujet raisonnable ne doitil pas reconnaˆıtre que si quelqu’un juge bien et juste telle ou telle manière d’agir, tout un chacun en général, pourvu qu’il prenne en compte la même matière, devrait juger de la même façon? Telle est du moins selon Husserl l’unique interprétation susceptible de rendre justice à la revendication kantienne de l’impératif catégorique fondé sur le principe de l’universalisation possible d’un motif d’agir; il devrait désormais s’énoncer comme suit: “Fais le mieux que tu puisses au sein de ta sphère pratique propre”. Seulement comment s’y conformer sans prendre en compte la matière des actes et donc la particularité des objets de valeur? Voilà en quoi la voie éthique que Husserl emprunte se sépare manifestement de celle de Kant, Husserl décrivant le sujet rationnel sous l’image du “spectateur impartial”,

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qui n’est pas totalement étrangère au principe d’universalisation mis en avant par Kant.22 Or, s’il n’y avait pas d’a priori matèriel, si nous n’avions aucun moyen de différencier les genres et espèces d’objets qui comportent a priori des prédicats axiologiques, alors le concept de valeur objective n’aurait plus de fondement. Certes, dans la sphère pratique vaut le principe formel selon lequel “le mieux est l’ennemi du bien”, seulement comment savoir ce qui, dans telle situation, est le mieux possible en s’en tenant à la seule détermination formelle de l’acte?23 Tout comme Scheler, Husserl estime nécessaire un classement sinon une hiérarchie des catégories de valeurs fondamentales avant d’entreprendre l’examen des lois de la préférence dont elles relèvent. Il distingue ainsi les biens sensibles, d’une part, des biens rationnels et, d’autre part, des valeurs de la personne ou de ses qualités personnelles. Il s’interroge sur les valeurs ou non-valeurs particulières qui se rattachent aux communautés (famille, groupe social, peuple, Etat), se demande dans quelle mesure celles-ci sont “idéalement valorisables et identifiables comme une sorte de sujet supérieur capable d’actions moralement bonnes ou mauvaises. C’est à partir de ce genre de question qu’on entre, estime-t-il, de plain-pied dans l’èthique proprement dite, et qu’on passe de l’éthique individuelle à l’éthique sociale”.24 En quoi il rencontre à nouveau la réflexion sur l’éthique philosophique que Scheler mène de son côté, à la même époque. Cependant axiologie et praxéologie formelles ne représentent qu’une première étape quoique décisive dans l’ordre des disciplines éthiques a priori, seule une recherche systématique complète conduria à une “phénoménologie de la raison axiologique, évaluante et volitive”, partie intégrante de la phénoménologie de la raison en général. Enfin, et c’est là un dernier point qu’il importe de souligner dans l’exposé des principes fondateurs de l’éthique phénoménologique selon Husserl, à la différence de la vérité du jugement qui est “vérité en soi” et ne dépend en aucune façon du sujet qui juge, dans le domaine du vouloir et du devoir, la subjectivité concrète et sa situation particulière n’est pas indifférente à la détermination de son devoir de faire et de sa volonté d’agir. Dès lors, la relativité subjective de l’obligation qui fait que chaque sujet a la sienne s’étend aussi à la dimension temporelle de la praxis : si à tout moment chacun ne doit vouloir que ce qui, objectivement, est le bien le meilleur qu’il puisse réaliser, au même sujet, à des moments différents de son existence, un autre devoir s’impose. Aussi l’impératif catégorique, selon Husserl, n’est-il recevable que pour autant qu’il s’énonce en ces termes: “Fais ce qui est le mieux parmi les actes à ta portée et en ton pouvoir, et dont tu perçois la validité objective avec une évidence rationnelle!”25

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Vers la fondation d’une éthique personnaliste Contrairement à Husserl, Max Scheler de son vivant a à son actif une oeuvre éthique importante qui a vu le jour dans les années les plus productives de sa carrière marquée par une intense recherche phénoménologique. Son intérêt pour l’éthique remonte cependant à la période pré-phénoménologique de sa pensée, bien avant 1900, où il différenciait déjà clairement (dans sa thèse de doctorat datant de 1897) les principes éthiques des principes logiques. Mais c’est après sa rencontre avec Husserl en 1901 et plus tard durant les années d’échanges fructueux avec d’autres phénoménologues à Munich (à partir de 1906) et à Göttingen (à partir de 1911) que sa réflexion éthique a pris une forme plus originale et plus vigoureuse, à la faveur d’une approche phénoménologique plus personnelle. C’est pendant cette période que Scheler publia son oeuvre majeure Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913–1916). On peut la considérer comme une oeuvre de phénoménologie appliquée qui, par opposition à l’éthique formaliste de Kant, mettait en avant une éthique personnaliste fondée sur l’intuition téléologique et la réalisation de valeurs matérielles. II développe l’idée en particulier qu’il existe un mode d’intentionnalité affective spécifique qui est indépendant de la raison et par lequel des valeurs sont appréhendées a priori. Les valeurs éthiques sont l’objet non pas d’une aperception intellectuelle mais proprement d’un sentir axiologique (Wertfühlen).26 Les préoccupation éthiques de Scheler furent toujours largement motivées par la conscience aiguë qu’il eut de vivre à une époque de crise et de transition historique, économique, sociale, politique, culturelle et spirituelle; il avait le sentiment que l’éthos historique européen était menacé de déclin et ses valeurs en voie de dissolution au profit d’un nouveau système de valeurs qui tendait à l’emporter dans un monde dominé désormais par la montée irrésistible du capitalisme moderne. Dans ces années de troubles et de menaces qui annonçaient la catastrophe de la Grande guerre, Scheler ressentit l’impérieuse nécessité d’une radicale “refondation de l’éthique” sur des bases sûres nouvelles. Revenir aux anciennes morales du sens commun ou aux principes utilitaristes préconisés par la philosophie morale anglaise n’était plus de mise désormais. Face aux assauts du scepticisme et du relativisme éthiques, la tâche qui s’imposait dorénavant, pour lui comme pour Husserl, c’était de contribuer à une réelle renaissance de l’éthique qu’il appelait de ses voeux et que devait promouvoir, sous les auspices de la phénoménologie, la nouvelle philosophie des valeurs.

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Si Scheler porte au crédit de Husserl le fait de lui avoir fait prendre conscience du vrai sens de la phénoménologie, il ne semblait pas se sentir lié par les problèmes de méthode particuliers qui préoccupent le fondateur de la phénoménologie, ni pouvoir le suivre dans la direction dans laquelle ce dernier s’était engagé pour les développer. Scheler repousse avec fermeté la primauté que Husserl (à l’époque des Ideen de 1913) confère à la raison logique et théorique et son allégation que les actes affectifs comme ceux du vouloir étaient nécessairement fondés sur des actes de l’intellect et susceptibles d’être appréhendés seulement par le truchement des actes prédicatifs d’objectivation et de thématisation de l’entendement. Il insiste au contraire sur la prééminence et l’autonomie des modes affectifs d’appréhension de valeurs qui ont leur logique propre, une “logique du coeur” à la manière de Pascal, indépendante de la raison théorique.27 Ce fut bien le concept husserlien de “l’intuition catégoriale” qui a ouvert la voie à l’axiologie schélerienne pour autant que celle-ci est basée sur les notions phénoménologiques comme l’a priori matériel et “l’intuition eidétique” (Wesensschau) qui nous livre les faits eux-mêmes dans leur évidence immédiate a priori. Ce que Scheler retient de la phénoménologie husserlienne n’est pas tant une méthode qu’une attitude de pensée, un mode d’expérience original par quoi nous “vivons” (erleben) et appréhendons les choses telles qu’elles se donnent à notre intuition immédiate avec leurs configurations essentielles.28 Il n’est sans doute pas de meilleure manière de comprendre l’éthique schélerienne que de la mettre en perspective avec l’éthique kantienne, comme il le suggère lui-même dans la remarque introductive à la permière partie de l’ouvrage où il éumère les diverses présuppositions de la doctrine de KANT, qui serviront littéralement de fils conducteurs à sa propre réflexion éthique.29 Scheler approuve la critique kantienne des théories naturalistes – hédonistes et utilitaristes – de la morale, sa réfutation “définitive” de toute forme d’éthique des biens et des fins (Güter/ Zweckethik), il est d’accord avec Kant pour souligner que l’éthique doit être inconditionnelle et a priori, qu’elle ne saurait reposer sur quelque chose d’aussi imprévisible que la réalisation anticipée de fins ou de biens contingents. Par contre, il rejette la conclusion kantienne selon laquelle les “contenus matériels” de l’expérience ne sauraient jouer un quelconque rôle dans la détermination de la valeur éthique d’une action. Selon la thèse kantienne, le seul principe de légitimité concevable était celui qu’un sujet doué de raison conçût sous la forme de l’impératif catégorique si bien que, pour décider de la moralité d’une action, les actes de volonté devaient être pris en compte uniquement d’une manière purement

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formelle, en dehors de toute considération de leur contenus matériels qu’il convenait, au contraire, d’écarter résolument tout comme les objects et les fins visés par le vouloir ou le désir.30 Quoique Scheler admette que l’impératif catégorique renvoie à un aspect essentiel de la moralité, il repousse le formalisme kantien dont il pensait qu’il empêcha même Kant d’avoir une vision cohérente de notre expérience éthique voire du fait éminent de notre comportement primordial à l’égard du monde, qui selon Scheler est de nature affective et implique une saisie de valeurs (Wertnehmung) pré-théorique; aussi l’ambition de déterminer la volonté d’une manière purement formelle, à part les contenus de valeur “matériels”, est-elle, aux yeux de Scheler, d’avance vouée à l’échec.31 En outre, privilégiant l’approche formaliste Kant méconnaˆıt que “le devoir moral” prescrit par l’impératif catégorique présuppose lui-même précisément ce que visait à exclure son formalisme, à savoir “l’intuition matériale” des valeurs actuelles implicitement suggérée par “la loi morale”. D’où l’erreur la plus grave qu’on peut reprocher à l’éthique kantienne: avoir méconnu ces éléments de l’expérience qui sont justement donnés a priori comme des phénomènes fondamentaux primordiaux de toute expérience morale, à savoir les valeurs : “Une valeur précède l’objet, elle est le premier ‘message’ de sa nature particulière”, affirme Scheler en reprochant à Kant d’avoir ignoré l’indépendance des valeurs par rapport aux choses et aux biens qui leur servent de “supports” (Träger).32 Kant s’est fourvoyé en réduisant l’a priori au pur formel en confondant le “matériel” avec le pur sensible. Selon Scheler, l’a priori est inscrit dans “toutes les unités idéales de signification et les propositions qui sont donnéees en elles-mêmes par l’intermédiaire d’un contenu intuitif immédiat”, et ce indépendamment de tout sujet les posant ou d’objects posés auxquels elles sont applicables. Comme Husserl il identifie l’a priori avec le contenu d’une intuition catégoriale. Il en résulte que désormais l’a priori n’est plus “subjectif” mais “objectif”, plus “formel” mais “matériel”, il n’est pas imposé ou constitué par la raison, mais donné dans l’intuition, non pas “indépendant de toute expérience” (comme le pensait Kant), mais “saisie dans l’expérience phénoménologique”.33 L’une des principales thèses de Scheler qu’on retiendra porte sur la différence des valeurs et des objets de désir ou des biens qui leur servent de “supports”. En accord avec Kant, il juge qu’on ne peut définir l’obligation morale simplement en fonction des biens recherchés sans la relativiser et la subordonner aux contingences empiriques de nos caprices, fins ou buts particuliers. Il souligne, en revanche, que les valeurs comme leurs “supports” ne

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sont ni des abstractions de biens empiriques ni des postulats d’une volonté empirique, mais des données premières, indépendantes du vouloir conscient, données dans les intentionnalités affectives de l’expérience. Lors même que Scheler reconnaˆıt que les valeurs n’ont pas d’“existence” réelle en soi, à la manière des idées platoniciennes, mais seulement une “existence fonctionnelle” en raison de leur rapport avec un “support” réel, existant, il accorde néanmoins aux valeurs le statut ontologique éminent de la “Gegebenheit” propre aux objets donnés a priori dans une évidence phénoménologique, c’est “dans les biens que les valeurs acquièrent objectivité et réalité”, déclare-t-il.34 C’est que les valeurs peuvent en quelque sorte s’exhiber par elles-mêmes dans un ordre objectif a priori de rapports possédant toutes les caractéristiques nécessaires à une éthique fondée avec toute la rigueur requise. Selon Scheler, les faits axiologiques sont des phénomènes originaires, fondamentaux et irréductibles quoique donnés dans une intuition affective (fühlenden) si bien qu’ils ne dépendent nullement du sujet les appréhendant. Il faut repousser énergiquement toute idée de subjectivité des valeurs, tout relativisme des valeurs qui les subordonnerait à la nature biologique ou psychologique de l’homme.35 En revanche, il prend en considération les propriétés et relations formelles existant entre les valeurs que déjà Brentano comme Husserl ont mentionnées (ex.“l’existence d’une valeur positive est elle-même une valeur positive”), et surtout les rapports de “hauteur” en vertu desquels telle valeur est “supérieure” à telle autre qui lui est “inférieure” car les valeurs se caractérisent aussi par le fait qu’elles s’inscrivent dans un ordre hiérarchique (Rangordnung) où chacune a sa place. Pour Scheler comme pour Husserl, c’est dans un acte de connaissance axiologique (Werterkenntnis) qu’on appelle “préférence” que nous saisissons le rang de supériorité ou d’infériorité de la valeur. Cependant que si l’être-supérieur d’une valeur se donne dans l’acte de préférer, il s’origine néanmoins dans l’essence même de la relation des valeurs. Toutefois la hiérarchie des valeurs ne peut jamais “se déduire”, seulement “se révéler” dans l’évidence intuitive de la préférence.36 Scheler propose une classification assez subtile et complexe des valeurs en les regroupant d’abord en deux grandes catégories, valeurs personnelles (Personwerte) qui se réfèrent directement à des personnes et à leurs actes, et valeurs de choses (Sachenwerte) qui concernent les objets de valeur, les biens matériels, puis en quatre modalités correspondant aux intentionnalités affectives à travers lesquelles elles sont appréhendées. Partant des valeurs les plus hautes pour aller vers les plus basses, Scheler les classe comme suit: 1°) les valeurs religieuses telles que le “sacré” et le “divin”;

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2°) les valeurs “spirituelles” (geistige) ou culturelles telles que le “vrai”, le “juste” ou le “beau”; la Science et l’Art; 3°) les valeurs “vitales” qui sont relatives à la vie et aux biens utiles à sa subsistance; 4°) les valeurs “sensibles” : “le plaisant” ou l’agréable, “le douloureux”, etc. Mais quelle que soit leur spécificité, toutes les valeurs y compris les valeurs “matérielles” sont subordonnées aux valeurs personnelles, Scheler nous assurant qu’il n’y a rien d’arbitraire ni de subjectif dans la hiérarchie des valeurs qu’il propose, qu’il s’agit simplement d’un fait phénoménologique livré à notre inspection et basée sur des critères aussi évidents que la durée relative, le degré de satisfaction plus ou moins grande, et d’autres du même genre.37 De surcroˆıt, comme Brentano et Husserl, il estime que ce classement reflète une “logique de la préférence” a priori en faveur de valeurs d’un rang supérieur de même que les valeurs “positives” sont péférées à des valeurs “négatives” d’un même niveau déterminé dans l’échelle des valeurs.38 Néanmoins la valeur éthique n’est jamais donnée directement comme contenu ou object d’un acte de vouloir, mais uniquement comme porté “sur le dos” pour ainsi dire de l’acte d’une personne qui la réalise chaque fois que l’existence d’un “support”, d’une valeur non-morale positive est recherchée sans qu’on se préoccupe de savoir si quelqu’un, actuellement, est capable ou non de faire exister la valeur non-morale visée. En ce sens l’éthique schélerienne n’est pas une éthique de la conséquence (Erfolgsethik) – qu’il ne se lasse pas de critiquer sans pour autant revenir à une “Gesinnungsethik” prônée par Kant.39 Scheler préconise plutôt une éthique du discernement diamétralement opposée à une éthique impérative du devoir à la manière de Kant à qui il reproche avant tout d’être “aveugle” en ignorant la primauté du phénomène de la valeur, de n’avoir pas su voir que les impératifs et les jugements moraux présupposent d’ores et déjà une compréhension axiologique. De plus, une éthique du devoir tend à être essentiellement négative et restrictive puisqu’elle présuppose chez le sujet une inclination naturelle à se soustraire à ses impératifs et ce faisant coupe court au vrai discernement moral. Son erreur fondamentale consiste à réduire la valeur éthique d’un acte de volonté ou d’une action à sa seule conformité avec ce que le devoir ordonne ou interdit. Voilà en quoi elle méconnaˆıt, estime Scheler, la véritable valeur personnelle et ne voit dans la personne que le sujet X d’un devoir-faire universel. 40 Quand bien même Scheler, dans sa théorie des valeurs, aurait donné dans un objectivisme et un absolutisme qu’on pourra juger problématiques, en revendiquant une validité objective a priori pour le sentir intentionnel à

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travers lequel nous appréhendons les valeurs, il ne nie pas qu’il y ait selon les époques une certaine relativité de rang dans les jugements moraux et les perceptions de valeur des individus et des sociétés. Rien n’interdit de reconnaˆıtre la relativité historique et culturelle d’un éthos, du contexte éthique particulier, de la manière particulière dont on juge certains comportements dans une société donnée, ou son niveau de culture et d’exigence éthiques ou même des différences de countumes;41 au contraire, la conscience de l’historicité de l’éthique nous aidera à mieux comprendre la théorie schélerienne de la vertu et des “actes exemplaires” ou des types de “personnes-modèles” (le saint, le génie, le héros) pour autant qu’il voit en elles des figures éminentes qui contribuent à promouvoir l’évolution morale et l’éthos d’une société sans que soit affectée en rien l’objectivité des valeurs comme telles.42 Enfin, pour conclure rappelons simplement que nous avons limité notre approche de l’éthique phénoménologique à la première étape de son élaboration par Husserl à l’époque des Ideen, qui est contemporaine de l’effort schélerien de refondation de l’éthique philosophique. Quant à Husserl, il abandonnera plus tard peu à peu sa vision trop étroitement axiologique pour se rapprocher de Scheler en axant lui aussi sa réflexion sur une description de la vie éthique centrée autour de la personne qui s’impose le devoir impératif d’une détermination rationnelle de soi-même et de sa vie. Cependant si la nouvelle orientation qu’il donnera ainsi à son éthique garde malgré tout de singulières similitudes avec son éthique et sa praxéologie axiologiques plutôt formelles de la période de Göttingen, les valeurs éthiques pourtant ne sont plus des valeurs purement objectives qu’a pu relever l’axiologie formelle et matérielle. L’individu humain a désormais pour vocation éthique de réaliser ses valeurs personnelles absolues, incommensurables: avant tout les valeurs d’amour que chacun peut puiser au plus profond de lui-même. Or, une telle éthique personnelle est inimaginable hors d’un “vivre-ensemble” dans une communauté éthique laquelle est appelée à se constituer en une une universelle communauté d’amour.43 Université de PARIS 8. N OT E S x Vorlesungen über Grundfragen der Ethik und Wertlehre 1914, in Husserliana, tome XXVII, éd. U. MELLE (La Haye, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), p. 29. xx Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus, 7ème éd. (Bouvier Verlag, Bonn: Manfred Frings, 2000), Préface de la 2ème éd., 1921, p. 14.

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1 E. Husserl, Vorlesungen, loc. cit., Ière Section: “Der Parallelismus zwischen Logik und Ethik”. 2 Dans cet ouvrage, aux §§ 117, 133–4, et 146–7, Husserl ne se borne pas à constater l’existence d’un parallélisme ou d’analogies entre ces disciplines formelles, dès le § 27, il esquisse une description concrète du monde comme un monde de valeurs, et pas seulement monde de “pures choses” (blosse Sachen). Ailleurs, au § 95, il précise la notion de “valeur” (Wert) et le sens de l’acte d’évaluer (Werten) en proposant des distinctions terminologiques subtiles telles que entre “Wertheit”, “Wertlage”, “Wertverhalt”, “Werterlebnis”, etc. etc., valant pour toute la sphère axiologique (op. cit., p. 198 sq.). 3 Vorlesungen, § 2, “Der Gegensatz zwischen ethischem Empirismus und Apriorismus”, loc. cit., pp. 10–14. 4 loc. cit., pp. 11–12. 5 loc. cit., pp. 12–13. 6 ibid. 7 Husserl fait ici directement allusion à la doctrine évolutionniste selon Ch. Darwin et H. Spencer. Tout comme M. Scheler (op. cit., p. 283), il en rejette catégoriquement les conclusions insoutenables au regard de l’éthique. 8 loc. cit., p. 14. On peut se demander si Husserl songe ici à Nietzsche et sa conception de “l’inversion (Umwertung) des valeurs” traditionnelles, notamment celles héritées du Christianisme. Dans le même contexte, au § 3 où il évoque “les conséquences anti-éthiques de l’empirisme éthique”, il condamne fermement la “Begriffsmythologie”, à laquelle sacrifieraient ceux qui hypostasient ou absolutisent des idées biologiquement utiles à la survie de l’espèce humaine; pour sa part, il ne voit dans ces idées que de “pures fictions”. Tout en feignant de prendre en compte les arguments de l’empirisme d’obédience biologique, il en dénonce les conséquences anti-éthiques et les effets néfastes pour la praxis éthique. ibid., pp. 14–19. Chez M. Scheler, on rencontre la même critique de l’empirisme éthique (op. cit., pp. 280 sq. et 293–4). 9 E. Husserl, loc. cit., pp. 17–18, et tout le § 4 qui est consacré à “la refutation du scepticisme et du psychologisme”. Husserl observe que les arguments du scepticisme éthique rejoignent au fond ceux-là mêmes qu’avait avancés l’empirisme logique. 10 loc. cit., § 4, pp. 20–26. Dans sa vigoureuse réfutation du scepticisme éthique, Husserl fait directement référence à l’argumentation qu’il avait développée dans les Prolégomènes à la logique pure (§ 34): il rappelle à nouveau la forme la plus ancienne du scepticisme grec, celui des Sophistes Protagoras et Gorgias dont Platon, dans ses célèbres dialogues, avait proposée une réfutation somme toute définitive. 11 loc. cit., § 5, pp. 36–51. En fait, l’analogie entre praxéologie formelle et logique formelle repose sur l’analogie entre les principes logiques formels et les principes éthico-pratiques formels, les deux étant en dernière analyse des propositions normatives. ibid., pp. 40–42. 12 Pour Husserl, l’impératif catégorique selon Kant représente le modèle du “principe éthique purement formel”, constat qui ne l’empêche pas de laisser percer, d’entrée de jeu, ses doutes quant à sa validité comme “unique principe éthique”, et aussi quant à l’ambition de Kant d’avoir établi par là le critère unique non seulement nécessaire mais encore suffisant de toute “moralité” (Sittlichkeit). On sait que, dans l’esprit de Kant, c’est exclusivement et uniquement le principe d’universalité (dont procède l’obligation inscrite dans l’impératif catégorique) qui détermine la valeur éthique du vouloir particulier. Husserl doute que la fondation purement formaliste de l’éthique kantienne, excluant toute référence à quelque élément “matériel” que ce soit, puisse être retenue comme une fondation suffisante voire comme l’unique fondation possible (ibid., p. 44). Les deux textes de Kant auxquels Husserl se réfère sont les Fondements de la métaphysique des

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moeurs 1785 (en particulier la Iième section) et la Critique de la raison pratique 1788 (Ière partie, ch. III intitulé “Des mobiles de la raison pure pratique”. 13 Comment ne pas admettre que toute forme de rationalité n’est qu’une forme d’application d’une unique raison, la raison logique, et que par suite la raison pratique et la raison axiologique (wertende) ne sont rien d’autre que des manières différentes de viser des domaines d’application particuliers de la raison logique (loc. cit., p. 57)? Husserl est convaincu que “nul ne saurait nier l’universelle domination (Allherrschaft) de la raison logique”, il ne partage pas pour autant l’interprétation de ceux qui qui voient dans la raison logique elle-même “une sorte de raison évaluante au sens strict du terme” à l’instar de ceux qui, de nos jours, tendent à confondre raison judicative et raison axiologique et à considérer le juger comme une espèce d’évaluation (Wertens) au sens d’un acte affectif (Gemütsakt). loc. cit., pp. 57–8 et 62. 14 C’est au § 8 qui est une récapitulation des paragraphes précédents que Husserl revient à nouveau à sa critique de l’éthique kantienne en reconnaissant toutefois à Kant le mérite d’avoir donné des “impulsions significatives” à la fondation d’une éthique formelle a priori; il lui reproche en même temps d’avoir sacrifié toute éthique matérielle et d’avoir fondé l’éthique formelle sur le seul principe formel de l’impératif catégorique lequel était pourtant censé être apte à prescrire pour chaque cas concret particulier de l’agir déterminé par sa matière ce qui était le bien et le devoir moral (das pflichtmässig Gute), ce qu’exigeait l’éthique (das ethisch Geforderte) alors qu’il avait exclu pourtant “de l’acte de vouloir et d’évaluer toute matière”. ibid., p. 65 sq. Dans ce même paragraphe, Husserl revient aussi au problème du parallélisme entre raison théorique et raison pratique, que Kant n’aurait pas su pleinement prendre en compte alors que lui-même propose d’étendre ce parallélisme au rapport d’analogie entre raison logico-judicative et raison axiologique évaluante tout en conférant à la raison logique une incontestable prééminence. Même s’il admet que “l’universel empire” de cette dernière pose un problème, face à “la raison purement axiologique (bloss wertenden) qui ne perçoit rien, ne comprend ni n’explique rien”, il en appelle à la raison logique, seule à même d’éclairer et de rendre intelligibles les données de la raison axiologique. A l’évidence, contrairement à Max Scheler, Husserl semble méconnaˆıtre le pouvoir de révélation des actes affectifs et volitifs et demeurer ainsi tributaire de la doctrine rationaliste à laquelle avait cédé aussi Kant lorsqu’il reconnaissait une indéniable primauté à la raison logico-judicative. Cependant Husserl juge que seuls les actes de la sphère logique et doxique sont en mesure de conférer une validité objective aux actes en général et à ce qu’ils visent, tout en concédant que “les actes logiques ne font rien d’autre que rendre visible ce qui est déjà là”. loc.cit., p. 69. 15 Il s’agit de la seconde partie des Vorlesungen, qui est spécifiquement consacrée à “l’axiologie formelle” (§§ 9 à 12). En fait, l’auteur l’avait déjà indirectement abordée à travers la question canonique pour toutes les doctrines éthiques concernant le rapport de la fin et des moyens, de même que dans son analyse des “rapports de motivation entre les sphères logique et axiologique” ou lorsqu’il évoque le statut des “lois logiques formelles”, le rôle du principe de contradiction dans la sphère axiologique (§ 11). 16 ibid., pp. 71–73. 17 ibid., p. 72. “Partout, note Husserl, raison logique et raison axiologique sont entrelacées entre elles … du fait que chaque acte d’évaluation a pour fondement des actes d’intellection, des actes ‘objectivants’ dans lesquels sont représentées des objectités valorisées”. 18 ibid., § 11 b). Husserl estime que, dans la sphère axiologique comme dans la sphère logique, il faut défendre avec la dernière énergie le point de vue de l’objectivisme et donc de l’idéalisme contre le scepticisme tantôt relativiste et tantôt psychologiste, tantôt anthropologiste et tantôt biologiste. ibid., p. 89.

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loc. cit., § 12: “les lois de la comparaison axiologique”. Rappelant que c’est l’ouvrage de Franz Brentano Vom Ursprung der sittlichen Erkenntnis (1889) qui est à l’origine de ses propres recherches en vue d’édifier une axiologique et une éthique formelles, Husserl observe qu’il s’agit dans ce paragraphe d’une tentative d’établir les lois formelles de l’ordre hiérarchique (Rangordnung) des valeurs (ibid., pp. 91–93). Mais, contrairement à Brentano qui s’en tient à une explication purement psychologique, il propose de distinguer dans l’examen des actes de préférence (Bevorzugung) et des actes négatifs de relégation (Hintansetzung) un point de vue noétique et un point de vue ontique (ou noématique): à titre d’exemple du premier il note la formule “il est raisonnable de préférer quelque chose qu’on tient pour bien”, et à titre d’exemple du second point de vue l’expression “il y a des choses qui ont valeur en soi” dans le cadre de leur catégorie, qui sont donc “plus précieuses” (wertvoller) que celles qui n’ont valeur qu’eu égard à d’autres choses (par ex. comme moyens en vue d’une fin), ou de celles qui sont des “nonvaleurs” (Unwerte). ibid., pp. 92–3 et 99–100. 20 Cf. § 18 a) et b) de la quatrième section intitulée “Formale Praktik”, pp. 126–129. Lors même qu’il juge que l’impératif catégorique constitue “le problème le plus central de l’éthique” (p. 137), Husserl critiquera dans ce contexte la thèse kantienne selon laquelle “la volonté de bien” considérée en elle-même est “bonne en soi” et a seule valeur morale, indépendamment des circonstances dans lesquelles elle s’exerce et nonobstant les conséquences qu’elle entraˆıne dans l’accomplissement de l’acte (p. 131). 21 Husserl tient à rappeler l’adage bien connu que dans la sphère du pratique, “le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” et que dès lors “placer au second rang le choix de ce qui est le mieux (das Beste) est un comportement éthique absolument incorrect et que, par conséquent, ‘choisir le mieux possible est une règle éthique absolue’. loc. cit., pp. 136 et 140. Seulement, la question est de savoir comment, dans telle circonstance particulière, déterminer ‘le mieux possible’? 22 Au fond, il s’agit de substituer au sujet rationnel idéal conçu par Kant “la fiction” du “spectateur impartial” qui est en l’occurrence un sujet jugeant, évaluant rationnellement la situation, un sujet à la place duquel nous nous mettons nous-mêmes lorsque nous jugeons notre façon d’agir ou celle de nos semblables. Pour Husserl, la “loi du meilleur” est une loi idéale qui veut que si un sujet agit avec justesse, et conformément à cette loi, “tout autre sujet devrait agir de même, à condition que son domaine pratique soit le même”, et qu’il puisse se mettre à la place d’autrui. loc. cit., § 19, pp. 139 sq. 23 Seulement, dès lors que chacun est différent des autres, et que chaque situation a sa particularité matérielle, le sujet raisonnable que je suis censé être en agissant conformément à la loi morale, je ne le peux sans prendre en considération non seulement le principe d’universalité formelle, mais aussi la matière ou l’objet de l’acte que je me propose d’accomplir ainsi que les circonstances dans lesquelles je suis amené à agir, mais en outre en tenant compte de mes propres possibilités pratiques, par exemple corporelles ou mentales. ibid., pp. 138–140. 24 “L’axiologie et la praxéologie formelles forment une première étape dans l’ordre des disciplines éthiques, manifestement la première en soi. A ces disciplines aprioriques correspondent, corrélativement, les disciplines noético-noématiques comme à la logique formelle correspond la logique des propositions, des possibilités, des probabilitées, etc., une théorie des actes rationnels correspondants … Il en va de même de l’éthique. On y passe également de la considération objective ou noématique à la considération des actes et de leur régulation, et de là on est conduit, à travers une recherche systématique complète, à une phénoménologie pure de la raison axiologique et volitive (wollenden), partie intégrante de la phénoménologie générale de la conscience en tant que telle”. loc. cit., § 19, p. 141. 25 loc. cit., § 21, pp. 140–153, surtout pp. 151 et 153.

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Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, dont la première partie parut en 1913 au tome I du Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, édité par Husserl, et la seconde partie en 1916 au tome II du même Jahrbuch. Dans la Préface de la premiére édition (loc. cit., p. 9–11), l’auteur précise que l’objectif principal de ses recherches présentées dans cet ouvrage était bien un effort pour fonder scientifiquement (Grundlegung) l’éthique philosophique, et non son élaboration complète. Il rend hommage en même temps au fondateur de la phénoménoloie en soulignant ce qu’il doit aux travaux importants de ce dernier. Dans la Préface de la deuxième édition (1921), Scheler tient à rappeler l’esprit qui préside à sa recherche éthique: elle se détermine selon lui par un “strict absolutisme et objectivisme” opposés à tout relativisme et subjectivisme éthiques à la mode, mais elle se définit aussi comme un “intuitionnisme émotionnel” et un “apriorisme matérial”. Enfin il précise encore que c’est bien le point de vue proprement “personnaliste” qui gouverne son éthique, comme l’atteste du reste depuis la première édition le sous-titre de l’ouvrage : “Nouvel essai pour fonder un personnalisme éthique”. op. cit., p. 14. Sur le “Wertfühlen”, op. cit., p. 87 et pp. 263 sq., où Scheler précise sa description du sentir axiologique. 27 On sait que Scheler s’oppose à l’intellectualisme husserlien et on connaˆıt l’insistance qu’il met à soutenir l’indépendance de l’éthique et de la sphère affective à l’égard de la logique et de ses principes, ainsi que sur la dimension émotionnelle de l’esprit qui a sa logique propre, la “logique du cœur” chère à Pascal (op. cit., pp. 11 et 82–3, de même pp. 260–263). On notera en outre que Scheler attire l’attention sur le fait que la “phénoménologie des valeurs” et la “phénoménologie de la vie” émotionnelle doivent être considérées comme relevant d’un domaine de recherches totalement autonome, indépendant de la logique ibid., pp. 83 et 87. 28 op. cit., ch. II, pp. 65 ssq. Scheler évoque expressément la “Wesenschau” husserlienne, et l’intuition ou expérience phénoménologique. ibid., p. 68. 29 op. cit., pp. 30–31. Il pourrait paraˆıtre opportun de citer ici les huit “présuppositions” de l’éthique kantienne à partir desquelles Scheler non seulement élabore sa critique du formalisme kantien, mais aussi les principales thèses de sa propre “éthique matériale des valeurs”. Ces toutes premières pages de la “Remarque introductive” montrent à quel point Scheler réfléchit à l’ombre du grand philosophe dont il reconnaˆıt lui aussi l’immense mérite sans s’interdire pour autant de soumettre son formalisme à une critique des plus radicales. Il prend pour cible essentielle les huit thèses de Kant qui sont à la base de sa doctrine et auxquelles il opposera, progressivement et tour à tour, sa propre interprétation des principes fondateurs de l’éthique. Ainsi selon lui une éthique matériale n’est pas nécessairement une “éthique des biens et des fins”, elle n’a pas qu’une simple validité empirique a posteriori, et n’est pas davantage une “éthique de la conséquence” (Erfolgsethik), ou un pur hédonisme ayant pour seule référence des états de plaisir sensible. Il est aussi inexact qu’une éthique matériale ne puisse être fondée sur l’autonomie de la personne humaine ni qu’elle repose sur la pure “légalité” (Gesetzmässigkeit) de l’agir et du vouloir. Enfin, elle ne fonde nullement le sujet moral et ses jugements de valeur éthiques sur l’égoïsme inné à la nature humaine et elle préserve parfaitement la dignité de la personne humaine 30 op.cit., pp. 32 sq. Si Scheler est d’accord avec Kant pour estimer qu’ “aucune axiologie (Wertlehre) philosophique (ni esthétique ni éthique) ne doit présumer des biens et encore moins des choses” ni des fins (Zwecke) ou des buts (Ziele) du vouloir, et qu’il approuve sa réfutation de toute éthique des biens et des fins, dès lors que la valeur morale ne saurait dépendre des “supports” de valeurs, il est en désaccord avec Kant quand celui-ci prétend que les valeurs éthiques du Bien et du Mal sont totalement indépendantes de leur réalisation matériale, et qu’il leur substitue le concept formel de “conforme à la loi” (gesetzmässig) ou de “contraire à la loi” (gesetzwidrig). ibid., pp. 45 sq. et 88 sq. Contrairement à Kant qui place la valeur morale du Bien

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dans la seule volonté, Scheler la définit comme “la valeur qui dans la sphère du vouloir se rattache à la réalisation d’une valeur positive ou d’une valeur supérieure” tandis que le Mal est “la valeur qui dans la sphère du vouloir se rattache à la réalisation d’une valeur négative ou d’une valeur inférieure”. ibid., p. 48. Sur l’erreur fondamentale de toute “éthique impérative”, comme celle de Kant, qui fait reposer la valeur morale sur l’idée de “devoir” (Pflicht) et la voit dans la seule obéissance au commandement de la loi et n’a dès lors qu’un caractère purement négatif et répressif, si bien qu’elle méconnaˆıt selon Scheler la seule référence de toute valeur éthique, à savoir la valeur de la personne qui ne saurait se réduire au “sujet rationnel (Vernunftperson) X” que Kant met au centre de son éthique formaliste, cf. op. cit., pp. 190 sq., 216 sq., 233 sq. et 278–9. 31 ibid., pp. 86–7. Scheler ne cesse de souligner l’apriorisme de son éthique selon lequel l’a priori axiologique (Wertapriori) et éthique n’est pas le “produit” d’une raison pratique, mais repose sur une “intuition axiologique” (Wertschauung) ancrée dans l’acte de sentir, dans l’acte de préférer (Vorziehen) ou de reléguer (Nachsetzen), bref dans l’amour ou dans la haine, dans lesquels la valeur vient à être donnée en elle-même (zur Selbstgegebenheit). 32 op. cit., pp. 40–41. 33 Sur l’indépendance des valeurs à l’égard de leur “porteur” ou support, cf. op. cit., p. 176, et sur l’appréhension intuitive des valeurs, ibid., pp. 65 sq., surtout pp. 70 et 86–87. 34 ibid., pp. 43–45. 35 ibid., pp. 258 et 270 sq. 36 ibid., pp. 104–105. 37 L’ordre des valeurs est fondé dans l’essence même des valeurs, mais il y a deux ordres à prendre en considération, l’un “formel” est fonction de la hauteur de la valeur par référence à des “porteurs” essentiels, l’autre purement “matérial”. A propos de la subtile classification schélerienne des valeurs et la “supériorité” des valeurs personnelles (Personwerte) sur toute espèce de valeurs de chose (Sachwerte), cf. op. cit., pp. 117 sq. Quant aux “modalités axiologiques” qu’il évoque, ibid., pp. 122 sq. 38 ibid., pp. 105 sq. 39 Sur la distinction entre “Gesinnungsethik” (éthique de l’intention) et “Erfolgsethik” (éthique de la conséquence), on se reportera au ch. intitulé “Materiale Ethik und Erfolgsethik” sur lequel se termine la première partie de l’ouvrage. op.cit., pp. 127–137. 40 Pour “l’éthique du devoir” (Sollensethik) et son caractère négatif et restrictif, qui constitue selon Scheler l’erreur fondamentale de Kant en ce qu’elle méconnaˆıt la valeur et la dignité de la personne, cf. op. cit., pp. 193–4, 198 et 219 ainsi que pp. 234–5. 41 Sur la “relativité” historique de l’éthique, ibid., pp. 303–309. 42 Sur les “personnes-modèles”, ibid., pp. 496 sq. et 570 sq. 43 Sur le “personnalisme” et l’idée de “communauté d’amour” chez les dernier Husserl, on peut se reporter à un certain nombre de conférences et d’essais rassemblés depuis dans E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937), éd. Th. Nenon et H. R. Sepp, in Husserliana, tome XXVIII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), et aussi à l’article de U. Melle, “The Development of Husserl’s Ethics”, in Etudes phénoménologiques, n°s 13–14 (Bruxelles: Ed. Ousia, 1991), pp. 115–135.

Arion Kelkel and Seyed Mohammed Khamenei, presiding.

J. J. VENTER

H U M A N D I G N I T Y A N D T H E O B J E C T I F I C AT I O N O F THE HUMAN BEING

S U B J E C T, O B J E C T, A N D H U M A N D I G N I T Y Human subjectivity does not exist – and this is the true kernel of Skinner’s theory – beyond Nature, but is part of it and resides within it. By making its physical nature an object, the human being also makes its subjectivity an object – and thus a part of Nature. The strict difference between subjectivity and Nature, which forms the basis for the concept of human dignity, disappears. Briefly: there is no room within a scientific picture of humanity for the idea of human dignity. In its scientific self-interpretation, the human being positions itself “beyond freedom and dignity.” … Nothing could be more short-sighted at this point than the objection that this scientific penetration and technological control only apply to the natural side of the human being, not to its spiritual side and subjectivity. Hopes of saving the “inner” human being with this kind of dualism have always turned out to be naïve. The human spirit is very much part of this world; it has a natural basis. The subject may not coincide with the body, but neither can it be separated from it. Technological access to the body will therefore not stop there: at some time or another, it will also affect the subject and its spirit. (Bayertz 1996: 86)

Science as Producer Subjectivity has been very important in Modern Western thought. How is it possible that we are faced with the disappearance of subjectivity? One can understand this historically. Two parallel processes were taking form simultaneously: 1.

2.

On the one hand there was the increase in the power of (natural) science and the believe in its method as the only valid approach to finding true knowledge (even and also in the human sciences) – we have to note that science is no more simply about observing, describing and explaining, but about making and producing. On the other there was a change in ontology from a rigid vertical hierarchical system to a horizontal historical vision – what was hierarchically lower became first in time as the/an efficient cause, under the name of “nature”; what was hierarchically higher, “reason” (or “culture”), became the telos, the final cause (cf. Venter 1999a).

In the following paragraphs I am going to argue that human dignity came into a clinch because of the progressive increase in importance of the “nature” 537 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 537–601. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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pole in the nature-reason dialectic of the horizontalized ontology. Cosmology became cosmogony through a progressive retropolation. Extrapolated history could be either pastistic or futuristic1 – for modern humanism attempted a completely immanentist explanation of the human condition (deistic or pantheistic): thus divine creativity was ascribed to “nature” (as the origin), and to “reason” (as the goal) – it finally had two immanent divinities. Especially the pastistic approaches threatened human dignity through the importance ascribed to “nature.” “Nature” was reduced to the subrational, in contrast to the Medieval conception of rationality as part of nature. The mechanistic world picture contributed to a demystification of the idea of “nature,” and a further reduction of its meaning, and supported a “disrespectful” interventionist analysis of “nature” (including the “natural” aspects of the human being). Technization of science gave science increasing power – the technique is not only in the application of science, but is an inherent part of science: science changed from explanation of the “why” through technical observation, to explanation of the “how” through technical (re)producing. The Right to “Dignity” Bayertz and Skinner talk about “subjectivity,” but the central attack is against the conception of “human dignity.” This is understandable. For at this moment it is probably the conception/idea/concept (however one should characterise it) which most seriously obstructs the progress of technically producing science. Human dignity has become a universal value which sometimes takes the form of a protected right. A few examples: •

In the consciousness of its spiritual-religious and moral heritage the European Union founds itself on the indivisible and universal values of the dignity of the human being, of freedom, of equality and solidarity. It rests on the basis of democracy and the constitutional state. It puts the person in the center of action, since it gives foundation to the citizenship and the space for freedom, security, and right. [Articles 1–5 have been brought together, by the publishers, under the heading: “The worth of the human being”: Article 2: Right to life; Article 3: Inviolability; Article 4: Prohibition of torture and denigration; Article 5: Prohibition of slavery and forced labour. Articles 6–10 are together under freedoms: Article 6: Right to freedom and security; Article 7: Respect for private and family life; Article 8: Protection of personal information; Article 9: The right to marriage and family; Article 10: Freedom of thought, conscience, and

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religion; Article 11: Freedom of expression of opinion and information; Article 12: Freedom of gathering and association; Article 13: Freedom of art and science; Article 14: Right to education; Article 15: Freedom of occupation and the right to work; Article 16: Freedom of enterprise; Article 17: Right to property; Article 18: Right to asylum; Article 19: Protection against deportation. According to the publishers, Articles 20 and following protect the right to equality; Articles 27–31 the rights to solidarity; Articles 39–46 civil rights; Articles 47–50 legal protection rights.] (Europäischen Union, 2000. Präambel; my translation) WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED, to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, AND FOR THESE ENDS to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interests, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of peoples … (United Nations, 1945. Preamble) Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity of and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, … Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge, Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every

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individual and every organ of society, keeping this declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (United Nations, 1948. Preamble; Art. 1) Article 1. (1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. (2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world. (3) The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary as directly applicable by law. [Article 2: Personal freedoms. Article 3: Equality before the law. Article 4: Freedom of faith, conscience, and creed. Article 5: Freedom of expression. Article 6: Marriage and family. Article 7: School education. Article 8: Freedom of assembly. Article 9: Freedom of association. Article 10: Privacy of correspondence … Article 11: Freedom of movement. Article 12: Occupational freedom; prohibition of forced labor. Article 12a: Compulsory military or alternative service. Article 13: Inviolability of the home … .] (Federal Republic of Germany, 1998) Chapter 1. Founding provisions. Article 1. The Republic of South Africa is one, sovereign, democratic state founded on the following values: a. Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. b. Non-racialism and non-sexism. c. Supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law. d. Universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multiparty system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness. Chapter 2. Bill of Rights. Article 7: (1) This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. (2) The state must respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights. [Article 9: Equality.] Article 10: Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected. [Article 11: Life. Article 12: Freedom and security of the person. Article 13: Slavery, servitude and forced labour. Article 13. Privacy. Article 15: Freedom of

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religion, belief and opinion. Article 16: Freedom of expression. Article 17: Assembly, demonstration, picket, and petition. Article 17: Freedom of association. Article 22: Freedom of trade, occupation and profession. Article 23: Labour relations. Article 24: Environment. Article 25: Property. Article 26: Housing … .] The right to human dignity stands in the way of the productive power of science and technology. However, it is not so easy to determine what the value of human dignity means, and even more difficult, how to interpret the right to dignity. When exactly will technicized scientific and technological practice violate the value of human dignity, or transgress the constitutional protection of human dignity? The constitutions do not define “dignity,” neither do they spell out the relationship between the right to dignity and other basic rights. Article 12 of the Basic Law of Germany protects the right to work under conditions of freedom; Articles 13 and 22 of the South African constitution provide for similar rights. There are authors who consider labour under such conditions as part of dignity, and if one considers the importance of work in a capitalist society, then the question comes up whether decent work is part of dignity. Article 25 of the South African constitution protects property rights. In Locke a link is constructed between the essence of the human being, work, and property – and via this to human dignity.2 Locke approaches the human being fully in terms of the old conception of “natural law” as rational action and freedom, which (for him) stipulates that one human being does not have the right to simply “use” another human being3 – this is a religiously based idea (being created as equals) which became quite influential in the sense that it gave a severe blow to the doctrine of a human hierarchy still found in the humanist Pico della Mirandola. I would imagine that when Locke says that something of our humanity goes via our bodies into our work, and this validates that parts of the objective world have to be respected as our “property,” then it implies a humanising of property, and creates a distance for others in relationship to what is “mine.” Locke anticipates Kant’s norm that no rational being ought to be used merely as an instrument by another rational being. Kant showed a kinship with the Stoic distinction between having a price (things) and having dignity (human beings). And we know that Marx, following (and going further than) Locke in linking labour as property to what a human being is, tried to show that in capitalism the human being is both merely an instrument (for another’s profit) and acquired a price (a transgression of the Stoic-Kantian norm), while losing its essence as a producing

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worker in this process.4 The Neo-Marxists’ criticism of “reification” (transforming human beings into “things”) and “commodification” (a totalitarian trans-functioning of everything from scientific knowledge to the three tenors) into something marketable, is thus in some sense part of an ancient vocabulary devised to keep human life “human,” and to recover “humanness” wherever it has gone lost. Could this be an indication of an implicit conceptual network in the Western mind, and sustained to some extent in the liberal tradition, which may help to understand “dignity” in the constitutions? Returning to our theme: what exactly are Skinner and Bayertz breaking down? What do we stand to lose if we accept their argument? But since there are no definitions, and if human dignity in these documents overlaps with other rights, the legislators and the constitutional lawyers and judges will have to “philosophize” in order to give expression to human dignity in legislation, legal arguments and judgments. Secondly, to make it more complicated, the initially recognised human rights have produced offspring. And thirdly the philosophical meaning of human dignity has changed together with changing views of the human “essence,” in two ways: firstly “rationality” is no more generally accepted as the defining and normative characteristic of the human being, and secondly, insofar as “rationality” is still accepted as such, there are now a variety of views of “rationality.” Firstly we have an indication of the implications of the offspring of human rights for human dignity. The South African constitution, for example, now protects environmental rights, Article 24 stipulates that: Everyone has the right a. to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being; and b. to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that i. prevent pollution and ecological degradation; ii. promote conservation; and iii. secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development. (Republic of South Africa, 2001)

Of course the Western legal community has its own well-established and legitimate hermeneutic tradition. This, for example, functions in terms of very old legal traditions (Roman law; a very long British legal tradition; the Roman-Dutch legal tradition), and uses concepts related to the philosophical tradition about human dignity (such as “the reasonable person”), and the norm of “precedent” (previous decisions by especially the higher courts). But human dignity made its appearance in legal documents only after the Second

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World War, so a long tradition of precedent in this regard does not yet exist. The environmental rights clause above gives the citizens a right to an environment which is not harmful to their “well-being,” and a right to protection of the environment for future generations, through “reasonable measures” which, among others, are aimed at securing ecologically sustainable development both in an economic and a social sense. “Well-being” does occur in human dignity literature as at least a form of dignity (cf. for example Van der Kooy discussed below). Thus the very new right to a protected environment may imply an extension of the right to dignity. This is strengthened by the inclusion of different kinds of sustainability (use of resources and even social development) in the right to a protected environment. One should not forget that many (if not all) present-day environmental problems have their bases precisely in human attempts to control the environment by technical and/or scientific means – we have been in the tension of mastery of and being mastered by nature (to be discussed below) for quite some time now. Thus inherent in this roundabout defense of dignity is the question of technical control of the human being via technical control of the environment – which is exactly the problem which faces us from the other side in Bayertz and Skinner. It is clear that without moving from our intuition of dignity to the age-old philosophical vocabulary network about it, and back to the expansion of rights, the legal community cannot cope with the concept of human dignity. It may be argued that in this case we may not lose much if we abandon the protection of human dignity altogether and remain with the protection of the other rights. This may be a viable option. But we do have to note when the specific protection of human dignity was introduced. In the United Nations documents it appears at its founding, after the “scourge” of two world wars and the “barbarous” acts of contempt for human rights by tyrannical regimes (Nazism, Fascism). In the German constitution it appears under the same circumstances; in the South African constitution after apartheid. Those who insisted on protection of human dignity at least had in mind that human beings ought to be treated in certain ways and specifically not in other ways, and therefore introduced a normative philosophical concept to carry this ideal into documents which are primarily “legal” in nature. This recognition of human dignity thus aims at the protection of the dignity of all human individuals, and is associated in some documents with “the brotherhood of all human beings.” In this respect it uproots the discriminatory philosophical views which flourished in certain contexts before the war. The belief in progress, after Turgot at least, took the form of a comparative

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structural analysis: present differences among nations were supposed to demonstrate the structural course of history and the rate differences in development (“all the gradations from barbarism to refinement”) – the “primitives” differ from the “civilised” in the sense that they have developed more slowly from the initial state where all human beings started, but all go through the same course in the same developmental order (Turgot 1973: 42). This was the basis of the Verwoerdian philosophy of “separate development” (cf. Venter 1999b). This elitism of progress was also built into the evolutionary organismic spiritualist views which dominated nationalist thinking before the War. The pantheist elitism of Fichte, Nietzsche’s evolutionist spiritualism, and theosophic spiritualism via the interpretation of Lanz (cf. Tresmontant 1991: 268–273; 460–467), have all had their influence on elitist thinking in Hitler’s Germany. In some philosophies (supposedly superhuman) elites, rooted in the “good soil,” were elevated above the (supposedly subhuman) “desert people” (such as the Jews). Heidegger’s own thought came near to this (cf. Venter 1997: 45ff). The belief that everything is divine naturally goes over into: “but some (the human beings) are more divine than others (the brutes).” Then “all human beings are divine” will easily come to imply that “some are more divine than others.” In the case of a collectivist approach, one lands up at aristocracy and leadership cults; in the case of individualism, the spiritual individual feels himself/herself elevated above the ordinary human beings, and has trouble sustaining relationships. (It remains stuck in a hierarchical ontology similar to the humanism of Pico della Mirandola; cf. Venter 2000: 127ff.) The protection of human dignity is an attempt to prevent elite intellectuals from making themselves “more equal than others.” Rationality In the philosophical context some shifts in the meaning of human dignity occurred together with shifts in the way some thinkers view the human being. This is clearly visible when we highlight this: B. F. Skinner’s denial of human dignity is directly linked to his denial that humankind has any identity above “nature.” In other words human subjectivity is denied, and the human being objectified or reified. Traditionally “human dignity” was closely associated with “rationality” – thus we find it in Cicero, Anselm of Canterbury, and Kant (cf. Venter 2000: 113ff.). In Kant it is associated with the status of autonomous rational freedom – not being used merely as an instrument by a fellow rational creature. In denying autonomous rational

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freedom, as Skinner clearly does, the Kantian form of dignity is logically also denied. Skinner belongs to the twentieth century – after Darwin the identity of the human being as a being in contrast to “nature” (as we can find it in the “reason” versus “nature” dialectic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), became more difficult to sustain, and therefore its special dignity (and the inviolability of human life) came under question. In the twentieth century, therefore, the close association between human dignity and rationality was lost (except for example in some Roman Catholic conceptions5). Firstly “rationality” had acquired different meanings, which made it difficult to determine what human dignity exactly is, at least for those thinkers who still insist on the connection between dignity and rationality. A few definitions and paraphrases will show the problem: (1) “Rationality” is variously defined and used even though there is a fairly constant and old tradition surrounding its meaning. The rational is associated with mind as a realm over against matter. But within mind, sense is taken as different from reason. Genuine knowledge, even when founded in sense experience, is authentically cognitive only because it is rational. Rationality is conceived to be autonomous, subject to no criteria except its own. Usually all of reality is taken to be subject to these criteria and there are no higher principles to which anything can be subject. Rationality is always logical and is the foundation of truth and reliability in the world. The universe is itself rational as well, so that rational knowledge is objective. Science is the most perfect type of rational knowledge. (Hart 1977: 1) (2) Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century, however, though accepting a strictly logical process as the rational process, basically viewed rationality as the discovery of norms (and not, as Hart has it for Modern rationality, the imposition of norms): “Finally, for the rational nature, to be rational is nothing but to distinguish the just from the not-just, the true from the not-true, the good from the not-good, the better from the less good” (Anselmus Canturiensis: Monologion 68). “For the rational nature is rational exactly to distinguish between just and unjust, between good and evil, and between more good and less good. Otherwise it would have been created as a rational being in vain. But God did not make it rational in vain. For this reason it has undoubtedly been created rational for this specific purpose” (Anselmus Cantuariensis: Cur Deus homo? II: 1). (3) Descartes, generally the father of modern rationalism, remained in the vicinity of Anselm: In the Discourse on method Descartes characterises

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“common sense or reason” as the “ability to judge well and to distinguish the true from the false” (HR, I: 79). Insofar as this is done well, it also includes the distinguishing of the good from the bad, “for our will tends to only strive for or avoid something to the measure that our understanding presents it to it [our will] as good or bad” (HR, 1: 98). Of course the will can be in error when it acts in an area in which the understanding has not yet arrived at clear and distinct principles (Principles of Philosopy 35; HR, 1: 233). But when something good (including God) is presented to us, then our will accepts it and we love that on the basis of this presentation (Passions of the soul 83; HR, I: 368). (Reason’s full imposition of its own criteria, referred to by Hart above, was the contribution of Kant.) (4) Karl Jaspers, the famous existentialist thinker, says that reason is eternally in movement. It is critical towards every position it reaches, is an opponent of all fixed ideas, it is a will to unity which is always in search of the One and the alien (Jaspers 1952: 38ff). (5) Jarvie and Agassi (1970: 172; 191), as anthropologists in reaction against positivism’s negative evaluation of the non-scientific (so-called “primitive”) cultures, view rationality as goal-directed action on the basis of an assumption that the said action is effective. Any action – even magical rituals – can then be said to be rational insofar as it is based on the assumption of effectivity. The assumption, however, can only be viewed as rational if it originated in the context of a self-critical tradition. Winch goes somewhat further in his quarrel with scientistic parochialism: he keeps only the normative (and relinquishes the logical side) of Anselm’s and Descartes’ views by reducing rationality to conformity to norms. And since every cultural group has its own norms, every culture therefore has its own rationality, which, of course, may include rituals which do not conform to the rationality criteria of Western science (Winch 1970: 99–100). (6) In the context of practical economic behaviour the effectivity definition of rationality re-appears: “a man is considered rational when: (a) he pursues ends that are mutually coherent, and (b) he employs means that are appropriate to the ends pursued” (Allais in Godelier 1972: 12). According to Lange, rationality really occurs only in the capitalist enterpreneurial system of production (Godelier 1972: 17): “How did the rationality principle first appear in history? The development of commodity and money relations made it necessary to seek maximum gain, and so led to bookkeeping, to economic calculations. ‘Gainful activity becomes an activity based on reasoning, a rational activity.’

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Finally one could concretise this into the idea that rationality is simply working for maximum gain with minimum input (whether one is buyer, seller, producer, or worker). Latouche (1995: 25) draws attention to the fact that since culture influences both decisions about buying and selling, and approaches to business management, these decisions may lead to economic actions which do not conform to the (Western) norm of maximisation: “economics stumbles against the norm of rationality: ‘Is it truly rational to be rational?’ ” (7) Feyerabend (1979: 27–8), the anarchist of philosophy of science, simply overturns the whole rationality tradition: “It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naïve a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving fror intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, ‘objectivity,’ ‘truth,’ it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: Anything goes.” We have no place here to debate the pros and cons of these descriptions of rationality. Hart’s description is a near explication of “high rationalism” – such as those of Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schleiermacher, von Humboldt, the early Husserl, and others. Kant gave us a well-known link between dignity and rationality in his rejection of the easy instrumentalising of the autonomous rational being: clearly such instrumentalising would be a denial of autonomy. Anselm, and in a more limited sense Descartes, accepts a heteronomy – a goodness or norm above reason – and thus allows for a dignity conception in which rational understanding and living-out of “the good” (and in some way finding meaning above reason), makes sense. But when we accept a vague goal-directedness as rational, then clearly what was called “superstition” or “primitive” in the heyday of rationalism, may now become part of dignified behaviour. And if we do identify rationality with capitalist effectivity (maximisation of self-interest) then one could possibly draw the nasty consequence that the most selfish person is also the most dignified. The irrationalist dynamics of Jaspers’ and Feyerabend’s views of rationality may, however, strengthen us in posing the question: does rationality really make sense as a basis for human dignity? Apart from the fact that “rationality” itself is in crisis, and that it is no more considered the distinguishing characteristic of the human being by

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many thinkers, other definitions of “human dignity” have been proposed during the twentieth century. Thus dignity now came to mean the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the state as the dignifying institution (Mussolini), enjoyment (hedonism), brotherhood (United Nations, Gabriel Marcel), or a right connected with other rights (German and South African constitutions), etc. Although it was in the twentieth century when human dignity became a basic norm and protected right, this was also the age in which more and more confusion about the meaning of dignity originated. The question now is whether technicism (the all-encompassing solving of problems through technology and techniques of all kinds) does not make it impossible for human socio-cultural adjustment to the new environment to take place (Laszlo), and thus alienates humankind from its environment, to such an extent that the “self” is almost no more sustainable in such an environment. Such an alienation will make dignified living impossible in most senses of the word. The future-shocked technological society which overwhelms traditional societies in processes of modernisation, contributes to a loss of the symbols and instruments which make effective operation in the new culture possible, and therefore to a loss of status (dignity). In spite of the relativising of the uniqueness of human life in the past century, I believe the confusion about dignity opens up a wider understanding of dignity than the traditional one-sided condensation into rationality. Human life differs in many more respects from subhuman life than only in “rationality.” Dignity from the side of the subject is located, intuitively speaking, in meaningful life, which includes having a meaningful occupation (not necessarily a job), having meaningful relationships and an accepted status in society (Marcel’s “brotherhood”; cf. Marcel 1963), identification with the cultural environment, and somehow being in touch with “nature.” This also depends on a dignifying environment (Laszlo’s “bio-cultural adjustment”; Laszlo, 1970) – an environment in which the individual is allowed enough power to experience the meaningful life. A serious question today is in how far the individual is empowered to operate in the new environment. What constitutes a “human life” in contradistinction from subhuman life in a culture which (it believes) (re)makes “nature”? And if some of those aspects of the original uniqueness of human life are no more realisable, does this not constitute alienation and a loss of dignity? This puts Bayertz’s position that there is no dignity, since there is no subjectivity, back on the agenda, and with it the question: why do we find resistance against human dignity from scientists, while the “people” seem to accept this “faith” (as the United Nations calls it) without much question?

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S C I E N C E , C O N T RO L A N D H U M A N K I N D : W H O C O N T RO L S W H O M ?

Latour summarizes what he calls the “constitution of modernity” in three guarantees: (1) Although we construct nature (in the laboratory), it is as though we do not construct it. (2) Although we do not construct society, it is as though we do construct it. (3) Nature and society must remain absolutely distinct; the work of purification (handling the two as different entities) must remain absolutely distinct from the work of mediation (building cultural bridges between the two). Contrasting the seventeenth-century authors, Hobbes and Boyle, Latour situates subject (society) and object (nature) at two extremes. They are, however, mediated by cultural power, giving us the hybrids that are in between (“quasi-objects”), as constructed in the laboratory. The universality of the “laws of Boyle” is the universality of the network of scientific practice: as Boyle’s apparatus is replicated elsewhere universality grows (cf. Latour 1994: 39–49). What Latour aims at is that modernity has been saying one thing, but has been practicing another. Natural science has been taken to be objective and universally valid: nature had to speak for itself and nature had to be explicable by nature alone. But we know that nature does not speak at all – the pretended speech of nature has been heard only through technical “hearing aids” and linked up with society in terms of interests. Control Through a Priori Laws of Nature – Descartes Descartes shifted the conception of “natural law” from the medieval focus on the human essence and behaviour, to that of axioms for the behaviour of extended mechanical bodies, and by the same token changed the meaning of “nature.” Simultaneously he enthroned “reason,” for these laws (of nature) were supposed to be innate axioms: although we observe them in nature, all true knowledge of them is the product of deductive reason proceeding from innate ideas.6 Descartes believed that knowledge of these laws could help us obey the law to promote the general good of mankind. By knowing the power of the elements and the heavenly bodies to the same degree that we know the crafts of artisans, we could “… apply them in the same way to all the uses to which we are adapted, and thus render ourselves lords and possessors of nature” (Discourse on method VI, 1969: 49). In other words, the alienation between the thinking subject and “nature” is also one of overpowering – the scientism of Descartes is the beginning of the elevation of humankind above nature (note the words “lord” and “possessor”). It is a power relationship. Descartes elevated “reason” above “mechanical”

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bodiliness, and one could surmise that this was the start of the reductionist idea of nature as the “subrational.”7 The pretended objective, universal validity is immediately subverted by the interests of lordship. Or, stated otherwise: Descartes’ views imply that since the laws of nature are known a priori, reason itself is situated above nature in its totality – it is the watchtower from where we can have knowledge of the totality. The interests of lordship, possession and use are supposed not to compromise the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge. Experimental science has to be consulted in order to determine how the abstractly deduced principles apply to nature, for there are many possibilities (Discourse on method VI, 1969: 51). But since Descartes approached the matter from the deductivist side, he did not recognize the selectivity of science due to the interests at play. He asked no questions about the implications of the use of the telescope by Galilei, which brought an important change in the way science was done – technology became an inherent part of the scientific enterprise. But the telescope only changed observation (apparently improving it) without changing the object. Soon after this Robert Boyle introduced the air pump, which was a means of studying an object by changing it. Boyle insisted on the mechanical character of “nature,”8 and consciously rejected any conception which made nature into a divine force or the “essence” of things. On the one hand he thus demystified “nature,” but on the other he also reduced it to pure corpuscularity. But did he clearly see the difference between the quasi-object his air pump produced and “nature” itself? Thus rationalist science presented itself as neutral, objective, universal. It assumed that reason had enough distance from nature in order to produce an overview of nature in its totality, as well as being able to fit the details into the total picture in a fully explanatory way. The subject of reason, however, the human being, was inside the cosmos, and at least partially dependent upon “nature” – the latter as bodiliness and as environment. This made for an uncomfortable understanding of the relationship between “reason” and “nature”: on the one hand reason was supposed to be above nature, and on the other it was directly related to nature or even a product of nature. Reason was lifted out of its medieval position as part of “nature” and became the new “supernatural” – a supernatural in the natural (the latter was conceived of as the subrational). Natural Law and Human Interest – Quesnay Is the human interest the universal, objective interest? Well, if and only if the individual human interest can be constructed as somehow identical with the

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reasonable. One attempt, very significant in its expressiveness and probable influence, came from Quesnay, the leader of the physiocratic school in eighteenth-century economics. We must note here that “physiocrat” literally means “nature governs.” “Nature,” for them, meant especially agriculture as the producer of surplus, and therefore of sustainability and growth in the economy. But agriculture is agri-culture, thus in its very name this tradition carried the tension between human-in-nature and human-above-nature, and gave it expression in its conception of “natural law.” Quesnay links the two meanings of “natural law” as (1) the “rational law of freedom” (Locke)9 and (2) the rule system for physical entities (Descartes and Boyle) by including each in the definition of the other: [A] Natural laws are either physical or moral. [1] One understands here by physical law the regulated course of every physical event which is evidently the most advantageous for humankind. [2] One understands here by moral law the rule for every human action conforming to the physical order which is evidently the most advantageous for humankind. [B] These laws form the ensemble of what is called “natural law” (Quesnay 1965a: 374–5). (For an extensive discussion of development of “natural law,” cf. Venter 2001b.)

The double-sided “constitution” of Modernity (as Latour calls it) is visible here: the “purified” positions of the “subjective” and the “natural” vis-à-vis one another, and the mediation via (in this case) selectivity. On the one hand the mediation is peculiarly humanistic, with the physical laws limited to those regularities which are to the advantage of humankind. In fact, in a footnote Quesnay recognises that that natural order which is to the greatest advantage of humankind may not be to the same advantage of other animals, but the Author of nature, he says, has given humankind the natural right by virtue of intelligence to make his part the best possible. On the other hand it tends in the direction of a kind of “naturalism,” for it defines the natural laws for morality as conforming to the physical order. The conception appears to be dialectical – a tension between “the advantage of humanity” and “conforming to the physical order.” On the one hand natural law is framed into human advantage, and on the other hand subjection to the natural order is prescribed. Freedom, however, remains real: the soul is not simply determined by extrinsic and physical causes, but also by a co-operation of operations which are peculiar to it, and which changes the whole mechanism of physical impulses that precedes the decision making (1965b: 752).10 More importantly, as soon as the role of nature in human life is highlighted, the human being’s status is somewhat reduced. Instead of the Cartesian total knowledge, a selection based upon the “advantage” criterion is introduced. One ought to remember that the physiocrats also defended the

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free market principle as part of nature’s governance (pleading for reduction of tax and tolls and free trade in especially agricultural products). The human rational moral autonomy over nature is now determined by the interest of the human collective with regard to the physical environment. It is a collective interest, since it is determined by enlightened rational society. The best possible government is based upon rationally evident natural laws, which are reconstructed as positive laws promoting the most advantageous order. (In this case “enlightened government” remains a monarchy; in Rousseau it is also the collective which determines the interests, but then in a more democratic form; cf. Quesnay 1965a: 376; 1965b: 754; Venter 1996: 184ff.) Thus the “lording over nature” of Descartes lost some of its totalitarian rationalism in Quesnay. This recognition also shows that the tradition of rational power is neither neutral (or objective) nor simply universal.

Nature’s Human Beings and Supernatural Designing Scientists – Kant After Quesnay the opposition between support for rational freedom and domination, over against being controlled by nature, became more pronounced. Although Turgot still defended liberty, he was looking at human history as a necessary linear progress driven by the subrational forces (war, competition, passion) in the human being (with reason at the teleological end). And from a physiocratic point of view he reconstructed society in terms of different classes as determined by the physical environment. He clearly indicated that even the analysis of morals was to be done in terms of the methods of natural sciences (cf. Turgot 1973: 41; 98). But it is Kant who most definitely expressed the tension, looking on the one hand at the human being in terms of subjection to “nature,” while siding in an explicit way with the idea of rational domination. Kant distinguishes the “rational” from “nature” as the subrational. The individual human being, or the nation, may be striving for a chosen goal, but in terms of the totality their actions take place subject to natural law, following the goal of “nature” as if they are on “leading strings” (an expression derived from Turgot). 11 The ordinary individuals (or nations) do not know nature’s goal – but the formidable Kant does know it: It does not matter how we metaphysically conceive of the freedom of the human will: the appearances thereof, namely the actions of man, are determined under the force of natural law, precisely like every other natural event. … Individual people, and even whole nations, do not often think about the fact that they, while striving … each for his own goal, unconsciously follow the goal of nature (which is not known to them) as if they are on leading strings, and are involved in the

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promotion of that which, if it were known to them, would not have much significance for them. … It has been determined that all natural abilities of a creature will one day develop themselves fully and effectively. In man, as the only rational creature on earth, the special rational abilities need only develop fully in the species, not in the individual. (Kant 1975a: 33; 35)

Kant actually diminishes his own view of human dignity more than is initially clear – he represents the individual human being naturalistically as dispensable in the light of “nature’s” aim with the species. While one human being is not supposed to use another merely as an instrument, “nature” surely has the power and the right to sacrifice the individuals. But “nature” works in and through individuals, with other individuals, conflict being its major mechanism (cf. Venter 1992: 194) – thus Kant subverts his own defence of human dignity by delivering the individual to the vicissitudes of human natural brutality on the way to progress. And the rational scientist, supposedly in control of nature – does he/she then have any say over “natural” human beings? Gabriel Marcel would much later argue for the opposite: as soon as the insignificance of the individual is declared, then the way is open for all tyrannies (Marcel 1963: 134–5). Kant’s pretence is that he is able to transcend the situation of ordinary mortals and provide an overview of the totality of natural history. He sees progress to full perfection of the “natural” abilities. For human beings, however, this means a transcendence in the immanence: the species as a totality will develop those natural abilities which support rational enlightenment. Reason emerges on the basis of nature, transcends nature – and provides, at least for the “enlightened” (such as Kant himself) the watchtower from where origin and telos can be overseen and analytically linked. But Kant goes much further – scientific reason in fact imposes the law onto “nature” (this time probably reduced to a “phenomenon”): When Galilei had the ball, with a weight which he himself had chosen, roll down the incline, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he himself had equated in advance to a known column of water, or when Stahl changed metal into calx and the latter back into metal … a light went up for the investigators of nature. They understood that reason only understands that which it presents according to its own design: that it anticipates, with the help of principles, according to fixed laws, its own judgements, and has to force nature to answer its questions, and not to allow itself simply to be dragged along on a leading string; for otherwise observations, which have been made accidentally and without a plan designed in advance, will not cohere in a necessary law. For the latter is what reason searches for and needs. Reason must with its principles, according to which alone similar appearances can be valid as laws, in one hand, and with the experiment, which it designed in conformity with them, in the other, go to nature, in order to be taught by it, but not in the quality of a pupil, who accepts being told everything, but in the quality of an appointed judge, who forces the witnesses to answer the questions which he puts before them. (1975b: 23–4)

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The ordinary human being is “on a leading string”; the scientist is not supposed to be dragged along “on a leading string.” The scientist does not only observe from the supernatural position; from there he is able to impose his will onto nature. As Heidegger said: the omnipotent scientist sets the stage, directs the play, and plays the lead role (Heidegger 1938: 85–87). But how is this possible? Kant finds his solution in Descartes in the sense that the observations can be webbed into laws in conformity with a priori principles, and with the help of experiments constructed in accordance with these, “dumb” nature is made to “speak.” But Kant sensed something important about modern science: the experiment is an engineering product – it is planned, designed, with a specific aim in mind. Universality is attained in terms of the common structure of all minds (the a priori forms and categories which make the synthesis of empirical fragments and rational structures possible). The technization of science is considered a necessity: laws can only be found in terms of a principled plan. Kant goes much further than Quesnay. The latter understood physical natural laws as selected in terms of advantage for humankind. For sure neutrality then became only a pretence, since human advantage is given priority above the possible disadvantage of the rest of creation. But in Kant’s understanding scientific knowing is a process of making; of forcing nature into a straightjacket designed by reason. The dignity of reason is situated in alienation from and mastery of nature – a “supernatural” emerges from the “natural.” It is not exactly clear what the long-term intention of the engineering may have been for Kant. But in terms of the real dignity of the human being (according to the categorical imperative of practical reason), the non-rational may have a price and may be used merely as an instrument.12 Given that the fully rational finds its fulfilment teleologically (or even eschatologically) in the species, the question about the relationship between the already enlightened and the not-yet-enlightened returns. For Kant viewed the early human being, under the governance of “nature,” as instinctual and brute (1975a: 26). 13 This (apparently) puts those human beings who are (seen as) still in the initial state of nature in the position of those creatures which can be instrumentalised. One wonders about Kant’s insistence on autonomy (using one’s own reason without the help of another) in the essay, What is enlightenment? (1975d) – in how far can persons who are not enlightened claim dignity? This poses a specific question: in how far may the “natural” side of the human being be objectified for engineering?

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All Animals are Equal, but Scientists are More Equal Than Others – Positivism and Darwinism In the positivist tradition the engineering of society and the individual took root, for in that tradition the human being is viewed purely in terms of its natural substrate, especially after the advent of evolutionism. But the “natural” substrate had already become explanatory of social and even moral behaviour even earlier. This was bound up with the elitism necessarily connected with modern rationalism. As we have seen above, Kant pretends to know the totality of “nature’s” history-making, while the ordinary individuals are not conscious of it (they are caught inside history). The problem of the rationalists was that very few (if any) persons live rationally. There were only two possibilities to defend rationalism here: (1) One could say that universal rationality is the outcome of a teleologically determined natural process, in which the “natural” functions serve the goal. Hume, for example, believed that the majority live morally on the basis of the sentiments; Adam Smith ascribed competitive progress to the role of the instincts and the sentiments; according to Turgot progress is driven by the passions and competition. (2) The alternative would be to identify the “natural” inclinations of the individuals with reason itself, and to characterise the “natural” processes as the expression of a hidden rationality, such as we find in Fichte and especially Hegel. But if all opinions, instincts, observations, events and even deviations from the normal, are somehow the “slyness of reason” (as Hegel called it), then philosophical thinking (metaphysical speculation) becomes no more than a justification of the status-quo-inprogress. (One is not surprised to hear Marx react that the issue is not how to interpret the world, but how to change it.) Thus the first alternative appears the more attractive, but from Marx’s perspective it contains its own problem: if “nature” determines human life, how is the change demanded by Marx possible? Let us first look at how the first alternative was adopted in its full consequences. Interestingly, in nineteenth-century realist literature the theme of objective science combined with a Darwinian sense of nature-in-control, the dignity of the human being disappeared in a proto-Freudian sense of determination by the subrational. In 1850 already Tennyson wrote a poem in which he struggled with nature’s cruel elimination of many individuals for the sake of the species (note: this was nine years before the publication of

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Darwin’s The Origin of species) – the competition motive which served in Turgot, Smith and Kant as the motor of human progress had already been accepted as part of “nature”:14 Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems So careless of the single life; That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear … (Quoted in Larkin 1977: 126)

Tennyson apparently did not yet see competition as the mechanism of improvement in life forms; he was simply stuck in a dialectic between God’s goodness and “nature’s” cruelty. Soon after, however, the French author, Zola, was supposed to have said: “The personalities of our dramatis personae are determined by the genital organs. It’s Darwin! That is what literature is!” This was a somewhat strong way of putting it. It is known that Ibsen and Chekov had read Darwin’s Origin of species (1859) quite early, and it influenced their understanding of the human being. In The Duel Chekov presents the idea of natural selection in the extreme form in which his friend Vladimir Wagner, a zoologist, developed it (cf. Larkin 1977: 127). Chekov tended to present his comedy characters, such as in the Seagull, as persons bound to their external circumstances as well as their internal passions. Almost every character in the Seagull is totally caught up in his or her passion for somebody, a love not responded to. The story is played out over two years, and at the end every person is still victim of the hopeless love that was there from the beginning. Interestingly, the doctor in the story is elevated above the difficulties and circumstances of the other characters. Apart from the fact that Chekov was himself a trained physician, in the nineteenth century the doctor often represented the power of science. Furthermore, Chekov presents the play as a comedy. Directors seem to find it very difficult to stage it as a comedy; one often has the impression that they read the story, with all the failures in love, finance and status, as a tragedy. If staged as a comedy, the characters will seem ridiculous, and one would be laughing at pain and incapacity to change or let go of an unbearable situation. Interpreted as a comedy, the characters have no dignity, for they are powerless against their own drives and passions which force them into doing stupid things.

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Moreover, in a letter to a friend Chekov once wrote that in his plays he attempted to present reality as scientifically objectively as possible. He complained that it was not possible to represent a poison murder totally realistically – cynically stated, it would cost too many actors! And, of course, the dramatic time can also not be presented realistically (the Seagull’s duration is two years). Importantly, however, the very attempt to be realistic or objective in a scientific sense, meant that the characters are presented as subject to fixed patterns which they themselves cannot change; they do not have the dignity of free decision as Kant would have it. Thus quite some time before Freud had fully developed the implications of Darwinism for the human personality, Chekov (together with Balzac and Ibsen), had drawn the consequences of it. In Chekov’s case humour amounted to the ridicule of compulsive behaviour. Chekov himself was strongly involved in reform programmes for the poor. How to rationalise such activity? Is the scientist (the doctor) elevated above natural law and the limitations of the natural situation? There is a deep irony in denying the dignity of free decision making: one cannot keep anybody responsible for how he/she treats another human being. After the horrors of the Nazi era, the German Federal Republic constitutionally protected “human dignity” as inviolable and committed all state power to the respect and protection of it (Art. 1[1]). But Einstein, who was committed to a causal view of all reality, is unable to do the same, in spite of what happened to his fellow Jews. Einstein viewed morality and religion from the causal point of view, allowing the transcendent into the immanent in terms of natural law: The researcher is soaked in the causality of all that happens. The future is for him not less necessary than the past. Morality is for him no divine but a purely human affair. His religiosity is situated in the astounded amazement about the harmony of the natural laws in which such super-eminent reason reveals itself, such that all meaningful human thoughts and ordinations are the nothingness of a shadow compared to that. This feeling is the guiding motive in all his life and striving, in as far as he is able to transcend the slavery of selfish wishes. Undoubtedly this feeling is near-related to that one which filled the religiously directed creative natures of all times (Einstein 1955: 18).

The human being, for Einstein, has no freedom – it “acts not only under external compulsion, but also according to inner necessity.” This, in times of suffering and hardship, has been a comfort to Einstein. In fact, he said, it softens “the easily paralysing feelings of responsibility, and causes us not to take ourselves, and others, too seriously.” This conception of life allows humour its rightful place (cf. Einstein 1955: 7–8). But then, of course, the researcher is also not responsible for his “choices” as a researcher! The researcher, Einstein, was a pacifist, but (on his view) can we keep anybody

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responsible for a militarist approach to research? The Western technical domination of nature and man was born from the belief in progress, which was continuously motorised by the militancy of the conflict mechanism and the Machiavellian belief in the goodness of conflict. The Faith in Science and the Demand for Control – Behaviorism Related to Einstein is the behaviourist tradition, of Watson and Skinner in psychology, and Bloomfield in linguistics. Bloomfield does not hesitate to talk about his “faith” in the scientific worldview. In his case this consists in a rejection of the “mentalist” approach, i.e. any view which ascribes the variability of human conduct to the intervention of a “will,” or a “mind” or a “spirit.” For him mentalism is a remnant of animism, and therefore unscientific. Science can only deal “with events that are accessible in their time and place to any and all observers.” Bloomfield defends the standard positivist avoidance of all “metaphysical” entities. He therefore explains language in terms of stimulus and response; it is a physical interaction between human beings – much like pricking the other with a pin, which is followed by a jump and maybe a swear word (cf. Bloomfield 1950: 32–33). Of course it is almost impossible to make sense of a term like “meaning” using a method like this, for it commits Bloomfield willy-nilly to a materialist ontology (which he implicitly abandons by assuming constancy of meaning) (1950: 144–145). More important for the question of human dignity, is why Bloomfield valued the natural science approach so highly. The answer to this lies in the hidden ideology of power and control which was discussed above (Descartes, Quesnay, Turgot, Kant). Von Hayek (1952: 39ff) has given a vivid analysis of how scientism (including Marxism), sustained the ideology of power in an elitist format, and we have seen the pretence of Kant of understanding the origins and goals of nature in history, while ordinary mortals are supposed not to understand. Bloomfield goes one step further than earlier adherents of scientism. He points to the misuse of the power of science and technology in the wrong hands, and believes that scientific linguistics could open an avenue to control this: The question is how we are to interpret the spread of interest in language. Let me state my interpretation plainly at the outset: I believe that in the near future … linguistics will be one of the main factors of scientific advance, and that in this sector science will then win through to the understanding and control of human conduct. In the domain of physics and biology science has for some time been working with success and has given us great power. In the domain of

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anthropology – that is, in the study of man’s super-biological activities – science has been unsuccessful. In our universe man himself is the one factor of which we have no scientific understanding and over which we have no scientific control. The truth of this contrast and its tragic import appear plainly in the fact that our achievements do us little good, because we cannot understand or control their human consequences. (Bloomfield 1930: 553–4)

In a theory like that of Einstein or Bloomfield it is impossible to keep the individual responsible for things done “wrong.” Nature is controlled by natural science; materialism has fully demystified it. If we humans are on the leading strings of nature, then the only way to send history in the right direction is through the expansion of the natural science method, not only to study, but to control the human being. This implies the reduction of human cultural activities, such as lingual communication, to their physical base. In fact it means treating human interaction as a purely physico-biological process. Thus the human being becomes a natural object for scientific study and technological control. This is exactly the idea of Bayertz in the quote at the top of the article. Ordinary human beings are nothing special – they have no ability for (and therefore no right to) freedom or self-determination. Are they on the level of things with a price, which can be used merely as instruments (to use Kant’s terms)? In fact, says Bloomfield and Skinner, uncontrolled human beings are dangerous, for they abuse the enormous power instruments created by science and technology. So, who should be in control? Science! Again the scientist pretends not to be subject to the same causalities that other human beings are – the ancient Greek pretence that expertise guarantees virtue, is revived. But in a purely physical interactionism “good” and “bad” cannot make sense, and if matters proceed in a direction I (the controlled) do not like, then I have only Einstein’s humour … . Bloomfield’s honesty unmasks B. F. Skinner’s rejection of human subjectivity and dignity. Skinner’s basic argument is very near to that of Bloomfield. We are faced with major problems in the human world, such as disease, famine, nuclear threat, and a population explosion. His faith is in science; he finds it natural that we try to solve these problems with the help of what we do best: “We play from strength, and our strength is science and technology” (1982: 11). According to Skinner the major problem lies in the fact that we limit the technologies we use to biological and physical technology: What we need is a technology of behaviour. We could solve our problems quickly enough if we could adjust the growth of the world’s population as precisely as we adjust the course of a spaceship, or improve agriculture and industry with some of the confidence with which we accelerate high energy particles, or move towards a peaceful world with something like the steady progress

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with which physics has approached absolute zero … . But a behavioural technology comparable in power and precision to physical and biological technology is lacking. And those who do not find the very possibility ridiculous are more likely to be frightened by it than reassured. That is how far we are from “understanding human issues” in the sense in which physics and biology understand their fields, and how far we are from preventing the catastrophe toward which the world seems to be inexorably moving. (1982: 10–11)

One has to note that Skinner expects a catastrophe, in spite, and possibly because, of the use of science and technology. Yet he does not retreat. Bloomfield was very honest when he said that adopting the scientific worldview is a “faith.” The choice for a purely natural scientific view of humankind cannot be defended on natural scientific grounds – there is no experiment that can demonstrate that only an experimental approach to humankind will yield valid knowledge. Skinner puts his trust in science, and like Bloomfield, denies any “metaphysical” side of human life. The reason why we have remained behind on the level of a technology of behaviour, Skinner says, is that behavioural science still tends to link behaviour to “states of mind,” “feelings,” “traits of character,” “human nature.” Physics and biology became successful exactly when they stopped with such an approach.15 The obvious alternative to finding an explanation in the inner human being then, would be to look for one in the environment. How does the environment work, in relation to the human being? At the basis of Skinner’s views we do find a vision of man-in-reality. Skinner recognizes genetic endowment to some extent, but in practice he says very little about it: experimental science finds the causal basis of human behaviour not in autonomous man but in the environment. The environment is responsible “both for the evolution of the species and for the repertoire acquired by each member.” Since early versions of environmentalism did not yet have the insight that the environment works by selection, they allowed much room for the (supposed) autonomous man. In the Skinnerian version of environmentalism, however, the functions formerly ascribed to autonomous man shift to the environment. This leaves some questions: Is man then “abolished”? Certainly not as a species or as an individual achiever. It is the autonomous inner man who is abolished, and that is a step forward. But does man not then become merely a victim or passive observer of what is happening to him? He is indeed controlled by his environment, but we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making. The evolution of a culture is a gigantic exercise in self-control. … A scientific view of man offers exciting possibilities. We have not yet seen what man can make of man. (1982: 210)

Autonomous man is the dignified man of Modern philosophy (Kant). For Skinner, however, dignity is a question of “credit,” and more credit is

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(supposedly) due for what can be seen as originality and as unrequited action. There is an inverse relation between credit and the conspicuousness of the causes of the behaviour (1982: 49–52). Dignified behaviour appears as if not controlled, and we try to conceal any control in order to avoid losing credit, or in an attempt to claim credit not really due to us. We can also maximize credit by exposing ourselves to conditions “which ordinarily generate unworthy behaviour while refraining from acting in unworthy ways,” hiding the causes of our behaviour (1982: 53–4). This pretence of minimal control and absence of causes (dignity) has a deeper foundation – it is rooted in our ignorance: There is something more than good husbandry or the appropriate evaluation of reinforcers in our concern for dignity or worth. We not only praise, commend, approve, or applaud a person, we “admire” him, and the word is close to “marvel at” or “wonder at.” We stand in awe of the inexplicable, and it is therefore not surprising that we are likely to admire behaviour more as we understand it less. And, of course, what we do not understand we attribute to autonomous man. (1982: 56)

This is how “justice” comes into the dignity discourse. Working with a “credit” idea of dignity, those who defend dignity are trying to preserve due credit, which is “justice.” Of course all credit and justice becomes nonsensical if there is no autonomous person who can claim “originality” of action. Using the principle of “natural selection” also for cultural activities, science is able to explain causally in terms of interaction with the environment all the supposedly autonomous actions of humankind: There may seem to be no compensating gain when dignity or worth seems to be lessened by a basic scientific analysis, apart from technological applications. It is in the nature of scientific progress that the functions of autonomous man may be taken over one by one as the role of the environment is better understood. A scientific conception seems demeaning because nothing is eventually left for which autonomous man can take credit. And as for admiration in the sense of wonderment, the behaviour we admire is the behaviour we cannot yet explain. Science naturally seeks a fuller explanation of that behaviour; its goal is the destruction of mystery. The defenders of dignity will protest, but in doing so they postpone an achievement for which, in traditional terms, man would receive the greatest credit and for which he would be most admired. (1982: 61)

Strangely, says Skinner, when science makes human life easier, the defenders of dignity often opt to avoid such advantages (for example painless childbirth), in the believe that struggling contributes to dignity and morality. But according to Skinner it is not our task to encourage moral struggles or to build inner virtues, but rather “to make life less punishing and in doing so to release for more reinforcing activities the time and energy consumed in the avoidance of punishment” (1982: 83). But with these words Skinner slips into normative

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language, and can surely not claim to have remained in the purely “positive” discourse of natural science. In fact, his very striving for a technology of human behaviour is based on a normative point of departure – that it is necessary to solve the “problems” which we are supposed to encounter. Skinner does take account of some of the objections of defenders of freedom and dignity against his technology of behaviour – the concern about an elite deciding what is good for others. Who will decide and to what end? For Skinner they are simply questions of reinforcers: what has become “good” during the evolutionary history of the species, may be used to induce people to behave for the good of others, and one may point to the individual gains which are also involved, such as security, order, health, wealth, or wisdom (1982: 124). The problem is that Skinner neglects the hermeneutic moment in culture (or evolutionary history), for to decide on “the good for others” is a matter of interpretation, which reintroduces the question: who will interpret and according to which principles? In fact, determining that which is supposed to have become “good” during the evolutionary history of the species, is also a matter of interpretation – “environmental selection” is not a clear hermeneutic key. For human beings (culturally) preserve certain things, activities and behavioural patterns, such as “human dignity” and “freedom,” or such “meritorious” practices as caring for those in crisis and for the weak. Are these “selected” practices or not? Could fairly longstanding behaviour, such as doing science and technology, be contributing to our problems, and yet remain “selected”? In the cultural context selection seems complex and ambiguous. In the richer countries there are those who argue that in these practices “natural law” has not been followed, and exactly this produces the threat of the catastrophe that Skinner fears. Skinner’s hidden norm of making life less punishable is, according to them, exactly what we should not be doing if we want to follow natural law and avoid some of the serious crises facing us. What is their proposal? Some of Us are “Nature,” So We Decide – Popular Naturalism The activist organisation FIGU16 in Switzerland believes that problems like war, pollution, the extinction of species, xenophobia, emigration, racism, are all to be blamed on massive overpopulation of the globe. Even though they seem to be spiritualist in their basic philosophy, their view of population development is based on the idea of natural law as automatic control of population through the ecological equilibrium. They believe that the law of nature which controls the population of animals and plants is also valid for

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human beings, but the human being, as a thinking being, transgresses this law.17 They blame especially Christians and Enlightenment humanists for exhibiting a false love for the neighbour, and propose a very strictly enforced, eugenetic programme of birth control (cf. for example FIGU 2001).18 The problem with their argument is that they do not explain how humanity succeeds in transgressing natural law. Like that of Skinner, this natural law approach does not take account of the development of culture in relation to that which was originally given and which we usually call “nature.” According to some of those who use “dignity” discourse, part of the dignity of the human being is its ability to somehow transcend some of the limits imposed by subhuman nature. FIGU supporters tend to blame the underdeveloped world, together with the developers and the do-gooders, for all the ills of the world. They do not account for the possibility that the developed world, in spite of its generally lower population growth and smaller families, may through its technological mastery put more stress on the world as environment, and create more dangers, than the underdeveloped world. TECHNICIZED SCIENCE AND THE SCIENCE TECHNICIAN – A PERSPECTIVE

The Scientist as “Master” When Bayertz seems to support Skinner and suggests that science has in fact absolved “human dignity” and successfully made the human being into an object, he does not seem to reckon enough with the fact that Modernity’s “narrative of mastery” (Owens’ term)19 is thereby expanded over the human “subject,” and that this makes for a totalitarian elitism, which is not less dangerous than that of any other kind of totalitarian elitism which ever claimed control over the human being. In fact, the same approach was inherent in “scientific socialism” (as Marx preferred to call his system) – an experiment which journeyed through Stalinism. We should not, like Bayertz, 20 talk in the abstract about “science” objectifying the human being and including it under “Nature.” “Science” does nothing by itself – it is the SCIENTISTS who are active in projects. Science is not a “person” wandering about and doing things; it is a practice executed by specific human beings. And as was shown above, it is not neutral with regard to interests, and even with regard to foundational beliefs, such as positivism’s own, explicitly confessed, uncritical acceptance of science’s claims to truth and certain rights. What Bayertz

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does, is to hide his own responsibility for what his work as a scientist behind an abstraction. This is only possible on the basis of the belief that human beings are not responsible. He in fact asks us, in the name of his belief in technical control, to give him a blank cheque to do what he wants with the human being. In the process of the technization of science, the scientist has become a maker, and is studying through making – the making of society (Marx and Skinner), and of late the making of individuals (cloning and genetic manipulation). This implies that a certain type of scientist (one who believes in science and who is using the modern reduced idea of “nature”) claims the power of an initiate. Power in the human world is a potentiality which is actualised only when a person takes charge (and ought therefore only to be legitimised subject to certain conditions). The power to objectify, to control and to instrumentalise is not claimed by science; it is claimed by certain scientists. When Bayertz claims that science knows no subjectivity, he seems limited in his understanding of science, for at least the practitioners of certain kinds of participatory research reject the distant observation of human beings, as “objects” similar to chimpanzees in a zoo cage – it is aimed at incorporating the persons studied as co-operating subjects in the research process. But even certain forms of participatory research (such as “scientific socialism,” i.e. present-day orthodox Marxism) are not too shy to put human beings under activist scientific control for the sake of “development.”21 The same attitude of giving the “scientist” the right to restructure society in the name of the oppressed was found among the Marxist student activists of the 1968 student revolution in Europe and the USA. A case in point is Ton Regtien: “The only way to acquire knowledge in society is social praxis, action, the struggle which changes social reality and through this, clarifies it” (Regtien 1969: 9). This means that the activist social scientist gives himself the right to experiment with social reality (human beings) and only through this does he/she come to an understanding of social reality. Given the structure of the process (knowledge through activism), this probably goes further in the domination of human beings by scientific technique than even some behaviourists wanted. For behaviourism is in principle an experimentalist approach, where the experiment precedes the application. Regtien is not far from Lenin and Stalin in the sense that apparently the human “objects” have no choice about participating in his process of coming to know. Note: this goes for the totality of society. The implication is still the dialectic of the “supernatural” scientist in the historical process controlling the “totality.”

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The Knowledge Assembly Line and the Managerial Technician Something more has happened with the process of scientific knowledge. Talking of “knowledge production,” “wholesale” and “retail” has become fashionable22 – knowledge has become subject to the commercial technological process. The human genome project is technologically driven, at a very high speed, with commercial intent. About 30,000 genes have already been patented. But soon after the announcement that the human genetic code had been broken, Time reported a 30 percent error in the results. The process of objectification is therefore done in terms of technological power and structured with a commercial aim, and run like a business. This means science has become subject to a further triple technization: (1) production technique; (2) managerial technique; (3) sales technique – of course in interaction with one another. At the same time the scientific process remains within the nature-culture dialectic and its “quasiobjectification,” strengthening the control motive. This is fast becoming the model for scholarship at the university level. (1) Production technique. In a capital intensive production system, specialised skilled persons are organised around machines and tools. It is possible, in today’s high-tech production systems, that the team members do not all understand how the tools work – most of us do not know how the car we are driving technically works either. This set-up is in a constant tension between stagnation and innovation, and constantly resisting creativity.23 Once the production lines are working, the investor would prefer stagnation, for this would contribute to growing profit, since the cost of recapitalisation will be low, and output of one and the same product is sustainable. But he/she will be forced to innovate by competition – that is, gradual changes in the product will occur, which will be accompanied by gradual changes in the capital (tools adjusted or upgraded). Creativity will be avoided, and competitors may even collude in resisting drastic innovations, for this will demand recapitalisation in the short term (retraining of staff and buying or making new tools). Even governments will support the producers in resisting drastic innovations. Imagine the employment situation if governments pressurise the automobile factories to produce electrically powered vehicles: the oil companies will face bankruptcy, and the automobile factories themselves will have to change all their tools and retrain their staff (and retrench a number); they may face bankruptcy too. It is neither in the interest of the investor, nor of the worker, nor of the government, to force sudden

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changes in this area. In the world of scholarship, this industrial approach is suddenly enforced unto all. This is an approach that can have good results in those areas of research that use expensive high technology instruments in order to collect data, or invent new technologies, in a context where it is sensible to produce “similar” outcomes over a longer period of time (such as the study of outer space). But note that in this case one may have members of the team who do not really know how some of the apparatuses work, and have to trust their specialised colleagues about the validity of the process and its outcomes. When technical elements of the process, into which the managers have no clear insight, are commercialised separately (e.g. by contracting in or out), then of course one may face guildlike secrecy about the particular processes, and you have to trust the results without really understanding their basis.24 This kind of process can be introduced into the university in those areas where research has to be done through a technical team approach. But it will tend to enforce production similarity within a paradigm. Kuhn (1970: viii) probably noted an important difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences – there is “normally” not much debate about foundations and validity of methods in the natural sciences, while such debates are part of the daily discussions of the social scientists.25 Kuhn did not understand the reason for this difference: the thoroughgoing technization of science. The dialectic of stagnation versus innovation from industrial production, driven by the capital-pragmatist success code and presently also by commercialisation, has found its way into science.26 A serious deficiency of this process for university science, is that it suppresses the reflexive critical function; it thrives on “recent” data, and thus loses sight of foundations.27 University managements under the influence of neo-pragmatism have found an easy way to enforce this mode of knowledge production: declining subsidy creates scarcity of resources. But as a general model for university knowledge and skills transfer, this is unsuitable. A socio-cultural anthropologist needs to go into a community, live there, gain their trust, and then write a creatively explanatory book about them (cf. Davies 1999). A historian needs to go and find documents, select the important ones, analyse and compare them. A skilled assistant may be needed to disclose some of the documents. Finally the interpretation is one person’s work.28 Surely teamwork is possible in the human sciences. Some kinds of empirical research, where the same kind of information has to be collected

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repeatedly, can be done by a team over time. And also the one-man kind of research can lead to valuable co-operation within larger groups, but the conceptual networks in the disciplines themselves will always enforce a kind of interactionist mode in which the specialist contributes from the center of the discipline, otherwise he/she becomes artificially marginalised in his/her own discipline. Whatever practical problem a philosopher may be asked to contribute to, if this implies that he/she loses the opportunity to also read Derrida or Lyotard or Plato or Aquinas, then something is wrong with the system. (2) Managerial technique. As the structure of the economy changed from the owner-manager to shareholding from a distance, the professional manager made his/her appearance. The manager of a corporation is the major external face of the organisation, and directly accountable to the shareholders – he/she has to produce shareholder value, and may easily be given a handshake (sometimes golden) if he/she does not succeed. Although the manager does not have any direct insight into processes followed by staff, he has to take responsibility for the outcomes, which, at least as far as the shareholders are concerned, can be summarised very simply in a balance sheet. A manager is somebody who is considered able to focus manpower and instruments on the aims of the organisation. This is the influential Drucker (1955) slogan: the manager sets the objectives and reaches them through other people’s work. Management “science” developed managerial techniques for the control of persons (to achieve management’s aims), or incorporated techniques from other disciplines, such as communication techniques, psychometric testing, and accounting techniques. “Management” is not the same as “authority.” A person with authority is somebody who may not be an expert, but at least has a sense of the norms of fairness, norms of administrative economy, and norms of quality valid for the specific situation. He/she has credibility with the staff. The balance sheet may show an effective manager, which is not necessarily a good manager. An effective manager may be able to use techniques to get his/her staff to reach the goals he/she prescribed while staff members do not show any core commitment, i.e. they do not identify with the organisation’s values and ideals (Kuhn & Geist 1988: 159). One technique may be competition among staff. Another, connected with the competitive code, is constant quality measuring – the omnipresent “audit”29 (capitalist thinkers are apparently finally realising that competition does not automatically guarantee quality). Managers tend to trust apparently “objective”

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(especially quantitative) instruments, because they put their trust in technology based on quantitative science.30 A new fad is team-building through “suffering together” – recently thirteen members of a South African law firm died in a river-rafting team-building exercise; another took his employer to court about the labour practice of forcing him, as an “older” person, during weekends, into dangerous physical exercises which have no kinship with his work, keeping him away from his family and his church. One of the most effective techniques to get persons to submit is the creation or use of “scarcity” through resource allocation (easily done by intransparent budgeting): the scarce has to be “managed” (cf. Achterhuijs 1988: 21ff). And scarcity creates fears (for example for retrenchment), it creates severe (sometimes hostile) competition, and forces staff (without instructing them) to work harder and longer, and increase output, and thus managerial success.31 “Take off their clothes and ride them bare backed” a manager at my university was recently heard to say. The result is economic and managerial totalitarianism, which leaves no aspect of life unaffected. At universities managerialism has probably gone further than in the business sector. Universities have no shareholders, which reduces the public accountability of managers. Universities copy the managerial practices of business, simultaneously introducing the industrial production mode of knowledge generation and the salesmen mode of knowledge distribution.32 This is applied over the total system, regardless of the character of specific disciplines. Very often this simply leads to an eclectic pragmatic fusion of disciplines, and scholarly responsibility is lost. Most seriously, academics, who are fairly subdued idealist workers taking their calling towards their students and their discipline very seriously (how many serious strikes by academic staff are known?), are traumatised and even brutalised by the application of managerial techniques. Worse: in the postmodern, late capitalist context, there are no clear norms for quality, excellence, fair play – “excellence” has become an empty manipulative technical instrument. Intransparent forms of social Darwinism easily become habitual practice. Given financial decline, those that generate money are often automatically the “excellent.” Technical managerial rationalising, for which the very expressive term, “re-engineering,” is in use, and which included “rationalising” by “downsizing” (minimizing especially waged input), has already become controversial: Hammer, who coined the term, came to the conclusion that he was misled by his own engineering background to neglect the human factor in the business enterprise. Those who followed the original re-engineering advice found

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that they brutally got rid of their senior, most loyal, most experienced staff, and thus lost part of their long-term corporate culture (Keegan 1996). Two natural scientists (Lawrence and Locke) have recently argued in Nature that science has become boring, because the “star” scientists and the output-calculating science bureaucrats have killed competing schools, and thus scientific creativity (cf. Highfield 1997: 24). (3) Sales technique. Advertising, licensing, patenting, all have their role to play. Understandably, when a pharmaceutical company has worked for many years under time-limited patent protection, they will tend to protect their investment. And they will surely not advertise the shortcomings of their product as long as they are safe from legal action. The recent debate in South Africa about AIDS medication and the threat of the South African government to fall back onto generic imitations is a case in point. For me the problem is not with the pharmaceutical companies’ insistence on their intellectual property rights, but rather the higher price demanded from the poorer countries where the epidemic rages. When it comes to genetic manipulation, the level of technology is very high, and it is seriously the question whether this can simply be allowed to function according to market principles. Advertising usually does not provide independent information flow to the public – sometimes, exactly through the use of technique, it directs the attention away from the product itself (note the recent debate in Time) (Butler et al. 1999: 32ff). When universities are forced more and more into the same practices, the credibility of the one independent knowledge institution of Western society may be seriously compromised. Universities do advertise themselves in terms of non-core factors, such as sports facilities and direct utilitarian contributions, as well as through “star” scholars, sometimes themselves “made” by the media. In the latter case, the advertisements may be misleading, for “the higher a man’s standing, the less he has to do with the students” (Kerr 1963: 55), who are the primary “clients.” Note that the advertising, as well as the other technical procedures, actually subvert the “complete information” assumption of theoretical economics. The pressure on the lecturer to refocus in the direction of technical research is severe, so the teaching process is transformed into a technical “client management” process over a distance, while the lecturer is faced with increased difficulty to integrate research and teaching. Equally misleading may be the pretence of the universities that some technical programmes will help students to a job,

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because of the uncertainty about market developments. The sports stars are supposed to be students, and contribute to the burden of the teaching staff, who have to help them to pass. A good pass rate leads to higher income and a better “corporate image” (omnipresent these days). “Client management” is here almost contradictory, for the students have to work at a product they have already paid for, and then have to submit to being managed by the producers of the product.33 Ironically it is not the trained accountants and the experienced businessmen who are the driving forces of running universities and the academic process like business enterprises (Davies 1999: 8). “What we exprience in short is the imposition of a rather starry-eyed mythical business-market model current in the 1980s, that captured the minds of remote and unworldly administrators, who urgently desired to make the world more ‘efficient’: public services were their helpless playthings” (Davies 1999: 8). What Davies implies is that a mythical theory of the market society is imposed onto universities by persons who do not know much about the business world (where many other relationships than market ones are functioning). It is the theoreticians in the consultancy businesses who are cashing in on the faith in technical expertise, and the politicians of the Reagan-Thatcher and utilitarian make-up, and university managers believing in the competitiveness code, who are imposing the myth of economism and managerialism onto all sectors of society (cf. further Venter 2001: 287ff). In the American context academic staff may be able to cope with this, given the vast resources available there; elsewhere it easily contributes to fragmentation of person and work. Thus the scientific process has become internally restructured in conformity with observational techniques (Galilei’s telescope), technical objectification by making (Boyle’s air pump), production techniques (hi-tech apparatus in an assembly line), managerial techniques (lining up persons and tools in conformity with imposed objectives), and sales techniques (adjusting the process and the product to the demands of commerce). Yet science in this mode of technization is enormously powerful because of its intransparency, its apparent effectiveness, and especially the Western (world hegemonic) faith in the benevolent powers of science and technology. The analysis of the commercial technization of the academic process, over and above its own inherent technical requirements, gives an indication of the extent of Bayertz’s and Skinner’s demands. On the one hand they argue that no person can really be kept responsible for his/her actions. On the other hand they want to claim the right to apply their techniques to any and every

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human being. They want the right to exert control while claiming non-responsibility in advance, and they are doing so on the basis of a denial of human dignity. They hide what Comte and Bloomfield at least acknowledged – that their claims are not based on established truth, but rather on beliefs, which factually had already cost no less in human lives than some fanatic faiths, except that scientists are easily seen as innocent – but note: There is another, stronger motive which fascinates the good scientist in connection with practical application: namely, to see that it “works,” to see that one has correctly understood Nature. I remember a conversation with Enrico Fermi after the War, a short time before the first Hydrogen Bomb was to be tested in the Pacific. We discussed this proposal, and I suggested that one should perhaps abstain from such a test considering the biological and political consequences. Fermi replied: “But it is such a beautiful experiment … .” This is probably the strongest motive behind the applications of science. The scientist needs confirmation from an impartial judge, from Nature herself, that he has understood her structure. And he wants to see the effect of his effort. (Heisenberg 1975: 55)

Note that this conversation took place “after the War.” Did the “beautiful experiment,” the “practical application,” at Hiroshima and Nagasaki fail to “speak”? Did (always dumb) “nature” not give judgement? Zacharov had to make a difficult choice; to disempower himself from doing these “beautiful experiments” under the control of “scientific socialism” – his dissidence was based in an opposite belief system: The consciousness of personal responsibility was especially strengthened by my role in the development of the most horrible weapon that threatened the existence of humankind – through the knowledge about the possible nature of a war with nuclear missiles; through my experience in the difficult struggle for a prohibition of nuclear tests and through my knowledge of the Soviet system … . (Zacharov 1990: 22)

Many scientists have not grown past claiming the right to power, without accepting the responsibility. As in the case of the behaviourists, the responsibility of the scientist is easily shifted to an abstraction such as “science,” historic “progress,” and even “humanity.” Says Richard Seed, a physicist working on the cloning of human beings: It is quite impossible to stop science, it is quite impossible to stop human progress, it is quite impossible to stop humanity and civilisation … If not me, then someone else [will clone a human being]. If not now, then later. If not here, then elsewhere. A political group can only impede, it cannot stop. (cf. Kyriakidou, 1998: 4)

There is a real danger that such scientific objectification of the human being may become reminiscent of Nazi science. As the supposedly free academic institution, the university was mobilised into an instrument for profit –

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note the significant title of Kerr’s book: The uses of the university – so was also the supposedly neutral activity of science claimed for the sake of profit. When human genes have been patented, then talking about the price of a human being is not unrealistic anymore. But an undisclosed report of the World Bank shows that human beings have had different prices for some time now: It is satisfactory to export waste and to establish polluting industries in the least advanced countries. In conformity with the economic calculus, this conclusion corresponds to the interest, correctly understood, of everybody. In the first place the costs of cleaning is much lower in these countries, if one takes salaries into account. Secondly, the costs of pollution in these countries are also less serious, both because the degree of pollution is less there, and because in case of an accidental catastrophe, the costs due to the loss of human lives is there much lower. This cost is calculated by taking the actual value of the series of income in proportion to the expectancy of active life. As the duration of life is less and the salary much lower, this brings the value of life of an ordinary Indian to a hundredth of that of a British citizen. Thirdly, the demand for a clean environment growing with the level of life is much stronger in the North than in the South. This massive exportation of pollution from the North to the South will create employment and stimulate the development of the poor countries. All taken into account, one would rather prefer to live polluted than to die of malnutrition. (Latouche 1995b: 35)

If we have to follow Einstein’s naturalism, then we are allowed humour in the face of suffering, but we have no argument against Nazi science. Again: it is not science which claims there is no human subjectivity; it is the scientist who has faith in power-science (and limits the human being accordingly to a reduced “natural” side), who claims the right to power over the human being, implicitly also claiming some nature-transcending subjectivity for the scientist while denying co-subjectivity to the studied human beings. The outcome of the Modern humanist tradition is in this case anti-humanist. But this is exactly where the faith in science and technology poses grave dangers. It constitutes a belief in control, but what it succeeds in is only partial control in an abstracted context producing a quasi-object, which, when re-introduced into “nature,” runs out of control. “Nature” does not produce hydrogen bombs. Human beings who profess science, technology, and politics do. “Nature” does sometimes create havoc: volcanoes erupt, hurricanes demolish our homes, tidal waves swallow ships; earthquakes demolish whole cities. Although Modernity has been preaching control for five centuries, not one volcano has been plugged. Human beings can control the size and components and the location where the hydrogen bomb is to be dropped. We can decide to control our own lives a bit by living away from the areas normally hit by “nature.” We can flee from the volcano, but the hydrogen bomb comes to us. And once it is dropped, we have no more

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control over the powers triggered in “nature” than we have over a volcano. The scale and complexity of the technological side of science, and of technology itself, has outgrown the possibilities of control, to a much more dangerous disproportion than that between the performance capabilities and safety technology of contemporary motorcars. In fact we have become powerless against the potential of simple loudspeaker technology, because when reintroduced into society, the control possibilities are diminished in a free society. Seed says the moralists can “stuff [their arguments against human cloning] up their noses.” But the point is: he is as powerless as the producers of the bomb against the effects of his own bit of control. All cloning can do, is the triggering of a process, which has to be re-inserted into “nature” in order to complete itself. Since even the laboratory has only limited controls over the initiation of the process, many things can go wrong. Then the only power one has is to kill that which does not fit the human objectives of control. The scientist never has the Frankenstein power to assemble a human being. To understand this, one can compare cloning with the process of changing a person’s gender. The latter is much more like “assembling” a human being, and the enormous problems faced in this case show the implications. The person who wants a sex change operation has to go through elaborate assessments in order to determine whether it is viable on the emotional and personality level, apart from the complications of the physical changes. The clone, when successful, will have to be re-inserted into the human environment, and the possibility for the scientist to control that process is not very good. Except that the behaviourists think that they have the rights and the technology to control that too. Bayertz says that Skinner is right: “The subject may not coincide with the body, but neither can it be separated from it. Technological access to the body will therefore not stop there: at some time or another, it will also affect the subject and its spirit” (Bayertz 1996: 86). Bayertz objects in principle to the constitutional safeguards of “human dignity”; he wants the avenues open for totalitarian technique. Comte, Marx, Bloomfield, Skinner – none of them – did even limit this control to the individual, and all of them have been looking for mass control. Thus I fail to see the practical difference between this controlling faith and another one which a few countries have tried out on a larger scale: There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence in the world as a human dominating the will of others, unless one has a conception both of the transient and specific reality on which that action has to be exercised, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the transient dwells and

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has its being. To know men one must know man, and to know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws. There can be no conception of the State which is not fundamentally a conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas evolving within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith, but always, at least potentially, an organic conception of the world. (Mussolini 1935: 7)

The scientistic tradition did not move far enough away from utopianism. Utopias have all been produced by intellectuals, Plato, Thomas More, Bacon, Godwin, and Marx malgré lui, and have all put the (non-accountable) intellectual (often the scientist) in charge of a totalitarian collective. Mussolini brought that into practice by attempting a government of non-accountable experts. Excellent criticism of the intellectualist utopias is to be found in Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, (not to forget his warnings against technocratic totalitarianism in 1984). L OV E T R A N S C E N D I N G T H E P OW E R O F S C I E N C E

Sentiment in Struggle with Science – Auguste Comte At least one important member of the tradition of scientism – one who contributed very much to its formation – found the one-sided objectification of the human being not sustainable. Life experience taught Auguste Comte that it is human relationships, and not simply the control of nature, which make life meaningful.34 The control of nature through science does produce culture, but the question for Comte was whether this culture is meaningful. Positive science takes us further and further into detailed knowledge of the “laws of nature,” and this contributes to progress, but does progress make sense? Comte summarised his own mature philosophy in a single–sentence confession of faith: “Love as a principle; Order as base; Progress as goal” (Comte 1957: 63). Although indicated as “goal”, progress is not a normative ideal for which we may or may not strive: it is the inevitable development of the intellect regulated by its static law. This latter subjects the intellect to the external world, and enforces the order of succession expressed in the dynamic law of three phases (theological, metaphysical, positive) – the structure of historical progress already constructed by Turgot (cf. Venter 2002). The intellect has no free initiative in its development. Thus the system of Comte is one of law and order, expanded into the human field – he undeniably approached the human sciences after the pattern of the (physical) natural sciences (cf. Comte 1957: 169ff). Comte, however, realised what Skinner and Bayertz may have forgotten: that a life lived under the inevitability of natural law may not be a life worth

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living – that love is rather what makes life meaningful. Comte was also concerned about the self-centredness of passions and would not as easily as Turgot, Kant, and Adam Smith accept that such passions would necessarily contribute to progress. Thus he insists on the non-reducibility of the human to the subhuman, and on the disclosing function of the love for the divine – a divine which he had to invent in the form of humanity. In the name of the past and the future, the theoretical servants and the practical servants of HUMANITY has dignifiedly taken over the general direction of earthly affairs, in order to finally construe the true moral, intellectual, and material providence, while excluding irrevocably all the slaves of God, catholic, protestant, or deist, from political supremacy, as being both backwards and disturbers. (Comte 1957: 1)

In the mature Comte modern humanism finds a full expression: humankind matures by relinquishing the divine and thus finds itself completely as part of nature and its laws. But since life has no meaning outside the principle of love, Comte is obliged to introduce a transcendent into the immanent in the form of humanity as the divine object of love. Note that he remains in the dialectic of subjecting all to natural law, while the positivists are given control of the “general direction of earthly affairs.” But Comte, who still believed (like Quesnay) that the knowledge of the laws is intended for exploitation and control, is afraid of the consequences of this for humankind (given that the basis of action rests in selfish passions – the heritage of Turgot and Kant). He believes, however, that the expansion of a law approach to the human sciences reveals a divinity, which can serve (in the absence of a cosmic creator and lawgiver) as a “final cause”: humanity itself. He then still had to put his trust in the law-abiding behaviour of the best instincts (those that function altruistically), and thus elevated the moral sentiments to the highest function in man. “Rationality,” defined by Comte as the midway between subjectivism (madness and mysticism) and objectivism (idiocy and empiricism) was losing its standing in favour of the sentiments. The focus on the “sentiments” was an inversion of the hierarchy of Modernity’s accepted categories of being-human. Comte did open the way for love to take the lead, while he still tried to hold onto the leadership of the intellectual. (It is almost as if he was replaying the Mediaeval debate of the voluntarists versus the intellectualists within the confines of his own mature philosophy.) In Modernity the human being is an historically stacked entity; at the bottom one finds the physical and the biotic processes, followed by instinctual and sense life, the passions, and the highest of the subrational: the sentiments. This was supposed to be humankind’s “natural” life, and historically for many Modern thinkers also the dominating functions in the

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“state of nature.” “Reason” somehow emerges out of these in the course of history, as the real dominating force, to be identified with “culture,” “civilization,” the “social,” and “Enlightenment.” As the study of the natural functions made headway – in Comte’s thinking the sciences of the “natural functions” became positive earlier – their importance in human life became more pronounced, which led to a reductionist approach to human problems. But the sentiments have often been viewed as in close association with reason – in Hume and Adam Smith they are the natural seat of the moral life of ordinary people in whom rational thought has not been fully developed. For Comte thus the sentiments provided a viable alternative to the category of “reason.” In elevating the sentiments, he also gave a new recognition to women: he believed that sentimentality is foremost in women (they get credit for developing morality), and physicality is foremost in men (thus their merit in developing the natural sciences). The problem is to unify these two areas, which are separated because of the mutual irreducibility of man to world, or the mental to the physical. This unification is a purely subjective construct done by the priest of the religion of humanity – Comte himself. Thus, still oriented to a “natural law” approach, again the pretence of the intellectual to somehow have a watchtower from where to produce a viable overview of the totality re-appears (as we have found it in Kant, Chekov, and others). A valuable side of Comte’s thinking is his defence of the non-reducibility of the specifically human functions (the moral, social and intellectual) to the physical aspects, and the potential for cultural disclosure of the different lawareas through love. Comte distinguished the different law-spheres in terms of the sciences related to each. Systematically constructed, there is a hierarchy of sciences based on the principle that the simplest is the most universal and the most complex is the most individualised. All the sciences, from simple to complex, add up to seven: 1. Mathematics; 2. Astronomy; 3. Physics proper; 4. Chemistry; 5. Biology; 6. Sociology proper; 7. Morals. Of these the first four are physical sciences which he names “Cosmology”; the second three are human sciences which he collects together under “Sociology.” In an “historic” sense the first four are called “preliminary sciences” (the sciences which historically became positive first, but only find their meaning in terms of the human-centred teleology focused in the later sciences), or “Natural philosophy”; they have as object the exterior order. The second three are historically characterised as “final sciences” (I believe we may read “final” here as indicating both “later” and “goal”), or “Moral philosophy”; they have as object the human order. The law-group studied by each science is irreducible

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to the others, and there is a dependence of the complex on the simpler (which is also expressed in the way in which the sciences of the more complex are founded on the sciences of the simpler).35 Importantly, the positivist “faith” – and Comte does not shy away from the term “faith”36 – focuses us on the laws to which we are subject, but the religion of humanity, as expressed in love, creates a movement of disclosure, in which the focus of the scientists working in the lower sciences is directed away from the trivial pursuit of too much detail, to rather opening up the laws for the sake of a better human life. Comte did not strive for exact knowledge of the laws. He was already moving in a pragmatic humanist direction, in which the precision required from science is deduced from what is necessary for human practice. The “degree of approximation … to be regulated by our practical needs, which measures the precision suitable for our theoretical forecasts” (1957: 174), has to be understood in the sense – anticipated by Descartes – of a “common exploitation of the human planet” (Comte 1957: 4). While liberty for Comte meant nothing but following the laws, the disclosure process has more leeway in the more complex lawspheres, which are more open to perturbations because of their complexity. 37 The principle of love for humanity thus unifies the individual human life, and induces the inspiration for cultural progress. Comte draws the attention to two important aspects: (1) “natural science” in all its progress does not make human life meaningful, and in fact cannot take us beyond the self-centred wants of the “merely living”; (2) the irreducibility of the higher law-spheres to the lower ones, in spite of the dependence relationship – this means that the “human” is not reducible to “cosmological.” Love makes it meaningful to focus our attention on the development of the human, in other words to find a sensible basis for a moral life, and not to limit our cultural activities to material culture.38 Comte unfortunately remained stuck in the Western tradition of maximum abstraction – thus he searches for the most universal, which is also the simplest and has the least content. The laws derived in the process – the physical and mathematical – may then be universally applicable, but he does not see that a more limited abstraction would render less universal laws, which are more important to focus on, if one wishes to recognize the dignity of human life. The early Marx, for all his materialism, recognised this, and thus also saw the implications for culture of being physically human, such as having hands. He analysed the humanness of human physical production. He also noted the interaction between the mental and the physical, and its meaning for the disclosure of the bio-physical within human culture – such as

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referring to sex under capitalism. Human sexuality shows a sameness to animal coupling only on the highest level of abstraction – the simple physical event of sexual transfer of cells. But at a lower level of abstraction, human sex shows itself as very different: not instinctual and seasonal, but as part of free communication (both for procreation, love, and even recreation) – it can be cultivated (often aestheticised) differently through different encodings within cultural varieties. It is important to note that Marcel pointed even further, to the subjectivity of the human body, saying that we are not in control of the body exactly because it functions as a subject and will follow its own patterns if we abusively objectify it (1963: 98–103). Another question which Comte does not develop, is that of the meaning of love. He probably counted on a traditional understanding of love as a sentiment, and wanted to highlight the role this could play in limiting scientific arrogance and giving meaning to culture. But what love really means he does not say. And it is important to ask whether the categories of Modernity really make it possible to understand enough of love. Comte has already gone some way to expand these categories by adding the social and moral as spheres of their own, apart from the sentiments and reason. But is it not too limiting to reduce love to a sentiment – even too limiting to reach what Comte himself was trying to achieve: to elevate human cultural formation and the sciences above the selfishness into which so many Modern thinkers boxed it in. When we limit love to sentiment, or worse, to passion (as Feuerbach did39), then we see only the emotional side of love. But when a drunken beggar approaches my front door, and asks for money “to buy food,” I may not emotionally like him, but I can still show him love. That is, I may not accede to his request for money – for he may not be in a position of freedom to resist buying more alcohol – but I can offer him food, I can find him shelter, and most importantly, give him the necessary support to regain his full freedom. And this I will have to do by using his present measure of freedom. In this way love can open the way for a meaningful life (as Comte and Feuerbach wanted it to do), both in the receiver and the giver. And though it may disclose freedom, it also presupposes freedom. The conception of love developed by the existential phenomenologist, Luijpen, may help us on the way. A Phenomenology of Love – Luijpen In his attempt to give a philosophical idea of love, Luijpen wants us to confront the appeal from the other: “be with me.”

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This is not simply an appeal to do what the other asks of me – I may fulfil a request in such a way that the other goes unsatisfied, for it is clear to him/her that my “heart” is not in it (that I am doing it in passing, that it is a burden for me, or that I am absent minded). I do fulfil the request and yet leave the other “alone.” But how is this possible? Because his appeal to me is more than his explicitly formulated request. The other does not only do a request, he “is” an appeal. The understanding of the appeal of the other to me is not connected to the facticity of the other, but much rather to what the other is more than its facticity, namely a subjectivity. It is a call to me to share in his subjectivity. Marcel attempts to transform this call to me into words: “be with me.” It is the “prayer” of the other to me, to step out of myself, to share in his subjectivity in order to accept it, to support it, and to increase it. (Luijpen 1976: 343)

In Luijpen the existential stepping-out-of-oneself clearly does not share the individualism of Sartre. For Luijpen being-with-the-other is what gives meaning to my life, on condition that this being-with-the-other is really love. It means to transcend the mere facticity of his being-there; to be more than giving the piece of bread, which is what he may have asked. In fact love may require exactly, as the only real answer, the refusal of the request for bread. It is all about promoting the subjectivity of the other: As incarnated subject the other is the origin of meaning and of new meaning; he gives without stopping, in freedom, meaning and new meaning to his facticity and to his world. As subject, as another “I,” as a “selfhood,” he goes through the world in freedom, he realises his history, he approaches his destination. His appeal to me implies the invitation to confirm his subjectivity, to allow him the possibility to exist, to agree with his freedom, to accept, to support, to share his freedom. My “yes” to his appeal carries the name of love. (Luijpen 1976: 344)40

Love therefore is not sentimentality – here Luijpen takes a distance from the limiting categories of Modernity in which Comte remained stuck. Love is real hard work – work in my own terms – to sustain and promote the dignity of human life. For love implies that one takes responsibility for the other, bodily, culturally – it is building space for subjectivity.41 One could say that even though Marx, since he came to know love as spiritualised sentimentality, rejected it as religious nonsense, he promoted love in this deeper sense. Luijpen says that it is clear that “the relationships among human beings cannot be humanised without the advent of love, as subjective inspiration, in this world. Humanness is not pushed into this world with the necessity of a natural process” (Luijpen 1976: 345). This is a blunt denial of the scientistic belief that manipulated nature creates human life. To play with Luijpen’s ideas: love, thus, gives meaning to human existence (transcends facticity); it creates the full socio-cultural, human,

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opposite of the Hobbesian “wolf” society. Kant argued that “humanness” – in the sense of “rationality” – emerges from the “natural.” 42 Kant therefore dialectically hesitated between the “natural” (“brute animal”) and the “human” (the “rational”) – but the first is the necessary source or elevator of the second. Eighteenth-century “nature” is the transcended; yet it follows the human being likes its shadow. This kind of philosophical anthropology opened the way for the naturalists like Skinner and Bayertz to reduce the “subject” to its supposed source. After Hobbes “love” was marginalised in philosophy. Luijpen denies Kant’s claim that humanness can be introduced into this world simply from the “natural.” What makes us human is love, which is precisely – in opposition to Skinner – the “yes” to subjectivity. One could read him to say that human beings make humans human through love, and that love somehow does not have its source in Modernity’s “nature.” But Luijpen does not limit the meaning-giving function of love to the “other.” As in Feuerbach, love comes back to the lover. Love to the other is deliverance of the self; it is infinite trust, and therefore defenseless. In destining myself for the other, I have a sense of my own destination. In sacrificing myself to the other, my own “self” is revealed, as being-for-the-other (which is “to be”).43 “In love the human being approaches his destination, he finds the fulfilment of his being human, on condition that this is not the motive of his loving” (1976: 347). There is a creative moment in love: as in Feuerbach, I “am” through love. Love creates the subject in the sense that it gives a specific meaning to being-subject. This is interactive and exactly not a natural scientific linear causal process. Love is a participation of the other in my own subjectivity, in such a way that I am not designing my humanness alone but with the other.44 For Luijpen there are many more meanings of looking at one another than the single hateful look which Sartre talks about (1976: 281ff). Luijpen succeeds in transcending the reductionist conception of love as sentiment (Comte) or passion (Feuerbach). He opens up a wider conception of human dignity through showing the reciprocal “yes” to subjectivity, which implies the communal humanising of all life, culture, and technology, and denying a mechanical, natural, causal origin of the meaning and destination of human life. This denial is not so much argued as chosen and asserted – in some sense it seems to be a fundamental choice. Together we dignify the human being by dignifying one another through love. And this can find expression in a safely constructed bridge or car, in a legal system that protects subjectivity, within a culture which discloses it. There is, however, a problem in Luijpen’s idea of autonomy and interactive self-designing. When is human life human? Probably when it is

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free, for to be subject is to be free; that is, the human being is not purely “result” (a “thing” determined by blind power and process), but transcends result exactly in and through the appearance of subjectivity in the evolution of the cosmos (1976: 200). While rejecting rationalism and scientism, Luijpen still adheres to the idea that the human subject is “originally” rational – rationality being the freedom of the subject to give objective meaning. The superiority of the human being is freedom, which is rationality.45 For Kant freedom is the “product” of reason; Luijpen thinks in terms of freedom first, and then characterises rationality as its equivalent. Kant makes reason, and thus being-human, the necessary “product” of nature; but for Luijpen beinghuman is being subjectively self-designed and co-designed (not simply caused by “nature”); it is subjectivity and freedom itself. But it is also reason in the sense of creating objective meaning. Luijpen’s idea of rationality is adjusted to twentieth-century irrationalism – it is no more the logic of the cosmos or of the spirit (or even of goal-directed human action), but simply a giving of sense to that which makes no sense without a subject. Sartre – in What is literature? – tried to maintain that the subject creates the objective world, but knowing that this is not really the case, he explained this creation as the making of new meanings by establishing new relationships among things (Sartre, 1949). I guess that Luijpen had something similar in mind. The argument becomes cyclical, however – Luijpen lets objectivity as meaning proceed from the subject, yet binds the subject, during the formation process, to objectivity, and maintains that the subject is the transcendental condition of all objectivity. This cyclical argument is included in a wider circle: the subject designs itself and co-designs other subjects, yet is presupposed as the designer of the subject as well as the maker of objective meaning. A similar cyclical thinking is included in Luijpen’s view of the creativity of love in inter-subjective relationships. The “let be” of reality in objectification includes a large measure of passivity; it is the respect for and acceptance of reality which makes knowledge objective. This “let be” differs from the active “make be” in which a new meaning is established. Love is a “make be,” but not all make be is love. We are through our being-together: the smoker through smokers, the Jew through Jews, mother through children. But I am actually only through being spotted by the other. This can either (1) happen through making my facticity be (i.e. I am characterised in terms of some factual property of mine), such as when I am taunted for my baldness. Baldness differs from the smoothness of a billiard ball, because baldness is more than physiological – it has a fully human meaning since it

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is a subjectivity. “A bald is only really a bald when others taunt him” (Luijpen 1967: 350). Or (2) it can happen through a “meeting in love,” which: … makes the other not to be facticity, but precisely subjectivity. Love “creates” the subject. This is of course not saying that without the love of the other I am no subject. But that I am a subject, can mean anything. It can indicate the fact that I am not a thing, not even when my freedom, under whichever weight, lies suffocated or destroyed. It can also indicate an experienced fullness of being-human, through which every obstacle is reversed in value, and humankind affirms itself as king of creation. The term “subject” can therefore run through a whole gamut of meanings, and this is what one has to keep in mind to understand the creativity of love. When I call love creative, I ascribe a certain influence to it. But here every thought of a causal influence must be kept far away. There can be no talk of the creativity of love being reduced to the efficiency of a unilateral, determining cause in the natural science meaning of the word. The reason for this is that one cannot give any account with concepts like these of what love in its true posture is … This is immediately evident when one reminds oneself of the essential moments of love: “appeal,” “destination,” “availability,” “self-denial,” and “acceptance,” indicate a reality that includes mutuality and freedom. It is precisely the negation of a unilateral, determining, causal influence and therefore cannot be explained by it. (Luijpen 1976: 351)

For Luijpen the creativity of love means exactly what we have explained above – when somebody loves me, such a person participates in my subjectivity and therefore I do not design my being-human alone, I do not move to my destination on my own, but together with somebody else. Love creates a togetherness, a “we” which is different from all other “wes” in whichever kind of meeting – “fulness,” “fulfilment,” “happiness.” Also the world changes through the love of the other; it gives me its most graceful face and becomes my “home.” But this creative tendency of love becomes fruitful, ratified, only when the beloved accepts this affection (p. 352). Luijpen subverts exactly what Skinner and Bayertz proclaim. Luijpen does not use terms like “natural law” anymore. Understandably, the “natural law” metaphor has been highjacked by those who want universal control of “nature,” but unfortunately so, since it was initially a metaphor of human rational freedom (as it still is in Locke). In Luijpen’s terms we are not simply the causal products of our natural environment; in the togetherness of love the human being affirms subjectivity, affirms the togetherness on the way through the world; confirms that we carry a co-responsibility for one another and our world. But this is exactly in and through the free togetherness which love brings with it. The body is webbed into this subjectivity; and the world as environment is made into a home. Luijpen does allow for large projects of a technological kind, and one would prefer him to also consider the “small is beautiful” tradition of Schumacher, but he clearly does not depart from the

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principle of control. Say “yes” to subjectivity-in-togetherness may be an expression of the latter-day encompassing meaning of “human dignity.” How to make this practicable? Luijpen has apparently not found a replacement for the Thomist and Lockean “natural law” of freedom. But one has to ask: where does one then find explicit guidance about the pathways of love? It is clear that when one has to defend subjectivity-in-togetherness, then it is to be done on a broad front. It cannot be limited to legislative documents. One has to defend it in science, and the growth of certain kinds of participatory research is a welcome recognition of this. One has to do it via a healthy environment. One has to understand and respect the subjectivity of the body – or in Comte’s terms: that the fields of physics and biology have their own “laws,” which are under the guidance of higher “laws,” but really follow their own “subjective” paths, and that the abuse of the environment or the body itself triggers developments which may lead to suffering (as Marcel so vividly argued), just as the cloner and the bomber trigger developments which run out of control under the functioning of their own “laws.” One has to defend such subjectivity in management, and the manager will have to learn how to be employing-subject together with employee-subject. Even the prison system will have to be able to cope with the subjectivity of the prisoners. We shall have to re-insert our sense of subjectivity into the traditions of science, legal systems, entertainment, technology, trade, religion, friendship, et cetera. In order to do this, we need to link the “yes” to subjectivity with the guiding pathways of a differentiated love which expresses itself in norms and institutions. T. P. van der Kooy provides some valuable indications for this. Welfare and Dignity – T. P. van der Kooy An elaborate understanding of the relationships among “human dignity,” “love,” “justice,” “welfare,” and “happiness” can be found in the work of T. P. van der Kooy. Being an economist, Van der Kooy approaches the problem of human dignity from the side of “welfare,” but he immediately transcends the realm of pure economics. “Welfare,” he says, means literally that things are going “well” with an individual or a nation. But when are we faring “well” or “badly”? This poses the question of norms or criteria; “good” and “evil” comes into the picture (1954: 7). Though believing that the course of history is not simply in the hands of individuals or nations, he nevertheless wants to stress responsibility (our welfare, he says, is not simply a question of good or bad “luck”). We have to do something about our welfare; acquire

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skills and manage well, and choose our welfare ideals on the basis of criteria of “good” and “evil.” These norms have to be communal, since our working on our welfare is communal in nature. This, of course, poses the problem of the origin of norms, which Van der Kooy ascribes to divine revelation. But he immediately adds that revelation does not provide a clear-cut recipe, for we have to make our decisions in different concrete circumstances which allow for responsible freedom (p. 13ff). Yet he sees “the nucleus of the welfare concept” as “the idea of a dignified human existence” (p. 15ff). Dignity here does not mean the usual idea of a certain minimum standard of life, although the latter is a condition for living a dignified life (a condition not fulfilled for many people). Some, however, do have work, and can sustain themselves, but they experience their work as meaningless and a necessary evil. Some may have satisfaction in their work, but the circumstances of their work are denigrating – which clashes with human dignity. One may even live royally and work playfully, and some may call this “welfare,” yet one may still have no human dignity: Standard of living and joy in work are not decisive for welfare. Human dignity does require a reasonable provision of consumption goods and a positive appreciation of one’s work, but it is not exhausted in this. Strictly taken, one has to invert the issue and state that human dignity does not grow out of a provision of goods and appreciation of work, but the other way round: that it determines whether the provision satisfies the requirements and how work is appreciated. For human dignity is closely connected with the standards according to which one can determine whether human actions and the circumstances in which the human being lives, are good or bad. (1954: 16)

Van der Kooy’s basic principle is a theological one, although he believes that the consequences of his viewpoint should also be acceptable to humanists: The nucleus of human dignity is situated in being created after the image of God. This idea is of a rare richness. Since God’s essence is love, it means that the essence of the human being is characterized by love towards God as its Creator and towards the neighbour as his fellow creature. This is the most central idea of being human, which as it were encompasses all others. Many want to stay with this central idea, and in fact the shyness to proceed is understandable. The original image of humankind has been affected so much by own guilt, that the appearance in which the human being reveals itself, is almost not recognizable anymore. The human being tends to hate God and his neighbour. The commandment of love sounds like foolishness to him. It cannot serve as a standard for him anymore. (Van der Kooy 1954: 16)

Van der Kooy’s essentialism – the human being characterised by love – need not be vicious in this case, for love is a norm, and norms need not be realised in order to be valid.46 Being a Calvinist, he nears the Catholic tradition in closely associating human dignity with being created after the image of God,

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but Catholicism’s exaltation of rationality in God and humankind (often placing “will” and “love” in second place), is totally absent from his thought. Instead the human being becomes essentially the agent and recipient of love. Love implies service. Van der Kooy sees in the human being a person with understanding, emotions and will, which implies that he can serve God and neighbour through “knowledge,” “surrendering,” and “ruling.” The striving for human dignity has a religious basis (serving God), but finds expression in the (1) recognition of the fellow human as a fellow creature, (2) the recognition of his/her personality for its own value, and (3) the active support of the development of his/her personality. Note that the “fellowcreatureliness” here implies a normative acceptance of the other, recognition of the person and support for its development. This goes back to Locke’s sense of human dignity as being created as equals (cf. footnote 3 above). It does not play into the dialectic of “nature” elevating some into control and leaving others behind (as instruments controlled by techniques) and avoids Kant’s ambiguity which makes us wonder whether the natural human being may be instrumentalised or be considered as part of the creative force in the comsos (cf. footnotes 12–13 above). Summarised: the standards of human dignity in inter-human relationships are (1) community, (2) justice, and (3) love for the neighbour. But there is also the task of using the gifts and powers of nature (in the broadest sense) in the service of God and the neighbour, i.e. (4) the responsible building of culture (1954: 17–18). These four are also the directive standards for welfare. Van der Kooy struggles to clearly distinguish his wide conception of “welfare” from the narrower one of economic welfare. This latter then includes (i) “welfare” in yet a narrower meaning – that which an individual or a nation finds worthwhile to strive for (satisfaction of needs); (ii) economic standing – the maximum possible control of goods (provision of goods); (iii) wealth – the maximum possible control of money or assets easily transformed into money (financial wealth). But economic welfare can only be seen as real welfare, if it is in conformity with “human dignity” (p. 20–21). The same goes for work. Van der Kooy tries to show that these three components of economic welfare are in themselves not to be identified with welfare. The desire for wealth may lead to profiteering, or to high wage demands, or inflation – thus welfare is not solely to be measured in financial terms. Economic standing may be a better measure of welfare than money, and governments who want to improve welfare, will strive for the increase in production of goods rather than a favourable balance of payments. But the increasing production depends upon the propensity of the worker to work harder (based on work

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environment, wages and prices), technology (in turn dependent upon the capital available for it), organisation (inventiveness of entrepreneurs), the propensity to save (depending on level of income and interest rates), and the propensity to entrepreneurship (which in turn depends upon the cost of production and the income from the product). All in all these factors depend again on the availability of money. Thus, one may conclude, even in the economic context, i.e. even in a business or an organisation run as a business, human dignity is at stake if economic welfare becomes the prime concern. One can intensify the sense of welfare at the hand of the satisfaction of needs, which is usually viewed as the needs of the consumer, while for example the need for meaningful work (capital for production, markets, creative job opportunities) is forgotten.47 This can, however, fail in terms of the growth of needs, or in terms of over-production. The satisfaction of needs (utility) is a subjective experience, which cannot be measured in terms of money – we have to be satisfied with a calculation of the monetary value of produced goods and services. Human beings are not satisfied in terms of monetary value, but in terms of the utility a product or service has for them. Thus the satisfaction of needs is not to be calculated in terms of goods or money (1954: 22–28). While the freedom of the individual in determining his/her own satisfaction is not to be denied, van der Kooy believes that there are higher standards for welfare: There is a variety of gifts, circumstances, and tasks, which have to lead to a variety of objectives and guidelines. But there is also a universally valid whole of standards, to which the choice of the welfare ideal is subject. The freedom of the individual is not abolished by this bond, but receives through this its essential content. I have summarised the complex of norms in the term “human dignity.” Here we approach the fourth and highest phase in the study of welfare (1954: 29 – my italics).

What are these standards? Van der Kooy mentions five “principles” as standards: 1. Community – this implies setting oneself open for the neighbour; 2. Justice – which means recognising the neighbour’s claim to selfdevelopment (or: self-deployment); 3. Love for the neighbour – aiding or supporting the self-deployment; 4. Cultural progress – consciousness of the calling to systematic activity; 5. The economic principle – (“utility” in a wide sense) which requires effective and efficient use of means. This whole complex of standards is “summarised in the concept of human dignity,” which, van der Kooy believes, can also be subscribed to by humanist

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thinkers (1954: 30). If one studies these standards carefully, there is a clear kinship with Luijpen’s approach, except that standards provide links to praxis. One could say that these are the replacements of “natural law” which Luijpen did not find, for van der Kooy sees them as giving freedom “its essential content” (which remains reminiscent of Locker’s understanding of “natural law”). In submitting to all these standards in coherence, one is striving after a harmonious welfare ideal. Van der Kooy is on the lookout for a simultaneous realisation of norms, and laments our human tendency to be one-sided. During the last few centuries the standards of progress and effectivity have received all the attention; the realisation of community and justice have been shifted to the state (it is now up to the state to promote wealth and economic standing and a fairer distribution). But this (economism and statism) presents a misguided idea of human dignity, which actually obstructs real welfare. Under the guidance, however, of these standards our personal behaviour becomes dignifying and suffering is softened: • Love for the neighbour is neither denigrating charitableness, nor irresponsible self-destruction; • The sense of community is a knowing opening-up for the neighbour; • Justice the recognition of his claims to a dignified existence; • Love for the neighbour urges the voluntary satisfying of such claims in our daily lives. These three sharpen our perception, the care to avoid mistakes is strengthened, circumspection with regard to the uncertain future is doubled. It remains impossible to compare (personal) utility, but through reliving the experience of the neighbour we do get a glimpse. Cultural development progresses with fewer derailments; increased trust stabilises emotional reactions (1954: 25–6). Van der Kooy’s formatting of subjective togetherness may exactly be the antidote for the distrust created by the intransparency of the managerial technical control discussed above. Van der Kooy rejects all utopianism in the sense that he recognizes that dignifying is a process (and not an intellectually organised system of happiness). Yet he warns against pessimism about the human being, for that will only lead to force, which may support the distribution of economic wellbeing, but not welfare. He also refers to the voluntary and free growth and distribution of welfare under a responsible practice of the entrepreneurial economy (although he rejects individualist capitalism and supports a serious protection of the economically weak [1954: 37ff]). Specifically the practice

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of freedom needs to be limited by the standards of dignity (1954: 71). The legal orders, which we establish, will always be relative, and to be measured against justice as the basic norm, subject to human dignity, and executed in terms of love (1954: 100). Van der Kooy seems to argue in a spiral, in which especially the first three principles (community, justice, and love) follow one another repetitively. I do not see this as a vicious circle. It is rather that these three are so basic and transcendental, that he tends to relate each one to existential life in terms of the other. And in terms of all five principles, he indicates what dignified living means, and therefore what it means to have full respect for dignity. This conception of human dignity – it is much fuller than a definitional concept – enables us to give clearer systematic content to the concept of human dignity and relate it to the more slippery approaches of for example the UN Declaration and Marcel. By condensing human dignity into five standards (community, justice, love for the neighbour, cultural progress, and utility), he provides a coherent playground for instituting human dignity, remaining true to the principle of “saying yes to subjectivity-intogetherness.” Van der Kooy thinks in terms of support for self-deployment and the recognition of the need for self-deployment, systematic cultural activity, non-denigration and no self-destruction in charitableness, openingup for the neighbour, satisfying the neighbour’s legitimate claims. All these elements are present in Luijpen’s approach, only in a more abstract way. Importantly they do indicate a link of composition between human dignity and other basic rights such as that of freedom to work, to associate, to a healthy environment, to a home and a family. Those who decided on the constitutional protection of human dignity in association with such basic rights, may not have had an explicit and systematic understanding of their connection (neither does van der Kooy), but, given the circumstances, the coherence was intuitively sensed. C O N C L U D I N G P E R S P E C T I V E – “ D I G N I T Y ” V E R S U S “ C O N T RO L ”

Scientism, managerialism, and technicism, have become woven together in a close-knit web. By exploiting the reversibility of Kant’s view of human dignity (rational autonomy in spe), and the control motive of Modernity since Descartes, human dignity is denied. The collapse of the firm belief in the essential rationality (even if only eschatological) of humanity, implied in fact an implosion of the human being into the reduced “nature” of Modernity. Finally that which elevated the human being above the brute, and above

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things having a price and being used as tools, has gone bust. Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, Turgot’s and Kant’s peaceful reason, the legal tradition’s reasonable man, are no more on their way. Thus, as Sartre concluded: no norms, no authority. A world-creating subject? What remains is “nature”: conflict, competition, objectives without norms, and determining laws. Hobbes “popularised” and Darwin “liberally collectivised.” “Man is a brute who needs a master,” says the great proponent of human rational autonomy. The technical scientists make us an offer: we have the skills to master the world and the human being. The will to power? No. The non-accountable non-will to control and remake the world and the human being. Physiocracy gone mad? Managerial technique can control even the scientists. It is not possible to defend human subjectivity and human dignity simply by logical argument. There are a few lines of defense though: (1) Why would anybody deny human dignity to some or all human beings? (2) When human dignity has successfully been removed from our rights consciousness, what do those who removed it want with us? The answers are given: experiment, control, remaking. “Environmental” selection by “Science” and “Technology.” Who are “Science” and “Technology”? To whom are they accountable? The results are predictable: Rights of control for some; no dignity for “all”; “paradise” for those “selected.” We do not need Orwell’s 1984. The human memory may be short. But we have seen it before, in practice. It has been documented. Our arguments for human dignity are thin; the United Nations called it a “faith.” But so do the techno-scientist masters call their worldview. Thus we are faced with a choice. Consider yourself a brute who needs a techno-scientist or a techno-manager for a master. Or accept being human, made for love. Problems remain. “Eight cells – is that a human being?” was recently asked by Europeans making science policy. At 300 cells we kill the embryo, says an American lab. With the head still in the birth canal, and the body out, we can do a “partial birth abortion for obstetric reasons,” say some American gynaecologists. In an aging society – what about lonely old people whose family do not care about them anymore? The problem remains ontological – some answer to the question, what does it mean to be human, will have to be given. Can we gain by defending human dignity? Is it not a gain when we are urged to reflect on and develop a work situation into a process of fulfilment,

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creativity and joy for the working person? Is this not possibly one meaning of dignifying management? Is it no gain when one can constitutionally shift governments in developing countries away from building elaborate offices to the creation of work? What loss and what gain is there when we care, one about the other’s living environment? Dignity discourse urges a dialogue about consumption and entertainment rates in the West, and oppression, militarism, and carelessness in the Third World; about the growth of wants in one section, and the neglect of needs in the other – is this not helpful? It is true: the protection of human dignity overlaps with the protection of many rights. But rights mostly have to be defended. Very often the person whose rights are violated, and even society have no effective means to do so. How to defend your right to a good night’s sleep against the hi-fi of a beatloving youth at three in the morning? How to defend your rights in supreme court when the financially stronger opponent simply drags the case in order to exhaust your resources and have your defense collapse? Now that dignity discourse has been liberated from the self-centered (competitive) rationality focus, it provides the beginning of a culture of duties. A culture of duties need not lead to nannying and a new control system, if it is approached as a “yes” to subjectivity, as a sharing in caring. Potchefstrom University South Africa N OT E S 1

By “pastistic” I mean a one-sided explanation in terms of the past; it is the “opposite” of “futuristic.” 2 “Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others” (Locke 1988: II, v, 27). 3 “But though this be a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of Licence … . The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. For Men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker; All the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his order and about his business, they are his Property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during his, not anothers Pleasure. And being furnished with

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like Faculties, sharing all in one Community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such Subordination among us, that may Authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one anothers uses, as the inferior ranks of Creatures are for ours. Every one as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his Station wilfully; so by the like reason when his own Preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of Mankind, and may not unless it be to do Justice on an Offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the Preservation of the Life, the Liberty, Health, Limb, or Goods of another” (Locke 1988: II,ii,6). 4 We proceed from a present fact of political economy. The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes a cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world. Labor not only produces commodities. It also produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and indeed in the same proportion as it produces commodities in general. This fact simply indicates that the object which labor produces, its product, stands opposed to it as an alien thing, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor embodied and made objective in a thing. It is the objectification of labor. The realization of labor is its objectification. In the viewpoint of political economy this realization of labor appears as the diminution of the worker, the objectification as the loss of and subservience to the object, and the appropriation as alienation (Entfremdung), as externalization (Entäusserung) (Marx 1967: 289). 5 Cf. Ryke 2000; Biestek 1957; John Paul II 1988; Cronan 1955. 6 “… I have also observed certain laws established in nature by God in such a manner, and of which he has impressed on our minds such notions, that after we have reflected sufficiently upon these, we cannot doubt that they are accurately observed in all that exists or takes place in the world: and, farther, by considering the concatenation of these laws, it appears to me that I have discovered many truths more useful and more important than all I had before learned, or even expected to learn” (Discourse on Method V, 1969: 33). 7 In the Middle Ages “reason” or “intellect” was the supreme part of “nature.” It did not stand over against nature. Rather: divine intervention, by Christ entering history, or the illumination of the intellect, or the addition of grace, came along ways considered not “natural” (sometimes called “supernatural”). Even so, such interventions did not circumvent “nature,” but exactly included the highest natural functions on the way to realising natural and/or supernatural destinations. 8 Nature is an aggregate of bodies which constitute the form of the world, considered as principle according to the power of which they act or be acted upon, in conformity to the laws (legibus) of movement prescribed by the Author of Nature (Boyle, De ipsa Natura 21, quoted in Clay 1915: 119, my translation from the Latin). Boyle did elsewhere circumscribe “nature” as a “system of rules” and stated that things do not happen “by nature” but rather “according to nature,” i.e. in conformity to the rules – this however need not be in conflict with the reduction of the area of application of “nature” to “corpuscularity.” 9 “But though this be a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of Licence … . The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions” (Locke 1988: Il,ii,6). 10 “[Freedom] … is a faculty relative to motives which are both inciting and surmountable, which counterbalance and weaken one another, and which present opposing interests and attractions, which reason, more or less enlightened and more or less preoccupied, examines and evaluates” (1965a: 369).

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One also finds the idea of a mechanistic play of human forces unconsciously subject to an overall plan of nature in Adam Smith, who argues that if the individual takes care of selfpreservation and propagation of the species, then they unconsciously realise God’s final causality (Smith 1976: 166; 292). 12 “The fourth and last step which reason undertook, and with that totally elevated man above the animals, was to let him understand … that he himself is actually the goal of nature … The first time that he said to the sheep. ‘The fur which you are carrying, nature did not give to you for your own purpose, but for me,’ and took it from it and clothed himself in it, he became conscious of a privilege, which he, by virtue of his nature, had above all animals: them he did no more regard them as participants in creation, but as means and instruments, delivered to his will for certain purposes” (1975c: 90–1). 13 Der Mensch ist ein Tier … das einem Herr nötig hat. (Cf. also what he says about the instinctual brutishness of humankind in early history; 1975c: 87). 14 In neoclassical economic theory competition is viewed as “rational” (as implied in the maximisation rationality referred to above); but earlier, in Turgot and Kant, the rational was directly associated with the cultural, the social, and peace, while competition was based in the instincts and the passions, the driving forces of pre-rational history. 15 Skinner’s literacy about “natural selection” (which he transformed into “environmental selection”), is less than impressive. Darwin himself did not hide the fact that it is a metaphor, and it is well known that he adopted it from capitalist economic theory, in particular from Malthus (cf. Darwin 1859: 115–6; Venter 1996: 214ff). One could add that “natural law” was an even more influential metaphor (cf. Venter 2001; 2002). 16 The German acronym FIGU stands for: Free Community of Interests for the Fringe and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies. It is an international study community, and espouses an unusual form of spiritualistic naturalism, and is not a cult or ritualistic in any way. But in some sense it is still “revelational”: “In the 1970s, Billy Meyer began working with other people interested in learning about his remarkable contact experiences with people from the Plejares stars. The knowledge he had gleaned from these contacts was written down and made available for public scrutiny. Some members of the group even witnessed the incredible phenomena themselves. Together they decided to publicize the information and formed FIGU. In addition to publishing and distributing the experiences, facts and evidence of Billy’s contacts, FIGU addresses many vital, worldwide issues on a daily basis. These include the crusade against overpopulation, the fight against the abuse of women and children, the protection of animals, human rights, and the struggle to save Planet Earth and its plants, animals and human life” (from the Billy Meyer home page; FIGU 2001). 17 “Also for the human being of the earth the laws of nature are valid, which everyone who can see is able to easily recognize: If there is an area where a species of animal suddenly shows a rise in population and is in danger, such that the said area does no more have the potential to feed the population, then epidemics appear, which decimate again the growing and superfluity of population of animals. Further in such circumstances it also appears that the too large population simply dies of hunger, or through weakness because of hunger becomes the prey of their natural enemies. Thus nature sustains the natural population, through which in an area continuously only as many animal life forms live as this area can feed. Only the human being as thinking being acts against this natural law and tramples it under feet. In contrast to the animal life forms it breeds offspring in superfluity … The human being imagines itself the crown of creation, and therefore claims for itself the right to the madness of believing, that it by grace of its ability to think, is in charge of everything and has the right to have a planetary over-

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population, and dare to despise all natural laws and commandments and trample them under feet” (FIGU 2001: 4). 18 “Brutal and inhuman when the natural laws and commandments are followed? No, brutal and inhuman and without neighbourly love it is, when the human being sustains its overpopulation with all means and then demands that more millions of offspring can be conceived, when because of … retarded emotional dreaming no hard birth control can be realised. Because of this all misery and all problems become even greater and unsolvable, through which finally no solution and no salvation is possible anymore” (FIGU 2001: 13). 19 “Master narrative – how else to translate Lyotard’s grand récit? And in this translation we glimpse the terms of another analysis of modernity’s demise, one that speaks not of the incompatibility of the various modern narratives, but instead of their fundamental solidarity. For what made the grand récits of modernity master narratives if not the fact that they were all narratives of mastery, man seeking his telos in the conquest of nature? What function did these narratives play other than to legitimise Western man’s self-appointed mission of transforming the entire planet in his own image? And what form did this mission take if not that of man’s placing of his stamp on everything that exists – that is, the transformation of the world into a representation, with man as its subject?” (Owens 1987: 65). 20 “Science knows no subjectivity and no spontaneity. Human behaviour which becomes part of science eo ipso becomes part of Nature” (Bayertz 1996: 85). 21 Cf. for example Mulenga, 1994. The Neo-Marxists have attempted to avoid this problem by reverting back to Kant’s adagium of the absolutely autonomous human being, but then got stuck in the same problem as Kant: how is it that autonomous human beings are manipulated by others? Thus Marcuse struggles with the fact that the needs of autonomous human beings are imposed by the late capitalist structure and precisely not autonomously determined. He thus struggles to find ways to liberate the happy individual from false needs – the elitism of the intellectual hides nearby (1966: 5ff). 22 This discourse is not new. Kerr (1963) already spoke about the “production, wholesale and retail of knowledge.” But it introduced a whole new approach and vocabulary into university thinking. Universities have “clients” and “commercialise” their knowledge. I am not saying that universities should not generate income from their products, but there is a grave danger of quality loss and irresponsibility, since the forced increase of output for gain, “patenting,” “licensing,” et cetera, may withdraw “products” from scrutiny. 23 By “innovation” I mean a change within the same tradition (remaining under the same rules); by “creativity” I mean changing the system of rules. 24 The Virodene scandal is a case in point. Researchers at the University of Pretoria succeeded in gaining government support for Virodene as a cure for AIDS (and even tested this on human beings), by keeping the real information close to their bodies. It was afterwards identified as a poisonous industrial bleach. 25 Of course, the longstanding debate between the determinists and the indeterminists in physics may be a counter-example. 26 I would like to pose the hypothesis that this oversight on Kuhn’s side is fatal for his theory of the history of science. Kuhn accepted two foundational statements: (1) pragmatism: scientists copy the methodical success of other scientists (together with its supporting worldview); (2) a revolutionary view of history in terms of birth, flourishing (new offspring) and downfall, similar to the revolutionary philosophies of history which we find in Kant and Marx (cf. Venter, 1999: 33). Einstein, for example, explicitly sides with a technicist approach when he defines physics as those sciences of which the concepts are based on measurements (1950: 99), and he did not

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experience his own work as a revolutionary change. The period of modern science which Kuhn analyses exactly overlaps with the period of technization and increasing capitalisation of the natural sciences, and is too short to really construct a pattern of stability-and-revolution. If, for example, finance would be available to carry out alternative approaches, then the natural sciences may land in permanent paradigm debates and shifts without clear revolutions – as is already happening in the area of “natural” medicines. On the other hand, the technization of the human sciences, especially where combined with commercial gain, is shifting questions about foundations aside, for such questions are not asked by “technicians,” who will also resist the asking of such questions by others in order to avoid questions about quality or validity. 27 History, recently, has become a trash bin for the outdated, and the span of “recentness” decreases. The Harvard method of referencing (author and date), is not neutral: it foregrounds recentness (it is part of the “data”-society), as if it is useless to read Einstein, Newton, Thomas Aquinas, or Plato. In the Middle Ages the adage “what is old, is good, and what is good, is old” still held. 28 If the present-day requirements of focused teamwork had applied earlier, then creative growth in the natural sciences would have been much delayed. Lavoisier was a bookkeeper in his father’s shop, who repeated all Priestley’s experiments; Mendel was sent home by the university as not intelligent enough; X-rays have been discovered “accidentally”; Einstein produced a mathematical theory, while his mathematics record was not something great; Darwin’s only university training was in theology. None of them had a team, and none had a “rating.” Crick and Watson worked in an equipped context – but their personalities may be more important to explain their success. Of major scientists, many have been very young or had very recently moved into the discipline – in other words, did not have well-established records in the disciplines in which they had success. 29 Power, a professor of accounting said: “The audit society invests too heavily in shallow rituals of verification, at the expense of other forms of organisational intelligence … In ordinary social life, the prudent informal checks we carry out on our friends and associates are intuitive, historical, personal and informed by understanding and – often – sympathy. They lead us to trust people wholly, partially, or not at all, and we act accordingly. What we witness now is an expansion of checks based on business models, or market models, to encompass more and more of our life: an assumption that a market or business model explains reality and creates reliability. The forms of trust that underlie a plurally-organized society, allowing different kinds of organization for different kinds of purpose have been superseded: we have one trust now, and it is the trust of the market, of the contract; it is … the neo-liberal metaphor of society as a contract in which market exchange is primordial. This affects our lives profoundly” (Davies 1999: 7). 30 The philosophical basis of behaviourism, the origin of many such tests, has been discussed above. Imagine the stereotyping built into a test based on the premise that human beings are not able to make their own decisions; that they are the natural law-governed products of their environment; that words (also the words in the test) have no meaning and are rather physical stimuli which consistently elicit certain responses; and that environmental manipulation of the human being is permissible since human dignity may validly be replaced by scientifically; determined happiness and effectivity. In fact, most attempts to quantify human cultural behaviour are based on serious and one-sided (even dishonest) stereotyping: note the stereotypes of the economist Ricardo, the moral philosopher Bentham and his disciple, the still influential economist Edgeworth. 31 The so-called “flattening” of the organisation did eliminate the hierarchy in some organisations, but it did not necessarily democratise. It rather created a technicist, social Darwinist

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situation in especially the highly-skilled environments. The power of the central management increased, but since they do not have the “hands-on” knowledge of specifics, which middle management in the hierarchical organisation may have had, central management has to fall back on technical procedures (such as allocations and “competition” to remain in control. There are already clear indications, such as managerial nervous breakdowns and special executive antidepressants, indicating that responsibilities have not spread out, but is rather concentrated in top management. The abilities of managers are totally over-estimated, and via technology, they assume tyrannical powers. The Drucker slogan ascribes to the manager both the ability and the sole right to set objectives and to achieve them through the use of other people. The employees often have to make a success of management’s objectives – however problematic or impossible they may be – in order to safeguard their own jobs. In a context where the only criteria are maximisation of gain, this is probably in direct conflict with the Stoic-Kantian human dignity tradition. Milton Friedman maintains that uncontrolled capitalism promotes democracy, but managerialism is the very opposite. 32 A professor’s life has become a rat race of business and activity, managing contracts and projects, guiding teams and assistants, bossing crews and technicians, making numerous trips, sitting on committees for government agencies, and engaging in other distractions necessary to keep the whole frenetic business from collapse (Kerr 1963: 43). Every aspect has been transformed into the managerial mold, initially in the American context a bit anarchic, but as the right of the senior manager to determine all aspects of the process increased, control became total. 33 It is often through new academic specialties and through athletics that the universities seeking to rise in the academic hierarchy can most quickly and easily attract national attention – and also by hiring great and visible academic stars. The mark of a university on the make is a mad scramble for football stars and professorial luminaries. The former do little studying, and the latter do little teaching, and so they form a neat combination of muscle and intellect (Kerr 1963: 90). 34 The mature Comte found love, when two women, a beloved and her mother, came into his life. This brought him to a rethinking of the role of the sentiments. A much more extensive analysis of Comte’s mature philosophy can be found in Venter 2002. 35 Although every class of phenomena always has its proper laws, which suppose special inductions, these latter [inductions] would nearly never be able to become effective without the deductions furnished by the preceding knowledge of simpler laws. This subjective subordination results from the objective dependence of less general phenomena with reference to those that are more general. Thus the continuous order of our studies, always ascending from the world to man, is not only motivated according to the logical preparation that the simpler speculations allow; it rests also upon the scientific dependence of superior theories on inferior ones, according to the subordination of the respective phenomena (Comte 1957: 181). 36 Positive faith reveals directly the effective laws (lois) of diverse observable phenomena, as much interior as exterior, that is to say, their constant relations of succession and similitude, which permit us to foresee them one after the other. It discards, as radically inaccessible and profoundly vain, every research about causes properly said, primary or final, of any events. In its theoretical conceptions, it explicates always how and never why (Comte 1957: 57). 37 Thus the veritable liberty is found especially inherent and subordinated to the order, as much human as exterior. But to the measure that the phenomena are more complicated, they would become more susceptible of perturbation, and the normal state there supposes more efforts, as on the other hand it permits here a greater aptitude for systematic modifications. Our better liberty

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consists therefore in making, as much as possible, the good penchants prevail over the bad ones; it is also there that our empire is the most expanded, on condition that our intervention there always conforms to the fundamental laws of the universal order (Comte 1957: 240). 38 In fact these laws are necessarily multiple, in accordance with the notorious impossibility of ever reducing one of the two general elements of all our real conceptions, the world and man, to the other. Even if we would succeed in condensing each of these two great fields of study around a single natural law, their scientific unity would remain forbidden by their inevitable separation. Although the world supposes man to be known, it could exist without man … . In the same way, humankind depends upon the world, but it [humankind] does not result from it [the world]. All the efforts of materialists to annihilate the spontaneity of life by exaggerating the preponderance of inert environments over organised beings, has only succeeded in discrediting this research, just as vain as it is idle, from now on left to anti-scientific minds (Comte 1957: 167–8). 39 Feuerbach, as materialist, finds reality and meaning only in love – but he limits love to passion as experience, saying: The new philosophy views and considers being, as it is for us, not only as thinking, but as real existing being – being thus as object of being – as its own object. Being as Gegenstand of being – and only this being then is Being and then deserves the name of being – is the being of meaning (Sinn), of vision (Anschauung), of experience (Empfindung), of love (Liebe). Being is therefore a secret of vision, of experience, of love. Only in experience, only in love does “this” – this person, this thing – that is the singular, have absolute worth, is the finite the infinite – in this and only in this consists the infinite love, divinity and truth of love. In love alone is the god, who counts the hair on the heads, truth and reality (Feuerbach 1967: par. 34–5). 40 Luijpen adds a note to this, taken from M. Nedoncelle: love is a will to promote: The “I” who loves wants before everything the existence of the “you”; it wants in other words the autonomous development of this “you” (Vers une philosophie de l’amour, Paris 1946, p. 11). 41 Love is the “yes” to the subjectivity of the other, but the subjectivity only exists sunken in the body and webbed into the world. The “willing” of the subjectivity of the other is equally originally the “willing” of his bodiliness-for-him and of a piece of the world-for-him. The human being who loves his fellow human being cares about his fellow’s body, worries about what he needs for his material existence, builds hospitals, constructs highways, curbs rivers and the sea, makes traffic laws, establishes schools and prisons, humanises the economic, social and political structures of society, et cetera, and all this so that it will be possible for the other to be his own subject, “selfhood,” freedom (Luijpen 1976: 345). 42 Nature wanted man to bring forth totally from himself all that transcends the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and not to participate in any other bliss or perfection, than that which he supplied to himself, through own reason, free from instinct. For nature does nothing superfluous, and is not wasteful in the use of means for its aims. Since it has given man reason and free will rooted in it, there was in the human equipment already a clear indication of nature’s aim. … It seems as if nature has enjoyed itself here in its frugality, and measured man’s animal equipment so precisely in accordance with the highest need of an initial existence, as if it wanted that only the human being to be considered meritorious and that he would dare thank only himself once he has lifted himself out of the severest brutishness to the greatest skill and inner perfection of the mode of thinking and … through that to bliss … . (Kant 1975a: 36). 43 In love I destine myself for the other, but I have in that the vague consciousness that I am approaching my own destination. Even though I have never been confronted with a doctrine about the destination of the human being, I do experience in love that I am on the way to fulfilling my being as “to be” (zu sein). Love is the availability of my subjectivity, the being-

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appropriated by the subject which is the other. In the giving, the delivering of myself my real “self” is revealed to me. My real “I” is the available “I.” In a certain sense I lose myself in the love, but this “loss” is not a real loss. As existence I am a certain “yes” to the world and equally originally a certain “yes” to myself (Luijpen 1976: 346–7). 44 In the meeting I carry a being-for-the-other, which is simultaneously a being-through-theother. … The loving approach of the other makes my subjectivity to be, in as far as the other in his benevolence participates in a mysterious way in my subjectivity, supports and favours this in such a way, that I no more design my being-human “alone” and approach my destination, but “together” with the other. The love of the other gives me myself to myself, if one understands this “being-myself” as a certain fulness. The reality of this creativity is experienced by everyone who receives real love as undeniable (Luijpen 1976: 350–1). 45 In the superiority of being of the human being as subject consists equally originally its rationality. … The being of the human as “I” means a certain superiority of being over against the things of the cosmos. But this “I” as superiority of being, thus a freedom, is the lumen naturale, the light, through which the human being exists for itself and through which the world exists for the human being. It is the light through which there is objective meaning. This light is traditionally called the “light of reason.” … Human ratio, reason, is the place of and the ability to let objective meaning appear, and this is clearly the existing subject itself. Traditionally the human being is also defined as animal rationale. To-be-subject means to-be-free, and equally originally to-be-rational. Here also and inevitably the being-bound of freedom shows itself. The subject reveals itself as freedom and the freedom reveals itself as reason, thus as the ability to make meaning appear. This meaning is however an objective meaning and the light of subjectivity is an “objective” light. This means that meaning is not handed over to the arbitrariness of the subject. The subject, as lumen naturale, is the “let be” (Seinlassen) of reality. As such it is bound to objectivity. Existing freedom is equally originally existing bound-ness. Of all this nothing can of course be understood by those who are not prepared to conceive of freedom and objectivity in their most foundational sense. … What we have in mind here is rather that which makes every choice between this and that possible and gives foundation to the possibility of the objectivity of judgment. This is the human being as subject (Luijpen 1967: 200). 46 Can we completely do without some kind of “essence”-thinking? If it is totally inadmissible to say that by virtue of some essential characteristic, human beings have an inherent dignity, then the consequence drawn by Locke about criminals follows. When Locke says that reason, i.e. the law of nature, teaches us that “being all equal and independent,” there cannot be a subordination of the kind “that may Authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one anothers uses, as the inferior ranks of Creatures are for ours,” he anticipates Kant’s idea of human dignity (summarised above). In content the law of nature is directly connected with living a dignified life, for “the Fundamental Law of Nature, Man being to be preserved” stipulates that if all cannot be preserved, then at least the innocent, and any attacker can be handled in the way of beasts of prey (Locke 1988: II, iii, 16). A criminal who violates the “right Rule of Reason” “declares himself to quit the Principles of Human Nature, and to be a noxious Creature” (II, ii, 10), relinquishing his right to dignified treatment. If we were to apply this consistently, then the mission of the Dutch Services for Justitial Institutions to provide prison facilities which conform with “human dignity,” even though crime is becoming more serious, could no more be supported. (Since prisoners suffer the highest penalty of losing their freedom, they are to suffer no further spiritual or bodily damage. Thus meaningful spending of daytime, adequate care, spiritual care, recreation, and the sustenance of social contacts with family and friends outside, is provided) (Dienst Justitieele Instellingen, 2000: 2).

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47

Much attention has recently been paid to the question of meaningful work in terms of the International Labour Organisation’s “decent work” paradigm (ILO, 1999; Standing, 2000).

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TA D E U S Z C Z A R N I K

C AU S A L I T Y A N D F R E E D O M I N RO M A N I N G A R D E N

Roman Ingarden’s conception of causality is original and different from the conceptions of other philosophers in many respects.1 According to Roman Ingarden: “A causal relation occurs between a certain C and a certain E if and only if: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

C and E are diverse; C actually conditions E, but E does not condition C in the same way; With respect to their form, both C and E are events or processes (or eventually phases of processes); The occurrence of E is simultaneous with that of C; Both C and E are real (actual)”2

Of course, these five points do not suffice for Roman Ingarden to explain the most characteristic “moments” of a causal connection, because they do not give the specific kind of the conditioning of the effect E by the cause C, i.e. “generation” (“production”) of an effect by its cause. I shall explain these points with a short critical analysis. Firstly, Roman Ingarden claims that a causal connection is a connection of two elements in which the first one is a cause and the other one is an effect. The notion causa sui (cause of itself) is nonsensical for him; this results from two other statements: a causal connection is asymmetrical (2) and both the cause and the effect must really exist (5). The asymmetry means that a cause conditions its effect just as the effect cannot condition its cause. Both a cause and an effect must be taken in the sense of individual terms. The above statements are a consequence of Ingarden’s notion of a causal connection as a connection of “generation,” in which a cause produces the existence of its effect. The cause must exist to generate its effect, i.e. a causa sui is impossible. The cause generates its effect: that means the cause does towards the effect what the effect does not and cannot do towards the cause and this shows the asymmetry of the causal connection. Ingarden’s notion of causality as generation stands in opposition to Hume’s conception of causality. Against Hume he claims that an ordinary sequence of facts must be distinguished from causality as generation as occurs in the case of science. 603 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 603–610. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Personally, I would add that we can always ask whether there is causality (as “generation”) in the world as the basis of appearances of ordinary sequences of facts. The philosophical question is not only if or how we can get to know a causal connection, but also whether there is causality as generation. Hume’s notion of causality is different but we can also use that second notion. There are ordinary sequences of facts but there are also such sequences which we treat as chains of connected facts where one fact generates the other. Ingarden tries to account for his option with the statement that a cause is incomplete in its being – it needs its effect to achieve wholeness of being said differently, the cause is in any “unbalance of being” and the effect brings it into balance. Unfortunately he does not explain exactly what this means. This is probably a consequence of his interest in physics, in which case his balance of being is an analogue of the physical balance of forces. To tell the truth, this is the one of the weak points of his argument, but maybe understandably, because he tries to identify, in this moment, the basis of change – one element of the ground of being. The cause and the effect must be temporal objects, because they must be real (actual). They are formally events or processes, but because beginnings, ends and intersections of processes are also events for Ingarden, he can say that causality is a connection between events. The causal connection between two events, where there are no more events between them, is named by Ingarden the direct causal connection and it is the basis for the indirect causal connections in which there are more events which are in succession causes and effects. We see that Ingarden’s conception of the cause is different from these conceptions which acknowledge things as causes or effects. For Ingarden a thing cannot do anything, it can only be a foundation for processes and events. For example a pencil cannot do anything itself.3 Ingarden’s conception is a special kind of eventism in this respect. For Ingarden, the event is the “stepping into being (occurrence) of a state of a thing or an objective situation”;4 for example, the arrival of a train into a station. The event is “coming into being” in one moment, without duration. The event comes into being and immediately goes out of being in the same moment; the event has no duration. It is set into being punctually and at once vanishes; only the state of a thing which has been begun by the event stays longer. Is it possible both to be a temporal object and to have no duration? What kind of object is an event? Perhaps there are two kinds of events: Being or not being That is the question.

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We can imagine two situations: the first is when an event is a small process of coming into being. But if this is true every two moments are different and we still do not understand how the second comes into being. I think the problem arises through the attempt to describe a change by static notions. Language is static in its logical form, which means that values of truth and falsity concern punctual moments. For example, let’s consider two sentences: “Socrates was bald” and “Socrates was not bald.” These concern two different moments in time. Let’s look at the active notion, for example, “I am reading a text.” There must be something static in this situation if I can say “I am reading” from one moment to another – the form is the same in both moments. Regarding cause, there are notions which have changeability, that is, “change”, but we cannot fully understand what that means or how anything changes. We can only say that in one moment something is such and in another it is different. That is all. The second situation is when an event is just a temporal point. I think we cannot understand how this is possible; I really do not know what “coming into being in one temporal point” means: this is like a miracle, especially in a temporal continuum, because we can set many moments between every two of them and we can always ask what state of a thing exists between these two moments. Secondly, if such an event has no duration but exists in time, then it would be possible for many different events to be in the same temporal point, and this is a logical contradiction. The conclusion is that the notion of change is not fully known. My proposal is to treat an event as an abstract object. Real object have duration, so Ingarden’s event is probably an abstract object like a geometrical point. This means that there are only processes, founded on things, in the real world. So we come to temporal relations. For most people the cause exists before its effects and both are adjacent. For Ingarden, two things, for example two atoms, cannot be adjacent – they can only be apart or cover the same part of space, because boundaries of atoms are not exactly specified. But the most important argument for him is that time is continuous and in a continuous object it is not possible to indicate adjacency as it is in the geometrical continuum of points. Geometrical points cannot be exactly adjacent because between every two of them we can always set a third one. According to Prof. Gierulanka, an editor and translator of Ingarden’s work, and my own opinion, strict adjacency appears only between sections closed and opened (in the mathematical sense), for example and (B;C>, but it is not possible in the homogeneous world. Therefore, an earlier cause can only be apart from its effect in conceptions in which there are continuums. For Ingarden, the mathematical methods of

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differentiation and integration are not adequate to explain real connections, because they do an intuitive jump, for example from a sequence 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 … to 0 as a limit, although we cannot attain 0 in this sequence. This method is good in mathematics, but not good in the real world, in the real transition between one fact as a cause and the other fact as an effect. In the real world we cannot jump to attain continuity. Ingarden argues that setting infinitely many events between two given events is only an illusion, because this interposition only lessens the gaps, and does not fill these gaps. I could add that this interposition is infinite and it cannot be finished. His conclusion is this: events cannot be adjacent, nor can they be apart, because in this case a cause does not exist while its effect is coming into being; so they must be simultaneous. The most original statement of Ingarden’s conception is that the cause and the effect are simultaneous while in direct causal connection. My objection to this is that Ingarden divides abstractly a continuous object which is time and treats its parts like separate pieces between which there is nothing – a kind of empty gap. This mistake leads to similar problems to those of Zeno’s paradoxes. For me, the causal connection has a similar continuity to that of motion and time, and we can neither treat them nor describe them using a static notion, like that of a geometrical point, a punctual present or Ingarden’s event without duration. We can divide abstractly the continuous real object without cutting it, therefore we can talk about parts of the continuous object; but these parts must have a duration. This division is theoretically infinite but practically and really finite, because we cannot really divide ad infinitum. Ingarden’s argument comes from an interpretation of time and especially the present. The present cannot be a temporal point, because the conjunction of presents without duration could not produce the duration of the world. The present must be an “indivisible” quantum of time. In this quantum there can be a cause and its effect but also the next direct effect, i.e. the direct effect of the preceding effect, and so on. This means that there can be many direct causal connections in the present, because events do not have any duration. In my opinion, we can set many arguments against Ingarden’s point. The most important and simplest is: if there are two different events in the same moment and every event is the “coming into being” of any state of a thing, then there are two different states in the same moment and there is a logical contradiction. Ingarden’s next argument for simultaneity of cause and effect is derived from Ingarden’s notion of cause. The cause is the last element (in time) of the active

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sufficient condition, which is composed of many elements as circumstances. This last element (the cause) completes these circumstances to the sufficient condition and also activates them, whereas these elements (the circumstances) could not generate the effect without this last element (the cause). If a cause is the last element of the sufficient condition, Ingarden claims, it cannot wait in its activity and it must immediately generate its effect. This means that the cause and the effect must be simultaneous – otherwise there could appear any element from outside the sufficient condition which could change the effect, and in this way, the “last element” would not be the sufficient or the last one. “Something is sufficient” means for Ingarden that nothing else is needed to generate the effect. Our answer is similar to the one above “Immediately” does not imply any remoteness. One element can follow another without interruption, without pause. “Sufficient” does not have to imply any temporal relation. According to Roman Ingarden, the sufficient condition can apply to mathematical or any other ideal relations. For example, the equality of all inner angles in a parallelogram is a sufficient condition of the equality of its diagonals; but this does not mean that there is any causal connection in mathematical relations. Therefore Ingarden distinguishes between static and active sufficient conditions. The first one is found between ideal objects, the second one occurs between real objects. The second one differs in special activity and actuality from the first one. This activity consists in the generation of something new. The second one is an expression of regularity in the world, not vice versa. The dependence of an effect upon a cause is not a logical dependence,5 but if any real A is a logically sufficient condition of any real B, then this depends on a regularity in the world. Even one appearance of two facts A and B, where A generates B, can provide evidence of a causal connection between A and B for Ingarden. The cause is not the whole causal condition but only its last active element, because the cause alone cannot generate the effect without the accompanying circumstances: otherwise it could have generated the effect earlier. The effect is also not the whole of the new state, but only a part of the new state which is different (qualitatively) from the old one because the part which is identical with the old state does not have to be generated – it stays from one moment to another. In order to stay identical, it does not need any cause or any causal connection. In the case when the cause and its effect are simultaneous there is a danger that the whole world will be shrunk to one moment (Hume’s argument6);

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therefore Ingarden sets a steady process or an invariable state of an object between two unsimultaneous events. The steady process and the invariable state have duration and through that the world does not exist only in one moment. They do not need any cause to stay – they are a “simple staying in being,” not “going over to another state,” because they have a special inertia of being and they are not changing at all. For Ingarden, not only is the invariable state not changing but the steady process is not changing as well. For instance, regular motion is not change and does not need any cause to continue. An object does not change in regular motion; its qualitative contents are the same, and therefore Ingarden claims that this move is invariable. For Ingarden, the world contains events linked by steady processes and invariable states on the foundation of objects persisting in time. We can defer to this view. First of all, every movement is a change – the change of position. Of course this is not a change of absolute properties but one of relative properties. My second argument is: if regular motion were not a change, it would be possible that Ingarden’s world would stop. Let us imagine the moment in which there would be only processes – in this situation, the world would stop, because something invariable cannot change at all (it is without change). Ingarden does not see this and claims, first of all, that two steady processes can intersect. This intersection is an event which has a cause – but this cause is not a direct cause, only an indirect but nearest cause, i.e. two events which are the beginnings of the intersecting processes. This produces a problem, because we have a situation in which the cause is apart from its effect. Secondly, he claims that this causal connection does not depend on a direct causal connection. I think otherwise. The processes can generate effects, they can produce change, they can crush, strike, etc. The steady process and the invariant state of objects need isolation to exist, otherwise they would change by some influence at every moment. This means for Ingarden that there are relatively isolated systems. The relatively isolated system is a system that is isolated temporarily and only in a certain respect and to a certain degree; in other respects it is not isolated. The system can be isolated by an isolator or by neutrality. The isolator is any material which takes over any influence. The neutrality is inefficiency which prevents any processes or events from influencing others. For instance, some chemical compounds need catalyzer to overcome neutrality. For Ingarden, the world is a big system of many relatively isolated systems of a lower level.

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This does not mean that indeterminism exists. Ingarden claims that every event and process has its cause. The relatively isolated system is no oasis of freedom. Every event in an isolated system has its cause, but not every influence on this system is a cause of every event in this system. He is a moderate determinist. And so, is freedom possible, according to Ingarden? Ingarden leaves only several remarks on freedom, and in proportion to them I am going to present some perspectives. Yes, freedom is possible, but for him, freedom is not the absence of a cause. Freedom is any ability (power) to generate my own decisions, my own acts. Freedom is an activity that has its cause in myself. My activity must go out from myself. What does “my” mean, for Ingarden? Man is a system of relatively isolated systems. The main ones are: the body, the psyche and the ego. The body is a relatively isolated system of other such systems like organs, nerves, etc. It is relatively isolated from its surroundings and from the psyche or the ego. The psyche is a relatively isolated system of psychical systems. The ego is a centrum of consciousness and of will. This is a centrum of reflection and thinking and it is also a relatively isolated system. Consciousness differentiates the ego from the rest. Our body is an isolator for many but not for all influences. Our eyes receive only some electromagnetic waves – for example, they do not receive ultraviolet waves. In this way not all influences from the external world are direct causes of something internal. My decisions can be independent from another system, but of course they have their causes; these causes are inside of the system of man. They can be in my body – for example, great hunger – in my psyche – love – and in my ego – for instance, a moral decision. The ego influences the psyche but the psyche also influences the ego. The same relation exists between the ego and the body, and between the body and the psyche. We see differences when one system works against another. For example, the body works against the ego when we are tired but want to do something more to help somebody. The ego works against the psyche when moral principle is in conflict with my desire. In these situations my psyche is more “mine” than my body, and my ego is the most “mine.” This means that I am the most free when my decision comes from my own ego. Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland N OT E S 1

Roman Ingarden – a Polish philosopher who wrote about causality mainly in the first volume of his Controversy Over the Existence of the World (Cracow 1947 in Polish and Tuebingen 1965

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in German) and in all of the third volume of this work entitled On the Causal Structure of the Real World (Tuebingen 1974 in German and Warsaw 1981 in Polish). The book R. Ingarden, Time and Modes of Being, American Lectures in Philosophy, Springfield 1964, contains some excerpts of the first volume translated in English by H. R. Michejda. 2 R. Ingarden, Time and Modes of Being (Springfield: American Lectures in Philosophy, 1964), p. 56. 3 I suppose it could be good argument in his theory that the man is a processing being. 4 Op. cit. vol. I § 28 5 That was a mistake of J. S. Mill. 6 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, I,III,2.

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In the philosophy of Józef Tischner (1931–2000) – priest, philosopher, publicist, one of the most outstanding figures in the Polish Catholic Church and certainly one of the most brilliant disciples of Roman Ingarden – the problem of the world seems to be treated marginally, not to say indifferently. In fact, however, because of the direction this philosophy takes and the way it evolved, ultimately it becomes a pivotal issue. Tischner’s philosophy is through and through a philosophy of the human being. It stems not only from strictly academic pursuits, but also from genuine “pastoral” care. Tischner wants to bring help to his contemporaries, as “contemporary man has entered a time of great crisis of hope. The crisis of hope is the crisis of the fundamentals,” writes Tischner in the introduction to Thinking According to Values.1 He wants to help particular people out of this crisis. But particular people are first and foremost where we are, and only the kind of thought that accepts some sort of “here and now” is likely to be fruitful. Whereas “there were times when the source of philosophy was admiration for the world (Aristotle). Then it was doubt (Descartes). And now, in this land of ours, philosophy is born of pain. The quality of philosophy is determined by the quality of human pain, which philosophy wants both to express and to prevent. Failure to see this is close to treason.”2 The expression “in this land of ours” is symptomatic. It betrays a love for this land that is common knowledge among those who knew Tischner’s passionate attachment to the Tatra region. But maybe it was this love, or, to put it more simply, the inalienable closeness of that land, i.e. “the human land” most often walked upon, that prevented Tischner from making the land the object of his reflection for a long time. If he does reflect on it, then only indirectly, through his critique of the philosophy of the world from which man is absent, and whose paradigm is thing-ness. Let us take this perspective on Tischner’s critique of Thomist thought. T H E C R I T I QU E O F T H O M I S T M E TA P H Y S I C S

Tischner’s famous article The Twilight of Thomist Christianity and the ensuing polemics, collected in the volume Thinking According to Values – extraordinarily rich, technically skilful and well worth deeper consideration – deals with what is the fundamental Christian philosophical orientation in the modern 611 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 611–624. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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world. There is the juxtaposition of fundamental differences both in the concept of philosophy and in the methodological rules it is governed by, as well as the categories of utmost importance, which should propel the presentday philosophy. For the purpose of this discussion two issues can be seen as particularly prominent from Tischner’s point of view. The first concerns the methodological anachronism of the great holistic speculative metaphysics, which tries to embrace the whole universe in a gigantic synthesis, but also the reality emerging from Christian revelation. The second deals with presenting under the name of “being as being” that kind of approach to reality which involves, since the times of Aristotle, predominantly “natural” reality; in the terminology, this approach is symbolised by the category of “essence.” “The metaphysics of Thomism – thus Tischner – almost entirely engulfed by ontology, is in fact the continuation of physics, albeit on a higher level of abstraction. The consequence is that a thought thus shaped is sensitive only to a very specific kind of experience, such as perception and bodily experience in general. Sensitivity of this kind is usually called ‘the objectivity of Thomism.’ If the data achieved in the perception of things and their properties is ‘objective’, then the results of the process of their abstraction (the concepts of entity, nonentity, essence, accidence, etc.) are also ‘objective,’ whereas suffering, guilt, consciousness of dying, etc., are ‘subjective.’” Thus “arises a deep conflict between him and the thought permeating modern philosophy.” Because, he adds, “although modern philosophy studies the subjective, it does not become overly subjective, and although it studies the relative, it does not become overly relative, and even though it studies the concrete, it does not give up the universal.”3 In a polemic with the Polish philosopher professor Stefan Swiezawski, Tischner writes, “man looked at himself through these (i.e. Thomist) concepts and perhaps he was aware that they help him think about himself, but he was not aware that he understands himself at all. The man who thinks he has understood the world, but has not in fact understood himself, can be dangerous.”4 The fundamental question now is the following: “is man able to learn the fundamental (philosophical, metaphysical) truth about the world, if he has not learned the fundamental truth about himself?” Actually, Tischner adds, “the truth about the world and the truth about man are connected by a ‘hermeneutic spiral’: understanding oneself conditions the understanding of the world, and understanding the world conditions the understanding of oneself.”5 The latter statements seem to be crucial. They do not concern only the critique of methodological monism or the “cosmologisation” of the philosophy of man; neither do they pertain solely to the separatist ontological

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and methodological pluralism: they reveal the fundamentality of the situation that modern philosophy has found itself in. It is a situation where the understanding of man as an element of the world, and the understanding of the world as primarily human (as human surroundings in the broadest sense), belong together, and only then are transformed into the world of things, subject to the scientifically discoverable mathematical and physical laws. Such a situation is the source of the possibility of metaphysical experience and the emergence of metaphysics as a science. Because “the development of metaphysics does not consist in rewriting metaphysical treatises, but in attempts to clarify the crucial ‘metaphysical experience’ of man.”6 This stance brings about a change of the sense of the world and leads to looking for sources of metaphysics that would go deeper than speculative rationality, i.e. a more fundamental movement of thought responsible for metaphysics, defined as the philosophy of Transcendence. It turns out, however, that in light of this movement Thomist metaphysics can also be given its due. Tischner calls the movement “metaphorisation.” How does it occur within the domain which is of interest to us? T H E “ M E TA P H O R I S AT I O N ” O F T H E WO R L D

One of the texts crucial to the understanding of Tischner’s metaphysics, and at the same time fundamental for the philosophy of religion of what may be termed “middle Tischner” thought, is the essay “Religious Thinking” published in Thinking According to Values. It contains a thoroughly reflected polemic with the proponents of Thomist thought, and this is also why it can give its due to Thomist metaphysics and creatively interpret it. The essay’s starting point is the question of the relation between faith and reason. Tischner is convinced that only by asking questions about this relation can we discover the legitimacy of – and not merely a subjective motivation for – the metaphysics of the world. Only when reason seeks faith can it find “the Codes of Transcendence,” meeting faith that had also set out to seek understanding. This is possible, since there is no enmity between faith and reason. “If faith seeks reason, reason is granted to faith; if reason seeks faith, faith cannot be entirely alien to it … in accepting the laws of reason, faith becomes thinking; in accepting the laws of faith, reason participates in its nature.”7 Religious thinking – like all thinking – has three dimensions: the subject (it is “somebody’s thinking”); the intersubjective, dialogic context (“thinking with somebody”), and the intentional reference (“thinking about something”). This already suggests a multiplicity of potential paths of religious thinking,

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its possible orientations, which forbid to restrict the concept to just one of them. We cannot take all three aspects of religious thinking into consideration at this point; we will limit our discussion to the domain where the thinking of the world can be found, and along with it possibly Thomist metaphysics as well. It is found, predictably, in the intentional sphere of thinking, in the “about” aspect of thinking. Tischner states firstly that “the intentional dimension of thought is fundamentally different from the subjective and the dialogic dimensions.” While “thinking can, as a rule, objectify anything,” nevertheless it has to remember that even when it makes itself – the thinking human being – the object of its thinking, this man, myself, is more than just the object of thinking – he is its subject, and, similarly, even if the thinking is directed at the other, making him its object, this other is also – or can be – a partner in the dialogue. This is not the case in thinking about things, objects and events. In this sphere the relations of subjectification and the dialogic relation do not hold. What remains are only the objects themselves – only what one is thinking about.”8 This somewhat academic differentiation entails a fundamental consequence: the hierarchization of reality. It is obvious that, in view of the above, a subject is “something more,” as Ian Ramsay would say, than things. The relations between them are such that things, hence also the world, are for man, while man, even though he exists in the world, is not for the world. This relation is illustrated by Tischner with a well-known metaphor: the world is the scene of human drama. We will not investigate the phenomenological basis of this expression here. What we are interested in is how the scene of man’s drama can become reason’s separate path toward Transcendence. This is Tischner’s reconstruction of this path: “The proper object of objective thinking is the world understood as the scene. … But the very fact of the world being merely the scene of the drama provokes the question about its ontological status. Where did it come from? What is it? What is it for? Questions like these involve the question about the ultimate object of intentional thinking. … In other words, is intentional thinking about the scene able to transcend the scene toward God? Hence the problem of looking for faith via the understanding of the world, defined as a scene.”9 It is striking that Tischner reconstructs the idea of accidence in a completely different way than Thomism – accidence is not the result of differentiation between essence and being, or of the structural accidence of finite things, but of some defect of sense, which does not justify the earth sufficiently. This is possible not only because Tischner relates the world to man, but, what’s more, reduces it to being man’s footstool, so to say. And this particular status is the basis of

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Tischner’s original “metaphysics of the world,” which he does not present in the essay, however, even though it is inherent in it. What emerges, then, is a clearly novel principle, which makes metaphysicality as such at all possible. It is the principle of “metaphorisation” discussed in another essay, “Thinking from Inside the Metaphor.” The essence of metaphorisation is the simple fact that reality – the world, the phenomena of consciousness, language, poetry – “is food for thought.” This Ricoeurian formula means for Tischner that what we think about transports us out of ourselves toward something else – toward the Absolutely Other – what appears, in relation to what is “food for thought,” true in the broadest sense. Tischner consistently terms this principle “hermeneutic thinking” and describes it in the following way: “Hermeneutic thinking indicates movement in the opposite [than default, i.e. from the near to the far; my comment – KT] direction: beings are metaphors, everything that is immediate, common and physical is a metaphor. A metaphor of what? Of what is in fact beyond the beings. Our existence, our physical experience in its entirety is a quasiexistence by nature. And quasi-existence can only cause quasi-judgements. The science of what there is, is merely an ‘as if’ kind of science, a science of ‘what as if existed’. It is no longer physics that is the supreme science, but metaphysics, as the only branch of knowledge which shows that experiential existence is but a metaphor of real existence.”10 The deepest mechanism of metaphysicality is revealed by Tischner in the essay “Thinking According to Values,” as Good, which “sheds light” on the problem of reality as a whole, and especially the reality of evil. However, in the discussed essay “Religious Thinking,” the source of the metaphor of the world as “the scene of the drama” is unique in the body of Tischner’s philosophy. The reason is that Tischner wants to recreate the conditions of a possible philosophy other than his own, looking for its immanent sources. He finds one in the Aristotelian admiration for the rationality of the world. Where does the admiration come from? “To admire means to discover some perfection in the world and seek even greater perfection beyond it. What kind of perfection? Thinking, which is the power of discovery, finds the world is perfect, since it is rational. Aristotle’s admiration is first and foremost the admiration for the rationality of the world.”11 From the point of view of the world’s metaphysics, as well as “some natural scientists,” “as the scene is characterised by reason, it must be a reflection of Reason … it is a work of art, so it betrays a mysterious Artist … it is purposely structured, so it forces us to think of the purpose of being.”12 This means primarily that metaphysical thinking is founded on emotion, some

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kind of sensing of reality, some way of, as Heidegger would put it, “tuning in the right mood” for reality, which determines a certain reading of it. What kind of reading? One which enables metaphorisation. “Humbleness in the face of the splendour of the world prepares reason for an act of worship, and thus opens it for God.”13 Admiration does not bring discredit to reason: “Admiration in the face of the rationality of the world, discovered anew every moment, is worthy of reason. Reason like that is not false.”14 That is what constitutes not only the source of Aquinas’ philosophy, but also its legitimacy. “The philosophic admiration for the scene and the religious way of experiencing its mysteries are very close. That is why the element of metaphysical admiration is not and cannot be alien to Christianity. Hence the philosophic work of St. Thomas Aquinas – making the pagan vision of the scene known to the world. From then on it was possible to say: reason seeks faith.”15 And although a metaphysics of the world thus defined cannot claim to be exclusive, it certainly keeps the eyes open to what other theories of the world, “which believe that the scene … is an absolute being,” fail to see. These theories are given by Tischner the “common name of ‘terrism.’” He writes, “terrism invests all the hope of the world in what is now and requires the world to accept the scene as ultimate. It is blind to accidence, metaphorisation and the relative character of the scene.”16 The Thomist vision of the scene leads to a certain understanding of God: God as Reason, but first and foremost as Self-caused Being, which seems to be the most proper one here. But is it really the most proper name for the God who is, in one way or the other, a God for man…? For Tischner, then, the world is just the scene of human drama, but at the same time a scene with its own logos, able to excite admiration for its rationality, and thus likely to occasion metaphorisation and involve the world in a relation with God. This moment seems crucial: through its splendour the world can both prepare the ground for and prolong the religious relation with God. What follows in either case is that the scene of the drama is not indifferent to the drama itself. But what drama is this and what is the role of scene? What is the ultimate meaning of the world for man? We will answer these questions with analyses taken from Tischner’s The Philosophy of Drama and The Controversy over Human Existence. T H E P RO M I S E D L A N D A S T H E P RO M I S E O F L A N D

The concept of drama reflects for Tischner the fundamental structure of human existence. What is drama? “Participating in a drama, man realises

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more or less clearly that – metaphorically speaking – his damnation or his salvation are in his own hands. To be a dramatic person is to believe – rightly or not – that man’s damnation and salvation are in his own hands. … This conviction presupposes man’s particular ontological structure – man can be the subject of drama, as he is a being-for-itself. … Participation in the drama is ‘learning’ oneself in view of the hope of salvation.”17 Drama, then, is a particular idea of existence: involving what is ultimate, i.e. ultimate damnation and ultimate salvation. From the perspective of drama human reality is so to say eschatological; there is inherent seriousness, “to be or not to be” in the deepest possible sense. Therefore everything that participates in the drama, no matter what the part, can achieve ultimate sense. The structure of drama is parallel (though not identical) to that of thinking. What is crucial in both is time, the scene of the drama and the other human being. “Man would not be a dramatic being if it were not for the three following factors: his vulnerability in respect to the other, vulnerability in respect to the scene of the drama and to the passing time.” 18 Let us immediately ask the following question: what is the scene of the drama? Firstly, there can be no doubt as to its being, which precludes any kind of “controversy over the existence of the world.” What is important for Tischner is that the scene is beneath man’s feet. “Man submits to himself what nature has placed beneath him. The basic act of submission is the act of subjectification or objectivisation. Man experiences the scene in making it subjective, changing it into a space filled with ‘objects.’ 19 However, this vision, akin to that of Husserl and Levinas, seems to require a slight correction. If drama deals with “the ultimate” and if the scene participates in “the ultimate” to some extent, then objectification cannot be the last word. When exactly, at which point does the world enter the drama to become the scene? When it becomes the stage of the struggle between good and evil, felt through the great religious narrative – that is, always. For Tischner the fact that the world is the scene of the drama means that it is never entirely neutral. Tischner conceives of the alternatives in terms of the following expressions: “the promised land” on the one hand, and “the denied land” on the other. As we will see later, it is just another facet of the previous dichotomy, that between the world as metaphor and the world as absolute, or “terrism.” The difference in these approaches consists not only in the content, but also in the connotation of the very terms “promised” and “denied.” They emerge from religious dialogue, i.e. directly from intersubjective situations, as “all the experience of the earth as the scene is mediated by some mutual relation with the other. This is what is expressed in the idea of promise.” 20

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Thus the world is directly, and not only at a remove, an essentially “human land.” Let us begin with the description of the elementary structure of man’s relation with the earth. Tischner calls this relation “husbandry” (in the sense of farming). Man has always been put in the position of one who must rule the earth, but at the same time must respect its nature – this concept, greatly disregarded nowadays, proves indispensable in this discussion. “From the point of view of husbandry – which is greatly significant – the land has got a certain nature. There is the nature of fire and the nature of water. There is the nature of woman and the nature of man. Whoever wants to farm the land, must take the differences in natures into account. … Things have to be treated in accordance with their nature. Whoever disrespects nature may provoke the mutiny of the scene.” Nature manifests itself not only in the so-called “laws of nature,” but primarily, says Tischner, in the hierarchical order of things, since “various forms of life constitute a hierarchy. That is why the wisdom of husbandry must accept the hierarchical order. The life of man is more valuable than the life of a blade of grass, the life of a tree or an animal. Man treads on the ground, which situates the scene beneath him.”21 As he writes on another occasion, “Man lives in a distance … The distance is something elementary: here am I, and there is the world; I am above the world and the world is beneath me.”22 The scene thus defined is internalised by man, and man attaches himself to the world: the world becomes “mine” – I am not the world, the world is “for me.” “The word ‘for’ indicates promise – my world is the world of the promise I was given, it is a world both promised and promising.”23 The promise, however, is fulfilled only when we form some kind of “togetherness” with others and thus mutually make husbands of ourselves. The fruit of this “togetherness” are privileged places. Tischner enumerates four of those: home, the workplace, the shrine, the cemetery. Only in this way, through interpersonal relations, is the scene organised in some “planes of crystallisation of life,” which make the scene of the drama “the human world of surroundings.” It is precisely in these “places” that the world acquires dramatic sense. Let us briefly consider them one by one. Home. Tischner’s beautiful descriptions of home owe a lot to Levinas, but they are also vibrant with personal experience. Let us quote at some length: “The space most immediate for man is home. All man’s ways through the world are measured in relation to the distance from home. … Home is man’s nest. It is here that children are born, it is here that responsibility for the tidiness and order of the first community ripens, it is here that man recognises the main mysteries of things – windows, doors, spoons – it is here that he

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laughs and cries, it is from here that he leaves to rest in peace. To have a home means to have an encompassing region of fundamental familiarity. … At home man can be himself at his place … To build a home means to feel at home.”24 Feeling at home is impossible without the other; it is owing to the other that man grows attached to his home as his promised land. “The betrothed who promise each other a home are certain that in their promise there is an inherent sense, prior to the promise of theirs … Their promises are merely echoes of the ancient promise … These who have built a home start to believe that right there, in that home, in that garden, by that cradle, their promised land has come into being.”25 But is that really so? Home is sometimes – inescapably – also the scene of tragedy: suffering, misfortunes, death. That is why home also constitutes a source of metaphorisation. “The essence of human drama is expressed in the question: what is home, is it a bona fide, solid home or just a promise of home? Is man able to build a solid home? Is he able to take roots here? Is his attachment to his home an attachment to something solid and durable? Losing home, man enters a borderline situation, where a new sense of the emptied home takes shape: he starts to suppose that the home was just a promise of a home … The emptied home opens the horizon of transcendence. It leaves an imprint in man’s soul – an idea of another home, one immune to fire or betrayal – the home of truth. This idea will determine man’s drama in relation to the real home, even when he will doubt it.”26 The analyses of the workplace draw from Tischner’s earlier studies of the problem of work, which, in his opinion, involves predominatly co-work, or communication between people. Tischner calls the fruit of work “rootedness.” “Rootedness” is – along with “feeling at home” – a form of becoming attached to the land. Man attaches himself to the land through his work. The main source of the power of attachment are those for whom man works.” But through work man also discovers the truth about the world, “he experiences the nature of the world as the promised land. Tasting bread, man tastes a promise which has been kept.”27 But work can also bring all sorts of unhappiness – “work can even kill.” Hence the pressing question: “what is it that we live in, actually: the promised land or the promise of land?”28 The answer to this question is, for believers, the shrine, which “opens a horizon of a totally Different Reality.” Let us quote Tischner: “Here, in the shrine, the ultimate truth about the world as the scene of human drama is shown. The earth is a metaphor of the earth. Home is a metaphor of the real home, and the obedience of the land greeting the working man is a metaphor

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of true obedience. These metaphors must be interpreted as signs of hope. To interpret the signs of hope is to understand the promised land as the promise of land. What is crucial to this understanding is the courage to leave the incomplete for the complete. This act of leaving is the very essence of poverty. Poverty is the basis for the discovery of the new sense of the world. … The world is a scene and the scene is for man, but only as a roadsign. Does anyone get attached to a roadsign?”29 Lastly, the cemetery is an occasion to understand the world as a place of heredity. Exile and unrootedness are manifestations of the violation of heredity. “At the grave of the dead, man realises that he is an heir. What does it mean to be an heir? It means, primarily, to participate in the dignities of those who came before us. In continuing after them, what we continue above all is dignity. We are heirs thanks to our forefathers and they are forefathers thanks to their heirs.” Nowhere else can the need for metaphorisation be felt more tangibly: “The cemetery increases the awareness of the distance between man and the earth. The land of the cemetery is the land of a promise which has not been kept.”30 As it has been showed, “the promised land” is – contrary to the author’s suggestions – something completely different than the world of things. It is first and foremost a geography of places where the sense of the human world is crystallised to man. This sense is fundamentally dependent on whether man is able and willing to read the deepest truth of the world, i.e. its metaphorical status, its being but a trace of completeness which is impossible to attain here – a truth also in another sense: a truth of fulfilled Good. Anyhow, the concept of truth is pivotal. But what happens to the world when man does not read this truth? THE DENIED LAND

Tischner’s fundamental thesis is as follows: man can only tame and rule the world to a certain extent, so that the metaphorical sense of the world remains unrelated to him. But misfortunes occur and “into a rationalised world enters something which seems non-rational.” The idea of “promised land” is also a name for the hope which can integrate misfortunes: “The power of hope consists in its embracing every rebellion of the world, transforming the sense of the promised land in the sense of the land as a promise.” However, hope can dwindle and disappear. “Then a suspicion arises that we live in a land of exile, a hostile land, a rebelled land. … Everything that is is denied me. … My relation to land, my husbandry have a different meaning now. Anxiety

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becomes part of it. I am afraid to take the next step because I tread on somebody else’s path. I keep repeating: forgive me for being here. I am guilty.”31 What happens then? The only option left in the denied land is fight, the reverse side of which is “desire,” and the structure of what Tischner calls “the allure of the world.” The structure can be summarised in the following way: “Those who desire, fight for possession. They fight, as they know they do not possess and this fills them with fear.”32 Desire is bipolar: it is directed both toward the earth and toward the other man. We are more interested in the former, but – what is true for the whole of this structure – the close relationship of the two is characteristic. Tischner defines desire as the prolongation of the tasting of things, as he renders Levinas’ jouissance. Tasting is the direct experience of quality sensations, which transforms into desire. Why? Because anxiety has crept into the tasting, and along with it a wish to take possession over everything possible. “Those who are afraid no longer want an apple, they want the whole apple tree.”33 Thus desire as greediness for riches is born. What is significant for this thought – and crucial to the entire Philosophy of Drama – is the connection of desire with the desire of revenge. “Desire ruins mutuality … Revenge means the necessity of striking first. The other must be chased away before he chases away me. … Revenge arises from the opposite of promise – the ancient denial. Where there is denial, there must be the agent of it. Who is the agent of the ancient denial? Can he be reached? He is cloaked by the darkness of historical amnesia. But he can be replaced any time by a particular person – the one who is approaching me now.”34 Unfortunately, we cannot discuss Tischner’s deep philosophy of revenge in more detail here. I will only add that “the possibility of radical, ethical and metaphysical revenge” is inherent in it.35 Living by desire annihilates places, makes man homeless, ruins every sphere of existence. I will not present the analyses of the denied land in detail, but I have to remark that they seem to bear the mark of genius, and in some respects have no equal in modern philosophy. Let us only sum up the vision of the land – the land which becomes ever less human. In the denied land man fears and desires. That is why home is here not just an inhospitable hideout and shelter from elements, but also shelter from other people – a hatchery of suspicions, which occasionally serves as a boxing ring as well. The world of work is a torment and a curse, since both the land and, more importantly, the working man become the mere material of work, devoid of their own nature and self-sufficiency. “Work is a form of fight – in

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which the land is the opponent,” and, in the ideology of work, “only work makes one human.”36 In the framework of this vision shrines become the place of resentment and vengeance, for man “founds his faith in God on deep lack of faith in the other human being.”37 In effect, “the modern man who looks for God will typically look for him outside the shrine, far from the sight of the human face.” Thus a world devoid of God is created. However, “What becomes of the scene of human drama without its sacred places? It becomes the land of laissez-faire. This is a place where nothing is forbidden. ‘God is dead – I am free to do whatever I please.’ Man threatens even to destroy the world. And the destruction of it does not make him feel guilty, as he is convinced that he is in fact destroying the land of exile.”38 It’s not surprising, then, that the cemetery ceases to carry any positive message as well. “The achievement of the dead is something that we can and need to despise in order to take forward the history of the world. We leave it with hearts full of scorn.”39 In this way what Tischner calls “the allure of the world” is constituted, and it is not just another form of “terrism” discussed earlier. “The basis of the allure of the world is the ancient conviction of denial. Man experiences the allure of the world as the voice of the land – the scene of his drama – a voice which encourages him to consider as promised what has been denied and forbidden. Allurement is an attempt to promise man what has been denied him.” And what has been denied him? This is not an easy question to answer. Let us put it this way: man was denied the right to break the laws of nature in the broadest sense. “Laws of nature” pertain not only to the movement of the celestial spheres, but primarily to mutuality, responsibility, solidarity and also to limits of possession. Let us recapitulate the idea of the allure of the world in the words of its author: “The voice of allure awakes desire. Desire is an act of questioning the inner truth of husbandry and its fundamental domains – it is a fourfold negation, which changes in consequence the sense of the places in the human world. The basic no negates the idea of nature – from now on everything becomes merely material for work, and work becomes a means of satisfying desires. … Gradually the difference between the scene and man who lives there ceases to exist. The world has no nature and man has no nature … In order to create everything anew, man reaches the state when he had not been created man. This negation creates the allure of the world. The allure constructs through destruction. The greater the wretchedness, the louder the voice of the temptation: ‘ye will be like God.’”40 The thesis fundamental for Tischner’s work as a whole claims that this transformation of the attitude toward the scene of the drama is a function of

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evil, which enters along with the experience of the betrayal of mutuality. Let us quote Tischner again: “The destruction of the places results from the end of mutuality, i.e. betrayal. Evil in the elementary sense, then – the fundamental, dialogic evil – manifests itself as betrayal.”41 Ultimately the world becomes what it is in Descartes’ hypothesis of the evil genius, which Tischner analysed many times: the object of a spiteful lie, where every value and every truth can be an anti-value and an illusion. The answer to such a reading of the world is, for both philosophers, freedom – liberation from the quasi-necessity to lie and from despair. For Descartes this meant the discovery of the truth of thinking and the discovery of a truthful God. For Tischner the climax of liberation is the opening up for the Good and the Infinite Freedom of God. It is the Good, but closely connected with Freedom, that Tischner finds the most appropriate name for God. Opening up for the Good brings hope, but it cannot be occasioned by men alone, who are more often desperate than hopeful. * As has been shown, through the idea of “the promised land” and “the denied land” Tischner introduces the world into the very heart of human drama. The sense of the world undergoes as if a double transformation. It is no longer a cosmos – the object of the physical sciences and speculative metaphysics – but neither is it a neutral Lebenswelt, nature and nurture. The world is every time a name for a certain shape of existence, which marks it with a totally contrasting deep meaning. The sense emerges from the way man responds to the “voice of the land,” which Tischner put briefly thus: “the promised land is the promise of the land.” The promise is not simultaneously the fulfilment of the promise, but only a hope for its fulfilment, a metaphor of fulfilment. This metaphor contains, however, a requirement of respect for the fundamental measure, which makes the world truly human, but which man often does not want to keep, thinking it beneath him. Then he changes the sense of the world into “the denied land,” making it – by desire and revenge – an increasingly waste land. According to this concept the world “takes part” in the drama not only as its scene, but also, to some degree, its prize. Tischner introduces us into the very heart of metaphysics, which is simultaneously, inescapably the metaphysics of the world and of God, since it is the metaphysics of man who construes the sense of reality in accordance with the way he reacts to the appeal coming from the Other: God and man. Papal Academy of Theology, Cracow, Poland Translated by Agnieszka Pokojska

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Józef Tischner, My´slenie wedlug warto´sci (Cracow, 1982), p. 10 ibid. p. 13 – my emphasis – K. T. ibid. pp. 304–305 ibid. p. 295 ibid. p. 297 ibid. p. 303 ibid. p. 339 ibid. p. 353 ibid. p. 354 ibid. p. 479 ibid. p. 357 ibid. p. 356 ibid. p. 358 ibid. p. 357 ibid. ibid. p. 358 Filozofia dramatu (Cracow, 1998), p. 10 ibid. p. 8 ibid. p. 9 ibid. p. 220 ibid. p. 221 ibid. p. 226 ibid. p. 222 ibid. p. 228 ibid. p. 229 ibid. pp. 229–230 ibid. p. 231 ibid. p. 232 ibid. pp. 232–233 ibid. p. 234 ibid. p. 235 ibid. p. 236 ibid. p. 238 ibid. pp. 236–237 Spór o istnienie czlowieka (Cracow, 1998), p. 350. Filozofia dramatu, p. 242 ibid. p. 243 ibid. p. 244 ibid. p. 245 ibid. pp. 246–247 ibid. p. 247

SECTION VII T H E C U LT U R A L C I P H E R S O F T H E WO R L D

A NATO LY F. Z OTOV

P H E N O M E N O L O G Y A S A FAC T O F C U LT U R A L H I S TO RY

The subject of my presentation is, first of all, an attempt to consider phenomenology as a historical phenomenon, in contrast to its widespread representations as a purely theoretical construction which developed exclusively according to immanent logic – just as the theorems of Euclidean geometry can be deduced from the several postulates and axioms firmly fixed in its foundation. I thus proceed to the precondition, which can also be considered a postulate – namely, the thesis that historical development differs from natural evolution, on the one hand, and logical reasoning (deduction), on the other. I stress that what we usually treat as “historical accident” plays a very important role in the history of ideas. I refer here to the creative intuition of the thinker which makes history to be “the space of freedom” as well as the historical context (specific social, cultural, biographic and other circumstances – including personal propensities of the thinker, his living conditions and friendship). If this thesis proves true, we have to acknowledge that every event in the history of philosophy (in the present case – phenomenology) has, even partially, individual character, in contrast to what is made “by strict necessity.” It is clear, that this attitude is much closer to Dilthey’s and the neo–Kantian’s interpretation of history, rather than to that made by Hegel. According to such an assumption, neither philosophical achievements nor its deadlocks can be considered as rigidly predetermined by the pre-given structure of knowledge (or paradigm). What I mean can be formulated as follows: the philosopher (as well as his philosophical school, i.e. the group of his adherents involved in the work to tackle the same problem) is always a person, rather than a notorious self-developed idea or program in the sense of the so-called Popperian “Third world of objective knowledge,” which leads to predestined results under any circumstances, sooner or later. If not Husserl or Heidegger, than somebody else! If not in Germany, than in England or in Russia! Anyway, such a position tacitly presupposes that a phenomenological idea inevitably arises in the structure of philosophical culture. It inevitably develops and reveals its “internal” content, passing all those basic stages with which we get acquainted in dealing with “the empirical history” of this idea, with the biography of the philosophers and the chronological sequence of their publications and presentations. Certainly, thus, there should be if not people gifted with consciousness, competent and philosophically educated, then at least, dynamic information 627 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 627–636. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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systems. In other words, the structure of philosophical knowledge as well as scholarship as a whole form the basic preconditions of the phenomenological turn in philosophy. I am far from an intention to reject the Popperian conception of objective knowledge as a whole: on the contrary, I agree with many outstanding physicians – theorists of our century who expressed their admiration of and surprise by the heuristic power of the mathematical formalism of modern science in such expressions: “It looks as if the equations are cleverer than we theorists are, and the only thing we have to do is to follow the mathematical formalism of the theory.” This aspect of scientific development has been clearly elaborated by I. Lacatos in his “methodology of research programs.” However there is also another aspect to which many scientists of the last century, as well as the present epoch of radical scientific changes, paid their attention. A. Einstein, N. Bohr and L. de Broglie are among them. According to them, the most outstanding discoveries of modern, rationally arranged science have been achieved by means of unexpected flares of intuition, or, following the expression of N. Bohr, due to “mad ideas.” Moreover, in the framework of mathematics, which is commonly viewed to be the pure embodiment of strict logic, at the verge of the 20th century there came into being two main schools (“intuitivists” and “formalists”) competing with each other, and the “constructivists” (bascially consisting of Russian mathematicians), who tried to reconcile the forementioned two. In other words, those who treat the development of scientific knowledge as a purely logical process have no monopoly in the field of theoretical reflection upon science, though it is difficult to overestimate the influence of their ideas, which is more often implicit – almost subconscious – especially with reference to the history of philosophical ideas. Let me now turn to the main subject of the paper. The fact that the phenomenological program has undergone a number of transformations during history could hardly be contested. All the biographers of Husserl and Heidegger noted “the turn” (Umkehr) in Heidegger’s philosophical thinking and the unexpected change of Husserl’s subject matter when he dealt with “the life-world” (Lebenswelt). Closer analysis reveals even more radical changes. For example, Husserl’s transition from the view of the realm of numbers (and, accordingly, logic) as a certain ideal sphere of life, similar to Plato’s “ideal world,” towards a “psychological view” of them was followed by radical criticism of the latter. This does not mean that he came back to the to the former idealism, now treated as “naive.” Finally, there was the transition to the transcendental position, similar to the Kantian position. At this time he considered his transcendental phenomenology, first and foremost

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the doctrine of methodology; however he is more interested than, say, Rickert, in the problem of the true foundation of scientific knowledge. Therefore the quest of the reduction of a given knowledge structure to its foundation appears to be high on the agenda. These researches get him in contact with “the second positivism”; he often cites and refers to R. Avenarius’ works. This “second” positivism differs essentially from the “first” one, developed in E. Mach’s works. This is due to the fact that within the second positivism cognitive mechanisms of the intellectual activity have been investigated, i.e. it was dealing with the theory of knowledge rather than with the methodology of science. For this reason the adherents of this philosophical position treated the doctrine as “epistemological idealism.” As they considered sensations to be the primary source of knowledge, their attempt to reduce knowledge to its foundation led to the denial of the notorious demarcation line between the sensual contents of knowledge (“complexes of sensations”) and the concepts (i.e. rational constructions). This thesis constitutes the precondition of further success of the phenomenological project. As Husserl, in contrast to the “second” positivism adherents, did not share the idea of cognitive reduction of any knowledge – including mathematical – to sensations, and adhered to the Kantian position of the constructive activity of human reason, his own concept of transcendental reduction became a core of the new, phenomenological research program dealing with phenomenological certainity. This quite specific reduction is by now widely known as the transcendental-phenomenological reduction. This reduction appears to have its “cognitive twin,” namely the process of phenomenological constitution, “phenomenological production.” Its main principles were presented by Husserl, who left the business of detailed development of phenomenological ontology to his pupils. This problem seems to him to be “a matter of technique.” I tend to agree with him: if the main principles of methodology have been elaborated and tested, its application requires skill rather than talent. I have no intention of discussing here the question of to what extent Husserl’s followers, being under the great influence of his ideas, restricted themselves to mere application of his methodology to various domains, but I will discuss how far they go in their attempts to improve this method, sometimes quite essentially. In this respect the “phenomenon of Heidegger” is the most representative. On the one hand, Husserl energetically promoted Heidegger’s “Being and Time,” being devoted to him as “a mark of respect and friendship.” On the other, Husserl was rather upset and bitterly disappointed by the fact that his

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phenomenology unexpectedly became a source of “psychological” ideas, with which he struggled (and, as it appears, not very successfully) for a long time. It seems reasonable to raise the question of whether Heidegger’s “fundamental ontology” was the only logical continuation of the phenomenological project which developed according to its own logic, as it were, the requirements of which could not be properly understood to its fatherfounder. If this was the case, it is unimportant whether the next step has been made by Heidegger or an other of Husserl’s pupils or by any philosopher “completely extraneous” to the German phenomenological school who, perhaps, got acquainted with the principles of phenomenology without the original papers. Sooner or later this step had to be made. Or, Heidegger’s “fundamental ontology” only used some moments of Husserl’s concept (as always takes place, because a philosophical idea does not exist in a cultural vacuum), and its purpose and even methodology differ completely. And then both the direction and the contents of his researches should be considered as his own merit (or his own fault – it does not matter), and “fundamental ontology” is not an anonymous, by and large, achievement of philosophical knowledge, having the status of an independent spiritual being within the Popperian “third world of objective knowledge.” Rather it is the event in European history of philosophy which is firmly connected with the name of Heidegger. It is a creative achievement of the thinker. If one is to adhere to this position, it is necessary to agree with neoKantian methodology concerning the “sciences of culture” (or “sciences of spiritual beings”): on the one hand, the history of philosophy has not only the right, it is also obliged not to be “anonymous.” Separate philosophers, their association, specificity of state and social formations in which they lived and worked should not be viewed as the mere surface of phenomena, behind which the original basis of the philosophical process, its “objective logic,” was hidden. On the other hand – it should be the science in the proper sense of the word, i.e. not only a collection of the facts of the philosophers’ biographies. It should be guided by methodology and a certain set of general principles, by means of which it would be able to separate historical events that took place in the past from “facts,” in Wittgenstein’s meaning of the term. Here the problem of the significance of the fact or event emerges, which refers the historian of philosophy to an other theme – the peculiarity of the life-world, pertinent to the given culture in contrast to “the objective way of life,” “outside of the sphere of culture.” In this way the historian of philosophy is able to reveal some independent regions of culture – for example, “German,” “Russian” or “American” philosophy, in which, in their

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turn, it is possible to find out spiritual formations of various levels. Here again one of the major problems becomes the search for distinction, which appears as a “contour” of independent (individual) formation in the structure of a given culture. Coming back to phenomenology, I would like to pay attention to the specificity of the history of contemporary Italian philosophical thinking, in the way it is embodied in the works of an outstanding philosopher of the 20th century, namely, B. Croce. Certainly, I refer to what is actually known about this philosopher due to the editions of his works in Russia. I tend to believe that the “phenomenon of Croce” is very interesting to us because it can serve as the argument in favor of the general thesis of the advantage (moreover – of the necessity) of considering the history of philosophy “from the point of view of distinction,” stressing its individual features, rather than similarity – personality rather than “general laws.” It implies the need to reconstruct the historical process as a history, as a life-world of human spirit, instead of the “applied logic,” the embodiment of Absolute Reason. Moreover, I admit that it may happen that one of the specific historical phenomena was consciously or subconsciously taken – not only by the researchers, but also by the whole cultural community – for the norm, for the pattern – and due to this fact one particular historical (cultural, contextual) formation or epoch gains absolute ontological priority, receiving the status of if not “logic” itself, then at least its pure representation. It may be that for this reason the philosophy of Croce did not attract due attention from the historians of philosophy not only in Russia, but also in the West (excluding, for clear reasons, the Italians). His name was often marked in the philosophical dictionaries or manuals on the history of philosophy as a “belated Hegelian” who made something in the field of aesthetics, propagandizing liberal political principles. In short, he was presented, so to speak, as a typical “provincial” philosopher, though very well educated. Such underestimation of Croce’s philosophical contribution is in my mind determined, first of all, by the very process of historical development of philosophical thinking in central Europe, especially in Germany. It is commonly stated that Hegelian philosophy embodied “a compromise.” Its claim that the concept of Absolute Spirit “removes” the opposition of two main substances – material and ideal – remained no more than a claim because in this system there remains a notorious “metaphysical” component: Absolute Reason turns out to be the same Spirit (though nature itself acquires the features of the spiritual being). The struggle against Hegelian philosophy as “an outdated metaphysics” has brought together

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almost all German post-Hegelian philosophers, even though they fiercely criticized each other in their works. They accepted with great hesitations, and with large clauses, its “rational grain” – its dialectical method – but not its philosophical program, aimed at getting out of philosophical dualism. Was it not the main reason for which philosophy in Central Europe has gone through the stage of radical denial of the former philosophy as “metaphysics,” then gotten rid of exaggerated positivism and the other epistemological conceptions in neo – Kantian methodology, in the “philosophy of life,” and then likewise in phenomenology, existentialism and structuralism? And in the process of the development of these conceptions ontological problems have been gradually regenerated, released from the “dualism” of classical philosophy: Husserl has made the turn to the philosophy “of the life-world”; in Heidegger’s “fundamental ontology” language turned out to be “the house of being”; in structural analysis there had been proved the inconsistency of the opposition of material and ideal with reference to language – and, at last, the concepts of discourse of M. Foucault and the “logic of meaning” of J. Deleuze created “pictures of the world” in which the opposition of ideal and material in the human world, the world of culture, had been worked out. The same proves true with the opposition of epistemology and ontology. Little by little the similarities between these pictures of the world and the Hegelian philosophical program became realized by both philosophers and historians of philosophy. I would say that just as the end of the 19th century in central European philosophy appears to be “the epoch of renaissance” of Kantian philosophy, which revealed a special “subjective world” (a transcendental world in contrast to a transcendent world), Hegelian philosophy became “modern philosophy” at the end of the 20th century. So, the Italian philosophical idea has managed to avoid this destiny. It appears this has been possible in Italy because in the years of Croce’s life the “metaphysical component” of the Hegelian doctrine did not look so terrible any more. This opens up the possibility of making a new attempt to create an absolute picture of the world without being afraid of the notorious accusation of a priori reasoning. And as the result of this attempt, “the broken tie of times” in the history of philosophical thinking at the center of the European continent and in its southern region has been restored in Croce’s works. Or, shall I say more carefully, preserved, as. Croce was acquainted with the dramatic history of the philosophical struggle in Germany in the second half of the 19th century, and he kept it in his mind. Criticism of the classical philosophical doctrines of the past, which German philosophers of the second

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half of the 19th century regarded as a means to overcome this past, became the form of “soft,” gentle, velvety and even friendly dialogue of the past with the present, which is made without serious difficulties in the continuum of historical time. Moreover, to a certain extent due to this dialogue – his dialogue – the historical time turns out to be “a continuum” for other historians of a philosophical idea – earlier, in our representation, it was discrete, “broken off” by revolutions! Therefore, Croce’s dialogue with the philosophical past was not reduced to a dialogue only with Hegel, an attempt to rehabilitate Hegelian philosophy post factum. It is also a dialogue with Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer, etc., and last but not least, with “the historical school,” the foundation of which, according to Croce, was laid by D. Vico rather then Dilthey! All these philosophers now peacefully dwell in general discourse, and it does not look strange at all, in spite of the fact that not only in the field of revolutionary post-Hegelian philosophical thinking, engaging in demarcation processes and consequently partitioned off by “epistemological obstacles,” but also in the “empirical” past, the relations among these philosophers seemed far from being friendly. How was it possible, so to speak, to unite them within the framework of common discourse? This uniting became possible due to Croce’s concept of aesthetics treated as the first stage of the activity of a theoretical Spirit. Here it is important to take into consideration that the meaning of Croce’s term “aesthetics” does not coincide at all with what the experts in this area usually mean, speaking, for example, about the subject of aesthetics. Croce considers aesthetics to be the basic philosophical concept, quite similar to the Kantian concept. But there is little difference. Aesthetic here means, first of all, “expressive,” and frequently even “projective.” While Kant’s a priori synthesis is a “routine” constitutive activity of a transcendental subject (which as a matter of fact, is nothing but theoretical construction itself), Croce’s a priori synthesis is the act of creativity of the human spirit. And, at the same time, its being is inseparable from the act of creativity. However, it is hardly correct to speak about expression as a form of activity of the human spirit in general. It is no more correct than to assert that the phenomenon, according to Hegel, being once “caused” by essence, after that continues to exist independently. As if the essence is concerned with the phenomenon as the cuckoo is with the nestling: having deposited its egg in another’s nest, it stops worrying about it altogether! This is obviously not the same in the sphere of aesthetics with any product of art: a picture, for example, outside the world of culture, being considered as a part of material universe, is not the work of art any more, it is

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just the product of natural factors in the process of natural transformation of substance, the result of the natural forces game. As a result of this shift, first of all, there appeared the opportunity to release the Hegelian picture of the world both from “metaphysics” (as here there is already no opposition of “physics” and “metaphysics”) and from that emotional cold which was greatly disapproved of by Kierkegaard; and to find there a place not only for reason with mind, but also for a free will (in the meaning that Schopenhauer ascribed to this term). This picture of the world is not already the so-called “spirit of a history” which “conducts ones, and others drags.” Secondly, the major concept of a history, a historical process, appears revised: Croce considers freedom not as a “realized necessity,” where human activity is determined by “the iron power of the historical law.” In his own interpretation a historical process does not appear as “straightened” history any more (as in the Hegelian philosophy of history, with reference to which it is possible to say, that if the empirical facts do not correspond to it, then it is “worse for the facts”). According to Croce, real history does not love necessity, certainty, in the sense of insuperable “reasonable” movement on a stable road of human life. It involves passion and creativity, historical mistakes and discoveries, historical achievements and deadlocks, unity and variety, the strong will of the people and their shortcomings. Therefore historical science should evaluate historical merits and historical mistakes, and the historical life of human beings involves freedom and its unfortunate satellite – responsibility. That is, the final product of a theory of history should be neither “straightened” chronology released from causal events, nor the registering of events involved into their “intrinsic basis.” Its final product, in the end, should be conceptual representations of human activity, human practice. This makes clear why Croce places history just between art and philosophy. The assumption that history as a science was born from the Hegelian philosophy of history was widely shared in the years of his life. But Croce finds here his own way of thinking, scrutinizing the major questions of historical science in “Aesthetics,” and thus referring to Vico, whose works dated back to the 18th century and who was by no means known for his studies in aesthetics. And in his book “Foundations of the new science of general nature of nations,” Vico finds something to be the “total philosophy of the spirit,” which is valid in respect to both history and “empirical social science.” Thus, in Croce’s philosophical development Vico has played the same (or a similar) role as Kant in the formation of a neo-Kantian conception of human cognition. The historian of philosophy who got used to strict

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adherence to the literal contents of the texts would probably find Croce’s treatment of Vico’s philosophy too arbitrary, or even simply incorrect. But Croce has to be seen as an original philosopher! Moreover, if accepting his conception of history and applying it to the history of philosophy, it appears that his interpretation of Vico’s texts is also a moment in the history of philosophy. Croce did not aspire to systematize and schematize Vico’s philosophy, choosing citations from his texts as the basic points for reconstruction of his philosophy. By means of reference to Vico he tried to solve his own problems; he uses the citations of his texts as a means of sedimentation of his own ideas. Nietzcshe would probably name such a manner of dealing with another’s texts as “perspectivism,” and Lacatos would see here one of the ways to bring into being the new research program. By and large we find here, perhaps, one of the most important characteristics of the history of philosophy, and of the history of culture as a whole. All things considered, we may say that philosophical thinking in Italy developed differently than in Germany. Due to specific historical circumstances it has found a shorter way than in German philosophy from the last classical ontology – from Hegelian absolute idealism – to modern, “nonclassical” ontologies. But this is not only a historical fact – it is just one more argument in favor of the thesis that in history in general (and in the history of culture in particular) there is no “unique truthful way” which sooner or later all peoples and cultures will follow. Moreover, it seems hardly correct to regard the distinctions in development of different cultures from the point of view of their approximation to such ideal ways. In our case it seems possible to assert that the historical development of philosophical thinking in Italy has appeared, in the end, closer to the ideal, “original,” intrinsic development of philosophy where Logic is Ontology and history is the same Logic brought into being. It is difficult for me to agree with similar statements, even if they expressed in a more gentle way. “The straight line,” the direct path in the sphere of culture (not only in art and philosophy, but also in the field of a science, and maybe even in any sphere of human activity), is not always the most fruitful at all. It is easy to demonstrate, for example, that successes of such applied science as mechanics, and its function as a science, would have been absolutely impossible if the development of this science had begun from a generalization of practical, “terrestrial,” technical experience, instead of celestial mechanics, the main principles of which have been formulated under the influence of Plato’s and Pythagoras’ metaphysical doctrines (even though the basic principles of which modern mechanics had to refuse). And what

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would have become of Husserl’s heritage, if he had begun his studies just with the concept of the life-world? In philosophy there are such research programs, the development of which is to a great extent predetermined by “the logic of the problem.” But even the transition from one such a program to another within the framework of the same problem does not at all follow the logic of the “basic” program. Here it is possible to speak about certain transients, mutations of rational thinking. As a result of some (very few!) such mutations, there appeared new worlds of culture – including philosophical conceptions – and the names of the people involved remain in our history. Moscow State University, History of foreign philosophy.

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A HEIDEGGERIAN DEFENSE OF PHENOMENOLOGY AG A I N S T A D O R N O ’ S N E G AT I V E D I A L E C T I C A L C R I T I QU E

At least since its Hegelian inception, phenomenology has been charged with idealism, with collapsing world and subjectivity. To this criticism, Theodor Adorno adds that phenomenology collapses into subjectivity and irrationality precisely in its claim to escape from the provenance of reason and things. This paper constructs a Heideggerian response to Adorno’s critique in Negative Dialectics, and thus a defense of phenomenology’s notion of world (to the extent that Heidegger seeks to determine the conditions of the possibility of having phenomena). The crux of Heidegger’s argument against the dialectical or negative dialectical criticism is that world, taken as “the manifestness of beings as such in the whole” (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 418), cannot be ensnared in the discourse on the subject and object because it is the condition of discursivity, and thus of the derivative linguistic realm of subjectivity and objectivity. But this form of disengagement from subjectivity, objectivity, and representation, in being’s irruption into the condition of the possibility of discursivity, paradoxically constitutes the radicality of the Heideggerian world, for if the philosophical thinking of differences is possible, it must occur in and through the differentiating of thought from universal discursivity. Therefore, Heidegger’s protophenomological world subverts this argument on its own terms by determining the conditions of dialectical significance, and thus justifying a non-dialectical phenomenology. Adorno’s critique of Heidegger’s ontology and the need of/for ontology in Negative Dialectics aims to annual idealism’s attempt to circumvent dialectics, and thus to establish the inescapability of dialectics (136). Adorno develops his argument through an immanent critique of non(negative)dialectical aspects of Heidegger’s “subjectivist” or “idealist” philosophy, with regard to the transcendence of concept, thing and temporality (389 – all references are to Negative Dialectics, except as indicated). This critique claims to manifest the non-identity immanent in Heidegger’s philosophy by showing that it cannot achieve its ontological aims through either conceptual or non-conceptual means. However, because Adorno’s form of immanent critique asserts the ideological character of attending to a 637 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 637–648. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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thinker’s assertions, he depends heavily on reading meaning from silent or unacknowledged tensions and beliefs in Heidegger’s thought (e.g. pp. 5, 61, 70, 74, 76, 81, 84, 97). Adorno’s critique organizes itself around Heidegger’s claim that Being transcends subjectivity, objectivity, conceptuality, rationality and entity, that its positive content lies “beyond facts, concepts, and judgments” (110) and is irreducible to subject-object dialectics. The “doctrine of Being” is said to hold sway “beyond subject and object, beyond concept and entity” (69). But this is impossible, for in bringing “the subject-object dichotomy … to mind it becomes inescapable for the subject” (6). Adorno rejects the possibility of a non-dialectical thinking, which is to say, a non-subjective, non-objective thinking. “One of the motives of dialectics is to cope with that which Heidegger evades by usurping a standpoint beyond the difference of subject and object … We cannot, by thinking, assume any position in which that separation of subject and object will directly vanish, for the separation is inherent in each thought; it is inherent in thinking itself” (85). Heidegger’s effort to transcend all subjective or conceptual forms, beings, reason, and temporality by recapturing an originary Greek experience of Being prior to the subject-object distinction fails because it aims to achieve the impossible, to grasp a pre-subjective state through subjectivity, and therefore it collapses into a mythical, irrational subjectivity. Hence, Adorno argues that Being’s claim to transcend dialectics conceals relations to subjectivity and objectivity. The subject “lies hidden” (105) within Being. “The doctrine of Dasein,” is “of subjectivity … [and] resurrects the old subjective inquiry” (86), for Dasein is the traditional German word for subject (107n). Therefore, Heidegger’s transcendent Being absolutizes subjectivity, rather than constituting its difference. But because we are always trapped in a dialectics, governed by nonidentity, of subject and object, this absolute subjectivization of being immediately collapses into objectivity, in so far as it constructs subjectivity in terms of being, the paradigm of objectivity. The problem for critique is that this objectification of being eliminates the nonidentity between subject and object that is necessary to resist identification with, or domination by, objective conditions and thereby collapses the space of theoretical critique, its transcendence of subjective truth. Yet, a retrieval of Heidegger shows that Adorno’s project cannot succeed on its own terms, for Heidegger both accounts for Adorno’s desiderata and supercedes them. This argument assumes, with Rüdiger Bubner and Michael Baur, and against Brian O’Connor and Adorno, that Adorno’s and Heidegger’s projects of thinking a philosophy of difference are quite similar,

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in that each aims to resist the hypostatization of thought, to overcome metaphysics and positivism (LH249), to determine the truth and untruth of popular consciousness, to increase reflection (LH250, cf. LH222), to transcend conceptuality through conceptuality (“Philosophy can neither circumvent such negation nor submit to it. It must strive, by way of the concept, to transcend the concept” (15)), to break through presence into its condition, to critique a transcendental logic, and so on. Heidegger can respond to Adorno’s criticisms in part, then, because his philosophy has similar aims, but also because he anticipates many of Adorno’s criticisms. Thus, in “Letter on Humanism,” he recognizes the charges that he is an irrationalist and that he uses a traditional, non-dialectical logic (LH249). The problem with these criticisms is that Heidegger’s philosophy does not abandon or dismiss reason and dialectical logic; rather, it constitutes itself precisely in a radical thinking of their possibility. Thus, it preserves the critical space in thought necessary to resist the ideological domination of subject-object relations. In resisting the temptation to absolutize dialectics, to claim the inescapability of the relations of subject and object, Heidegger challenges dialectics without already subsuming this resistance to its own identifying terms, unlike Adorno’s conceptions of negative dialectics and determinate negation. Because the relations of Heidegger’s logic are irreducible to an analytic logic, he fundamentally rejects the charge that being is disengaged from the world, that there is a choris, a separation, between Being and what it makes possible. As the condition of the possibility of individual entities and significance, Being is essentially determined by its relation to entities. Dasein is inseparable from its condition, for it “is in each case essentially its own possibility” (BT, §9, H.43). Because Dasein determines itself as an entity in the light of this possibility that is itself, the thematization of its Being can unfold only “from the existentiality of its existence” (BT, §9, H.43); Being can be thematized only from Dasein’s everydayness. “The theme of our analytic is to be Being-in-the-world, and accordingly the very world-itself; and these are to be considered within the horizon of average everydayness – the kind of Being which is closest to Dasein” (BT, §14, H.66). Thus, we do not move outside the essence of reason or language in constituting them. “We human beings, in order to be who we are, remain within the essence of language to which we have been granted entry. We can therefore never step outside it in order to look it over circumspectly from some alternative position” (“The Way to Language,” in BW423). Dasein’s transcendence, its being-out-ahead-of-itself (which determines the meaning of metaphysics), is

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always already immanent in the world, in the sense that it moves within who we are, without dismissing or negating this presence; “‘Being-ahead-of itself means … ‘ahead-of-itself-in-already-being-in-a-world’” (BT, §41, H.192). Transcendence does not envision “a worldless ‘subject’”; it “characterizes Being-in-the-world,” and this means always “already [having] been thrown into a world” (BT, §41, H.192). This intimate relation between transcendence and everyday experience rules out the ideological disengagement from present experience charged by Adorno. Heidegger’s subversion of transcendental logic relies on the same language of irruption, penetration, breaking through and reciprocal logic as Adorno’s negative dialectics (cf. 5, 77, 127, 176, etc.). However, their common language betrays fundamental differences. Heidegger undermines the choris of transcendental logic because he constitutes radical thinking not by going outside all experience, but by irrupting into the given, whether everyday experience, the ontological tradition, metaphysics, logos, or reason. The language of irruption reflects his concern to move beyond presence at all times only by working through it. “To lay bare what is just present-at-hand and no more, cognition must first penetrate beyond what is ready-to-hand in our concern” (BT, §15, H.71). Cognition goes beyond the ready to hand by entering into that which is present, and this retains an intimate connection with presence, for its meaning is determined precisely by this irruption through it. This movement within the essence of discursivity is not a separation or independence, but an intertwining and incessant reversing of priority between condition and conditioned. The dynamic structure of world reflects the inherent tensions of this interpenetration. “World builds itself in the occurrence of projection, that is, in projection something erupts [bricht etwas aus], breaks open possibilities [bricht auf zu Möglichkeiten], and irrupts [bricht so ein] into the actual as such, in order to experience itself as irrupting, as an actual entity, amidst such as can be manifest now as an entity” (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 531). This same structural reciprocity holds in irrupting through the logos to the condition of its possibility. For Aristotle, “the logos grounds its possibility in the originary unity of synthesis and diairesis,” but determining the condition of the possibility of this dialectic synthesis-diairesis requires penetration or irruption through this logos into the difference between being and beings – which is always already a selfrelating (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 530). The affirmation, negation and questioning of logos are possible only insofar as the view into the clearing, the irruption, has occurred (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 530). Irruption into the condition of the possibility of logos is possible only

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because we already move within the “as”, taking something as something, and this dimension is characterized by the ontological difference of the between; the condition of the possibility is simultaneously conditioned by actuality. Thus, the movement from logos to the ontological difference never constitutes their relation according to the terms of transcendental logic, as a hierarchical separation, for the transcendence or stopping out (heraustreten) of projection and ek-sistence is already an irruption, a breaking into (einbrechen). Heidegger’s Heraclitus seminar of 1943 and his essays “Aletheia,” in Early Greek Thinking, and “On the Essence of Truth,” in Pathmarks, express this resistance to the invariance and choris or separation of a transcendental logic in thinking the reciprocal logic or philia of physis (Aufgehen, emergence, unconcealment) and cryptesthai (Verborgenheit, concealment). Heidegger’s retrieval of Heraclitus expresses an alternative to dialectics and transcendental logic in the relationship of cryptesthai to physis, for this reciprocal relationship cannot be understood by the terms of a linear, hierarchical construction of a transcendental logic, or by the negativity and contradiction of a dialectical logic, though it explains these terms. “Self-concealing guarantees self-revealing its true nature [Wesen]. In self-concealing, inversely, what reigns is the restraint of the inclination to self-revealing. … And so physis and cryptesthai are not separated from each other, but mutually inclined toward each other. They are the same. In such an inclination each first bestows upon the other its proper nature. This inherently reciprocal favoring is the essence of philein and of philia. In this inclination by which rising and selfconcealing lean toward each other the full essence of physis consists … [S]elf-revealing not only never dispenses with concealing, but actually needs it, in order to occur essentially in the way it occurs [Wesen, west] as dis-closing” (“Aletheia,” in Early Greek Thinking, 114).

In physis, concealment and unconcealment are not conceived in opposition, rather, they are thought in an erotic tension (philein), an inclination toward one another that is not an identification. This relation indicates the radical origin of what Adorno would call ideology, for its revealing-concealing establishes our inherent fallenness. The joining of physis and cryptesthai makes possible the concealment of the essence of truth from everyday understanding. Hence, this ideological character is not merely contingent, but necessary to Dasein’s movement. “Because Dasein is essentially falling, its state of Being is such that it is in ‘untruth’” (BT, §44, H.222). “Dasein is equiprimordially both in the truth and in untruth” (BT, §44, H.223). This is a more radical way of expressing Adorno’s resistance to binding ideology to a single class or society in the present, for fallenness into an everyday understanding of the “they self” is of Dasein’s essence. Heidegger argues in the Heraclitus

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seminar that das niemals Untergehende (the never-setting – fragment 16) and das Aufgehen, the emerging, are equiprimordial; in the occurrence, the concealing cryptesthai and the unconcealing physis (emergence) are joined together in an intimacy, eine Innigkeit, according to which each bestows upon the other its proper Wesen, its proper being (“Aletheia” in Early Greek Thinking, 113). This ontological difference is irreducible to a dialectical separation, identification or fusion. “The two modes of biding are different but not separated. But neither are they merely coupled together. For world and things do not subsist alongside one another. They penetrate each other. Thus the two traverse a middle. In it, they are at one” (“Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 202). The relation of world and things has the character of a unity only through its difference, through its relations of affinity (philei) and strife (polemos); even in taking world as a whole, Heidegger characterizes its fundamentally by its “multiplicity” (Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 171). World cannot be identified or reduced to a dialectical logic, for its occurrence constitutes difference without presupposing the separate moments required by a dialectical mediation. “The dif-ference does not mediate after the fact by connecting world and things through a middle added on to them. Being the middle, it first determines world and things in their presence, i.e., in their being toward one another, whose unity it carries out” (“Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 202). As the between, difference’s execution of the possibility of presence recalls the fold of Nietzsche (Gay Science, Preface, 4) and Merleau-Ponty (“The Intertwining – The Chiasm,” in The Visible and the Invisible), in that it simultaneously constitutes surface and depths in a tension that resists identity yet precludes dialectics’ abstract separation of subjective and objective or transcendent and immanent moments. “The threshold, as the ground-beam bearing the doorway as a whole, … sustains the middle in which the two, the outside and the inside, penetrate each other. The threshold bears the between … [Pain] is the rift. But it does not tear apart into dispersive fragments. Pain indeed tears asunder, it separates, yet so that at the same time it draws everything to itself, gathers it to itself. Its rending, as a separating that gathers, is at the same time that drawing which, like the pendrawing of a plan or sketch, draws and joins together what is held apart in separation. … It settles the between, the middle of the two that are separated in it. Pain joins the rift of the difference. Pain is the dif-ference itself. … The verse calls the separation of the between, the gathering middle, in whose intimacy the bearing of things and the granting of world pervade one another” (“Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 204).

The “between” of difference is not a third thing distinct from the two or a subsequently arising dialectical mediation, for it constitutes the inside and outside by its gathering and separating. But in so doing it abolishes this possibility of

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distinguishing between inside and outside (Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 167). Difference is not thought on the basis of unity; unity is thought on the basis of difference, in that dif-ference as metaphor (dif=meta; fero, ferens=phora, bearer) transcends generic unity. Being carries out unity only metaphorically, through its analogical unity, its pros hen equivocity, on the basis of difference. This thinking of difference cannot be subsumed in a negative dialectics, as Adorno claims. In questioning the absolute provenance – the inescapability – of dialectics, Heidegger enacts relations of difference irreducible to dialectics, and therefore subversive of Adorno’s entire project. Heidegger situates dialectics, along with reason and transcendental logic, within logos (which does not exempt us from asking whether Being constitutes relations other to negative dialectics). But this establishes dialectics as derivative in its meaning, in that its significance derives from logos. In irrupting through the logos into the condition of its possibility, Heidegger understands logos and its derivative possibilities – such as dialectic – from a dimension radically other, world (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 440). Because this dimension is prior to logic, it is not governed by its rules. Like Adorno, Heidegger refuses to posit identity or contradiction as the absolute rule of thinking. For Heidegger, identity and contradiction belong together, but they are not primordial, for they are meaningful only within the gathering of logos. This conveniens between Heidegger’s logos and Adorno’s negative dialectics should not be surprising (despite Adorno’s contention that Heidegger adheres to the absolute character of contradiction (108n)), since both projects are intended to resist the domination of identity and contradiction over difference. But Heidegger’s thinking of Being differs essentially from a negative dialectics in thinking this dimension as radically other to dialectics. For Heidegger, dialectic “becomes superfluous,” for he “has put it on a more radical footing and raised it to a new level [aufhob]” (BT, §6, H.26). He overcomes the dialectical need (dialectics’ claim to govern the sphere of thinking) by situating it within the discursive realm of logos, as something derivative of a more primordial dimension of thought. World is not without relation to subject and object. It is not disengaged from subjectivity and objectivity, as Adorno charges (88), for subject and object are grammatical constructions in logos, and “logos, Speech, and world stand in an inner connection” (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 443). World relates to subject-object in so far as it is the condition of the possibility of the logos, and therefore the condition of the possibility of the logos apophantikos and its subject-object distinctions. Heidegger does not make

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dialectics equiprimordial to its essence, for the essence of logos is such that there could be a multiplicity of other possibilities unrealted to subject and object. He denies a role to the subject and object within that which is to be thought (das Zu-denkende), because as historically derivative, they cannot be always already operative in human being. Thus, subject and object have no role in the retrieval of Greek thinking. “That which is to be thought is nothing ‘objective’; this thinking is nothing ‘subjective’. The difference between object and subject has no place here”; subject and object have no role in a transformative retrieval of Greek thinking (Heraklit, 39). This liberates thought from Adorno’s dialecticization of being, for in Heidegger’s argument, objectivity becomes possible only through transcendence (BT, §69, H.363) and the same is true of subjectivity. “This ‘I’, which has been raised to be the special subjectum … is in its meaning nothing ‘subjective’ at all, in the sense of an incidental quality of just this particular human being. This ‘subject’ designated in the ‘I think’, this I, is subjectivistic only when its essence is no longer understood, i.e., is not unfolded from its origin considered in terms of its mode of Being” (“Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics,” in BW303). The joining and partitioning in dialectics, the synthesis-diairesis of the logos apophantikos, is “possible only on the basis of world” (Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, 172), for world or kosmos “is at the basis of every partitioning,” as well as every joining (ibid., 171). Hence, subject and object have their meaning only through the fallen concealment of human essence. Dialectics is inherently “ideological”; it arises from the turning away from the clearing or truth of Being into untruth. However, as one of many modes of fallenness, it is not inescapable, by the terms of Heidegger’s destruction of ontology. Therefore, unlike Adorno, Heidegger has no difficulty in his attempt to express difference, for he “denies that all thinking is necessarily coercive or dominative. … [Hence, he] (unlike Adorno) can also affirm that thought as such is able to recognize and articulate what is problematic about its own coercive nature” (Baur, 363–4). For Heidegger, the thinking of difference is possible because thought is not inherently unifying or coercive. Thus, he never says that entities cannot be comprehended, for they cannot be said or experienced apart from discursivity (LH235). Things as they appear are always already discursive; they can always already be conceptualized. Negative dialectics inherently subjects otherness to identity. By conceptualizing the object in its “difference”, and comprehending thinking as conceptuality and identification, Adorno’s own terms force him to reduce the differences of human experience to identity, despite his similar use of

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interpenetration (127) and reciprocal logic. Heidegger’s thinking differs fundamentally in its ability to admit difference into thinking and discourse. Because Heidegger considers logos as synthesis-diairesis, he never reduces thinking or its discursive expression to identification, unlike Adorno, who, in claiming that “[t]o think is to identify” (5), equates thinking with synthesis, with an inherently unifying power. On Adorno’s own terms, this annuls the possibility of thinking difference, even as he strives toward this thinking in the figures of determinate negation and the objective remainder. “For Adorno, all thinking whatsoever is always already dominative and repressive; coercion is inherent in our thinking” (Baur, 359). Thus, his act of thinking the subject, the object and the remainder necessarily identifies them, effacing the remainder’s “putative” difference. Therefore, negative dialectics cannot, on its own terms, question its own possibility. Because Adorno cannot conceive a kind of thinking that does not involve unification, which is to say, domination, “rational thought [on its own] is not able to recognize and articulate what is problematic about its own coercive nature” (Baur, 360, cf. 365). The same is true for dialectics, as Adorno recognizes, for, in formulating difference only in terms of oppositional, reciprocal relations of subject and object, dialectics determines its conception of difference as a maximum, inherently subsumable to identity as its opposite. Hence, both dialectics and negative dialectics conceive difference in terms of identity. Even nonidentity is always already oriented toward identity. Adorno expresses the unrequitable telic desire for the impossible reconciliation of subject and object (Baur, 364). He takes his “bearings [ultimately] from a utopian, eschatological vision of a never-tobe-realized reconcilation of subjectivity and objectivity” (Baur, 360), which “would no longer annex the alien in an exercise of philosophical imperialism, but would be happily content to accept it as distant and different even in proximate surroundings – beyond the limits of heterogeneity and sameness” (in Dallmyr, 39). Heidegger’s thinking is governed by no such thinking of a telic beyond, for the intimacy of the philei of being and beings constitutes the between of the ontological difference; world cannot be subsumed to unity, for thinking and discursivity necessarily hold open the clearing of difference. In a sense, then, Heidegger sustains difference more radically than Adorno by thinking the totality of everydayness only from out of a non-totalizable difference, the ontological difference. Like Adorno, Heidegger refuses to ontologize an “objective” remainder (LH235). But Adorno’s formulation “objects do not go into their concepts without remainder” is self-refuting,

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expressing objectivity and the remainder precisely in terms of conceptuality. The “object” and the nonconceptualizable “remainder” are already identified with the concept. Because he claims that thinking inherently identifies, it follows that even the thinking of negation or determinate negation inherently grasps the negative according to the terms of identity. Thus, his attempt to include the object as the principle of negativity exposes his inability to think difference except by reducing it to identity. Unlike Adorno, Heidegger does not posit difference in quasi-oppositional terms as non-identity, or even as “the consistent sense of nonidentity” (ND5), because he places both identity and its simple opposite (as in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik) within the derivative logos apophantikos. Propositional thinking and dialectic are now “no more the center of the problematic, but on the contrary that which is broken up (sich auflöst, is dissolved) in a farther reaching dimension” wholly other to the logos apophantikos, the dimension of the “as” (Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 440). Heidegger does not dismiss his historical antecedent – dialectical thinking; rather, his thinking of world and the essence of logos provides a strategy for dealing with dialectical thinking without thereby founding itself in dialectics and its inherent privileging of identity and totality. Adorno argues that “[i]dentity is the primal form of ideology. We relish it as adequacy to the thing it suppresses; adequacy has always been subjection to dominant purposes and, in that sense, its own contradiction” (148). Yet, he privileges identity by defining negative dialectics by opposition to the tradition, that is, by subjecting negative dialectics to identity. In arguing that totality must be opposed by demonstrating its nonidentity with itself, “[n]egative dialectics is thus tied to the supreme categories of identitarian philosophy as its point of departure” (147). Adorno’s assertion that subject-object dialectics has become inescapable indicates an ideological dependence on the idealist tradition. He distances himself from German idealism only from within its problematics, consigning himself to his own form of historical archaicism. By contrast, Heidegger’s refusal to sustain the totality of reason resists the domination of dialectical and “logical” thinking. Accordingly, Heidegger’s aims seem much more limited than Adorno’s; he does not pretend to be writing a history of the present in Adorno’s geopolitical style. But this is suggestive of the greater radicality of the Heideggerian “project” in its resistance to the thinking of totality. While Heidegger also fulminates against certain tendencies in society and academia, his critiques seem divorced almost entirely from our everydayness, and, despite attempts to do otherwise, the reduction of his thinking to a single determinate political possibility is entirely counter to his

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program of thinking. Being in terms of this ceaselessly changing projection and thrownness into evanescent possibilities. If practical theory distinguishes itself by preserving difference over identity, by resisting the reduction of difference to identity, and this entails the refusal to set forth programmatic or universal political demands or generalizations of society (the generalizations in the “Culture Industry” about jazz and film, for instance), then Heidegger’s method constitutes a more radical practical theory than that of Adorno’s. For Heidegger, “thinking is a deed. But a deed that also surpasses all praxis. Thinking towers above action and production, not through the grandeur of its achievement and not as a consequence of its effect, but through the humbleness of its inconsequential accomplishment” (LH262). On the face of it, this seems like the height of resignation, for in withdrawing into a thinking prior to all entities, Heidegger denies the demand for an action other than solitary thinking. Yet, the ability of this thinking to enact a difference irreducible to identity and its refusal to reduce its possibilities to a single programmatic political standpoint constitute a more radical preservation of difference against the domination of identity than Adorno’s overtly political manifesto.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adorno, Th. and M. Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. tr. John Cummings (NY: Continuum, 1972). Adorno, Th. Prisms, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982. “Cultural Criticism and Society” —. Negative Dialectics, Continuum, NY, 1995 (ND). —. In Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (NY: Columbia University Press, 1998). “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” “On Subject and Object” “Resignation” “Why Still Philosophy” Heidegger, M. In Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (NY: Harper & Row, 1993). “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” “Letter on Humanism” (LH) “On the Essence of Truth” “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics” “The Way to Language” “What Calls for Thinking?” “What is Metaphysics?” (WM) —. Being and Time. tr. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967) (BT). —. In Early Greek Thinking. tr. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (Harper & Row, NY, 1975).

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“Aletheia” —. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt–Endlichkeit–Einsamkeit, GA29–30 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983). —. Heraklit: Freiburger Vorlesung, Sommersem. 1943 u. Sommersem. 1944, GA55 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979). —. The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, tr. Michael Heim (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1984). —. In Poetry, Language, Thought (NY: Harper Colophon Books, 1975). “Language” “The Origin of the Work of Art” —. Sein und Zeit (SZ), GA2 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977). —. In Wegmarken, GA9 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978). “Vom Wesen der Wahrheit” Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. tr. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Baur, M. “Adorno and Heidegger on Art in the Modern World.” Philosophy Today, 40(3), 357–366, Fall 1996. O’Connor, B. “Heidegger and the Critique of Epistemology.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 24(4), 43–62, July 1998. Brunkhorst, H. “Heidegger and Postmodernity.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 14, 411–424, 1988. Dallmayr, F. “The Politics of Nonidentity: Adorno, Postmodernism – and Edward Said.” Political Theory, 25(1), 33–56, Fall 1997. The translations from the German texts listed above are my own.

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T H E G O D S O F T I M E : H U S S E R L , T H E M AYA , A N D T H E P R E - S C I E N T I F I C WO R L D

Ostensibly this is an essay regarding the “pre-scientific” world, which Husserl sought to examine in “The Origins of Geometry.” What Husserl looked for more specifically was an encounter with the world that was renewed by a return to the things themselves. At the time, “science” (indistinguishable from philosophy) was about deriving ideas from the life-world instead of passively accepting propositions as handed-down by “the tradition,” which is really a canon of works written and promulgated for mass consumption. For what has occurred in the “textualization” of science, not to mention philosophy, is that the abstractions of the text have regretfully supplanted our empirical encounters with the world as the basis for reality. A seminal figure in this transformation was Galileo who, in Husserl’s portrayal of him, made it possible to think of the world, indeed, the universe, in the completely abstract language of mathematics. More specifically, Galileo reenvisioned the universe in the forms of geometry. What we lost in the process was more than a geocentric worldview. We also lost our capacity to view the world as part of a transcendent universe, one composed in the language of myth, which consists of the stories of unseen powers and the belief that all things are interdependent. By turning to the Maya I hope to open a way for appreciating the world as a sacred being, full of spirits and grounded in epics of world creation. But first we must deal with Husserl and the crisis of “western science.” What Husserl wanted was to reconnect post-Galilean science with the lifeworld. In a sense, what Husserl was arguing for was a reinvigoration of science with a sense of spirituality. However, this wasn’t a spirituality based on scripture or encountering the numinous. The spirituality that Husserl sought was the spirit of discovery. Instead of passively accepting scientific premises as they were written down, such as Euclid’s axioms, we should encounter the world as if for the very first time. This is to say, science must regain its sense of wonder. For wonder is the most primordial response that we can have to the world around us. Wonder antedates not only science but also religion. It’s the purest motivation we have for reflecting on the nature of things. It’s with this sense of the fabulous then that Husserl embarks on an attempt at recapturing what made geometry possible in the first place – not, 649 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 649–663. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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however, the historical conditions of the first geometers, but rather the “eidetic” relation between world, perception, and ideas. In a way, Husserl wants to examine the transcendent qualities that make discovery and understanding a part of the human condition. What we encounter in the process is a point where talking about the sacred and mythical becomes necessary. Husserl never uses such terms, of course. Nevertheless, a part of the crisis that Husserl identifies is our inability to perceive and talk about the world as a sacred being, complete with sacred places. But if we’re going to raise the sacred as an issue, then we need to turn to where the wonder of discovery and a belief in the sacred come together. Towards this end we’ll turn our attention to the ancient Maya. Not only did the Maya make impressive advances in astronomy, even when compared to their European counterparts, but they did so while maintaining a polytheistic worldview, in which planets, stars, and even numbers symbolized the deities of the Maya pantheon. Within such a world, to speak of origins is to talk in terms of myth. Whenever I read Husserl’s “The Origin of Geometry,” I’m reminded of the culture heroes who populate many myths throughout the world. In particular, there’s a point in Husserl’s essay where he says with respect to the origins of geometry: “we inquire into that sense in which it appeared in history for the first time – in which it had to appear, even though we know nothing of the first creators and are not even asking after them.”1 What matters most is the kind of knowledge attained by the first geometers and how they attained it and not who was there when this happened. Consequently, Husserl prefers to keep his culture hero nameless for the reason that naming him (or them) would detract from his agenda at establishing an historical a priori for all cultures. But this overlooks the fact that the culture hero is a “universal” in its own right, in the sense that an archetype is a universal. However, a culture hero isn’t the same as a concept or an idea. A culture hero is someone who was there before historical time began to found a people’s traditions. More specifically, a culture hero was the one who named the flora and fauna, who learned how to hunt, how to build a shelter, which plants were medicine or food, who learned how to heal the sick, and to seek visions, and sometimes founded what we would call “the arts and sciences.” The culture hero, though, wasn’t always an individual. In the case of the Maya, the culture hero was actually a set of twins, Xbalanque and Hunapu, who would undergo various adventures recounted in the Popol Vuh, including the defeat of the lords of the underworld, after which they would both become celestial bodies.2 Whatever the case may be, the culture hero was a conduit – a direct link – between the people and the sacred. In turn, it was incumbent upon the

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people to revere both what the culture hero inaugurated and the sacred powers that governed the world. Different places, though, were the homes to different culture heroes, each of whom would found a different set of customs and values. Even if we recognize that culture heroes are found universally across various cultures, there’s no such thing as a universal culture hero. Each culture hero is tied to a given place, speaks in a given language, and was created by particular powers. What characterizes Husserl’s mythology, if you will, is what distinguishes the modern attitude towards myth in general: specifically, that one may claim a common patrimony with regard to a panoply of traditions, be they Greek, Roman, Christian, or whatever. Accordingly, Husserl’s first geometer doesn’t belong to any culture in particular but to mankind in general. For what’s more important than a common origin in myths, according to Husserl, is the presumption that all cultures, however “primitive,” may attain to the level of scientific thinking demonstrated by the first geometer, whom Husserl regards as a paradigm of “pure thinking.” As a paradigm of pure thinking, the first geometer is unburdened with the garb and language of a specific people, for he is a paradigm for all cultures trying to solve the puzzling questions of the world. “To the one human civilization,” Husserl proclaims, “there corresponds essentially the one cultural world as the surrounding life-world with its [peculiar] manner of being; this world, for every historical period and civilization, has its particular features and is precisely the tradition.”3 Like the formation of life itself, everything, every culture is ultimately reducible to certain key components. These components are always found, no matter how diverse the variations. We see this in music, literature, and painting, where a great wealth of creativity is made from essentially the same stuff. “Here,” Husserl says, “we are led back to the primal materials of the first formation of meaning, the primal premises, so to speak, which lie in the pre-scientific cultural world. Of course, this cultural world has in turn its own questions of origin, which at first remain unasked.”4 Husserl’s belief that he can provide a “scientific” explanation for culture and history seems to also have been influenced by the burgeoning discipline of anthropology, which in the works of Boas, Malinowski, and Lévy-Bruhl did seek the natural laws that governed customs and beliefs. Thus, the origins of the cultural world remain “unasked” for the reason that one of the things that we take for granted is the situation in the world in which we happen to find ourselves. To be in the world as Husserl sees things is to be a part of a culture, complete with a language and a way of communicating ideas to one another, which in turn formulates into a tradition. What’s interesting about Husserl’s pursuit of

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this pre-scientific world is that he’s in search of an origin to culture that’s neither historical nor mythical, but somehow scientific in its own right. What this means to the mythology to which I’ve been alluding is that it too is a part of Husserl’s scientific explanation of culture, perhaps as one of the givens of “primitive” society, along with a belief in magic. As such, mythology and magic represent the nascent stages of human development, which would later be superceded by more rigorous and empirically grounded accounts. But is the discovery of the soul and the spiritual world necessarily a primitive accomplishment? By Husserl’s own logic, it’s precisely the absence of such transcendent qualities that lies at the heart of the crisis in “Western” science. For if the world was once regarded as infused with spirits, then their reduction to mere inanimate objects, subject only to natural laws and quantifiably explanations, can only lead to the disenchantment of science itself, including a lack of wonder. In which case, the pursuit of a more mythical world fulfills a need that scientific inquiry alone can’t meet – the desire for meaning. For meaning – or purpose – is what truly binds people together, which they preserve in their use of language. For language is not only the medium for scientific knowledge, but also for articulating the invisible bonds that hold a society together. Husserl says as much when he asserts that mediating the formation of any civilization is a common language. For it’s a common language that establishes an important horizon that defines a given world. More specifically, a common language enables fellow men to “reciprocally express themselves, normally, in a fully understandable fashion.”5 It appears that this is a necessity for any society, regardless of their supposed level of development. Certainly, in the case of the Maya, as Schele and Miller observed, there was a unity of language among the various regions of Maya culture. “This uniformity of language,” Schele and Miller observe in The Blood of Kings, “was one of the factors that facilitated trade and cultural exchange between the kingdoms and gave the people of this region a sense of common identity as Maya. Although fiercely competitive, the Maya, like the ancient Greek city-states, presented a unified ethnic identity to outsiders – especially those who spoke other languages.”6 However, whereas societies like the ancient Maya may have acknowledged the trances and dreams of medicine men, a more sophisticated society, such as the European, marks its growth by how much it has successfully eliminated the “irrational” from its common discourse on the nature of things. For objectiveness – which is what we’re looking for in scientific thinking – can only occur in a “mature normal civilization,” one which has at least marginalized the language of children

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and the abnormal. Communication, on the other hand, for the normal and mature is possible because at a fundamental level there’s an unequivocal correspondence between the words we use and the world around us. We live in a world where things are named and the meaning of those names are mutually agreed upon. What Husserl’s image of language suggests, though, is that not only can words be used unequivocally, but they also possess an invocatory quality bordering on “sympathetic magic.” In which case, we haven’t entirely outgrown our need for a more primal belief in the “magic” powers of language. For, if words correspond with objects, then using an object’s proper name serves to render that object present. If this weren’t the case, then how could Husserl’s pursuit of “reactivating” the self-evident be possible? Just as the ancient hunter may know the song that will beckon the deer to him, so may the scientist learn the words that will render forth the self-evident. In both cases, one would have to learn how to call objects by their “true name.” Unlike many ancient people, however, who relied on the oral tradition for retaining their sacred and practical knowledge. Husserl stipulates the need for writing as part of the integral process of objectivization and traditionalization, that is to say, of civilization. Jacques Derrida would analyze this factor in Speech and Phenomena, where he wrote: “Along a whole itinerary which ends in ‘The Origin of Geometry,’ Husserl will accord a growing attention to that which, in signification, in language, and in inscription, deposits [consigne] ideal objectivity, produces truth or ideality, rather than simply records it.”7 For scientific thinking, as exemplified by geometry, belongs to the cultural world in a way similar to “fine literature,” at least, the similarity becomes apparent once they’re both written down. Once this is done, they’re similar in the sense that both the Pythagorean theorem and Hamlet’s soliloquy, for example, were both unique events in their respective genres. For they’re not products of mass production, like hammers in a tool factory. Rather, they’re the issues of inspiration, and, as such, they both possess a “supertemporal” existence. With this in mind, Husserl wants to distinguish between the corporeal form and the spiritual form of language. The corporeal form may assume a variety of media and styles, including other languages, giving the misleading impression that science and fine literature are in a constant state of flux. What transcends this maelstrom of diversity, according to Husserl, is the persistence of the “ideal object.” After all, as Husserl emphasizes, language (made up of “words, sentences, speeches”) is “thoroughly made up of ideal objects.”8 Contrary to the symbols and metaphors of mythology, language in the mature normal civilization is comparable to mathematics (with its numbers and equations). In spite of the

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various ways we may express, say, the number four (4, IIII, 2 + 2, et cetera) it never loses its original meaning as being a specific quantity. The “thematic” qualities of language, then, are similar to the numerical values of an equation – they transcend the corporeal form in which they are represented. At this point it may be fair to say that Husserl is extrapolating from a very “Western” assumption. Specifically, that “writing” is necessarily both alphabetic and purely phonetic. Derrida, once again, offers a valuable insight about the consequences of such a presumption when he wrote: If writing brings the constitution of ideal objects to completion, it does so through phonetic writing: it proceeds to fix, inscribe, record, and incarnate an already prepared utterance … For example, the “protogeometer” must produce the pure ideality of the pure geometrical object in thought by a passage to the limit, assuring its transmissibility by speech, and must finally commit it to writing. By means of this written inscription, one can always repeat the original sense, that is, the act of pure thought which created the ideality of sense.9

Writing, as opposed to speech, was a way of representing the ideal in a more or less stable form. In this way it could be corrected in terms of grammar and corroboration with the facts, thereby maintaining its integrity as a vehicle for objectivity. Speech, on the other hand, even when it’s a Socratic dialogue, is a process of give and take which is never-ending, until someone reaches an insight and writes it down for posterity. Writing directs the mind away from the world of flux, which speech mimics, to a point up above the plurality of things where their “form” exists as formidably as the stars. Though writing systems have always expressed a certain level of abstractness, nonetheless, they’ve also been much more pictorial. This was certainly true for the Maya. Although it may be cogently argued that the sophistication of their culture may not have been possible without the invention of writing, nevertheless their method of writing suggested a different understanding of the wordobject relation, which will later have implications for how to address the crisis of western science. But first let’s consider how Linda Schele and David Freidel portray Mayan writing in their book, A Forest of Kings: The Maya writing system … was a rich and expressive script, capable of faithfully recording every nuance of sound, meaning, and grammatical structure in the writers’ language. Calligraphically, it has an unsurpassed elegance, deriving its form from the beauty of freely flowing painted lines. Maya scribes, whether carving limestone, engraving jade, inscribing shell, or incising bone, never lost the eloquence of their writing’s original painterly grace.10

Mayan writing was capable of everything that’s possible with Western alphabets, including the expression of ideas. Indeed, the Maya believed that the capacity to work with images, writing, and numbers was something that was

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beyond normal human ability.11 Yet, writing entered the world as a natural phenomenon. This was exemplified by the media used, such as limestone, jade, and shell, not to mention the “accordion-folded books made from beaten bark paper that was surfaced with a thin layer of plaster,”12 suggesting a different sense of “objectivity.” When we look at writing systems, such as the Mayan, Egyptian, or, for that matter, Medieval European illuminated manuscripts, we see evidence for making a comparison to the “fine arts” as well. What such writing styles remind us of is the fact that words aren’t just abstract ideal objects, but rather the traces of what we actually experience with the senses. In the case of the Maya, Schele and Freidel wrote that “The art of writing for the ancient Maya was not only the sequence and structure of words, but included making the image of the word itself.” Moreover, “the art of the scribe turned not only on the beauty of the calligraphy but also on how creatively and innovatively, he exploited the potential of the writing system and the conventions of text presentation themselves. To the Maya, it was not only what the text said that counted, but also how the scribe chose to say it: and not only how it was said, but also where and on what it was said.”13 More to the point, what we’re calling objective here isn’t just the collective knowledge of a given civilization, based on “ideal objects”; rather, it’s the expression of a world first created by sacred powers. Writing in this context means reactivating the creative impulse that characterizes the Ancient Word that emerged as the world itself emerged. As it states in the Mayan holy book The Popol Vuh: “This is the beginning of the Ancient Word, here in this place called Quiché. Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant the Ancient Word, the potential and source of everything done in the citadel of Quiché, in the nation of Quiché people.”14 The Ancient Word was the power of fertility incarnate, flowering and growing long before humans would come into existence. Even Husserl had to acknowledge that the world antecedes humans. With this in mind, it seems to me that one of the reasons why Husserl has turned to geometry for his model – aside from what we can say about its use by Plato and Descartes – is the fact that geometry literally means measuring the earth. The very essence of its definition, its origins, bears the traces of a deep connection to the surrounding world. For even if geometry is made of ideal objects, these ideals are nonetheless incarnate. The ideal objects of geometry are incarnate because they were derived from the life-world itself. As such, geometry originated in the pre-scientific and pre-modern world of an ancient culture. Geometry was even once an oral tradition that in its primal state didn’t need to have its descriptions and axioms written-down. It’s unclear, of course, about whom Husserl is referring

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– the Greeks, the Egyptians, pre-historic man? Nevertheless, as Husserl tries to return us to the historical a priori, even if we know very little about the culture and epoch of the first geometer, we can be certain of at least one thing, implicit in geometry itself, “that it was a world of ‘things’ (including the human beings themselves as subjects of this world); that all things necessarily had to have a bodily character – although not all things necessarily could be mere bodies, since the necessarily coexisting human beings are not thinkable as mere bodies and, like even the cultural objects which belong with them structurally, are not exhausted in corporeal being.”15 Furthermore, the fact that there are objects in the world means that they exist in both space and time, complete with secondary material qualities, like color, shape, weight, warmth, hardness, and so on. In turn, objects in the hands of humans tend to take on symbolic and functional values, as customs developed around the production of certain shapes, leading to their “improvement” over time, such as would be epitomized by Egyptian and Greek architecture. The pyramids of Egypt, for example, were a feat of both scientific thinking and religious expression. Implied in Husserl’s analysis though is that the greater accomplishment was on the part of science. For not only is it the case that religious thinking alone was incapable of such an endeavor; but scientific thinking, unlike the religious, was capable of transcending the limitations of particular cultures. What this is beginning to sound like, however, is that we’re taking the world Descartes described for granted as the world that defines “pre-scientific” cultures. A culture, after all, is made-up of more than fundamental shapes. Consequently, if we’re going to be true to the prescientific origins of geometry, or science in general, then we’re compelled to acknowledge that what such cultures had in common was a belief that the world was inhabited by “unseen powers.” For the Maya, as Schele and Miller portray them, their life-world “was a complex and awesome place, alive with sacred power.” Moreover, as Schele and Miller continue: This power was part of the landscape, of the fabric of space and time, of things both living and inanimate, and of the forces of nature – storms, wind, mist, smoke, rain, earth, sky, and water. Sacred beings moved through the three levels of the cosmos: the Overworld which is the heavens, the Middleworld where humans live, and the Underworld or Xibalba, the source of disease and death.16

It was within such a worldview that the Maya understood the movement of the stars and planets. Moreover, using their knowledge of mathematics, they would erect the steep, truncated pyramids that would dominate the Mayan skyline, serving both as ceremonial sites and as observatories. Yet their beliefs in a sacred order didn’t impede their ability to comprehend the more “abstract”

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complexities of the natural world. In the case of mathematics, the Maya clearly demonstrated a capacity for figuring in large numbers extending into the millions, specifically, as a way of counting back “into the former creations of the world.”17 For the Mayan universe wasn’t simply mathematically grand, it was also mythically epic. Consequently, the Maya needed to be able to figure in large numbers to calculate the epochs implicit in an eternity. The Maya captured the essence of mythical time in their calendars, which actually consisted of two ways of reckoning time. First, there was an explicitly sacred calendar, in which a month consisted of twenty days, counted off in series of thirteens. What made this calendar sacred was that each day was named after a god, such as Imix, Ik, Akbal, and Kan, who would take turns ruling over their respective days, making them either auspicious or malevolent. Counting off the days by thirteen, in turn, would assign each god’s day a different number for two hundred and sixty days before repeating itself. This 260-day calendar was known as “the tzolkin or the Sacred Round or Almanac Year.”18 Secondly, there was a more secular calendar of approximately three-hundred and sixty-five days, divided up into eighteen months of twenty days, concluding with five “dead” days, during which New Year’s rituals were conducted. I use the word secular here in the sense that the latter calendar pertained to the mortal world of humans, as opposed to the eternal world of the gods. Humans lived in a world where their days were finite, whereas the gods lived in a realm that was mythical and thereby a-historical. Thus, the days of the secular calendar were counted-off as 1-Pop, 2-Pop, and so on, with each month containing the respective name of a god, such as Uo, Zip, Zotz’, and Zec. Taking the two calendars together, you may get a typical Mayan date of 1-Imix, 19-Pop, which wouldn’t repeat itself for fifty-two years. However, as Elizabeth Benson points out in The Maya World, “The difficulty with a date of this kind is that every fifty-two years it is repeated. It is as if we were to write a date July 7, ‘65; we could know the place of the date within the century, but we would not know which century.”19 Nevertheless, the Maya didn’t hesitate to calculate the centuries. They also counted-off in terms of tuns (years), katuns (twenty tuns), and baktuns (twenty katuns). Indeed, using a vigesimal numbering system consisting of bars and dots, enabling them to use both the zero and positional numbers, the Maya would achieve a sophistication that exceeded both the Greeks and the Romans. It’s with this sophistication that the Maya not only possessed a complex calendar and writing, but also, as Michael D. Coe observes in The Art of the Maya Scribe, they also possessed “large and complex markets; towns and cities with major public architecture, especially temple-pyramids,” and “a large pantheon of gods, many with agricultural associations.”20

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Classic Maya civilization, then, according to Husserl’s criteria, exhibits the necessary attributes needed to initiate scientific thinking, which is a way of thinking about the world beyond the meager concerns for survival. Inventing something like geometry – or, for that matter, astronomy – means making a transition from the finite practical world to what Husserl called the “theoretical world-view and world-knowledge.” Implied here is the notion of opening up the finite world of the known and unknown spaces and time to an infinite horizon, a horizon that was there as given all along. At this original point, however, we do not have geometry (or astronomy) per se; it hasn’t yet been objectified and turned into a tradition. When the latter takes place, what we’ll have, more to the point, is a complement to the sacred eternal, that is to say, a counterpart to the Ancient Word. At least, this appears to be the case if we accept that turning to the earth is the same as turning away from the sacred. If we do accept such a proposition, then we can also accept that one of the counterparts to such things as the Ancient Word is writing. For only writing, in Husserl’s estimation, can mimic the everlasting qualities of the eternal. After observing that it was the ancient Greeks who first discovered scientific thinking as a form of reasoning that had the consistency of mathematics, Jan Patoˇcka goes on to state in his treatise on Husserl: Science (as for instance mathematics) is a component of and a contribution to philosophy. Its intention is to penetrate beyond appearing particulars to the whole that bestows meaning, to penetrate this whole itself, comprehending it as an organic unity in all its interlocking, internally necessary, and reciprocally implied parts. Being and the world, understood as a kosmos, an organic whole, become the goal of Greek philosophy and science.21

But does writing have to necessarily lead to a notion of science that’s divested of any beliefs in the sacred or the mythical? What the Maya discovered was how particular beings, like the planets and stars, which were really deities, behaved over time. Their names and their patterns of behavior were recorded in Mayan glyphs. With great accuracy, the Maya predicted the movement of Venus, Mars, as well as the occurrence of solar and lunar eclipses. In fact, with regards to Venus, the Maya knew that the Evening and Morning stars were the same object, unlike their ancient Greek counterparts. Moreover, as Coe observes, the Maya “were, of course, astrologers not astronomers, and all these bodies which were seen to wander against the background of the stars must have influenced the destiny of prince and pauper among the Maya.” 22 It also influenced their belief in a common destiny as a people. Running in cycles of thirteen baktuns, the world would be destroyed upon the completion of the thirteenth baktun. Once this

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occurred, a new world would emerge, starting a new epoch.23 What the Maya didn’t do with their conception of the cosmos, however, is what Galileo did with the Western notion of the universe. “What, then, is Galileo’s consummating discovery?” as R. Philip Buckley poses this question on behalf of Husserl. “This was nothing less than the development, advancement and unique application of aspects of the scientific approach to reality which had begun in Greece.”24 More specifically, with a unique application of geometry to the astronomical field, Galileo stipulated a model of the universe that was not only based on the ideal shapes of geometry, but also successfully substituted these ideal shapes for nature itself. In other words, the shapes became more real for Galileo than the nature he observed. It’s more real because now nature can be perceived as written in the objective and predictable language of mathematics. Galileo said as much himself when he wrote: Philosophy is written in this grand book the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and all other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders around in a dark labyrinth.25

Galileo accomplished a Herculean feat that Husserl admired as much as he critiqued it for having instigated a “crisis.” For the “language of mathematics” is neither that of everyday speech nor of the sacred, such as myth and prayer. On the contrary, the language of mathematics brings the ideal objects latent within language in general to their crystallization. As such, the language of mathematics is always written instead of spoken. This is where the real crisis begins. Derrida detected this when he wrote: To reactivate writing is always to reawaken an expression in an indication, a word in the body of the letter, which, as a symbol that may always remain empty, bears the threat of crisis in itself. Already speech was playing the same role by first constituting the identity of sense in thought … With the possibility of progress that such an incarnation allows, there goes the ever growing risk of “forgetting” and loss of sense. It becomes more and more difficult to reconstitute the presence of the act buried under historical sedimentations. The moment of crisis is always the moment of signs.26

Furthermore, although Husserl may regard the founding of geometry as an almost heroic event, it’s nonetheless an historical event at which point philosophy and science break free from its connection to the sacred and to any sense of the mythical qualities of the world. For the mythical world is ahistorical and therefore incapable of progress, whereas the history of science exhibits a procession of reaching more complex stages, built on the work of

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predecessors. Nonetheless, in an attempt at recovering an overarching sense of history, Husserl would claim that history was “from the start nothing other than the vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning.”27 Similar, then, to the world beyond particulars that science uncovered, history also has a structure that reaches beyond all the particular events that we may naively think of as making up history. Husserl states: Only the disclosure of the essentially general structure lying in our present and then in every past or future historical present as such, and, in totality, only the disclosure of the concrete, historical time in which we live, in which our total humanity lives in respect to its total, essentially general structure – only this disclosure can make possible historical inquiry [Historie] which is truly understanding, insightful, and in the genuine sense scientific. This is the concrete, historical a priori which encompasses everything that exists as historical becoming and having-become or exists in its essential being as tradition and handing-down.28

Just as the Ancient Word has its counterpart in writing-down the selfevident, so too does the time of myth. No longer are events governed by a sacred plane, nor is there teleological purpose to creation. Instead, history, like culture, is limited by the universal laws that effect such phenomena as the acquisition of self-evident knowledge, of science. In which case, history isn’t a matter of random events, but of people acting according to the knowledge that they have about the world. The discovery of geometry wasn’t just an end in itself, but had practical implications for how people interacted with the world. Yet, as much as Husserl wants to reinsert science into the lifeworld, and even recapture a sense of wonder, it’s uncertain how we can avoid repeating disconnecting ourselves from the world. For as long as we maintain the scientific tradition of abstraction and universalization, even if we do this with respect to the life-world, how will we ever resolve the “crisis” that Galilean science unleashed upon us? The pre-scientific world for which Husserl yearns was aware of patterns in nature and of these patterns correlating to numbers; yet, in the case of the Maya, they didn’t create the crisis that emerged in the Western tradition. What prevented the Maya from merely “mathematizing” the world in which they dwelled? To put it succinctly, the Maya maintained the depth that Galilean science lost when it asserted that ideal objects were paramount. For the Maya, to the contrary, they preserved a connection to their universe because even the numbers they used to calculate the trajectories of planets were infused with a sense of the sacred. In other words, even numbers were identified with deities. This was clearest, of course, in the way they developed their calendars. As Schele and Freidel describe it:

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This endless succession of time was given order by grouping days into ever-repeating cycles ranging from the small to the inconceivably huge. Some of these cycles came from the observation of the natural world, for example, the cyclic movements of the moon, the planets, and the constellations. Others derived from the symmetries intrinsic to the numbers themselves, for example, the practice of counting in twenties. Other numbers and their repetitions were sacred and had magical properties.29

Is such a mathematical universe possible for modern science? One of the reasons that Galileo is regarded as a hero is due to the fact that, in spite of retracting his theories, he represents the capacity of science to stand up to sectarian dogma. Because of Galileo, we’re completely free of the geocentric universe, as well as what that symbolized for pre-Renaissance Europeans. However, if we only compare Galilean science to the institutions of Western religions, then we can’t appreciate the ability for a mythological conception of the universe to grow and adapt with the changing world of civilizations. There were numerous gods in the Mayan pantheon with equally numerous myths associated with them. Even with the advent of writing, the Maya, who were otherwise a very conservative culture, could alter their cosmology to accommodate changing times. This doesn’t mean that the Maya treated their mythic tradition frivolously; rather, the metamorphosis of myth reflects the power of transformation inherent in the gods. Elizabeth Benson addressed this phenomenon when she wrote: Not only could Maya gods change their place and their function and the goodness or evil of their nature, they could also change form; the same deity might appear as young or old, and sometimes deities even seem to have changed sex. The gods varied in importance from place to place and from time to time. Sometimes they were known by different names; sometimes the same god had different attributes in different situations.30

In the end, the lesson for modern Western science isn’t to appropriate the Mayan tradition nor to reinterpret Western religion. Rather, the task for science is to understand the universe as the home to a plurality of animate beings. From the migration and mating of animals to the birth of stars, all natural sciences are sciences about life, and as such, each being into which we may inquire exhibits not only a form and function but also a “personality.” This isn’t to suggest that science embark on anthropomorphizing the known universe; rather, it’s to suggest that we make our view of life more inclusive. In other words, we need to remember that the universe is more than the stars and planets we can observe with our theories, telescopes, and satellites; it’s also made up of myths, dreams, and fantasies. For if the world and universe are regarded as living, then regarding them as exhibiting a kind of soul and consciousness is within reach. Furthermore, if the world and universe are

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thought of as possessing soul and consciousness, then it becomes easier to believe that there’s an unconscious side to existence where myths, dreams, and fantasies can take place. Only then will the world and universe regain the depth that enables our inquiries to attain the sense of meaning that constitutes a genuine moment of enlightenment. University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus N OT E S 1 Edmund Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry,” in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. by David Carr (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 354. 2 Linda Schele and Mary Ellen Miller, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986), pp. 244–245. 3 “The Origin of Geometry,” p. 378. 4 Ibid., p. 369. 5 Ibid., p. 359. 6 The Blood of Kings, p. 51. 7 Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. by David B. Allison (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 25. 8 “The Origin of Geometry,” p. 357. 9 Speech and Phenomena, pp. 80–81. 10 The Blood of Kings, p. 50. 11 Ibid., p. 138. 12 Ibid., p. 50. 13 Ibid., p. 55. 14 Anonymous, Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, trans. by Dennis Tedlock (New York: A Touchstone Book, 1996), p. 63. 15 “The Origin of Geometry,” p. 375. 16 The Blood of Kings, p. 301. 17 Elizabeth P. Benson, The Maya World (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1977), p. 100. 18 Ibid., p. 100. 19 Ibid., p. 101. 20 Michael D. Coe and Justin Kerr. The Art of the Maya Scribe. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1998), p. 26. 21 Jan Patoˇcka, An Introduction To Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. by Erazim Kohák (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), p. 10. 22 Michael D. Coe, The Maya (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987), p. 176. 23 The Maya World, p. 101. 24 R. Philip Buckley, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Crisis of Philosophical Responsibility (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), p. 43. 25 Op. cited in ibid., p. 46.

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Speech and Phenomena, pp. 80–81. “The Origin of Geometry,” p. 371. 28 Ibid., pp. 371–372. 29 Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (New York: Quill William Morrow, 1990), p. 78. 30 The Maya World, p. 111. 27

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H OW D O E S T H E S NA K E E X I S T I N T H E RO P E ? T H E C O N T ROV E R S Y A B O U T T H E S TAT U S O F T H E E X I S T E N C E O F T H E WO R L D I N C L A S S I C A L I N D I A N T H O U G H T

What is the status of the world in which we live? Is the empirical world real? If so, is it conditioned by itself or by some other transcendental level? In the present paper all these questions will be examined through one of the most ¯ well-known schools of Indian philosophy, the advaita vedanta. The advaita ¯ vedanta is not only the most known but also the most representative system of Indian tradition and the Indian way of thinking. In every system of philosophy it is extremally difficult to answer our starting questions, and it is almost impossible to resolve such problems – but in an idealistic, monistic system the situation becomes much more complicated. And so it is with ¯ advaita vedanta. As is commonly known, there is only one real thing according to this ¯ school, and it is alternatively called Brahman or Atman. We can see in the passages of the holy Indian texts, in the Upanishads, such as neti, neti – “not this, not this” – that no positive language is adequate to describe Brahman. “Here, then is the rule of substitution: not -, not -, for there is nothing beyond this “not”. And this is the name – “the real behind the real”, for the real consists of the vital functions, and he is the real behind the vital functions.” Brhadaranyaka upanisad 2.3.6.

The model way of describing Brahman is the apothatic one. If there is only one way of speaking of the “real” reality, it is not possible to distinguish any ´ categories and to explain and justify the empirical world. Sankara, one of the most widely known and the most esteemed advaita philosophers, introduced a model of the two ways to speak of Brahman. He clearly distinguishes a higher from a lower Brahman. That distinction is possible when we admit ¯ exists. So the higher that the ultimate knowledge about reality (vidya) Brahman, Brahman viewed from that aspect of knowledge, is free from all adjuncts, all names and forms, and it is called nirguna. Saguna Brahman, . . ¯ Brahman with some attitudes, or God (I´ svara), is the lower Brahman; it is ¯ Brahman viewed from the aspect of ignorance (avidya). So we have to admit that the predicates are applied only from an empirical standpoint conditioned by ignorance. There are four positive properties commonly ascribed to 665 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 665–674. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Brahman: truth, real existence (sat or satya), consciousness (cit or caitanya) ¯ and bliss (ananda). “A man who knows brahman obtains the highest there is. On this we have the following verse: Truth and knowledge, Th infinite and brahman – A man who knows them as hidden in the deepest cavity, hidden in the highest heaven; Attains all his desires, together with the wise brahman.” Taittiriya upanisad 2.2.1

We can call advaita a cit-centric philosophy but we a “cit” in this system of thought is not an abstract way to the principle of being. This is a crucial point. The general understanding of the notion of “cit” is connected with the ´ subjective attitude. But in the Sankara system of advaita, the way of interpretation does not had to the concept of subjectivity. An understanding of ´ Sankara’s advaita as subjective idealism can be taken from the subjectively oriented “metaphysic of experience”. Every experience is the subjective one only. And it is the only way of approaching being, i.e. the ultimate being. The way to grasp, to realize the nature of being, is ultimately in the subjective experience. Being comes to the objective realm (or we can say, “transcendental subjectivity”) in the form of the consciousness – cit. The ¯ realization of the self – Atman – which in essence is pure subjectivity, is the main aim of advaitic thought. From that realization comes the equation of ¯ Brahman-Atman with cit. In this context it is clear that cit is not a logical abstraction. Advaita keeps to the point that real enlightenment can come only through ¯ concrete intuition (anubhuti) and not through abstraction. All empirical and logical reasoning must be reduced to intuition, because through that alone we ´ are presented with reality. Sankara defines the aim of his enquiry thusly: To avoid the snare of the objective world, into which the self is dragged from its native home of pure subjectivity and to restore subjectivity to its foundational source. The subjectivity is not a mere theoretical presupposition, that is the crucial point with the advaita system of thought. One has to remember that, ¯ after all, vedanta is motivated by the deeper interest in liberation (mok sa), . ¯ ¯ recognised to be the supreme value (paramapurus. artha). “Brahmasutras” – ¯ – begins with the definition of what the main the source text of the vedanta aim of every enquiry should be. “Now, therefore, the enquiry into Brahman”. Brahmasutras I.1.1.

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When we discuss the attitude of reality, first we have to define the ontological status of the world. Generally speaking, we have to deal, in advaita ¯ with two levels of reality: the ultimate one, which is the only one real vedanta, existence – sat, and pure consciousness – cit and our empirical world, which is very difficult to describe. The status of the world in which we live becomes the ¯ most important problem in advaita vedanta, and how diversity can apparently arise from an undifferentiated unity. The most common answer is that the ¯ a. ¯ So diversity can be explained by inquiry into the working of avidya¯ and may ¯ a¯ mean. first we have describe and understand what avidya¯ and may The real existence (sat) and the pure consciousness (caitanya) can be understood not only as the positive properties but also as the synonyms of the ¯ Brahman, because Brahman-Atman, as we have learned from the holy texts is ¯ ekam advit ıyam – one without second. Brahman taken as consciousness is understood as the self-luminous. Although It is self-luminous it should not be inferred that It is an object of Its awareness – he can never be the object of knowledge and he cannot be the knower, the subject that knows objects at the same time. Both the knower and the known are products of avidya¯ and thus not ultimately real; likewise the relation between them is unreal. Thus the consciousness that is Brahman is not a relational consciousness between knower and known. So we have to distinguish pure consciouness from . ¯ empirical awareness. Using the sa¯ mkhya words, adopting by vedanta, the realm of consciousness belongs to purusa, who is nothing more than pure cit, . and the realm of awareness belongs to prak.rti – a principle of activity and the empirical consciousness only. One of the most acute points in the advaita ¯ vedanta is to find a proper mechanism to explain the transition from consciousness to awareness. When objects appear to this witnessing con¯ they are superimposed on pure sciousness they are the work of avidya; consciousness, which remains unaffected by that relationship. It is avidya¯ that ¯ provides the adjuncts (upadhi) that, by conditioning Brahman, produce the ¯ occasion for the apparent creation of the world. So the true knowledge (vidya) does not remove the objects of the world but rather removes our false awareness of them. ¯ The advaita vedanta uses a lot of examples, analogies and parables to explain that mechanism. The story about “taking in the darkness the snake instead of the rope” is the classical example in the discussion about the status of existence in the whole Indian tradition. In the darkness we see something long, thin, and moving, so our first association is with the snake. We start to behave due to that impulse, we can escape, or stay in the place or even try to omit that danger. Due to that impulse we are acting and these acts have their

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own results. After sometime we notice that something in the dusk was not the snake but the rope only. And now arise a lot of questions: when did the snake disappear, it could not disappear because it was not real. But the results of our behaviour due to that impulse remained and for us they were and still are real. And what has happened to the Law of Karma, the fundamental Law of the Indian paradigm? Could we say that we produce the snake or not? To resolve that riddle is the same as to resolve the enigma of the world. In that case the ultimate reality is the rope, and the snake represents our empirical world. The various schools in India proposed many possible answers, sometimes completely different from each other and even in the advaita the explanation of that parable is not homogenous. In this paper I mostly stick to ´ the system of Sankara. For the advaita the rope that is seen as snake is the objective foundation of the illusion. Illusory experience, as much as normal experience, may be considered in its noetic phase. The false content seems to possess a noematic character, and going to every day experience, the character of the intermediate type – embodying reference, but not to reality. Likewise, to reverse it and to go to the other example of the imagination of the water in the desert, the water that we see in a mirage is unreal but the water that we use is real. The latter example points out the “useful” attitude of reality. Only the real object, in this case the real water, can bring the real effect. To move this to the metaphysical level, only real knowledge can bring the actual ¯ realization of the Atman-Brahman, the ultimate reality. There must be an objective foundation for our common illusion, and according to advaita it can be Brahman only. When the false realm is negated, the real one shines by itself. And only the Brahman is pure consciousness and self-luminous. And only he is the real existence (sat). The snake did not disappear because it did not become, which means that it is not a real existent (asat). A real object (rope) is taken to be non-originating. But one of the objections indicates the possibility that unreal objects are really born, that is, they become real, or that some other casual relations hold between the real and unreal as cause and effect; this creates new problems. One of the first answers was given by Gaudapada, the first advaita philosopher. Taking the rope in the dusk for a snake is a wrong interpretation of what is presented to the senses. The fact that I wrongly interpret something does not necessarily imply that I actually produce the snake. The interpretation does not mean the creation. ¯ The phenomenon of error – adhyasa – presents in the fact of contradiction a concrete occasion for reflection. And reflection is not only the best but the

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¯ only way to realize Brahman-Atman. The content of false perception comes to be recognized qua its false character in contrast with the reality of the substratum. As with illusory appearance such as rope-snake, so with the confusion of bodily characters with the subject – self; the fact of contradiction would demand a suspension of the existential character of the presented content and a closer inspection of the content qua content. In the case of body-self ¯ ¯ ¯ adhy asa), the native sense of subjectivity, although it does identity (dehatm not prove by itself to be an objective presentation as such, would still clash directly with the objective character of body, senses, etc. ´ ¯ In that place Sankara develops the idea of “superimposition” (adhyasa), which he defines as “the appearance, in the form of a memory, of something previously experienced in some other place”. The appearance of one thing in ¯ ¯ the aspect of another (anyasya anyadharmavabh asa) is the essential character of the situation of error. This world seems to be an analysis of the mechanism by which “wrong interpretation” takes place. The concept of nescience stands for the principle of objectification. Proofs are advanced by advaita for ¯ showing nescience as a positive principle. Ajñana is something more than ¯ absence of knowledge – it is rather negation (adhava) of true knowledge. The ¯ definition of superimposition (adhyasa) captures the common core of everyone’s theory of error. In erroneous cognition, properties belonging to one thing appear to us as belonging to another. It is this primary superim¯ position that constitutes ignorance (avidya). The correction of false cognition does involve not merely reflection on the false content, but also the right apprehension of the substratum in its true ¯ character. So the complex situation of error involves substratum (adhis. .thana) in which alone the specific character of the given object is to be perceived, and only such perception can finally remove the false one. When that “superimposition” takes the form of a memory, the following questions arise: where did these things come from, and are they distinct from each other? If they are not distinct, how can they be superimposed, and if they are distinct, what happens to monism? ¯ The phenomenon of error (adhyasa) indeed provides, for advaita, the ¯ point of departure from psychological to transcendental subjectivity. Adhyasa involving contradiction provides the concrete occasion with which reflection might start. The said erroneous identification of self and non-self is regarded as the commonest confusion in human life and as such forms the chief item ¯ of adhyasa. The psychological features of agency (kart.rtva), cognisership ¯ (pramat rtva) constitute different aspects of basically the same confusion. In .

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these cases the supposed subjectivity of consciousness necessarily appears in the objective content. The avidya¯ comes from the superimposition. Avidya¯ is begininngless, and there was no first superimposition – that is classical answer of advaita. (Sometimes they confess to an inability to explain the mysterious ways of ¯ ¯ is the lack of avidya). One possible answer is: the ignorance (avidya) ¯ awareness (ajñana). In that case the external world can be like a game with myself and I fail to appreciate the different levels of “myself”. In the advaita ¯ vedanta, the internal organ (antahkara na) in the character of the mind . . (manas) is naturally directed outwards to turn gradually towards the self within. The ordinary level of experience constitutes a double error – the misinterpretation superimposed on grounds that are themselves unreal because only apparently produced and that the mechanism by which apparent production occurs is a “higher-level”, incorrect interpretation. In Husserl, the “bracketing” of external reality is taken rather as a theoretic attitude to enable the mind “to turn back” within itself and to inspect ¯ it from within, as it were. In vedanta, however, the attitude of turning from the flux of objective appearance is recognised to be a serious phase in the spiritual life of man and not merely a theoretic attitude. There may be two ways in which cognitive consciousness, as understood ¯ in advaita vedanta, possibly functions – namely, as valid cognition and as pseudo-cognition in the illusory situation. The former is effected through the modalization of internal organ – antahkara nav . . .rtti – in the form of the object ¯ rtti concerned, and the latter through the modalization of nescience – avidyav . – with illusory object as content. The consciousness is of the nature of act in the sense of reference-function being constitutive of consciousness. Consciousness is immanently involved in every conscious state as the necessary factor of evidencing. In the advaita’s words, object is reduced to v.rtti (modus) which in its turn cannot stand but as evidenced by consciousness so, object is not taken in its “transcendence” but is sought to be reduced to consciousness by way of v.rtti-mediation. Such v.rtti-mediation is admitted to be present at every level of knowledge, external or internal. Even the v.rtti is not produced through the senses – as in the case of internal experience of mental states, for instance – some sort of v.rtti besides the evidencing consciousness as such would be necessary to make a state of consciousness possible. Another important problem is the question of the locus of ignorance. ¯ Neither attaching avidya¯ to the individual soul (j ıva) nor avidya¯ (in the form ¯ a ¯ – cosmic ignorance) to Brahman can resolve that problem of the may

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´ without difficulty. For Sankara avidya¯ is regarded as belonging to the tertiary ¯ order of the inexplicable – anirvacan ıya, meaning either real or unreal. The na unique character of agenthood (kart.rtva) originally belongs to antahkara . . na – the internal organ is the realm of our empirical world, i.e. the (antahkara . . ¯ realm of nescience – avidya); and from agenthood would follow the quality of cognisership, i.e, being the agent of the knowing act – a quality that evidently cannot belong to the object of cognitive act. Thus, as the internal organ is itself characterised by the quality of agenthood, the consciousness defined by it should naturally assume the character of cognisership. The modes of presentation of objects, external or internal, are reduced to the modifications of internal organ (antahkara nav . . .rtti). The object of perception is regarded in advaita epistemology as generating the corresponding psychic mode and serving at the same time as the medium of manifestation of consciousness. Consciousness may be spoken of not merely as pertaining to, but also as limited by, the object concerned (snake – rope). The transcendental consciousness stands above the “natural” world. One could read this whole model of thinking as a phenomenological translation of ¯ ¯ the notion of the anirvacya mayic nature of the world, conceived in its ¯ sin – to whom totality, as a transcendental situation in respect of witness – sak . . ¯ the total reality of the samsaric world would be presented as a phenomenon – the entire structure of the world – jagat being created by the God – I´svara – ¯ through free act. At this stage, the ultimate position of ajñana as function in respect of consciousness may be reviewed. ¯ We can say that when j ıva mistakes avidya¯ for something real, it is he who is termed “ignorant”. From that construction comes our view of the world as the real created one. But it is not a subjective idealism. The world is false not in the sense of being a figment of our imagination, but in the sense that it is not real – the only ultimate, real being is nirguna . Brahman. It is possible for advaita to accept the reality of the world although not reality as the world; this is a crucial difference from empiricism. Brahman ¯ a ¯ is the ground of the provisional stands over against the world and may ¯ a ¯ can be taken as the distinction between the world and Brahman. M ay cosmic condition of which illusion is the model. On an ultimate analysis, ¯ ajñana could be taken to represent the functional aspect of consciousness. The various modalities of function, in varying degrees of generality, ¯ constitute the world of experience. Ajñana, viewed as function in relation to pure consciousness, should represent the reference in general and as such it should stand on the same level as evidencing consciousness itself. As modalized nescience in the form of modification (v .rtti) of internal

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organ, it would correspond to unmodalized consciousness, i.e. the witness ¯ sin. – sak . ¯ a ¯ is given through analogy to human illusory All description of may experiences. The ultimate being of the world does not have to be stated as a theory, as it is strictly implied in the very definition of Brahman itself. ´ Sankara is very emphatic about the factual reality of the things that are ¯ a ¯ does not mean denial of the world. mistaken for something else. May Explicitly noting its non-existence is indirect recognition of its phenomenal existence. It is out of the question (for advaita) that phenomenal reality ¯ a ¯ will last as long as Brahman can be comes into being through speech. May ¯ a ¯ will last. That is the spoken, and the world will last as long as may explanation why no positive language is adequate to describe Brahman. During our considerations we came across the problem of the nature of cause and effect. Can we understand Brahman as the cause and the empirical world as the effect? We can shed some light on this issue by appealing to the difference between a dream and a waking state. The difference between the realm of Brahman and the realm of the empirical world is very similar to the difference between the realm of dreams and waking. Everyone accepts that dream objects are unreal because, though they appear to originate, exist only for a time, and then go out of existence. Accepting the unreality of dreams, we can then formulate the following inference: waking objects are unreal, because they originate, like dream objects. In vedãnta each statement nullifies itself in the light of the character of Brahman which is implicitly (not explicitly) present in Brahman statements. The external world appears, just as dreams appear, but the appearance is the result of “construction” (vikalpa) of ¯ a. ¯ Coming back to our starting picture, the realm of the snake ignorance, or may started and vanished but the realm of the rope remained all the time the same. The problem of explaining the status of the external world is dependent on the construction of reality itself. What we do, how we behave (due to the impulse of the “snake”) is strictly connected with our imagination, experience, memories, habits and everything that is in the internal organ – antahkara na. . . And the way of experiencing reality is dependent upon the construction of the ¯ knower, of the subject. In the advaita vedanta both subject, – the knower – and the object – the external world – are constructions that arise from ignorance. The ignorance responsible for the subject area is called: “not knowledge” – avidya¯ – and the ignorance responsible for the object area is called “illusion, ¯ a. ¯ So both, empirical agent and the external world, are not imagination” – may real ultimately. That pattern brings news problems for the consideration of the relation between cause and effect.

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An agent brings about the effect by procuring an action that gives form to the effect’s nature. Thus, it is the agent that is responsible for the nature of the effect. Without the agent the effect will be without a nature. The agent is that which gives form to the effect, and only once it has that form can it perform the function. Yet, when the agent is responsible for the “creation” or for the construction of the external world, and the agent is not absolutely real, can we speak about the reality of the external world? Everything is a construction ¯ when compared with Brahman, the only real existent, but within of avidya, the realm of phenomenal experience the relation between cause and effect, though both ultimately unreal from the “highest standpoint”, are equally real from the empirical standpoint. And this can be an answer as to why we are responsible for the effects of our act and works due to the “snake” impulse. The Law of Karma remains in its own reality. The entire enquiry is already brought to the experiential level of individual consciousness, thus providing the context of perceptibility (pratyak sa) – or in . other words, evidence. In other words, the world of objects, of things and events, is not sought to be explained in terms of metaphysical theory, but rather described qua phenomena given to consciousness, which at the same time meaningfully refers to them. It thus proves to be a movement from the transcendent to the transcendental, via the immanental of individual experience. The advaita considers the nature of cause and effect from the other side as well. The effect must exist already, for otherwise anything might arise anywhere. Another argument suggests that when scripture says that “in the beginning the universe was nonexistent” it means that the effect, before it arises, is the causal stuff but not yet developed in name-form. However, advaita does not admit that the effect really exists at all. In commenting on the famous passage in the Chandogya upanishad he makes it clear that in the production of, say, a pot from some clay it is the clay that is real; the pot is “based merely on speech”. Jagiellonian University “How indeed does that rule of substitution work sir? It is like this, son. By means of just one lump of clay one would perceive everything made of clay – the transformation is a verbal handle, a name – while the reality is just this: “It’s a clay”. It is like this, son. By means of just one copper trinket one would perceive everything made of copper – the transformation is a verbal handle, a name – while the reality is just this: “It’s copper”. It is like this, son. By means of just one nail-cutter one would perceive everything made of iron – the transformation is a verbal handle, a name – while the reality is just this: “It’s iron.

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That, son, is how this rule of substitution works.” Chandogya upanisad 6.1.

This analogy is an example serving as proof for the existence of Brahman. And from this passage we have learned, as well, that the proper reflection on one phenomenon of the world can be enough to realize the truth of all reality. Coming back to our starting example about the rope and the snake, we can say that it is not an exhaustive explanation of that riddle. It is the same ¯ shows, with the most fundamental riddles of our life. And, as advaita vedanta the proper answer is not possible due to the words, reason, and constructions we must use – all of them have the nature of ignorance and ignorance – ¯ ajñana – is another name for our empirical individuality. The quotations in the text are taken from: – Olivelle Patrick, Upanisads (Oxford University Press, 1996). – Brahmasutras, Swami Sivananda (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1977).

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L I F E WO R L D : A C O M PA R AT I V E S T U DY O F S O M E A S P E C T S O F C H I N E S E A N D H U S S E R L I A N T H E O RY

There are numerous studies discussing common elements of Western and Oriental philosophy. Some of them deal with the phenomenological inheritance – especially that of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The different views of the universe and man’s place in it formulated by Oriental and Western cultures require a deeper analysis. A comparison of the two may illustrate not only the fundamental difference of cultural and philosophical stances but can also lead to unexpected discoveries in our own philosophical investigations. In this context, in my essay I would like to introduce the Chinese philosophical concept of intentionality by a Neo-Confucian thinker Wang Yangming (1472–1529). His theory of intentionality characteristically portrays the object (wu) in a way radically different not only from the Cartesian subject-object dualism, but also from Husserl’s attempt to go beyond such a model. Wang Yangming was one of the most eminent Neo-Confucian thinkers. His philosophy influenced not only Chinese culture but also Japanese Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was (like Husserl) rather an explorer who was directed by a spirit of discovery than a creator of a philosophical system. Wang’s main publication was a collection of essays, conversations with his pupils and letters, entitled “Instructions for Practical Living” (Chuanxilu). RO OT S

The roots of Wang Yangming’s philosophy are as follows: Firstly, his concepts are deeply rooted in the Confucian notion of human nature (renxing) of mind (xin). Mencius1 regarded this idea as the most important for him: “What is it, that we have in common in our mind? It is a sense of principle and righteousness (yi–li). The sage is the first to possess what is common in our minds. Therefore moral principle pleases our minds as beef and mutton and pork please our mouths.”2 The Sage to Mencius is an innermost, ontological reality of man. Whatever Nature imparts to man is called human nature: “The function of the mind is to think. If we think, we will get them (the principles of things). If we do not think, we will not get them. This is what Heaven has given to us.”3 Secondly, Wang deals with a Taoistic concept of the mind (xin). According to Zhuangzi,4 the mind of the Sage is vacuous and alert. Subject and object 675 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 675–682. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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are not denied (like, for example, in Indian Buddhist philosophy) but positively affirmed in the theory of “equalization of all things.” Wang Yangming also gave us a new interpretation of Zhuxi’s5 notion of investigation of things (gewu). He created its idealistic form. Frequently, Wang Yangming’s philosophy is regarded as created under the influence of the Chinese Buddhist notion of sudden enlightenment. Wang Yangming, like all Neo-Confucians, stresses: “Always be doing something.” But his own practice of meditation indeed played a great role in his theory of innate knowledge (liangzhi). ORGANIC

“Organic” is a very good name for Wang’s way of thinking. His philosophy is defined as a dynamic and idealistic kind of creating an interpretative model of the universe. The universe is described by him as one organic whole. What exactly does it mean? Organic here means “living.” People are born, exist, and die as an element of Nature. It also means that all of the things (wu) in the universe (including us) that appear as elements existing independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern (li). No parts of that pattern are really separate from it or from each other. The Neo-Confucian vision of the universe suggests that whatever we experience is not external reality but our interaction with it. So, all properties of the things in the world of things (named the “external world”) and in the world of culture (named “civilization”) are not properties of themselves but of our interaction, our intercommunication with them. A man does not behave in the world but interacts with his environment. Organic also means participation. John Wheeler, a well-known physicist at Princeton, wrote: “May the universe in some strange sense be ‘brought into being’ by the participation of those who participate? … The vital act is the act of participation.”6 Wang Yangming sees the universe exactly in the same way. For him a man is not an observer in the world which is “out there,” “out of him.” A man is a participant. And the knowledge is the knowledge of the participant: “The human mind and the things form the same body. In the case of one’s bodyblood and vital force in fact circulate through it and therefore we can say they form the same body. In the case of men, their bodies are different and differ even more from those of animals and plants. How can they be said to form the same body? The Teacher said: Just look at the matter from the point of view of the subtle incipient activating force of their mutual influence and response. Not only animals and plants, but heaven and earth also, form the same body with me. … Separated from my

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clear intelligence, there will be no heaven, earth, spiritual beings, or myriad things, and separated from these, there will not be my clear intelligence.” 7 In this context Wang rejects subject-object dichotomy. Man’s subjectivity becomes the real experience rather than an abstract concept in which subject and object were not two independent entities. By focusing on the linkage between thought and being in the world the inner and outer are experienced as the two extremes – positive and negative – of pole continua. Organic also indicates a hierarchy. A man is a living part of a living whole. The whole is the universe as One and, like in my own organism, where each part of my body grows up only experiencing the inseparability of his own being from his environment, a man is also deeply inseparable from his own being from his human, animal, and even from his inanimate environment. It is essentially an experienced and lived reality. And this is what a man ontologically is. Each of us always exists being deeply related to a kind of “hierarchy of being.” Each level is a part of a higher level, and a whole for all lower levels. This is not a hierarchy of perfect creatures. It is the structure of life. This is a form of holism according to which all of the organic wholes are organized in nested hierarchies of organisms within organisms. The parts of organisms can be understood only in relation to their local activities in the ongoing whole. Then, to know where I am – to know my so called “locality” (fen) – is for me to know how to live. To live means to interact. A Confucianist is first of all a participant of the level of the world nearest to him – of other people, to be named a “civilization.” Thus cognition is the matter of communication. The problem of truth and certainty of knowledge is not very important. The problem of sincerity (zheng) – the question of whether when I relate myself to the world I take a monologue or a dialogue – is the most important. So, I am using the correct language. I am wrong only if I act being conditioned by bad habits (qixi) or selfishness (zisi). In that case genuine directionality of my mind becomes dark for me. So the intendent object (wu) should be rectificated. Therefore the proces of regulating the mind is identical with the rectification of the name and the object and with the real process of growth of body/mind, whole. THE SELF

The self is a participant in the world. In Wang’s way of thinking man is indeed essentially conceived as a being in the world. Man’s environment is not simply a physical world of things. Man is born into an historical situation and, especially, a situation of culture. To exist is to exist in a world that includes a social dimension, or rather which includes other people, other subjects.

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Confucianists say that a man is human (ren). Etymologically, the character ren consists of two elements: the symbol of man and the symbol of two. It symbolizes that from the ontological point of view nobody can really be a human being without interaction with other people. Only if I experience others in myself and myself in other can I grow up as a human being. To speak or to understand is the real – in the deepest sense – process of communication. Humanity (ren) is not only a personal virtue but also a metaphysical reality essentially identical with the cosmic principle (tianli). It is the basis of growth, self-cultivation, and it means creativity itself. We can say that ren is a principle of participation. This human ability to participate is not only reality but it is a universal power (qi) to be a living part of an organic whole. What we name “the world” cannot be understood in isolation from the meaning conferred on it by man. There are no distinctions between consciousness (mind, xin) and its object (wu). Wang Yangming looks on the body/mind as the source of all knowledge and openness to others. Wang erases the dividing line between body and mind and sees human reality as one always based upon the body and always interested in relationship between persons. He named his philosophy the “learning of body/mind” (shenxin zhi xue). The deepest, innermost and indissoluble reality of self is liangzhi. Wang Yangming points out that lingzhi is the “clear illumination” (zhaoming) and “spiritual awareness” (lingjue) of the heavenly principle (tianli). According to Wang’s own words it is the ultimate reality of Heaven, Earth and the myriad things: “Liangzhi is oneness. From the point of view of its wondrous function it is called shen (spirituality). From the point of view of its transformation, it is called qi (material force, ether, or existence in process). From the point of view of its crystallization, it is called jing (essence).”8 NA M E S

The problem of names (ming) involves an extensive area of Confucian investigations. In the context of our essay, it should be pointed out that to know (zhi) is not a purely cognitive function without involving the whole existence of the knower. If the knower is the participant, to know will first of all involve the inner-side of the growing up process. If so, very interesting questions arise: “What is the thing?”, “What is the name?”, and “Where is the very source of this connection between the man and the world of named things?” The real basis of such questions is not the problem of certainty of knowledge (like it is understood by Husserl) but the factual process of becoming fully realized as an authentic human being. Wang always tries to embody ren (tiren); he never tries to comprehend it purely intellectually.

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Wang Yangming realized that a really important division does not lie between recognized things and that human ability to know them, but between named things and namelessness. Such namelessness should not be considered as a set of things without names. It is so, because from the Chinese point of view when we speak or understand we do not picture or represent the reality but we choose how to react with the world. In other words it means that Wang Yangming does not assume – like Parmenides, Plato and most of Western thinkers – identity of logos and being. For him to know is to know how to apply a term which is a name of a part of the world. But “to apply” means “to be applied by a participant” not by an observer. For a participant, naming is a way of picking up one’s way through the world. It is not – like for Husserlian pure ego – a descriptive project: “There have never been people who know but do not act. Those who are supposed to know but do not act simply do not yet know. … Seeing beautiful colors appertains to knowledge, while loving beautiful colors appertains to action. However, as soon as one sees that beautiful color, he has already loved it. It is not that he sees it first and then makes up his mind to love it. … I have said that knowledge is the direction for action and action the effort of knowledge, and that knowledge is the beginning of action and action the completion of knowledge.”9 “Knowledge in its genuine and earnest aspect is action, and action in its intelligent and discriminating aspect is knowledge.”10 “It is the original substance of knowledge and action that they are one.”11 THE THING AND INTENTION

One of the central problems in this connection is the problem of meanings: How and why can a term (as a name) mean something? An inquiry into the concept of the thing (wu) necessarily involves broad issues of Wang Yangming’s notion of intention (yi): “The master of the body is the mind. What emanates from the mind is the intention.12 The original substance of the intention is the mind knowledge, and whenever the intention is directed is a thing. … For example, when the intention is directed toward serving one’s parents, the serving one’s parents is a ‘thing’ … and when the intention is directed toward seeing, hearing, speaking, and acting, then each of these is a ‘thing.’ Therefore I say that there are neither principles nor things outside the mind.”13 Words relate us not only to other words, not only to “mental pictures” but also to the rest of the world. Opposite to Husserl’s early phenomenological theory, Wang assumes that man is able to understand the meanings of words because of his ability to act or rather to interact with other people and other parts of the universe – like his ancestors used to do. For Husserl, meanings are connected with “evidence” of conscious acts – at the utmost, of pure,

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transcendental ego. But in human perception, like in the nature which is man’s living environment, features and qualities interact to form a vibrant, living whole. The thing intended by intentionality of the observer – who is in fact the participant – interact to produce an experience of nature. The participant becomes an active partner in the act of creating (reproducing, reviving) meanings from the forms of language and civilisation. All Confucianists suppose that names have meanings because people can transmit senses, and continue old patterns, inherited from past human experiences. This involves “learning of the tradition,” which requires that the man be immersed in the nature and its cultural heritage, so that learning takes place by an osmosis-like process. It is body/mind learning and the experiential “learning by doing.” There is nothing like an “absolutely fixed” meaning. The process of getting immersed in the nature and culture is the real (not pure and transcendental) process of understanding what something means. And it is never left behind but is continued as a part of lifelong learning process deeply connected with the form of growing up and becoming a mature human being. TRADITION

In this context Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt is very interesting. Wang Yangming also asks about the foundation and extreme source of meaning. Attempting to answer this question he must also disagree with separation of man’s intellect from his being existentially rooted in his tradition and history. The central problem is the problem of the autentic line of “transmission” and human spiritual “locality.” Organic wholes are subject to self-resonance from their own past states. Man’s past states includes past states of his own civilisation, because becoming a mature human being involves the transmission of culture from ancestors to their descendents. Platonism that postulates the existence of an autonomous realm of essences existing independently of manifestations of them in the phenomenal world is here an impossible way of seeing the cosmic organism. From Wang Yangming’s point of view each of us lives in a formative environment of essences. To know, for example, essence of good is to know how to become a good father, or good son, or good ruler. Such knowledge is not a kind of theory but personal experiental confirmation of the old patterns. Inner knowledge of good involves the possibility of the repetition and resonance from all previous forms and shapes of meanings. According to Confucianists, following Mencius, human beings have a common (not just similar) nature. Mencius illustrates this by reference to the pity and alarm one feels on seeing a child about to fall into a well.

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Essence of good is closely connected not with the observer’s “evidence” of conscious acts but with the participant’s ability to produce an experience of good. Wang yangming thinks about forms in terms of li. Li is a principle that is interpreted as deeply grounded in human subjective sentiments more than in some abstract universal construct. But this subjective element is not related to the individual, egoistic feeling but to the personal experience universal (which means here a long continued form) patterns of reacting with the world, because li means also “the pattern.” Patterns of ancestors are inward in the following sense: “The Book of Odes says, ‘In hewing an axe handle, in hewing in axe handle, the pattern is not far off.’ If we take an axe handle to hew another axe handle and look askance from the one to the other …”14 In the sense comparable with Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt, Wang Yangming points out that humans always are in the kind of “horizon of humanity” or “pole of culture.” We are transmitters of life not only in the genetic but also in the historic meaning of this word. This transmission is related to human ontological structure as a set of tools which enables us to creatively reconstruct the wisdom of all past human generations. What man is essentially constitutes the likelihood of correct continuation. The very source of meaning is not a transcendental ego but lively and dynamic linkage between ego and the world, between subject and object, between the past and the present: “Separated from my clear intelligence, there will be no heaven, earth, spiritual beings, or myriad things, and separated from these, there will not be my clear intelligence. … I asked further, ‘Heaven, earth, spiritual beings, and the myriad things have existed from great antiquity. Why should it be that if my clear intelligence is gone, they will all cease to exist?’ Consider the dead man. His spirit has drifted away and dispersed. Where are his heaven and earth and myriad things?”15 In other words, Wang Yangming points out that in the case of the dead man there is no linkage named “Heaven, earth, and myriad things” in connection to him and the world. There is nothing that can be something without connection to the world itself. There is only some likelihood of harmonious continuation; there is a possibility of creative reconstruction of old patterns in existing people, in their heaven, and earth, and myriad things: “ ‘A former scholar said that the flying of the hawk, the leaping of fishes and the feeling that one must always be doing something are all very lively and dynamic in the same way.’ The teacher said, ‘Correct. The whole universe is very lively and dynamic because of the same principle. It is the unceasing universal operation of one’s innate knowledge’ ”16 Wang Yangming thinks that the truly important question is not about objective laws of history and historical facts. Truly important is the problem

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of the ability to recognize the presence of the past in our deep awareness. To repeat means to recognize. This is always a creative process. This is Wang’s notions of Lebenswelt. In fact, from Wang Yangming’s point of view existence is neither the being (you) nor the non-being (wu) but it is the being pointing out the non-being. Maybe in order to explain this point of view Chinese art will be most instructive: “Eastern paintings do not aim at the expression of the real form of things; and even if they do portray the form of things, they do not portray the things themselves. … On the surface of the canvas the blank spaces dominate. These blank spaces are wholly different from the backgrounds of Western paintings. Instead the blank spaces are expressed by the form of the things portrayed.”17 This is liangzhi – “spiritual awareness” of the flow of life itself: calm and empty. Calm and empty means namelessness and thinglessness. Each of name (ming) and each of thing (wu) points out the place of the participation. Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland N OT E S 1

Mencius (371–289 B.C.), Confucian thinker Wing-Tsit Chan A source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 56 3 Ibid., p. 59. 4 Zhuangzi (399–295 B.C.) was the one of the most prominent taoist thinkers. 5 Zhuxi (1130–1200) was the creator of the greatest Neo-Confucian philosophical system. 6 Gary Zukav The Dancing Wu Li Masters (London: Rider/Hutchinson, 1979), p. 54 7 Wing-Tsit Chan, Ibid., pp. 690–691 8 Wing-Tsit Chan, Ibid. 9 Ibid., pp. 669–670 10 Ibid., p. 681 11 Ibid., p. 670 12 Wing-Tsit Chan translate the Chinese character yi as “the will.” Tu Wei-ming in his “Humanity and Self-cultivation” as “the intention.” I follow the second way. 13 Wing-Tsit Chan, ibid., p. 673 14 Wing-Tsit Chan, ibid., pp. 100–101 15 Wing-Tsit Chan, ibid., p. 691 16 Wing-Tsit Chan, ibid., p. 690 17 Keiji Nishitani Religion and Nothingness (University of California Press, 1983), p. XXV 2

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I N T RO D U C T I O N

A basic characteristic of the African world is that the human being is seen, above all, as a relational subject (between himself and his peers, the world and God). Based on this category of relations we can remark that saying “I” is equivalent to saying “you,” or better still, is equivalent to saying “the other” or saying “us,” which all together means saying “human beings.” In fact, whoever wants to know the reason for living has to question the “world,” as such, and finally has to question God, the Author of life. Therefore all the realities (pain, destiny of man, spiritual life, human thought itself, death and life) are all arguments which envelop the human being. From these considerations we can conclude that the human being is the love of God personified in the world. The global vision of creation is therefore centred in the human being. In African vitalogy or worldview, it is impossible to think of humans not being linked to the “world” and to God, the Creator. All these realities are interdependent and are thought of within a hierarchy of values which go from God, through human beings themselves, to all creation. These ontological and vitalogical realities as conceived by the African mind are expressed in the conception of the African worlds (material world, world of life and the world of the ancestors), fundamentally linked to the religious sphere of the people’s life. The “world” as such is an eternal entity and a vitalogical living reality, which itself is as eternal as its creator. Therefore, the world in the African mind presents itself as a factor that cannot be discussed, so much so that it is difficult to hold an argument on it. The world as such is not an object of demonstration. Whilst discoursing about the world, the human being does not theorise on the world but is welcomed by it. The world begins to become an object of discussion only when conceptions on creation and on the reality of other worlds are taken into consideration (the world of the ancestors, the supernatural world and the world of life). However, the world as it presents itself to our mind remains for everyone the best of its kind, the only one possible because it is incorruptible and, at the same time, immortal since it always offers something new for life. Even here, because of the way in which the world shows itself, one can say that, everything which is revealed as being 683 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 683–704. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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incorruptible is created by God, and whatever is created by God is unique of its kind. We can then conclude that, both man and the world, for the precise reason that they are unique in their kind and are created by God, are called to live His life and therefore reach eternity. The world of Life (for the African life is everything) bears in itself the seeds of immortality and eternity. It is for this reason that the world, and life itself, assume a divine nature for Africans. One cannot discourse on the world without taking into consideration its origin and therefore its creator: God. With regard to the knowledge of God, we can say that, the principal, if not the only attribute is that, Africans see God as being the Creator. The vital force manifested by the world in the generation of new life to whom everybody relates is God Himself. Every human being wants eternal life, wants to reach immortality, because there is a constant relationship with God in everyday life. The divine nature which human beings and the world assume, via their participation in the life of God, leads us to investigate the reality of African divinities, the sacred, the sacrifices and worship which characterise the Africans’ religiousness. We find that the African God is never the God of an individual but always the God of the people. It is from this that we affirm African monotheism stems. The result is therefore that Africans do not dare to talk of God or elaborate a theology. The relationship with God takes place through a dialogue with Him; one should be able to talk to God. This takes place through rites, prayers, song, dance, worship and sacrifices, because everything should be able to give praise to He who gave it Life. The ways in which values are passed on – for example, by proverbs (teachings on morality) in the African way of thinking – assume a place of great importance. They reveal themselves like entries in a dictionary regarding thought and traditional knowledge. In this argumentation we find the African vision of the world as an eternal entity and vitalogical living reality. T H E WO R L D : E T E R NA L E N T I T Y A N D V I TA L O G I C A L L I V I N G R E A L I T Y In fact, whoever wants to know the reason for living, has to question the “world” as such, and finally has to question God, the Author of life. Therefore all the realities (pain, destiny of man, spiritual life, human thought itself, death and life) are all arguments which envelop the human being and his world.

1. Universal Vision of the World It is not easy to describe the world, especially within an African worldview, essentially vitalogically articulated. Therefore, my reflection requires a

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presentation rather than a definition, a description instead of categorisation, as if it can belong to itself without the rest of creation. The above expression, quoted at the beginning of this reflection, introduces us to the African worldview where one cannot think about man separately from all other living beings, or think about the world separated from its own origin or, again, think about both man and the world without the author of life and of everything who is God the Creator. Such an affirmation leads us to conclude, that man is a small world of his own in the world, whose meaning and sense of life is outside himself. This sense and meaning belongs to the world and especially depends on God his Creator. This affirmation also presumes a plurality of worlds which will be considered in the course of our reflection. Such a reflection has its departure point in the observable reality of life and in the presence of several objects, which are a source and object of knowledge for man. I would like to analyse these different worlds, without giving an abstract definition of them. It is a question of finding the sense of these different realities and therefore of the world itself related to its origins: God. One is inclined to ask why such worlds are so present in the everyday language of all people; and why one has to theorise about different worlds, when the world of daily life seems to be sufficient unto itself. African tradition and African thinking do not permit any foregone definitions of the cosmological perspective, just as will not, in an anthropological perspective in their search for meaning. Africans are inclined to discuss issues related to everyday living. Let us choose this method of approach because the world has an immense richness of life to offer to man. It should be emphasised that Africans, just as every other human being on earth, continually live with the world and within the variety of worlds. I would still like to emphasise that the world in itself is not subject to any proof of existence since its existence is real and without doubt. In fact, in discussion about and around the world, man does not need to theorise about it, because he finds himself welcomed by it. The first affirmation which is not a definition in itself is this: the world is made or created1 by God just like man is created by God. Man seeks the meaning of his existence, not in himself, but by including himself in an eternal representation of life. The question on the search of meaning should then be formulated in the following way: “Where are we?” However, the answer cannot be found in a rational way of reasoning, but in the dialogue existing between the world and

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its inhabitants. The true answer then lies in this dialectic between living beings. It is useful to see how Western classical thinking, in which many African scholars have been educated, considers the world. This will help us to avoid discoursing of the world as if it were a subject invented by us. In the LatinGreek speculation successive thinkers have seen the world (kosmos) as Space or a Configuration of Heavenly Bodies. These seem to be a composition of particles deriving from interstellar Space. Often, in the course of history, the cosmos was understood as being the sum of elements and this is the true meaning of the word Universe, a Latin expression which literally means “to revolve around the Oneness”: “vertere in Unum.” Thus the Universe is an organic whole of earthly and heavenly bodies eternally in movement: there is therefore an order and harmony in such a concept of the kosmos.2 Then, the physical world itself is thought of as a geographical and astronomical entity which constitutes the venue of natural and human events. This affirmation of the world’s astronomical, geographical and historical unity leads us to the concepts of autonomy, totality and fulfilment. That is why the different continents are also described as being a world of their own and the term passes from the physical reality to the description of each people: the African world, the Asian world, the New World (the Americas), the Roman world and so on.3 Thus, since the concept “world” has multiple meanings, I have preferred to use the expression “cosmological perspectives” in deepening my study of the natural and supernatural phenomena and their relationship with our knowing subject, man. For the Africans the world includes the earth, sun, moon, stars and the other planets. This permits the African cosmology to be described through myths. We should remember here that myths are literary forms of expression in which archaic traditions on the concept of the world are presented through symbols. Moreover, there is always a religious basis in the myths even when they are related to the origin of the world. Every African society has its own myth of the origin of the world, but what interests us is that, these myths are purely the product of the speculative imagination of human thought. In all myths regarding the origin of the world one can clearly see that the world does not exist on its own. It is created by the Will of God. The Will of God is therefore a dominating factor in these myths. The Will of God is the answer to the doubts and mysteries created by the narration of these same myths.

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2. The Created World This is a Bangwa traditional story, about the creation of the world transmitted orally from generation to generation: God was alone and walking along on His world but was not very happy. When He thought about the world originated by Him, He wanted to populate it with all forms of life. Thus all things had life through God: the plants, animals and the human beings. However God did not want to be confused with the fruit of His will and so he retired into the sky. The human beings who know quite well that they owe their existence to the Will of God, looked for Him all over the place, but God is so great that He enfolds these who were looking form Him. The humans, being embraced by the presence of God, like a child enveloped in bed sheets, continued to look for Him tirelessly. They can never remove this mantle of the presence of God because this is the source of life and without life, one cannot live or exist.

The dominating factor in this story is the desire of God, the Will of God. God’s Will and the action of God both mean “creation.” The story is divided in six parts. In the first part it is taken for granted that God existed since eternity and He had already given existence to His world. This part concludes with the inconclusive nature of the immanent experience of God, who wants something else. The world is the first thing created by God, but it cannot correspond with Him: since God cannot exchange words with anyone or anything when creating. The second part deals with the thought of God, which brings about the creation of living beings. God thinks about the world, which He had given a beginning. The third part takes up the theme of the Will of God, which goes hand in hand with the thought of God. When He thinks, He creates forms of life. He wants all things to be an expression of His Will and His Thinking. The fourth part presents the result of God’s Will and Thinking: the plants, animals and human beings, who receive their existence from Him. In the fifth part it is assumed that God fulfilled His Will, however His creation is not exactly equal to Him even though it received life from God. God does not want to be confused with the things He has created, so that everything and every human being has the freedom and the possibility to establish a dialogue with Him. This happens because His seed of life impresses in everything and everyone a longing for eternity. God retires in sky, which according to Africans is the dwelling place of God. Africans can speak to God looking towards the sky, the sun and the moon. In this fifth part the idea of a plurality of worlds is evident. God cannot dwell in a visible world, but in a world different from ours and yet equally real. In the sixth part human beings are presented as the artifices of creation: they are the only ones among the living who are aware of the Will of God as

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their creator. They search together for God in His dwelling. The story concludes with the difference between God and the rest of creation. God, being so immense and embracing all things and all human beings with His mantle, results to be the most excellent Being. He is even called: “The Greater Elder.” Since we are all embraced by this mantle of life, true freedom in seeking God lies in living His same life in order to participate in His eternity. Thus, the world is the place in which the whole span of life of every living being unfolds. All together, the world, the human beings and the plants live thanks to God’s Will and Goodness. All things originate in the world: below, on the earth, there is the mystery of life and up, in the sky, the wonders of God. The Africans’ concept of the world lies in this dialectic between “the below” and “the up,” in which everything results to be the creation of God; thus, the world, for Africans. Finally in the African mentality the world can be identified with nature itself, which provides an answer to man’s many questions. Such a world contains all realities, spiritual and material, and all that it contains is to be enjoyed by all. 3. The World as Generator of Life Even though the world is not generated but created – otherwise God would have the nature of motherhood and thus be subject to work – all the same, it generates life at the Will of the creator. Thus, the world exists for the life that it generates, especially for man’s presence. Both the earth and the sun are vital forces capable of generating and giving warmth to living beings. All that is created is immortal, at least in the Creator’s mind. Instead, all that which generates or is generated in the world, is in fact corruptible and thus conceived as being mortal, at least in the mind of man. That which is immortal, both in the mind of man and of God, is Azem – that is, the form of the world, unique of its kind. The form of the human mind can be modified but not the world’s shape, as it presents itself in its reality. Our ancestors have seen and enjoyed this world the way it is and they were not able to modify it. All living beings form part of this world, which welcomes them into its bosom. Such an incorruptible world presents itself as a divinity. This is why many people adore the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets. There is a religious basis in the cult of planets. Their incorruptible nature recalls the idea of immortality and eternity, which we have already spoken about regarding the memory which the living have of their dead.

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That is why the world shares in the divine nature and generates entities, which can be made divine. In this concept can be found the basis of the idolatry practices in African traditional society. It is often said that Africans adore the water, the sacred forest, the sacred tree, the lake, or the mountain. Such practices go so far as to consider even human beings as having a divine origin, but always as an image and participation of the divine nature of worlds. In such cases the person made divine becomes immortal, at least in a spiritual sense, because at his physical death, he will be proclaimed immortal and thus worthy of receiving sacrifices. We will go in depth into the reality of the sacred, the divine and these sacrifices when we shall reflect about God in the fifth chapter. In the evening, huddled around the fire, the children of the village listen eagerly to the story of how their tribe originated. The origin of the world, how it came about, is always explained through stories of the beginning of one’s tribe, especially because each people thinks that theirs was the first tribe that ever existed. All the others descended from their own tribe. Therefore it is enough to know about the origin of one’s tribe, in order to learn about the origin of the world. The world is one big tribe. Ontological truths are transmitted through African stories or myths permeated by symbolism. African symbolism helps in explaining deeply felt and shared experiences from the present. It is also useful in classifying various forms of experiences and legitimises social institutions and norms of behaviour of the individual in society. Through symbolism, previous information is passed on from generation to generation or from one group to another.5 The characters in the stories are animals and often also human beings. The subject matter of each story refers to events related to the community, such as marriage between families or disputes between sovereign kings, and etc. Such events take place in villages and head villagers are involved. In these literary forms one can see the methodology through which parents transmit values to their children, no matter who the characters are and what kind of events unfold in the story. This is an example taken from the Kipembawe tribe found in the central western part of Tanzania. A man called Mulingula from the Sagara tribe came to Kipembawe and married Igonggo, daughter of the Chief Ikili Ntondo Mutikilwa. At that time the name of the village was not Kipembawe but Mpanda and the people were all related among themselves. The foreigner brought along with him some pumpkinseeds and he told the Mpanda inhabitants to cultivate them. Before returning to his home area he told them to go ahead and eat the pumpkins, but that they should keep some seeds for planting the following year. After his departure there was a big drought in Mpanda and the people were suffering from famine. They were so hungry that they ate all the pumpkins

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without keeping any seeds. When the Sagara traveller returned he asked for his seeds, but the people did not have any. They tried to offer him other things: goats; cows; ivory; slaves; but he refused all these offers. He wanted his seeds. At the end the Chief, who felt exasperated and furious, took some soil in the palm of his hand from the ground and told him: “Here, take this!” Everyone was surprised to see that the foreigner accepted this offer. When he returned to his home area, Sagara, he met his elder brother Molova, and told him: “I have planted some seeds in the land where I got married and now that land belongs to me.” Thus they went together to Mpanda and divided among themselves the country. Molova governed Kipembawe and Mulingula ruled Igunda … Chief Ikili went away towards the west and the name Mpanda became extinct.6

This story seems to be realistic enough. It describes an imposed change of dynasty after a marriage of convenience. However the major part of the story deals with the seemingly trivial issue of the pumpkin seeds. This shows that there is a lot of symbolism involved in the story as one can see from the positional analysis. The word “land” which is used in the story means also “the country” or “territory” of a village Chief. This word is normally used to indicate the dynasty of a leader and the members of his family. The son of a leader is called “the son of the land” and a relative of a leader is called “the relative of the land.” The leader himself is sometimes called “the one of the land” and his main emblem, the magic horn, is called “the honour of the land.” The phrase “to plant seeds in the ground” is frequently used by the people of those parts in order to indicate a man who marries a woman who is symbolically associated with “mother land.” However the phrase refers to the marriage with a woman from the family of the Chief. In this part of Tanzania the family of the Chief is matrilineal, while all the other families are patrilineal. The leaders are not nominated through blood links expressed by a will. They are elected from among the sons of the sisters of the preceding head. This means that any citizen can become the father of a leader and the family of the leader needs citizens who can guarantee its fecundity. It is immediately clear that the action of the stranger Sagara to plant pumpkin seeds in the ground of Mpanda is symbolically parallel to a marriage with a woman of the Chief’s family. This is as far as the positional analysis is concerned. Then regarding the operational analysis we can see that the seeds, which the stranger wants back, represent his offspring because they are the fruits of his “seeds planted in the ground” through his marriage with the daughter of the Chief. We should bear in mind that in a matrilineal system the offspring belong to the family of the mother.

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The stranger claims his offspring back but he is refused. “The seeds were eaten up”. To eat something normally means to take complete possession or to steal something. However the word “land” is ambiguous because it refers both to the territory and the dynasty that governs it. Thus by refusing to give to the stranger the fruits of his marriage, the leader of the village of Mpanda and its people inadvertently gave him the right to govern the territory. In this lies the explicit interpretation of Mulingula. The positional interpretation of “sowing seeds in the ground” refers to the marriage with the daughter of the Chief, while the operational analysis of the same story refers to the name of the daughter, “Igonggo,” which means “descendants.” Let us conclude by summarising the various parts of the story. The elements forming the structure of the story are: the pumpkin seeds; the sowing; land; the eating of the seeds; the dust taken up from the ground. The centre of the story consists of the acts of planting the seed in the ground, eating the seed of the harvest and taking up the dust from the ground. The message of the story is that the stranger, from the Sagara tribe, had all the right to govern the territory of the leader Ikili Ntondo Mutikilwa, who took away his children.7 At first glance the story seems to have nothing to do with the origin of the tribe. Let us keep in mind the importance which the land has in the life of a tribe. The ground provides a livelihood: it always belongs to man. The territory of a tribe is of utmost importance: the ancestors who founded the clan are buried in it. However if we read the story carefully, we will be able to see other important elements emerging. The foundations of the world coincide with the foundation of the original tribe. The origin of the world is essentially linked to the various events surrounding the marriages among various families and it involves the Chief and the different dynasties. God is never mentioned in these vicissitudes because the tribe’s history concerns only its members. It is assumed that God has already created the world. Now it is up to man to rearrange nature and live in harmony with everyone. That is why in each village there is a chief who represents all the inhabitants and in him everyone finds his own personal identity as a citizen of that particular village. There are many charismatic Chiefs who are also spiritual guides for all the people. 4. Some Concepts of the Origin of the World Each tribe, people or clan has its own concept of the origin of the world. God is at the basis of all these concepts.

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Let us review some of them without making a specific, critical analysis because God, who is always at the basis, guarantees the validity of each one of these concepts. In whatever way they may appear, they stimulate our reflection and reveal the intellectual creative endeavour which favorises the thinking activity. The problem of the origins is presented as a dialogue between God and the creation. In the Abaluyia tribe (Kenya) it is said that God created man and the world so that the sun could send its light to someone. Then He created the plants, animals and the birds, so that each and every one could be food for man. This same tribe believes that God created man first and then the woman, because society is masculine by nature and the one who commands should come first by birth or appearance on earth. This is similar to what is narrated in the Bible. The woman is considered as an interlocutor for man, for practical reasons. Man has to share his life with someone. There is nothing else which suits this purpose, because man cannot talk to animals or plants, but only with someone of his kind. Let us examine some stories on the creation of the world.8 The Lozi tribes from Zambia believe that God created the world and then He populated it. In fact He created everything: the plants, animals and finally men. God did not create man as an individual but as a people, a tribe. After having created the first tribe, which normally is the Lozi tribe, he continued creating other tribes and peoples, each with its own customs, languages and culture.9 The Lugbara tribe from Uganda believes that God, in His greatness, created the first human beings, male and female, many many years ago. The earth was already in existence and so human beings were able to live from the fruits of the land and transmit life. For the Mende, from Sierra Leone, God first made the world then He populated it with human beings, animals, rivers and plants. Some tried to give a more elaborate explanation by referring to the human experience of work and day-to-day living. Since the concept of “nothing” does not exist in most of the African languages, then God must have fashioned man out of something concrete. God, in person, must have created the living beings in their present form. The material used must have been as eternal as God, but not equal to God, because one can say that only God has made everything and so also the material used to create man. This concept can be found among the Shilluk from Sudan. The Shilluk raised the question of the diversity of peoples. They asked themselves: “Why is that all men, though similar among themselves, do not have the same

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colour of the skin and hair, and do not speak the same language?” They solved this problem by saying that God used clay with a different colour in order to create different races and peoples. He Himself dictated to each people with which language they should sing and talk, both with Him and among themselves. According to the Shilluk they created human beings in their complete form. The Shilluk compare God to an artist who uses clay for his work and to a builder of houses. This is how the attributes of God come about, which serve to explain His activity, because He cannot create without doing anything, nor can He create out of nothing. These attributes of God are not common only to a particular tribe but to the whole of the African continent. There are also other attributes as the Maker, the Modeller, Goodness, Uniqueness and above all the Creator. Even the Bambuti Pygmies are of the idea that God used clay to fashion living beings. According to them God first created matter and then he used it as material in His creating activity. The Akamba (Kenya), the Basutho (S. Africa), the Shona (Zimbabwe) and the Nuer from Sudan, all narrate in their myths and stories that God first created earth (the world) and then He populated it with living beings, plants and rivers. The Nzaui, a tribe in the Akamba territory in Kenya, think that God, after creating the earth, drew man out of a hole in the ground, from a marsh. In Nzaui, up to now, there is a big rock with a deep hole. Legend sustains that God extracted the first man and the first woman out of this hole. The Herero, a tribe from Namibia, narrate in their myths that God made the first human beings, a man and his wife, come out from the mystical “Tree of Life” which, differently from the sacred tree of the village, is found in the underneath world. In Egypt, along the Nile, a legend narrates that man comes from the sky, that is, from another world, different from the one that we know. This explains the deep longing to return to an original world. The Nile River inhabitants assume that God created man in another place and then he was brought to settle down here on earth. From what we have seen up to now, it is evident that both man and the world are the result of God’s creation. The world, due to its incorruptible nature, is created and, in its turn, generates life. We mentioned already that man is created and that his act of generation follows always the law of the Creator. Human procreation is then not a common process of generation, similar to others in the world, but the work of God, by participation. By procreation human beings contribute to the creation of the world. Whatever is generated subsequently is always seen as the work of God, in an

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analogous way. For the African it is impossible to think of God as creator excluding something from Him. In whichever way generation and procreation, linked to the corruptivity and the mutability of entities, take place, God’s act of creation is never reduced; in fact, this is the case of the World. In this world, everything comes to existence, grows, but also everything seems to change, seems to die. Thus the world is the place of possibilities, of every possibility, however all creation participates in the divine nature of the Creator. That is why one can find veneration and divined practices of places and people. The world, with its intelligibility and participating nature in the Creator’s divinity, is open to man’s knowledge and interpretation. 5. The Intelligibility of the World The world, in virtue of being divine by participation, offers itself as intelligible reality and, at the same time, capable of knowledge. Man’s definition of the world is always insufficient, for the very reason that, if he were not already in the world, he would not be able to speak about it. In any case, if we have to give a definition of the world, then we should look for it among those that consider the world as an entity of reason, in virtue of creation. According to Africans, all forms of life, belonging to the order of creation, are necessarily intelligible. The world, as a material entity, principal matter, is subject to Mathematical Science; but, as a form of intelligence, it is subject to the same conditions of man. It is expressly in the dialogue between man and the world that its true meaning emerges. There are various aspects of the world which, due to their distance and their exceptional nature, such as the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars and the rest of the planets, the horizon, show that a certain difference between the world and man exists. These entities participate in a mysterious way in the divinity of God: in fact, they cannot be clearly identified, like the surrounding objects. Many African peoples see in these objects, denominated as “worlds,” the dwelling place of God. The world – or, we should say, such worlds, transfigure themselves and acquire a certain transcendence which makes the knowledge about them always uncertain. The world, being the home of living beings, is also the place where all such beings intermingle, find themselves and welcome life. Thus the world becomes a sign of remembrance and an allusion of a transcending divinity. In this way man is capable of having a supernatural experience of a subjective kind, both on a personal and on a collective level.

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6. The Supernatural World From what we have just seen, we can say that African thought recognises a plurality of worlds and foresees a progressive knowledge of them. However a greater intellectual commitment is necessary in order to fulfil this knowledge, due to the fact that, the material world is just the first step towards this knowledge. The expression “cosmological perspectives” refers to this plurality of worlds which offer themselves to the intelligence of man as a means for his realisation. Thus, from the material world created by God, man arrives at the world seen as vitality, as intelligent and as an entity of reason. Through the participation in the absolute divinity of God, a new concept of the world, as transcendent and of supernatural order, emerges. The research of these last two worlds belongs to the philosophical reflection. The hypothesis of a spiritual world originates from the desire for eternity and immortality of the human soul. Each one of these worlds seems to be animated by an eternal spirit, thus there should exist a spiritual world in which, if one participates in it, one will enjoy eternal happiness. Every knowledge of the transcendental kind is always true knowledge, because the enjoyment of an eternal good, which implies a changeless knowledge, means not to make any more mistakes. In fact, mistakes are found within empirical objective knowledge, while it is not possible to make mistakes in the field of intellectual subjective knowledge. In any case, the empirical objective experience is a true but incomplete experience; it tends towards a lasting experience or knowledge of an intellectual nature. The thinking or knowing subject organises the objective reality translating it into experience. On the other hand, the supernatural nature of the experience of the plurality of worlds manifests itself at the limit of the human experience and knowledge. The objective experience becomes transcendent when reality is made sublime, divine and treasured by man. The supernatural experience of a subjective-personal nature refers to the experience of the individual, without a true exchange with others taking place. Such an experience nourishes the spiritual life of the individual, but, at the same time, mortifies and makes him unhappy as long as his interior life remains hidden, as if it were private property; instead, his life becomes fruitful when it is communicated and shared. Such an experience, however, does not reach the peak of supernatural life.

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Regarding the supernatural experience of a subjective-collective nature, it refers to the communitarian aspect of the experience of the world. Each and every one has made the subjective-personal experience, but in contact with the collective experience, everyone communicates to the others what one knows, and the whole community participates in the contemplation of the reality of the world. In this way, the whole community believes, renders sacrificial offerings, reflects and enjoys eternal happiness. 7. Fetishism and the World of Spirits In all African societies there is a belief in a spiritual world, in the world of spirits. Someone who attempts to investigate the foundations of such beliefs very soon becomes aware of the difficulties involved in such research on a scientific level. Each explanation and conclusion proves to be insufficient, because it is not a question of a tangible reality, but rather a supernatural one. Always, according to the African conception of these phenomena, it is not clear where such a world lies and whether this world belongs to the field of creation, or to that of the generation or, again, if this world of spirits is found in an intermediary position, between the earth and the planets (in a material world), or if it coincides with the dwelling place of the ancestors. One thing is clear: such a world is not identified with the dwelling place of God, because some of these spirits are bad and commit bad deeds within the community. They also live in a constant state of rivalry among themselves. We have already encountered the theme of spirits in the chapter dedicated to man and his spiritual powers. We said that some are able to transform themselves into pure spirits and that, together with others in the same condition, they live operating good or bad deeds, according to the finality of their intentions. We saw that the spiritual world originated from a special act of transformation of the living human beings, by doubling the actual existence of the individual. One needs to make an intellectual endeavour in order to understand the nature of such a world, and it is necessary to get rid of the idea of tangible matter in order to affirm that the world of the spirits should be considered within the context of an ontological and metaphysical problematic. This spirit realm is a result of the divine creative nature of the world and it reveals itself in the daily experience of the individual. In his desire for eternity and immortality, African man anticipates in some way this longing with a strong sense of spiritualism. A longing concludes by creating its object.

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According to some, God did not create the spirits. These spirits are thought to be a special state of human beings somehow already enjoying a state of salvation, experiencing an unconditional freedom. In this condition, they are living in a state of personal immortality. One arrives gradually at such a level of life. The first condition is that of being a really existing or existed person. In the hope of reaching the greatness of the ancestors, who are already truly dead, some people declare to be one of them, brought back to life, capable of performing deeds. Then the second step requires that one should be truly dead. Through the remembrance and the memory of the living, a person can identify himself with the sacred reality by invoking the ancestors and for a moment contemplates the reality of eternal life. The third step consists in the anticipation of eternal life, lived for a moment, in relationship with the living and the dead. In all African traditional societies there are myths about the presence of the spirits of the deceased who can have a strong influence on an individual’s life, by causing disaster to those who forgot them in their daily life, or left them out of life’s events. When there is a problem in the family: a failure in the son’s exam, the death of a new-born etc., the family members can suspect that the spirit of the dead grandparents is reproaching the family. In these situations, the origin of sacrifical practise in the African villages is found. The sacrifices serve to rebuild the relationship with the ancestors and to repair the damage caused to others. It is also a means of obtaining kindness and protection against bad spirits. The African, as a member of a tribe, lives in this mysterious link with these worlds. What ever are the relation and the grades of these links with the spirits, what is certain is that, the spiritual world is an immaterial reality, configured as a superior and transcendent entity, as a divine and incorruptible place. Such a world exists as an immanent principle to the being of mankind and is fundamental for the moral and religious life of the individual and the society. Such a world stimulates the African way of thinking. The hope of every man is to live in a state of immortality in order to escape from the corruptible nature of matter, which constitutes the human organism. These spirits are not gods, even though they participate in the divine nature of the Creator, because what is divine is not intrinsically God. Some people in society enjoy a special presence of the deceased in their lives. Normally they are the successors to the thrones such as the village Chiefs who, in their turn, were leaders of the people. They act as intermediaries

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between the living and the dead, and as such are also heads and leaders of religious ceremonies and are again responsible for the moral life of the people. If a person curses one of these men, he can encounter misfortune in his life. Such misfortune could be objectively caused by the spirits. It is believed that some of these men are gifted with bilocation and they exercise this power to defend their lives and that of the collectivity, for example protecting the people from the enemy during war. These spirits are considered as temporary divinities aspiring to reach God in eternal life and thus obtain immortality. The fear of death, both biological and spiritual, pushes African man to unite intimately with these spirits who are already on their way to eternity. The spirits, understood in this way, live together with human beings in the same geographical area and fight with them against the enemies. A misunderstood view of these worlds gives rise to fetishism, which consists in the religious veneration of material objects. Characteristic of fetishism is the cult or the exclusive, fanatical veneration of persons or objects. We ought to consider African fetishism as a primary form of religiosity, even though sometimes it is mixed up with actions of magical features. Fetishism in Africa is considered as a first form of religious practices even though it is cloaked in a mystery, unknown even to those who practice it. In the long run, the practice of fetishism is a means of constant actualisation of that world in which everyone hopes to find himself as soon as possible: the spirit world. 8. Uniqueness, Eternity and Goodness of the World In order to explain briefly what we intend by cosmological perspectives, we have to talk about “theories of the worlds.” Are there truly as many worlds as theories? Is this plurality of worlds real or is the world, as an entity of reason, only one? Apparently things seem many and the worlds seem to oppose among them; however, in virtue of the ontological unity guaranteed by the cosmic vital force, the world is one, as one is the mind that defines it. In fact, every reality is one in the thought, and thus it is ontologically impossible that things be conceived as many. The world as we know is always identical to itself, and in this identity lies its unity. When the African speaks of the world, he is immediately referring to all that exists and all that he knows. While all things on the surface of the world evolve, the structure and position of the cosmos never changes or evolves and for this reason, the

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world is one. No planet opposes another and no planet can live a life on its own. Since it is not possible to determine precisely the limits between these worlds, apparently separated from each other, then such worlds are considered as “a whole in the indispensable wholeness.” Each world holds up everything else and each planet is part of the whole system. Given the incorruptibility of the solar system, one is convinced that there is no other world better than this. The seasons make their rounds, vegetation is in continuous renewal and the soul of the world, its vital force, suggests that this is the best world the Creator could make. All that is incorruptible is created by God, and all that is created by God is unique in its kind and lives in eternity, The Eternal Nature of the World Our idea of eternity is derived from our idea of creation. The Creator, God, is the one who bestows eternity on the world. All creation enjoys an infinite extension in time, which had its beginning in God and in Him will have no end. Eternity can also be considered as “truth,” because what is created is immortal and, thus, is also true. The truth of the world goes hand in hand with its eternity. We should also be able to say that, all true things are also eternal, whatever place they occupy within the whole. In other words, we affirm that all that is true is eternal, and that all that is eternal is true. We will deepen the ideas of truth, goodness, oneness and the idea of change (becoming) in the seventh chapter of the third part of this work. We can anticipate the conclusion by saying that true and eternal things are also good. The Goodness of the World The meaning of life has to be guaranteed by the Creator. The good things happen by the Will of God and the world provides everything for the livelihood of man. The gratuity of these gifts proves the unimaginable goodness of the world. The Bangwa expression “Ngong mbong” (“the goodness of the world”) means that life is good, indicates the marvels of the world, the all-goodness. The goodness of the world cannot be compared with the temporary goodness of man, because goodness, for the African, is the living of life, is vitality. This vitality has to be eternal in order to guarantee the immortality of life. In conclusion, let us mention what can be considered as the synthesis of the

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worlds, that is “the world of life,” changing Husserl’s10 expression intending it as “the stock of meaning,” as “the horizon of sense.” No doubt the difference of the two expressions is very big and the two positions are located on different levels, historically and theoretically; however, there is still room for some converging points. 9. The World of Life Among all the worlds we have been discoursing about, the most convenient for the whole cosmological system is the world of life. Normally life as it is refuses any form of theory. We have already encountered more than once the notion of “vital force” which, at first glance, seems to outline a rather simple field, the area of life, that area in which vitality is fully exercised and expressed. Life is a common factor to all living beings and man is at its summit. Life is a gift from the Creator, the greatest of all gifts. We can either reflect on life, or try to give an interpretation of the world of life by intellectually elaborating a theory on living. The immediate given datum is a matter of fact: we all know that we live. There is no discussion whether it is true or not that life is the first condition for living, the first gift that we all receive, we only need to search for its meaning. Why do we live rather then die? The universe of life is qualifying and above all it is signifying. Thus, life and meaning are synonymous terms. Meaning is not only that which has sense or which possesses a logical coherence in a pure formality. But it is that which places the sense in a vital context. For this very reason, what is meaningful not only says something, but it is something that has value for the listener, inspiring in one’s soul attachment to life and giving potentiality to the possibility. Life is meaningful also on a purely biological level. However, in the area of a reflexive consciousness it converges onto meaning. To be born, to have life and to die are all integral parts of life. It is not known for certain when life begins and comes to an end. Africans believe that, once born, one lives eternally. Since life does not belong to the individual but to humankind, the individual or the human person has always existed. Each one is in the seed of the species and in the mind of the Creator. Thus, life understood in this way is original; is that which is not deducible, but at the same time a source of deduction. From the logical point of view, life precedes meaning, because it is the centre and source of meaning. We can say that the world of life can be expressed as the world of man, object of a phenomenological description.

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When we talk of a vital force, phenomenologically we intend to refer to the active force, typical of animated beings and vegetation, that which is essential for living. In effect, life is that which cannot die, and is eternally beautiful. If man hopes in an eternal and immortal life, it is because the world of life bears in itself the seeds of eternity. That is why life presents itself as a divine nature. The world of life includes all generations: those of the past (the ancestors), the present and the future ones. Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia Pontificia Universita’ Lateranense N OT E S 1

The term “Leguih ma Leboh” which means “to do” or “to create” is applied only to God. In the Bangwa language God “does” or “creates” while man “builds” or “manufactures.” In the expression: “Ndem ma guih, Ndem ma kong beh eah” the verbs to do or to create are mentioned; however, it is better to use the term “to create.” This verb should not be understood in the same way that it is used in the Bible. The Biblical verb “to create” comes from the command of God, followed by an act of obedience by the creation and this is pleasing to God. There is no modality in which God “does” things in the Bangwa mentality. According to the Bangwa, God has always existed since eternity, and He cannot do any form of work. Thus man cannot exercise any form of control over God. In the Bangwa vision of the world, God’s actions are limited to mythical narration. The only attributes typical of God are Love and the Will. God is love and so he donates His life to His creation. All things and especially man are the fruit of God’s Will and Love. Thus all things tend to be eternal just as the Creator is eternal. For the Bangwa, both man and the surrounding world are a personification of the Will and Love of God. 2 Cfr. G. Devoto and G. C. Oli, Dizionario della lingua italiana, Le Monnier, see under the heading “cosmico” and “cosmos,” Col. 487. 3 Op. cit., col. 1187, under the heading “mondo.” 4 Azem, Ngong, means the thing, the world the way it has always been. It can also be translated by the world “substance.” We will discuss this concept in the third part. 5 Cfr. Aylward Shorter, in Culture Africane e Cristianesimo (Bologna: EMI, 1974), pp. 135–137. 6 Op. cit., pp. 136–137. 7 Cfr. op. cit., pp. 136–138. 8 These stories were collected by John S. Mbiti and published in his work African Religion and Philosophy. We have already mentioned this work when we spoke about the contribution of various authors to the formulation of African thought. This is an updated list. Cfr. Mbiti’s text at p. 93 for the last story narrated. 9 Cfr. John S. Mbiti, African Religion and Philosophy, p. 40. 10 In the first volume of his work Ideas for a pure phenomenology and a phenomenological philosophy (1913), Husserl talks about the meaning of the world and its objectivities (noemi). These are formed by the intentional acts of the pure conscience. In his second volume (1953) Husserl opposes the reality of the inter-subjective “we” with the Cartesian cogito and the pure I of Fichte. This inter-subjective “we” unfolds in a working relationship revealed mainly by

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language, society and history. When Husserl spoke about the world of life and science, he encouraged a return to the intuitive and genuine sources of experience, a return to things themselves. In his work entitled “Crisis,” Husserl indicates phenomenology as the way out of the crisis into which Europe fell due to the triumph of modern science. Cfr. Enciclopedia Garzanti di filosofia 1981, p. 416.

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Kenyatta, J. Facing Mount Kenya: the Tribal life of the Gikuyu (London, 1938, New York, 1962). Kiambi, B. “L’être chez les Bantous,” in Revue du clergé Africain, 1966. Laburthe, Tolra P. “Y’aura-t-il une pensée africaine en philosophie et théologie?” in Culture et développment, 13/3/1981. Laleye, I. P. “La problèmatique de la philosophie en Afrique: effort d’élucidation et de thématisation,” in Cahiers Philosophiques Africains, No 6, 1974–1976. Lufuluabo, F. M. La notion Luba – Bantoue de l’être (Louvin, 1964). Maboloka, P. Basotho Afro-ancestral veneration, “Inst. Lumes Vitae,” 1971. Mabona, A. “The depths of african philosophy,” dans Présence Africaines, No 30, 1960. —. Africanity: The cultural unity of Africa (Oxford, London, 1992). Maurier, H. “Methodologie de la philosophie africaine,” in Culture et développement, 6/1/1974, pp. 87–108. Mbiti John S. African Religions and Philosophy (Penguin, 1969). Mulyumba Wa Mamba Itonga. “Les proverbes, le language didactique dans les sociétés a traditionelles africaines. Le cas des Balega – Bashile,” dans Cahiers du CEDAF No 8, 1973. Nkafu Nkemnkia Martin. “L’originalità del pensare africano,” in Nuova Umanità (NU) XVI (1994) 4–5, 47–64. —. Il Pensare Africano come Vitalogia (Roma: Città Nuova ed., 1995, 1997). —. African Vitalogy – A step forward in African Thinking (Nairobi/Kenya: Paulines Publications Africa, 1999). —. Lidia Procesi. Prospecttive di Filosofia Africana (Internazionale Roma: Edizioni Associate, Editrici 2001). —. Tempo e Spazio nel Pensiero Africano, Aquinas XLII (1999) fasc. 2, pp. 1367–382. —. “Diritti Umani e l’interculturalità – necessità di una nuova consapevolezza di diritti dei popoli,” in AA. VV. Diritti Umani 50 anni dopo, a cura di Emilio Baccarini (Aracne, Roma: Lorenzo Fioramonti, ed., 1999), pp. 59–76. —. “Le Culture africane,” In AA. VV. Il Figlio dell’uomo e gli uomini del duemila. Nuntium No 12 anno IV Nov. (2000) pp. 49–61. —. Teoria dell’argomentazione nella vitalogia africana, “il Cannocchiale,” rivista di studi filosofici (1996) 1–2, pp. 261–275. edizioni scienticifi italiene, Napoli, 1996. —. Vitalogie comme expressione de la pensée africaine, in A-T-Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Vol. L, (Netherland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 281–298. —. Vitalogia. Il Pensare Africano: Fondamenti, Ipotesi ed Opinioni, Aquinas XI (1997) fasc. I, pp. 107–123. —. La visione tradizionale africana della vita, AA.VV., Reincarnazione e mesaggio cristiano, in “Religione e Sette nel Mondo” Anno 3 (1997) 2, 111–127. —. “The Notion of ‘Eleng,’ that is of ‘Time’ in African original experience: a Vitalogical dimension,” in A-T-Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LIX, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), pp. 115–129. Nkrumah, K. Conciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for decolonization with particular reference to the African revolution (London, 1964, 1970). Northom, D. Un Humanisme African: Valeurs et pierres d’attente (Bruxelles, 1965). Nyerere, J. Ujamaa: The basis of African Socialism (Dar es Salaam, 1968). —. Uhuru na Ujamaa: Freedom and Socialism (Dar es Salaam, 1968). Obenga, T. L’Afrique dans l’antiquité: Egypte Pharaonique Afrique noire (Paris, 1973). Odera, Oruka H. Sage Philosophy. Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy (Nairobi – Kenya: African Centre for Technology Studies, 1991).

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Okioh N. Quelques catégories de la Sagesse Africaine (l’homme, l’être dans le monde devant Dieu), 1962, pp. 7–24. Okolo, O. “Lecture et repris philosophique des traditions dans l’Afrique Contemporaine,” in La place de la philosophie dans le développement humain et culturel au Zaire et de l’Afrique, (Lubumbashi, 1973), pp. 131–144. Ruch, E. A. and Anyanwu, K. C., African Philosophy (Roma: Catholic Book Agency – Ufficium Libri Catholici, 1984). Senghor, Leopold S. “L’esprit de la civilisation ou le lois de la culture négro-africaine,” dans Présence Africane No VIII–X, 1956, pp. 50–65. Smet, A. J. Philosophie Africaine. Textes choisis I et II (Kinshasa: Presses Universitaires du Zaire, 1975). Thomas, L. V. “La pensée de l’homme noir (d’Afrique Orientale et Australe, Afrique Anglophone),” in Notes Africaines No 118, 1968, pp. 42–48. Tshiamalenga, N. “La vision ‘Ntu’ de l’homme: essai de la philosophie linguistique et antropologique,” dans Cahiers des religions africaines, VII, 14, 1973 (1975), pp. 175–197. Van Bulk, G. “Existence et portée du Monotheisme African,” dans Formation religieuse en Afrique Noire (Bruxelles, 1954), pp. 20–43.

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C H I N E S E TA L E S O F O R I G I N : A H E R M E N E U T I C S O F NA R R AT I V E D I S C O U R S E

The task of interpreting Chinese myth and modern literature in phenomenological terms requires close attention to basic sources. This task becomes especially complicated when one is confronted with the disparity between the classical tradition and the modern novel, which belong to different, perhaps even antagonistic, cultural realms. It may seem that the world of myth has nothing to do with the modern sensibility. And yet, Vico’s Nuovo Scienza provides us with one model for interpreting history as both mythic and cyclical. The following discussion will draw upon Vico’s famous distinction between the three phases of human history in examining how Chinese myth provides a discursive frame that allows for the interpretation of cultural experience. The first part of the paper will discuss how the “divine” and “heroic” phases of history are presented in the Chinese context by creation myths, which suggest the classical period and its social institutions. The second part of the paper will employ Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in discussing Liu Heng’s novel, Fu Xi, Fu Xi, as a recent attempt to depict the human (or post-heroic) phase of Chinese culture. The conclusion of the paper will show how phenomenology provides a flexible basis for interpreting Chinese myth and literature in contemporary terms. One of known creation-myths in Chinese tradition concerns the figures of Fu Xi and his companion, NuWa. In classical narratives, Fu Xi is a highly versatile god who brought many benefits to mankind. He is said to have been responsible for the invention of nets used in hunting and fishing, the invention of divination, and the discovery of fire. But he is also identified with the invention of tools for calculating time and recording distance. He is even associated with music as the discoverer of melody and the inventor of instruments. In late tradition, he becomes the companion of Nu Wu with whom he symbolizes marriage. He is often shown in Chinese iconography holding a carpenter’s square and a knotted rope. The figure of Nu Wa appears with variations in many different texts throughout Chinese history. First known by her divine transformation, she is the female creator of humankind and savior of the cosmos. Nu Wa’s gender was underscored, beginning with the Han Dynasty. This is significant in view of the fact that some primeval gods were of indeterminate gender. Her 705 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 705–715 © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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emblems are the compass and the knotted chord. She is depicted in traditional iconography as human with a lower serpentine body entwined with the figure of Fu Xi. She is represented in later iconography as married to her brother.1 The symbolic, cultural and psychological aspects of their relationship offer definite insights concerning the “divine” phase of Chinese history. This Chinese myth of origins is replete with symbolic meaning that reveals how an early civilization valued kinship with nature, social harmony, and practical understanding in vital contexts. The role of number points to Fu Xi as the source of spatial marks and temporal intervals. The connection between number and music is strongly evident in his dual function as origin of arithmetical calibrations and harmonic constants. Their marriage clearly dramatizes the power of nature and the need to subdue this power in human institutions. The representation of both male and female could be interpreted in terms of a psychology of drives, but it also suggests that the human bears a metaphysical burden that cannot be reduced to carnal desire. The symbolic importance of marriage is inscribed in an soil. Tradition uses the story to explain how wealthy aristocrats are made from yellow earth and ordinary mortals are made from the chord’s furrow. This aspect of the creation story provides a kind of explanation for the existence of social differences. It also seems to go along with the idea that social hierarchy is determined according to a scale of values. Implicit in this story is an apotheosis of the “heroic” phase of human history. Vico’s conception of the Homeric age as the home of aristocratic virtues in ancient Greece compares to the image of the wellordered society that emerges in the myths of classical China. However, the image of marriage in the classical myth contains symbolic aspects that cannot be viewed in purely cultural terms. The marriage between Fu Xi and Nu Wa took place in seerecy. The fan, a symbol of marriage, acquires symbolic meaning in this context, and yet, its symbolic value probably has more to do with the nature of human love than it does with the sharne of incest. The origin of institutions presupposes an awareness of the incest taboo, but the ceremony itself merely suggests the need to remain hidden, rather than the attempt to conceal an unacceptable practice. The hidden aspect of this ceremony brings us to the verge of “human” (or post-heroic) history. The circumstances surrounding this marriage provide a bridge between divine and human history. Fu Xu and Nu Wa lived together on Mount Kunlun where they spoke of becoming husband and wife. Feeling ashamed, Fu Xi went with his sister up the mountain and prayed for a sign to show him what to do. A misty vapor immediately gathered around the mountain, and he knew that his request had been granted. Plaits were woven

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from grass, making a fan to cover their faces as a sign of iconographic traditions that does not allow us to see either partner as completely dominant. It would seem, therefore, that the marriage of Fu Xi and Nu Wa expresses some of the “metaphysical” peculiarities of Chinese culture. The ancient belief in an orderly cosmos is reflected in the appearance of both figures and their special relationship. Furthermore, the role of the family strongly emerges in the fact that Fu Xi and Nu Wa are brother and sister. By placing the origin of humankind in a single family, Chinese tradition provides a basis for conceiving of social unity as both inclusive and inherently non-violent. At the same time, the idea that brother and sister could form a couple seems to violate one of the oldest taboos of civilization. An arrangement that in some respects would be inherently wrong can be explained in symbolic terms. Surely the mythic aspect of this arrangement must be emphasized, since the exclusion of all social factors shows that it is an idealization. The myth itself does not take the empirically existing family as the basis for expressing the origin of institutions. An ideal couple is instead offered as the basis for suggesting how gender differences can be harmonized in the service of prior unity or the order of the cosmos itself. The couple helps us see how Vico’s “divine” history is inscribed in the Sinitic representation of human origins. The myth of origins can also be mapped on to the structure of Chinese society as it existed during the pre-modern period. Chinese creation myths suggest that mankind did not exist when Heaven and Earth first opened and unfolded. In this remote time, however, Nu Wa kneaded yellow earth and fashioned human beings in an indeterminate setting. Working feverishly, she was unable to finish her task, but drew her chord in a furrow through the mud and lifted it out, thus producing the first humans from yellow The novel can be read on two levels which, when taken together, constitute a convincing interpretation of the complete narrative. Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical conception of the text provides a useful basis for interpreting the novel in terms of both structure and meaning. The text can be analyzed semiotically for structure but also semantically for meaning. The semantic level of meaning transcends the text and points toward a vision of the world as a whole. Interpretation for Ricoeur involves interpretation between the semiotic level, which emerges in what is said, and the semantic level, which relates to the world that the text projects. The world of the text can be examined with respect to structure or semantics, but even when examined from the structural standpoint, the text has meaning as a narrative that invokes a cultural world. Discourse in this hermeneutical account would show how various levels of meaning form the basis for textual unity.

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Ricoeur offers a hermeneutical conception of discourse that derives from his unique approach to language. The term “discourse” is used to describe the event of language as opposed to the stability inherent in the linguistic system. Events come and go, whereas systems remain. However, the fleeting quality of the event can be related to the ontological priority of discourse that results from the fact that the event is actual and concerns the status of individual speech acts as temporal occurrences. For Ricoeur, the temporal aspect of the event refutes the epistemology that underlies a linguistics of parole. The system as such has only a virtual existence. Discourse, rather than structure, is what grounds language since the code itself cannot be actualized apart from unique speech acts that aequire meaning in the production of complete sentences. Within this framework, discourse becomes a structure, not as structuralism would have it, but in the their union. The human world depends on a divine sanction, but relationships become morally ambiguous as soon as they form a private sphere of conduct. The use of classical myths in recent Chinese literature often reinforces a perception of human history as constituting a complete break with the metaphysical world-view. In this sense, we might say that Vice’s interpretation of history as nonprogressive and eyclical has been confirmed in much postCommunist fiction. At the same time, the classical tradition offers insights into modern China that argue in favor of a phenomenological view of symbolic experience. Both Vico’s historical approach to human culture and the phenomenological stress on continuity are suggested in Liu Heng’s important novel, Fu Xi, Fu Xi a study of Chinese peasant life in our own period. The novel reveals the deceptive side of mythical thinking, but it also suggests that the meaning of an ancient tale is not exhausted in its literal interpretation. On the one hand, Fu Xi, Fu Xi is a study of how violence, incest and disorder came to dominate a rural family in contemporary China. In this novel, Yang Jinshan, an older man who is unable to father a child, mistreats his bride, Judou, as soon as they are married. His cruelty increases as impotence overtakes him. His nephew, Tienqing, is shocked and angered by his uncle’s obsession, and later becomes involved with Judou. Tienqing and Judou eventually have a son, Tienbai. And yet, Liu Heng does not treat this as an ordinary tale of illicit love. The married couple is terrified about being discovered while Jinshan is alive. Their predicament worsens after Jinshan dies and his presence no longer shields them from moral awareness. The guilt and fear arising from incest is deepened by their son’s refusal to accept his natural father. In the end, Tienqing commits suicide as he bears witness to the

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dire consequences of his transgressive deeds. synthetic sense as the relation between the functions of identification and predication that define the sentence. The hermeneutical conception of discourse depends on the dialectical unity of event and meaning that informs the individual sentence. This sort of unity enables Ricoeur to propose a transition from a linguistics of the code to a herrneneutics of the message. Discourse is realized temporally and in single moments, whereas language can be conceived as a system only if it exists outside of time. Nonetheless, speech itself assumes the form of an event whenever it actualizes itself in performance. Performatives simply exhibit a general feature of language that can be found in every class of speech act. Moreover, linguistic performances are always about more than themselves. Ricoeur affirms the unity of event and meaning in a manner that sustains the communicative power of language. Furthermore, the model of linguistic meaning that Ricoeur takes up is grounded in a hermeneutical understanding of the relationship between language and world. It is on the level of the individual sentence that a distinction can be drawn between the sense of what is said and the reference to which the sense refers in its meaning. Ricoeur’s understanding of the way that language actually works provides a distinction between sense and reference with an ontological grounding. In a system of language, signs only refer to other signs in a given system. Within the framework of the individual sentence, however, language is directed beyond itself to embrace the world as an intentional correlate. Sense is relative to discourse, whereas referentiality constitutes the movement in which language assumes a meaning that transcends inner experience. Hence, while sense brings together the identification and predicate functions, reference is what relates language to the world. Ultimately, reference in the hermeneutical sense is another name for the truth of discourse as the meaning of language. Ricoeur’s hermeneutical conception of language also provides a model for positioning the reader as an interpreter of texts that can institute a new understanding of the world. Experience can enter language as an ontological condition of references that possesses more than an immanent justification. Hence language can be understood as pointing toward the extra-linguistic, but it also contains the basis for a more originary beginning since experience underlies every verbal expression of being. It is because we always begin with something to say, because we have experiences to bring to language, that language is not only directed toward ideal truths but also refers to what occurs in time. The role of the text in this situation is inseparable from the

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reader’s being-in-the-world. But this does not mean that the text is merely a projection of the reader’s own experience. Experience depends on the reader’s projection of a world, which in turn constitutes the basis for readings that can transform the reader’s attitude toward life. It is important to emphasize here that Ricoeur’s model of the text would be inconsistent with a radically subjective approach to cultural experience. The text invokes an engaged reader whose being-in-the-world limits the range of interpretative possibilities that are available in any reading. In other words, the text cannot be interpreted arbitrarily but constrains interpretation in precise ways. The self who reads is not just anyone but carries vital expectations into any reading that opens up a new understanding of the world. The text itself can introduce the reader to a new mode of being, which remains implicit in the act of self-projection and the horizon of possibilities that constitute a world. Ricoeur contends that the reading of the text is only authentic if it enables the reader to respond in a manner that bespeaks an enlarged understanding of the world. The kinship between text and world is what prevents the text from becoming a purely personal experience. At the same time, the text can open up possibilities of being that the individual uniquely understands since interpretation depends on lived experiences that, even when held in common, are in some specific to the individual interpreter. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics stipulates how literary texts can be interpreted whenever the individual reader engages in a quest for meaning. The understanding of the world is the ontological presupposition for genuine interpretation. The existence of the world guarantees the possibility of shared experience, which, in the case of Chinese literature, would include an awareness of how pre-modern myths can influence the construction of modern reality. According to Ricoeur, the (literary) text is never a purely fictional entity but always maintains some sort of dialogue with the world to which it refers. This world, however, is not an object to be contemplated at a distance. The reader is implicated in an experience of the world through every act of interpretation. While a given literary work may contain several discourses, it subsists as a meaningful unit that remains related to the informed reader’s experience. Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology can be related to Fu Xi, Fu Xi, a novel that depends on a special use of a classical Chinese myth that invites us to consider how literature allows us to move beyond the limits of fictional realism. It is true, for instance, that the novel deals with sexuality in its portrayal of characters in a single household. Chinese tradition, however, recognizes a basic opposition between “Yin” (excessive sexual feeling or

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passion) and “Zhen,” a virtue similar to chastity. The dynamic between characters in the novel can be related to a distorted version of this classical opposition, which performs no role in Western criticism. In other words, the meaning of the novel is based on a principle that would only be evident to a reader who is already familiar with Chinese culture. The sort of reading that the novel requires is certainly not political in the narrow sense but cultural in the broad sense. The novel also makes use of Chinese symbols in order to challenge beliefs that have been widely accepted from the classical period to the present. “The biggest sin of all is Yin.” This traditional saying, which largely defines what it means to be human, is scrutinized in Fu Xi, Fu Xi. In alluding to the ancient love between brother and sister, the union of Judou and Tienqing becomes increasingly ironic. And yet, the allusion in itself already suggests that the novel is concerned with the moral issue of “Yin.” The modern relationship calls into question the very possibility of filial love. The novel also integrates a contrast between a mythic union based on divine sanction and a human situation in which relationships cannot achieve stability in time. The relationship between Judou and Tienqing is also blessed by heaven. The comparison of their relationship with that of the ancient deities suggests that the former is morally acceptable. Tienqing is Jinshan’s adopted son, whom he enslaves in his dye factory. He is therefore not the biological son of Jinshan or the brother of Judou. However, Fu Xi’s marriage occurs in the archaic period before rules define human actions in opposition to what is some sense natural. Judou’s attraction to Tienqing is understandable, but it occurs in a context in which her involvement would be perceived as morally questionable. Hence the natural quality of this relationship entails a tragic result. Their love becomes unacceptable due to the establishment of man-made rules. The delicate balance between sexuality and spiritual aspirations that is essential to the classical myth has been undermined in a modern narrative of personal violence and social exclusion. The relationship between Judou and Tienqing, far from restoring the experience of cosmic harmony that gives the mythic tale its metaphysical grounding, calls attention to the power of life itself to disrupt a precarious unity. Moreover, the novel employs the classical myth as a way to strongly criticize Confucian patriarchy and the gerontocratic society that it sustains. By presenting the male principle through two different figures, Liu Heng introduces a measure of generational conflict into a social context that has lost the primitive unity of the classical myth. Jinshan’s pseudo-divine status

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acquires an ironic meaning when set beside his own behavior toward Judou and his response to his wife’s transgression. Patriarchal values, however, are not confined to the older man’s behavior. The response of the townspeople to the relationship between Judou and Tienqing prevents the couple from knowing true happiness. Their child, Tienbai, seems to internalize the dominant mores when he grows up and turns against his adulterous parents, a gesture that precipitates his natural father’s suicide. A final irony inheres in Tienbai’s name, which draws upon his father’s name to form the idiom “qingbai,” meaning “innocent from guilt.” “Tien” (heaven) directs us back to the archaic story, but it also demonstrates in this context how far the modern novel has taken us from the classical tradition.2 Fu Xi, Fu Xi demonstrates as well that a complete response to literature often requires traditional knowledge as a basis for interpreting a series of symbolic inversions. Liu Heng is clearly partial to what Ricoeur has called a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in his deliberate parody of classical values. At the same time, he employs narrative discourse in a way that invokes a specifically Chinese world. The text that he produces is part of its own moment in secular history, but it cannot be read unless the “divine” background of classical myth is set against the realities of the present. It could be argued that our interpretation of the modern novel has brought us full circle from the “divine” standpoint of myth to the “human” chaos of our own period, thus illustrating the downward thrust of Vico’s reading of history. However, this same reading can be related to a persistent narrative that underlies both the “metaphysical” and secular versions of Chinese myth. We now return to the possibility of interpreting the symbolic quality of Chinese cultural experience in phenomenological terms. It would seem that the two versions of the creation-myth are completely opposed to one another. The classical tradition identifies the human family as the site of an original oneness just as it seeks to explain social differences in religious terms. The secular adaptation of the classical myth adopts an ironic view of divine origins and re-contextualizes it in a social milieu. Nonetheless, both the classical myth and its secular distortion call attention to cultural invariants that constitute the limits of what can be achieved in the private sphere. Does phenomenology offer a productive basis for showing us what the classical myth and its novelistic version have in common? In answering this question, we must consider that phenomenology has developed increasingly sophisticated methods for assessing cultural subject matter. Early phenomenology was perhaps more strongly concerned with identifying eidetic structures than with redefining the scope of the human

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sciences. More recently, however, phenomenology has been integrated into a hermeneutical approach to language, world and text. Ricoeur’s contribution to this development is exemplary insofar as it demonstrates indebtedness to Husserl and also grounds experience in existential projection. Furthermore, in relating the interpretation of texts to a referential conception of meaning. Ricoeur’s phenomenology upholds a scientific understanding of experience, just as it sustains the hermeneutical implications of existential analysis. Finally, Ricoeur’s work becomes a truly critical hermeneutics to the degree that it enables us to interpret the historicity of human experience in terms of how mythic tales assume distinct meanings during different phases of cultural existence. Critical hermeneutics enables the historical dimension in the human studies to be foregrounded in a manner that demonstrates the importance of narrative to the creation of meaning. From this point of view, Vico’s narrative of cyclical history provides an important corrective to the progressive history of modern times. In going beyond Vico, however, critical hermeneutics strongly suggests that human consciousness can assume a positive role in coming to terms with historical change, particularly when it results in a more complex appropriation of cultural traditions. The world-view that animates Liu Heng’s readers is not the same as what inspired believers in the creation story during classical times. Nevertheless, the appropriation of the original myth only occurs because a family narrative continues to inform the literary imagination and can be adapted to a new social world. Liu Heng’s use of this myth would be not interpreted as extremely ironic if the myth itself were not well-known among modern Chinese readers. A critical response to the myth presupposes a high level of cultural cognition, which allows the modern reader to assess a family narrative in terms of changing values, rather than in static terms. Ultimately, this family narrative is inseparable from the institutional fabric of Chinese life, but it also demonstrates how nature itself can lose its naturalness in a secular milieu. The importance of the family to Chinese experience is essential to both the classical myth and its secular distortion, just as the theme of filial love remains constant to each narrative. However, the two narratives differ considerably and reveal different aspects of Chinese history. The classical myth can be interpreted as a unique creation myth that enables us to see how cultural experience can be grounded metaphysically. The relationship between the two family members in this case is fundamental to the metaphysical constitution of conjugal love, just as it forms the occasion for the origin of basic human activities. In contrast, Liu Heng’s Fu Xi, Fu Xi

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foregrounds the social dynamics underlying the perception of an unlikely couple that has ceased to be self-sufficient. The novel enables us to thematize the role of patriarchy in promoting sexual inequality, but it also reveals the questionable aspect of attraction between family members. The birth of a “natural” son is experienced as unnatural in the secular world of the modern novelist. And yet, in both cases, the family relationship becomes the starting point for an unfolding narrative that suggests different cultural discourses. Hence the hermeneutical standpoint enables us to consider how an underlying narrative provides a key to symbolic interpretation. The need to appreciate the old as well as the new should be acknowledged in any effort that seeks to understand the continuity of human time. The Chinese example suggests how both classical myths and modern novels can share many of the same concerns, which remain constant in history. Our phenomenological study of cultural experience reveals the differences and similarities between two visions of life that evoke symbolic values in interactive contexts. Furthermore, it has shown how the recovery of spiritual values requires a sustained attempt to go beyond the “natural attitude” so that Chinese myths can be approached in a critical spirit. In acknowledging the role of myth to cultural experience, phenomenology thus demonstrates how creation stories can become part of our conscious heritage. Mao Chen Skidmore College N OT E S 1 For an extended discussion of the myth of Nu Wa and Fu Xi, see Anne Birrel, Chinese Mythology (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 69–72, and pp. 163–165. 2 See Lau, pp. 5–8.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Birrel, Anne. Chinese Mythology (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Chang, Kwang-ehih. Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). Chang, Kwang ehih. “zhongguo chuang shi shenhuazhi fenxi yu gushi yenjiu” [Chinese Creation Myths: A Study in Method]. Bulletin of the Institute of Ethonology, Academia Sinica 8 (1959): 47–79. Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. “Judou – A Hermeneutical Reading of Cross-cultural Cinerna” in Film Quarterly, 1992, 2–10.

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Liu, Heng. The Obsessed [English version of Fu Xi, Fu Xi]. Trans. by David Kwan (Beijing: Panda Books, 1991). Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Trans. by Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). —. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971). —. Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. Trans. by Robert Czerny; with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). Vico, Giambattista. The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Rev. trans. of the 3d ed. (1744) by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell University Press 1968). Yu, Guoen. Tien wen xian yi [Collected Interpretations of the “Questions of Heaven”] (Peking: Zhonghua Shuju, 1982). Yuan, Ke. Zhongguo gudai shenhua [The Mythology of Ancient China]. 1951. Rev. ed. (Shanghai: Shangwu yishu guan, 1957).

SECTION VIII T H E N E W C I P H E R I N G O F T H E C O N S TA N T C O O R D I NAT E S O F T H E WO R L D A N D E X I S T E N C E

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T H I N K I N G W I T H T H E S K I N : T H E P RO B L E M O F S PAC E I N M O D E R N P H I L O S O P H Y: E . H U S S E R L A N D A - T. T Y M I E N I E C K A

Skin is deepest of all. Paul Valery

This dictum illustrates in a paradoxical manner the vast panorama of the understanding of space: the skin being a tactile sense organ is also the ultimate point, the very surface of human existence, mapping, as it does, the space which a person occupies in the world. The skin shapes self-awareness and determines contact with the world and thus, while being a surface, it is in reality the deepest thing of all. Its depth absorbs the highs and posits man in the world even before he has been constituated. Even more – to contemplate life is to contemplate with your skin, because the skin is in the most direct possible contact with life. There are no mediators. Philosophy so far has been gazing upwards, which is to say away from the basics. Yet, every theory is based on depths which are sometimes even abysmal. Nietzsche thought that reaching the secret depths is the real goal of philosophy: this was known already to pre-Socratics and should be recaptured by the philosophy of the future – recaptured with all the life-forces, with all the powers of language which are also the power of the flesh,1 wrote G. Deleuze. Nowadays the problem of space and its inward-boundedness acquires special importance in connection with the processes of globalization, the prevailing tendencies of homogenization and unification of the Earth’s Space, by concentrating on extension and not on the in-tensive and variegated space. P. Virilio has claimed recently that even if F. Fukijama’s prediction about the “end of history” has been premature, “this should not deter us from talking about the end of geography.”2 I doubt if we can expect this either, however, because the depth of the soil today has become a structure resisting the unification of differences. In today’s world, philosophical conceptions thematizing the phenomenon of space acquire special importance. I propose to draw attention to two such conceptions belonging to one and the same philosophical tradition, yet sufficiently different to merit particular study; these are E. Husserl’s phenomenology and A.-T. Tymieniecka’s modern phenomenologyof-life school, to which in particular I want to draw special attention. 719 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 719–727. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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I surmise that it was a lack of topical context that prevented Husserl from paying special attention to the theme of space. (His 1907 lecture Ding und Raum has attracted less scholarly attention than his contribution to the problem of time). Yet, Husserl is to be mentioned among the first ones (alongside G. Simmel, who touched upon the problem of the surface of life and the importance of space in the forms of life) to thematize the apprehension of space and in his typically profound manner to constituate the phenomenon of space. Husserl begins with the act of constituation of space bodies (Raumdinge) and discovers that an important feature of this act is the possibility of reversion of the process (Umkehr), e.g. – a square figure can be viewed from left to right and the other way round, and yet it will remain a square figure. This is different from the way things are being constituated in time – e.g. one the act of playing does not envisage a melody “the other way ‘round.” Husserl connects space and things, considering space to be the mutual interrelation of things (Ordungszusammenhang der Dinge), and it is exactly this interrelation or arrangement that produces the thing: “Die festgehaltene Identität des Dinges ist festgehaltene Identität seines so un so erfülten Raumes.”3 Thus the identity of a thing is not being-in-itself, but keeps changing according to its location in space: the identity depends on whether we view it from the right or from the left side, from above or from below, whether we are closer or farther from it. (Husserl’s example is with the steam engine’s whistle. S. 105) This is the ever-changing interplay of intention (Intention) and fulfillment (Erfüllung). The thing does not appear as an objective entity unrelated to the consciousness, but is formed in continuous apprehension of the consciousness (kontinuierliche Wahrnehmungs bewuβtsein), as a series of pictures (Bilderserie). For this reason Husserl introduces a very interesting – in my view – term: objectity (die Objektität), to be used instead of objectivity – a term traditionally contrasted with subjectivity. Objectity is the subjectivity of a thing’s apprehension. Objectity or the thing as the object of mind’s intentionality appears as a series of images, as the visible pieces (sichtbaren Stücke) which follow one another in a motivated fashion forming permanent fullness of the mind. Husserl illustrates this thought with the example of an alley. First only single trees, a, b, c, d, e, enter the field of apprehension; then going on and turning right, a new tree appears – f, etc., yet the wholeness of the apprehension is not determined only by the succession of the apprehended images, but also by the Pluss of the apprehension (Plus an Auffassung) which provides the impulse for the becoming of what is being seen. Each series of images, starting from kinesthetic states, radiates life-giving intentions

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(lebendige Intentionen) ensuring the identity of the spatial order and the order of what emerges as the thing observed: “Die Bestimmtheit der Raumordnung und die Bestimmtheit in der Ordnung der Sichtbarkeit und der jeweiligen Ordnung des aktuellen Sichtbarwerdens gehören wesentlich zusammen.” 4 Thus, according to Husserl, consciousness is something that undergoes permanent filling-up (Erfüllen); there is no such thing as “empty consciousness,” much in the same way as there is no empty space (correlation of things and space). This leads Virilio to conclude that Husserl “marks an astonishingly abrupt severance of philosophy and physics. The ancient geocentrism turns into Husserlian egocentrism,”5 for the idealities and objectivities of the physical space are no longer used to explain the “living presence” objectity of the consciousness. Another important feature of space in Husserl’s phenomenology is connected with Umwelt and the inter-subjective structure of space, with the person’s location in some specific place, designated by Husserl as “Hier.” I look upon the world from a definite place: “Alles ist bezogen auf das Hier, das mein Hier ist. Ich, die Person, bin im Raume an dieser Stelle. Andere sind dort, wo ihre Leiber sind. Sie fahren, spazieren, sie machen einen Besuch usw., wobei doch ihre Geister mit den Leibern ihre Stelle im Raume wechseln, im Raume der einen objektiven Umwelt.”6 It is the level of constitution of space, that marks it as the orientated space, wherein the perceiving body is considered a body in the world and the absolute “here,” i.e. the absolute point of orientation for all other objects. This is the originator of spatial orientations – the above, the below, the left and the right positions are determined by the body, which is “here” and which constitutes the spatial order called “the zero point” by Husserl. By occupying the point “here” our body draws the frontiers of the world as the frontiers of ourselves in meeting other bodies. Spatial fields are thus formed and such notions as neighbourhood, distance, closeness, etc. come into existence. B. Waldenfeld writes: “Wenn es solche Orte gibt, so nur auf dem Boden leiblich verankerten und orientierter, tehnisch vermittelter, mannigfach inszenierter, geöffneter und begrenzter Raumfelder, mit vielförmigen Aufenthaltsarten, Wegverbindungen und Hindernissen, mit Verhältnissen der Nachbarschaft und der Ferne und mit Ereignissen, die staff – finden und nicht einfach ohne unsere Beteiligung abrollen.”7 An event is something that is taking place, that finds the state in which we stand (stattfinden), and thus it is ourselves who produce the event – the event as “being here” (Hier-sein), as the identity of the I-placement. Space is the event that constituates the person on several levels: first, in relation to one’s own body;

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my body is the thing confronting me (Gegenstand) as something chosen by me, visualised and touched and sensed by me. The personal subject is characterized by intention towards “objectities” – including those produced by one’s own body. Objectities are those entities that enable the perception of the Other as a personal subject, too, and the involvement of him/her in the shared field of intersubjectivity: “In der komprehensiven Erfahrung vom Dasein des Anderen verstehen wir ihn also ohne weiteres als personales Subjekt und dabai auf Objektitäten bezogen, auf die auch wir bezogen sind: auf Erde und Himmel, auf Feld und Wald, auf das Zimmer, in dem ‘wir’ gemensam weilen, auf ein Bild, das wir sehen usw. Wir sind in Beziehung auf eine gemeinsame Umwelt – wir sind in einem personalen Verband: das gehört zusammen.” 8 Thus our orientation in the world, our apprehension of other Selfs and the existence of our shared world is made possible due too our bodies and the objectities it produces. Without apprehension of our bodies as something to be touched, seen and sensed we fail to produce the idea of selfhood and thus we lose the ability and even the wish to conceive other persons. This type of schizoid subject has been analysed by M. Merleau-Ponty in his work ‘Phenomenology of Perception,’ and also by the Russian philosopher V. Podoroga: “The schizoid subject loses the ability to feel the boundaries of his/her body; the senses of the skin die off and the apprehension of the selfhood becomes impossible because the criteria for distinguishing between the inner and the outer events of the body are lacking. The schizoid person is a skinless person.”9 The human being as a member of the inter-personal world does not only use his/her skin for spatial orientation, e.g. for moving about. The bodily existence of humans ensure orientation in the multifarious world; it differentiates the world, constituates inter personal relations (Wechselbestimmung), mediates communication and, quite simply, it ensures joyful existence. Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life, in my opinion, develops a different structualization of space, which has a distant relationship to the two Aristotelian notions of space and place: first – that “the existing (thing) is located where it is, but non-existing is located nowhere”; and second – that place is not just something, but has a self-creative power: “unimpeded things tend towards their place – some upwards, others downwards – but the upwards-position and the downwards-position, alongside six other directions, are modes and parts of the things.”10 Tymieniecka is mainly concerned not with the constituation of the things and the human world, but with the creativity and self-individuation of life. Space and place are of great importance in these processes, and therefore one

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can assert: if Husserl extends the time-space structure into a peculiarly reversed space-time variant, then Tymieniecka develops the latter into a fullblown Creative Orchestration. The difference manifests itself already in linguistic form: Husserl speaks of the “structure” of space, while Tymieniecka uses the term “spacing,” which semantically includes the idea that space not only “is,” but that it exists as a life-constituating mode. In view of this I will try to reconstruct – or maybe at places deconstruct – Tymieniecka’s understanding of space using mainly her Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life–Strategies of Reason. Although the theme of space is not among the leading ones in this work, it is touched upon and substantiated in several parts of the book (except, perhaps, part 5). It could be said that the theme of space is a sub-theme within Tymieniecka’s “system,” the more so because her philosophical system as the ontopoetic individuation of life is actually a theme with many variations. As the author herself puts it in the Foreword to the voluminous work: “Philosophising is the uniquely humane aspect of man’s self-interpretation-in-existence.”11 The process of self-individuation – the author holds – takes a certain Route on the Spacing/Scanning axis. This progression develops “expanding in the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive, that is by entering into this unity and occupying a place.”12 I want to particularly stress in this connection that Husserl in describing space constituation mostly chooses such examples as “cube,” “alley,” “whistle of a steam engine,” etc. – that is, inanimate things (except, of course, in cases when he illustrates inter-subjective space), while Tymieniecka considers the life of “living things” which acquire space in the process of becoming. Life thus is not given in space, but it becomes and unfolds together with space. At the same time life is also in a sense given as an “entelechial design,” but the quality which it acquires on the Spacing/Scanning axes is a specific signification of life: as an articulation of the progress of life. Thus, one can surmise that the space axis is also given, only it has more than one direction; it is multi-directional, multi-levelled articulation which manifests itself as the “relevant laws in the cosmos.”13 At the same time the cosmic dimensions are not transcendental constituive conditions, but they deal with energies, synergies, masses and rationalities of life. In my opinion one can detect here affinities with Deleuze’s idea of the “self-moving though,” which implies that philosophy is a creative and not a reflexive activity. Tymieniecka also holds that life articulation on the Spacing/Scanning axis is not something just taking place in space, but a new form of coexistence, ordering, transformation. These forms are variegated: they are movements that “single out,” or “bring together and tie,” etc.; they

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all install “space” for the living and human beings forming vital strings. Thus, ever new factors are brought within play, articulating life in ever new modes and significations and cooperating towards the foundation of the spacing process. Such unfolding of life takes place within the project of entelechia; so it does also in the logos projecting. The logos projections consist of several concepts – first of all that of process – which open up the inorganic circuit and vital growth, as well as the series of human activities, the life of the psyche and educational efforts.14 Process as constructive advance as a series of transforming operations leads to the end-result: process is expansion in the manner of the placement of life’s territory. Process binds together the timespace vectors: the process in time consists of three phases, the process in space deals with the centre–side vectors. Process is the main constructive line in the logoic strategy, but Tymieniecka speaks also of other logos structures (e.g. operations). Thus she draws a wide and reasonable Spacing/Scanning axis and places events on the constructive Route, which joins together everything-that-is-alive in the cosmic rights scale. What I would like to object to, however, is the use of the term “progress.” 1) I wonder if this term is not discriminatory with regard to some modes of self-individuation, when used to characterize life as a process of spontaneous and vital self-individuation, because the notion of progress implies some sort of finished end-product. Is life without some sort of an end-result less precious than life with one? 2) Second – a question arises concerning the demarcation of the centre and the sides of the logoic projecting space. If the human being in life process is considered the centre, which moves together with the person, then what about the centre–side structure, and is it not just a one-way movement – from the centre towards the sides. It is quite possible that my traditional way of thinking, which considers the notion of progress only within temporality and historicity, is preventing me from grasping the proposed notion of progress within space structures. The next theme in Tymieniecka’s work which articulates life spacing is connected with the embodiment of the logoic life or living space (Part II, chapter 1, IV) determined mainly by the soil. Basing her deliberations on the existential fact that soil is necessary for life, Tymieniecka goes on to establish the principles of life logos, e.g. cosmic law. Indeed, soil as the bases of life is necessary not only for beings directly connected with it – as in plants and animals – but it provides the spatial bases for life in cosmic dimensions. Tymieniecka writes: “Even on earth birds might take flight for extended periods, but they obtain their substance ultimately from the ground in which the trees they roost in are rooted.”15 I find this thought

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very agreeable, for it shows that both birds and we – in reality and symbolically – are able to fly due to the soil. This shows that soil is not an earthly but a cosmic category. The author goes on to develop the thesis about “the soil as the dwelling place on earth” so as to draw the conclusion in the end to the effect that these lines are subservient to the main ontopoietic principles, which are four in number. Developing still further this structure of the embodiment of logos she argues for the four stages of the accomplishment of life’s spacing/scanning. It seems to me that the number four, which keeps reappearing in the text – the four ontopoietic principles, the four accomplishment stages, etc., are conceptually charged with important associations: it chimes in with the Greek idea of the four elements (water, fire, soil and air) which are not only material substances but also principles – as logos is. It is not without significance that the author uses the term Dionysian Logos in a number of places. The third theme in space structuration, which I consider of particular importance, is called “The Passion for Place and the Metaphysical Center of Aesthetics.” Here space is structured by way of imaginary place signs, and creativity presents itself in undisguised form. In the classical metaphysical tradition imaginary space has been marked as utopia, as a place which is not. Though non-existent, utopia has been presented not as a subjective potentiality, but as a finished, ready-made place (and thus identical with a thing). Thus T. Moore presented utopia as an island in the South Seas, which can be reached, e.g. by way of a tourist trip, and viewed as a tourist sight. Campanella’s The City of the Sun was a solid architectonic construction with a distinctive hierarchic order, impervious to any subjective influences. Today philosophers follow a different approach in understanding utopia as a place. M. Scheler distinguishes homo faber, who invents things and places, from homo contemplativus, who discovers things and places in a subjective manner. Similarly E. Bloch makes a distinction between people of two different types of intention – Erfinder and Entdecker, who discover things by uncovering them. In general, people today mainly invent and produce things, but these things remain undiscovered, because instead of uncovering things, people prefer to discharge them – to throw them out and to produce new things. In this way people throw themselves out on the garbage heap. The structure of the passion for place is designed for the “uncovering” (Entdeckung) and is connected with imaginatio as a creative power. Yet for Tymieniecka imaginatio is not just a pure form of imagination (as it is for Kant); she reveals this theme in three related fields – philosophical anthropology,

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aesthetics and metaphysics – where passion is imaginatio, the sublime wish for incarnation, and this incarnation is spatial. The author characterizes this passion as the “heart of the Human Condition.”16 Everything that is alive emerges within a territory, which is the territory of life, and this unites humans to all other living beings. Yet Tymieniecka does not accept this obvious fact as self-evident, especially with regard to human beings (in distinction from other living beings), because human existence in the world is of another type: “Here is the very question of life’s foundation, grounding, elementary conditions, on the one side, and its most complex manifestation, freedom from them, on the other.”17 Humans are bound to the bases, the space, the place; and at the same time they are longing to overcome these bounds – this is the ages–long paradox of human existence. Already M. Scheler has spoken of man’s position in the cosmos as a “Jetzt-Hier-So” situation. In distinction from Scheler, for whom man is “life’s ascetic,” capable of saying “no” to the realities of life, and also from Husserl, whose understanding of space focuses on “Hier,” Tymieniecka, in my opinion, broadens the vision of the human being and, consequently, also about space and place by introducing the “passion for place” and imaginatio notions. (She maps out also the sacred space, esoteric space, etc.) Husserl was not particularly concerned with the aesthetic element, though he mentions occasionally the imaginative act of reason. This explains why post-Husserlian phenomenology develops in the direction of aesthetics thematization at the hands of R. Ingarden and Tymieniecka. I hold that the whole ontopoietic structure of Tymieniecka is a manifestation of aesthetic creativity or – to put it another way – it is a manifestations of creativity aesthetics. Her conception of aesthetics is – in her own words – much broader than just an analysis of the artefacts of art, of prose, theory, or texts; it is a real ontopoiesis of life. This is a world where the ego, the consciousness, does not dominate over the secretive, the mysterious, even the esoteric. On top of that, the “Creation narratives” of this aesthetic creativity are presented in a lively, linguistically lush and fascinating discourse, so much so that one begins to see the point of Deleuze’s dictum to the effect that “language becomes flesh.” Yet, this “flesh” does not think with its head only, but also with its feeling heart, its stroking hands, its walking legs that are mindful of the ant on its path; it thinks also with the skin – the skin that feels pain and pleasure. To think in reality means to think with one’s skin. Latvian University, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology Riga, Latvia

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N OT E S 1

Gilles Deleuze, Logika smisla (The Logic of Sense) (Moscow) p. 159 (in Russian). Paul Virilio, “Un monde s’expose: fin de l’historie, ou fin de la geographie?” Le monde diplomatique, August 1997, p. 17. 3 Edmund Husserl, Ding und Raum (Hamburg, 1991), S. 217. 4 Ibid., S. 223. 5 Paul Virilio, L’inertie polaire (Paris, 1990), p. 137. 6 Edmund Husserl, Die Konstitution der geistigen Welt (Hamburg), S. 33–34. 7 Bernhard Waldenfels, Topographie des Fremdenn. Studien zur phänomenologie des Fremden 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), S. 195. 8 Edmund Husserl, Die Konstitution der geistigen Welt (Hamburg), S. 22. 9 Valerij Podoroga, The Metaphysics of Landscape (Moscow, 1993), p. 31 (in Russian). 10 Aristotle, Physics (Moscow, 1981), p. 123 (in Russian). 11 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 4: Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXX, (Dordrecht/Boston/London), p. 200. 12 Ibid., p. 65. 13 Ibid., p. 66. 14 Ibid., p. 67. 15 Ibid., p. 145. 16 Ibid., p. 412. 17 Ibid., p. 409. 2

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T E M P O R A L I Z AT I O N O F T H E B O DY W I T H I N P H E N O M E N O L O G Y A N D T H E M E TA P H Y S I C S O F M A N I F E S TAT I O N

In this paper, I would like to discuss some problems concerning the question of manifestation of time, its Erscheinung, or its coming-to-be-experienced. Since Aristotle, philosophers have found themselves in paradoxical questioning about the nature of time. Indeed, a major obstacle found its clearest expression in Augustine’s famous dictum: “If you ask me what time is, then I do not know anything about it any more.” So, one would say with him that the whole task is to translate the experience of time into discourse, even if it has been set out as “simply” descriptive. Curiously enough, philosophers seem to have not been at ease with Aristotle’s rather straightforward decision to link time with movement. Why should they not be content with an explanation like this: time happens and we experience it as happening whenever something is moving, changing its place, pace and its own state? Perhaps this refusal is due to an almost mysterious subtlety about the experienced time. I cannot engage here in arguments against Aristotle’s “kinetic” account of time. Rather, in this paper I will shortly discuss and counter-balance some theoretical perspectives which reveal their antiAristotelian strain at least implicitly insofar as they hold to the view of the irreducibility and prority of time. But, struggling to delimit the descriptive region, as phenomenologists often do, one seems to get an extra ephemerality of time so that time’s ontological and “epistemological” priority turns out to be just the other side of its ungraspability and random schematic analyzability. I don’t pretend to give the “full schema” of time. Simply, it seems interesting to sum up some recent philosophical developments that give it a kind of “neo-Aristotelian” turn. Phenomenological philosophy and other Continental philosophies more or less explicitly rely on the thesis of the irreducibility of time. For instance, Edmund Husserl sees time as a ground for the constitution of meaning and objectivity. Though he admits the existence of time-constituting consciousness, it nevertheless falls into obscurity as he is forced to confess that the possibility of time-consciousness has remained an unresolved problem. But this means that the phenomenologist in his descriptions is led to hold on to the level of pure temporality, treating it as a main constitutive force. But 729 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 729–737. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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simply admitting something else as important does not change the perspective on the subject very much, and one could say that the emergence of temporal phenomena remains a puzzling question. Nevertheless, the heritage of Husserl consists precisely in asking further this mind-breaking question about what really could be this “timeless absolute consciousness” which constitutes subjective experiencing of time. 1 Martin Heidegger gives another twist to the question of time. In his fundamental ontology he goes as far as to say that “time is the meaning of Dasein.”2 Even more, time for him is the meaning of Being itself. Besides, within the temporal structure, Heidegger privileges the future and possibility. Time seems fundamentally linked to the future as to the yet-to-be. Time is flowing from the future, it can be recognized as passing only from this “futurological” perspective. Time is thought of as a fundamental expression of our projects and expectations which exert a kind of “pressure” on us because of more or less strict terms set for their accomplishment. French philosopher Raymond Duval warns us against overprivileging one single aspect of temporality, arguing that one should not conceive time univocally. There are many “temporal situations,” he says, and the Heideggerian privilege of the future is just one of them, named “countdown” or “counting backwards” (compte à rebours).3 He goes as far as to say that “the future is not a part of time,”4 insofar as such temporal predicates as past, present and future do not really fit into time understood as a size or volume (grandeur), because they cannot divide time’s passing. One could say, along with Umberto Galimberti, that Heidegger’s “futurology” is a waiting-for-sense. His whole philosophical position is qualified as an ideology of time insofar as it tries to conceal or repress the absence of meaning pervading the modern world (a good example of stating the diagnosis for the oncoming meaninglessness is Husserl’s work Krisis). Galimberti points out that Heidegger performs a kind of prova ex absentia, i.e., he gives substantial weight to something that has disappeared and is absent.5 Heidegger is “conjuring” back meaning with the help of temporal analysis. As such, whatever importance we give to the question of meaning – “salvation” – we must conclude that Heidegger’s temporal analyses have remained restricted as to the problem of time’s manifestation itself. Of course, there is no doubt that the conscious sucjectivity as engaged in projects (Heidegger) or constituting meaning and objectivity (Husserl) is inseparable from the unfolding of the temporal dimension, but still the question remains of how to understand this enigmatic thesis that time temporalizes itself, succinctly formulated by Merleau-Ponty after Heidegger’s

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tautological dictum “der Zeit zeitigt sich.” I tend to think that the selftemporalization thesis is unacceptable and that the confusion aroused by this contemplative tautology results from the fact that the phenomenon touches at the limit of conceivability because it is involved in the process of conceiving and experiencing itself. My doubts regarding the time’s self-enclousure upon itself found some support in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of manifestation, where one can also find a philosophical position that time is a derivative phenomenon. So I would like to present and comment on her main theses. Before I turn to my interpretation of Tymieniecka’s conception of temporalization or timing, I would like to mention some hints on what could constitute time, as found in phenomenological tradition. First, Husserl refers to the flow or flux, which he considers as a metaphorical designation for a time-constituting dimension. But, as one can easily feel, this metaphor itself seems not to be free from some temporal element, at least in the mode of duration. But, for Husserl, the flow is a change without anything changing in it,6 it is continuous change that cannot be accelerated or slowed down. Husserl thinks of the flow as of a pure renewal of an act as such without any complicity with a previous phase (something like Descartes’ “continuous creation”). Every original phase of the flow is an imperceptible Entspringen or bursting forth of the absolute subjectivity. But the problem is to put together these burstings in a duration that would introduce the passage of time. Anyway, this Entspringen or Erscheinung is manifestation itself. Secondly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception, navigating through his ever ambiguous statements, nevertheless seems to hold that “the body secretes time.” 7 On the other hand, time is thought of as univocal, non-multiple, “non-collective” and “proper,” endowed with its own concrete unity.8 Merleau-Ponty goes on to say: “There is not a multiplicity of linked phenomena, but rather one and only phenomenon of the flow. Time is a unique movement that suits itself in every one of its parties …”9

He compares time with a gesture which envelops muscular contractions. So we can say that, though explicitly proposing a different “source” of temporalization, Merleau-Ponty still holds a holistic position that excludes the constitutive role of some micro-level of differential movements and durations. In the final analysis, the body’s contribution seems to be limited by constituting something like “embodied” Husserlian “absolute flow.” The body seems to build a dimension where all hypothetical constitutive structures diffuse and efface; it has concealed itself in a kind of blurred empty “spot” or trace.

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So we encounter there two limits – the flow and the body – that seem to be the limits of the phenomenological investigation, too. But, even as they can be conceived of as limits of explanation simply in being pointed at, there is, nevertheless, a further possibility of phenomenological exploration: namely, if we look at the absolute subjectivity of the flow and the body10 from the perspective of the phenomenology of manifestation, as proposed by Tymieniecka, among others. (At least in some points, there are also kindred theories of, for instance, Michel Henry, Raymond Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon; emergentism also must be considered.) The planes of reference and explanation themselves should be described in their coming into beingness, and we can expect that their ontopoietic mechanisms of manifestation could better explain how they bring about time, insofar as they temporalize themselves, thus furnishing human beings, for instance, with one of the most fundamental forms of intuition (as Kant called time). The phenomenology of manifestation receives some complementary denominations such as “creative phenomenology,” “proto-phenomenology” and “phenomenological ontogenesis.”11 This is to show that it is designed to follow the genetic progress of a living individual, thus being both the description and the further effectuation of the ontopoiesis of beingness. The reduction to most primary acts is controlled by a kind of rule of participation, rather than by the rule of maximal evidence. Protophenomenology is largely conjectural, as it draws its intuitions from the sciences, too, and so it is also (meta)physical, relying on experimentally and discursively attained evidences. If it is still introspective, the problem is what kind of access other than clear intuitions of a surface can still help to fix the first rather infinitesimal phenomena of manifestation which are so closely tied to life processes and sensibility. The multiple trajectories of creative acts reveal themselves within manifestation as manifest, but the contact with them is unstable, fleeting, as if virtually leaving a trace on the recording surface of the “vigilant or roving eye,” as Tymieniecka names life-sustaining and, later on, phenomenologically observing agency. One might even say that the creative acts of life are teeming with numerous small contemplations or Leibnizian “obscure perceptions” which both help to control and effectuate the process of individualization and, besides, operate the phenomenological acts themselves. The phenomenological act is a self-contemplating life, not a distanciation on the plane of abstractive representation and eidetic intuition – as she puts it, it “enters spontaneously into the workings of life in its circuits.”12 I would like to stress the word “spontaneously” used in this citation: it should imply that, radically speaking, we are “doing creative

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phenomenology” as we live on, however intermittently we explicitly recognize doing so. If I am correct on this point, then we shall dismiss the Husserlian distinction between natural and phenomenological attitudes or, at least, deny the radical change occurring between them. This is because now the phenomenological act is just a particular instance of life processes, at other times operating unnoticed within multiple logoic steerings of an individual whom we ordinarily put into the narrow bedrock of an ego. So that, somewhat boldly, Tymieniecka’s position implies a fluent identity of phenomenological philosophizing and living: “The movement of the act becomes the factor of ‘intelligibility.’ ”13 In other words, within the process of manifestation, the philosophizing subject becomes aware of this same manifestation and becomes capable of describing its meaning in itself and furthering life’s strategies. But let us turn, finally, to the temporalization of the body. Tymieniecka says that time starts with a first spark of life, but I would rather like to focus on the conscious awareness of time as an expression of life’s proto-temporal processuality and individualization. No one would deny that life proceeds and individualizes itself in living organisms or bodies. Embodiment is a manifestation of life that encompasses multiple factors and operations of differentiation and coalescence. As Tymieniecka puts it, there are lots of “logoic devices” that account for innumerable functions and compositions. The Logos is multiple, it has many voices as incessant fusions and separations in ever further constructive operations that reproduce and renew the living being, maintain and cultivate its beingness. The Logos is a vertiginous movement to the order which never stops at something as “definitively ordered.” It is impossible to follow phenomenologically all of its operations, yet we have at least a kind of the “evidence of multiplicity.” But, insofar as the “evidence of multiplicity” seems to be something like a contradiction in terms or an impossibility what the representational intelligence nevertheless tries to win and make possible (for example, in the highly abstract representation of a set theory in mathematics), insofar as it escapes us this way, we can still encounter it in the phenomena of timing. Timing or temporalization presents the multiple logoic activity within life’s body. Tymieniecka interprets Husserl’s Vergegenwärtigung as such a presencing which consists of “simultaneous and successive moves that generate time.”14 This is something more than simple “rememoration,” as Raymond Duval translates the word.15 Nevertheless, Duval rightly says that Vergegenwärtigung has nothing to do with external perception, since it is a

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“manifestation of wakefulness, the perception of the specific activity of supervision and waiting.”16 Presencing presents the immanence to itself, just after the human body has manifested itself in spatial exteriority as a starting point for inner and intersubjective manifestations. As life becomes manifest to itself through the body’s immanent operations, the irreversible wakefulness installs itself to watch over the life. Here, in bodily self-awareness we see the culminating point of an integrated existence.17 Tymieniecka rightly says that the body is “the seeming repose in self that arrests our attention, the ‘something’ that persistently stays ‘there’ and confronts us, a phenomenon that does not vanish or recede.”18 But the body is not only a phenomenon, it is something that gives itself phenomenally in sensations or perceptions and in their timing, it has a highly differentiated mass that gives weight to self-manifestation in phenomena. The body weighs, Jean-Luc Nancy would say; that is, it feels its own existence as a kind of obscure evidence that one cannot have in front of one’s eyes but can only have as one with oneself – therefore, simply be it. The weight of existence as the “first” manifestation, the “first” presencing that can inasmuch appear as the “last” and “intermediary,” too. Our attention is arrested on it, it can be a secret attention, an unknown self-possession of the body so that every new shot-circuiting of the logoic difference generates time-consciousness. Although we usually seem to experience time as a linear succession, there is something wholly other that presides over the immanent making of time – another protophenomenal order of life’s diversity. There is a differential movement as coming to presence, and within this presencing there appears the present as a source of further temporalizations, as an extension of duration. One could say that the presence of the present is a correlate of life’s multiple operations and internal movements. Tymieniecka links time to movement: “Time appears … in the crystallization of the motility proper to life’s functioning.”19 As much as there are crystallizations, there are also different modalities of time, multiple renewals of its upsurge. Crystallization should be thought of as a centripetally – oriented process which synthesizes different processes in diverse unique phenomena that seem to conceal the complexity of their generative structures. Therefore, crystallized time is not a linear succession, but, quite differently, includes many lateral, transversal movements whose encounters have impressive portions of chance in them. As if departing from the multiple operations, time would be the modality of confluence: “The ontopoietic course of life … proceeds … through the confluence of numerous operations, processes, moves, stimuli, etc. … This confluence performs the transformative or sensori-motor operation … crystallizes in a multiple motio.”20

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The confluence could be taken as another name for a synergy that designates the communication between the senses, helping an individual to orient itself in worldly situations. But, to my mind, confluence includes also non-specific sensibility such as surfacing general organic innervation that serves as a background for experiencing one’s existence as insistencepersistence in beingness through multiple dynamic operations. Confluent movements are life’s tying itself together. And this tying or synthesis is reinforced with a temporal dimension. In this dimension, becoming aware of ourselves, we can at least to some degree check out what’s going on in our life. Here we find the somewhat obscure origins of meaning, practical orientation and thinking, too. The sensing of time as well as self-awareness are one of the most manifest instances of these multiple movements of confluence that could be called kinesthetic movements. Manifestation belongs to aisthesis, though its phenomenal “frame” prompts one to use spiritualistic vocabulary to describe its characteristics. But a more radical look imposes itself when we dismiss a somatophobic attitude that until very recently seems to have pervaded philosophical and general culture in its ideological “casting.” Of course, there are more subtle methodic strategies to be invented insofar as somatophobia is something more dangerous than an almost involuntary disregard for the sensible materiality of phenomena. So far, in the anlysis of time, we had tried to show the way out of this “involuntary disregard,” and this may be termed a kind of reduction. Temporality has been referred back to the material operations of life and its virtual confluent networking. What I have still called phenomenology, has considerably “gained weight,” so to say. In the guise of a conclusion, it would be interesting to compare the idea of time-as-manifestation with Raymond Ruyer’s theory of actualization. Relying on the relativity theory, Ruyer holds that “the present” as a temporal mode has no sense outside the interactions between the “actualities,” as he terms the somatic operations.21 In a word, time as duration is an idealization of multiple “actualities”, and, among other things, this implies that there does not exist one unique being-in-the-world. Time is a collective fact as a result of the conjunction of “actualities” that constitute the dimension of the folded present. Therefore, time does not have its reality proper. Beyond this, Ruyer goes even further, assuming that the presencing of the actual does not necessarily imply a temporal complexification. The presence of the actual can be thought of as a kairic moment without complementary temporal extensions. In itself, the actual as a condition for its own presencing is an a priori of the present, the latter constituting the ideal order of time. But without actualizations in

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process, time is a meaningless concept, as if without any matter that would support it. Thus, without logoic operations of actualization there would not occur the manifestation of time. I am totally aware of how rough my sketch of temporalization has been, especially with respect to the many singular and subtle analyses of timephenomenon which deserve more detailed scrutiny. But, nevertheless, I would like to close this short article with yet another “stroke of the brush.” The philosophical perspective sketched above might lead us to reconsider the Husserlian approach to time-constituting consciousness. One might ask whether his method of reduction really can do justice to the conception of time as manifestation. The reduction seems to perform a kind of “stepping back” from the ordinary field of intentional effectuation, i.e., it loses sight of the overall milieu of experience where all human acts get their full meaning. Thus, under the reductive procedure, one is dealing with a “weakened” phenomenality of the acts or with “slackened intentional threads”, as MerleauPonty puts it. Besides, the acts of temporalization are not explored from the standpoint of their dynamic unfolding, because, for Husserl, the nature of time-constituting consciousness remains unknown. Even more, Husserl has missed the chance to admit that his reductive operation itself could be viewed as a further process of manifestation that leads to the discovery of more subtle structures. In other words, reduction could be seen as the other side of transduction. According to the admirable thesis of Gilbert Simondon, transduction is a mental procedure that follows the being in its genesis and development, it “accomplishes the genesis of thinking in the same time as is accomplished the genesis of the object.”22 In the same time, the transduction is also an intuition insofar as “through it in the field of problems there appears a structure that resolves the given problems.”23 Therefore, the Husserlian reduction could be interpreted as such a transductive operation of “problem-solving” within the thinking strategies of a living being. To my mind, such a change of perspective could widen the scope of descriptive analyses, particularly those of temporalization. University of Latvia N OT E S 1

Later in his career, in his unpublished manuscripts, Husserl comes close to considering temporality as linked with a body. See, for instance, fragment C6, S.7: “In the flowing archipresence, we always already have an unchanging perception of the flesh and, therefore, in the temporalization of the immanent time the perception of the flesh traverses continually this time

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in its entirety, constituting the flesh synthetically, identically and omnitemporally.” Quoted after – Didier Franck, Chair et corps. Sur la phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: Minuit, 1981), p. 190. 2 Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1927), p. 331. 3 Raymond Duval, Temps et vigilance (Paris: Vrin, 1990), pp. 134, 164–5. 4 Op.cit., p. 142. 5 Umberto Galimberti, Psiche e techne. L’uomo nell’età della tecnica, 4th ed. (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000), pp. 686–7. 6 Duval, op.cit., p. 57. 7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 227. 8 Op.cit., p. 482. 9 Op.cit., p. 479. 10 The “absolute body” if we dare to fuse together the two phenomenologically still rather indefinite phenomena: the “absolute” could be thought of here as an ab-solution, i.e. – separation or moving away from the experiential domain. 11 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the LifeStrategies of Reason (Dordrecht et al.: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 19, 393, 403. 12 Op.cit., p. 19. 13 Op.cit., p. 332. 14 Op.cit., p. 193. 15 Duval, op.cit., p. 43. 16 Ibid. 17 Tymieniecka, op.cit., p. 193. 18 Op.cit., p. 133. 19 Op.cit., p. 497. 20 Ibid. 21 Raymond Ruyer, Éléments de psycho-biologie (Paris: P. U. F., 1946), p. 112. 22 Gilbert Simondon, L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (Paris: P. U. F., 1964), p. 20. 23 Op.cit., p. 21.

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It is a rather widely accepted idea that philosophy is a totally abstract subject and that it is completely remote from everyday life. A philosopher is usually supposed to be somebody who – detached from ordinary life – thinks about the ultimate meaning of existence. But: “Regardless … of the role of the philosopher, and regardless of how remote we may think his activities are from our immediate concerns, the philosopher has been engaged in considering problems that are of importance to all of us, either directly or indirectly.” (Popkin et al. 1981:XIV) In any case, the philosopher attempts to work out some general and coherent conception of the world as such and of human affairs in it. Are his ideas always very remote from the world? Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. As far as ecology is concerned, I believe they are not remote, but rather very material. Ecology has become very popular in the last few decades. We can now see so-called ecological agriculture, ecological washing powders, ecological paper, as well as eco-development, ecobusiness, ecofeminism, etc. Perhaps the notion ecology is being over-used by the popular press, and that is why scientists dealing with ecology often get irritated. It should not be forgotten, however, that ecology is, first of all, the science which emerged from biology less than a hundred years ago. The name was coined by combining the Greek term oikos, which means “household”, and the term logos, which means “knowledge of something.” Therefore ecology is the science which refers to the biotic and abiotic surrounding of each living organism, and of course to the organism itself. It is also a story about the household of nature, about nature’s particular parts and their interdependencies which, taken together, eventually constitute one whole. This seems to be a knowledge that helps us to understand the world in which we live, and also how it influences us, and vice versa. That is why it seems to be so close to philosophy. Ecology also appears to be useful in helping us to understand the processes that lasted about 3.5–4 billion years and created life on Earth. It is closely related to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is, in fact, one part genetics and one part ecology. Some years ago, William Murdoch and Joseph Connel wrote about ecology: “It is a young science, probably not older than forty years; consequently, much of it is still descriptive. It deals 739 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 739–744. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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with systems which are depressingly complex, affected by dozens of variables which may all interact in a very large number of ways.” (1973: 161) Such an opinion has certainly not lost its truth: ecology nowadays, as the multi-interdisciplinary science, appears to be more complex than ever. And this brings us to the question: how are philosophy and ecology related?; or to the somewhat modified question: do they constitute two quite separate entities, or do they – at least partly – overlap? I think they partly overlap, and it becomes evident when a philosopher looks more closely at the foundations of ecology; some of them appear to be undoubtedly of a metaphysical character, and this is precisely where philosophy/metaphysics overlaps with ecology. In constructing his philosophy of dialogue, Martin Buber based it on certain purely metaphysical assumptions. Some of the best known axioms of his theory include: “In the beginning is the relation”, and “All actual life is encounter.” (1970: 69, 62) I think the eminent philosopher, trying to overcome the discrepancy between subject and object, quite unequivocally underlines the interconnectedness of everything – especially when he constructs the theory of man’s dialogue with Nature (written in capital letters!), he appears to be the precursor of what may be called environmental or ecological philosophy, already in the year 1923, when his most known book Ich und Du was first published. In the light of philosophy of dialogue – prima facie very distant from environmental philosophy – there seem to be good reasons for dialogue across ecology-philosophy boundaries. The philosophical traits of ecology can perhaps be best traced back when one looks at its historical background, at how it emerged out of other sciences. The term ecology was coined by the German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel in 1866. (Haeckel 1866) At that time the idea of nature’s economy was quite new, especially in light of the fact that the prevailing model of nature resembled that of a mechanism (be it less or more complicated!), and remained in full accordance with the Newtonian vision of the world. Next in line was much the more contemporary Frederick Clements, who insisted that ecology was the theory of the physiology of superorganisms. He also introduced the notion biome in 1916. According to Clements, the Earth as a whole could be described as one huge organism (Clements 1905). Expressing such views, he threw a somewhat holistic cast upon his theory, and his views resemble those presented later by Jim Lovelock in his concept of Gaia. (Lovelock 1979) In the 1920’s, Charles Elton made a great contribution to ecology by introducing the notion of biotic communities to describe the gatherings of

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animals and plants. In addition to this, he coined the phrase trophic niche, which meant the position of a given organism or species in a natural group of organisms of a given environment, bound together by the ecological factors and constituting a certain whole. (Elton 1927) Finally, in 1935, Arthur Tansley used the notion ecosystem, meaning the whole made up of interacting living things together with the physical factors of the environment. It is characteristic that Tansley treated ecology as a new analytical study of nature, and therefore a very objective science, resembling physics, chemistry and biology and linked with them as closely as possible. (Tansley 1935) Following Tansley, Eugene Odum stressed the importance of the ecosystem concept in his famous book, The Fundamentals of Ecology, published in 1953; since that time the term is probably the most important notion in ecology. (Odum 1953) The new science began to possess its contemporary shape, which can be expressed by the definition: “Ecology is the scientific study of how organisms interact with their environment … A key word in ecology is interact. Organisms interact with the other living things that collectively constitute their biotic environment as well as with the nonliving physical surroundings that make up their abiotic environment.” (Postlethwait et al. 1989: 720) Biologists today organise ecology, the science of interactions, into a hierarchy of four levels: populations, communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere. Each consecutive sphere emerges from the other as a completely new structure, irreducible to its previous components. Such a vision of the world is based upon evolutionary, and therefore also ecological, facts. At the beginning of the twentieth century much more attention was being paid, especially by the representatives of physical sciences, to the concept energy as constituting the deepest and most fundamental base of reality. For example: in view of the quantum theory it is very difficult to speak about physical objects as understood by traditional ontology. As a consequence the first metaphysical foundation of ecological philosophy, which constitutes itself on the border line of ecology and philosophy, is the assumption that energy, much more than objects (be it either atoms or subatomic entities), constitutes the base of reality, understood as the ancient Greeks understood the term arche. Also in the first half of the twentieth century some representatives of sciences, at the very first look very distant from philosophy, began to think of nature in categories of energy. This is especially evident in the case of a philosophizing forester, Aldo Leopold. In his A Sand County Almanac, the book generally thought to be the Bible of environmental philosophy, Leopold makes the assumption that the land, “is a fountain of

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energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals. Food chains are the living channels conducting energy upward.” (1966: 253) In such a vision, organisms are treated as knots of cumulated energy in the all-surrounding web of life. And one can have no doubts that the currency – in the economy of nature – is solar energy. The second metaphysical assumption of environmental philosophy is the relational character of all objects – all living beings are always interconnected by different environmental relationships. It is therefore assumed, as in the heretofore mentioned Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, that a given object – whether biotic or abiotic – of relation, cannot be known per se, that it cannot really be perceived apart from its relationships (interactions) with other objects. That is why, I think, J. Baird Callicot writes: “Ecosystemic wholes are logically prior to their component species because the nature of the part is determined by its relationship to the whole. That is, more simply and correctly expressed, a species has the particular characteristics that it has because those characteristics result from its adaptation to a niche in an ecosystem.” (1989: 110–11) The author undertakes a very difficult task of squaring the circle or answering the somewhat paradoxical question: what comes first – a chicken or an egg? I believe that the philosophy of dialogue, as represented by Buber, finds a better answer to the question, claiming that both components of the relation (and also its characteristics) somehow appear at the same time; therefore it cannot be decided which of them comes first. The next important metaphysical assumption of environmental philosophy (especially of the holistic kind!) is thinking about reality in categories of greater entities, of some greater wholes; the most adequate term to be used here is holism. The concept of philosophical holism was coined by Jan Christian Smuts. (Smuts 1923) It stresses the importance of some greater wholes because they, e.g. ecosystems, appear to be cradles of life. It is obvious that such thinking stands in great opposition to traditional, wellestablished philosophical theories according to which only individuals can be the objects of ethical concern, for example. And it is usually assumed, in this context, that if one takes care of given individuals, the greater wholes will be taken care of too, so to say automatically, in accordance with the laws of nature. The last, but certainly not least, assumption of environmental philosophy refers to the evolutionary, generative processes. The contemporary representatives of different sciences neither question the theory of evolution itself (although there are some exceptions!) nor claim to know its aim. Such opinion also holds true, it seems, as regards environmental philosophers, who

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are sometimes inclined to point to its tendencies, however vaguely stated. For example, Aldo Leopold writes: “The trend of evolution is to elaborate and diversify the biota.” (1966: 253) And hence comes his known prescription for good action: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” (1966: 262) The same author suggests that evolution itself, producing a species called homo sapiens and endowing it with reason and perhaps moral sense, leaves for a while the sphere of pure facts and enters the sphere of morality to give mankind one recommendation only, that the evolutionary processes must not be stopped. R E C A P I T U L AT I O N

The metaphysics of environmental philosophy, especially in its holistic version, seem to be grounded upon the four categories presented above. First comes energy, understood as the arche of (first biotic and then abiotic) reality. The second metaphysical assumption expresses the relational character of reality, which is perhaps most convincingly and correctly expressed by Buber’s axiom: “In the beginning is the relation.” The third category emerges out of the second, in the sense that the category of holism is inevitably bound up with the actualised relations, which presuppose holism, the term quite close to the term organicism; the former is able to express more than the latter, however. Quite mysteriously, wholes express much more than simple mathematical sums of relations; perhaps the notion of structure, as opposed to simple sums of objects, is also adequate in this context. The last category, evolution, seems to be slow but persistent, stable and – what is certainly most important – creative. Although its aim seems to be unknown, man, its highest and most complicated creation, should certainly obey the ancient maxim when dealing with nature: primum non nocere. Such advice is the real challenge for contemporary man, who has just entered the third millennium. Cracow BIBLIOGRAPHY Buber, M. I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Callicot, J. B. In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). Clements, F. E. Research Methods in Ecology (Lincoln, Nebraska: University Publishing Co, 1905). Elton, C. Animal Ecology (New York: MacMillan Co, 1927).

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Haeckel, E. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (Berlin: Reimer, 1866). Leopold, A. A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966). Lovelock, J. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). Murdoch, W., Connell, J. “All about Ecology.” In I. G. Barbour (ed.), Western Man and Environmental Ethics (Ontario: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc, 1973). Odum, P. Fundamentals of Ecology (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953). Popkin, R. H., Stroll, A. Philosophy (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1981). Postlethwait, J. H., and Hopson, J. L. The Nature of Life (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1989). Smuts, J. C. Holism and Evolution (New York: McMillan Co, 1923). Tansley, A. “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts and Terms.” Ecology 16, (1935) pp. 292–303.

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TOWA R D A P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L G RO U N D I N G O F T H E GEOGRAPHICAL CONCEPTION OF THERAPEUTIC LANDSCAPES

P R E L I M I NA RY O U T L I N E O F T H E P RO B L E M

The purpose of this paper is to provide the propaedeutic for the philosophical grounding of the geographical concept, “therapeutic landscapes.” The propaedeutic for a more detailed fleshing and exfoliation consists in establishing the meaning and overall extent of the concept, as well as considering how the notion relates to praxis. As a guiding, preliminary definition, a therapeutic landscape provides a placial nexus for the promotion and maintenance of health and well being. By this definition I do not condone or disapprove of any particular human relations with nature and human society or want to immediately imply any particular agenda. Nothing beyond a general skeleton of the study is intended in order to avoid perspectival assumptions leading to ideological contexts and premature advocation of policy implementation, which would theoretically limit the project. I elaborate the sense of the notion in light of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life, which I advocate as providing the most viable framework.1 The description that follows will engender general implications of Tymieniecka’s phenomenology, which allows for the development of the concept of therapeutic landscapes in terms of a function of life’s evolutionary progress, or in Tymieniecka’s phenomenology, ontopoiesis – first makings of life. In this form of descriptive phenomenological investigation, “beingness” (the non-substantive dynamic organization of real entities) naturally unfolds into implications for ethico-valuational prescription. “Oughtness” emerges within ontopoiesis as a sense bestowing function (at the human station of life’s organizations it is the Moral Sense), and thus is contextualized within life. The preliminary definition of therapeutic landscapes prompts immediate questions concerning the health and well being of what entity or entities, as well as questions concerning the meaning of “landscape,” “therapeutic,” “placial nexus,” “health,” and “well being.” This particularly rich conceptualization promises to interlink a plethora of knowledge bases. Just some of these bases which could be mentioned are environmental concerns, comparative 745 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 745–773. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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ethology, biological inquiry into the quality of life, ethical inquiry into the nature of the good life, the axiology of place, geopsychology, and socio-cultural organization and productions. Other pertinent areas such as architectural design and planning also fall within this context of the qualitative nature of life on earth’s landscapes. “Therapeutic landscapes” is construed to function as the common final cause of those various inquiries. The sense of “landscape” that I advocate comprises the earth’s surface, which also includes the areas below and above the surface that support life. Thus the term should be construed as generic for related “spin-offs” – seascape, skyscape. This “zone of life support” is contextualized in a larger system that includes the earth’s core and the planetary and solar systems. Landscape in this sense of life-supporting organization is connected to the notion of the biosphere – the layer of the earth and its environs that contains living organisms. Obviously landscape involves an interrelation between biotic and abiotic relatively stable forms and dynamic forces. An important aspect of landscape differentiation concerns the nexus of ecosystems – the interactive systems of biotic communities and their habitats. Biomes are plant-animal communities, which are geographically circumscribed by distinct physiognomies. But the understanding of landscape is not to be limited only to those of the “natural environment”; “cultural landscapes” are meant as well. An egregious problem concerns the manner of their interrelationship. Our goal is to ground a general significance of “landscape” that will be able to accommodate the entire gamut of life; otherwise the notion of a general descriptive scientia of landscape degenerates into the partialities of disciplines. The word “therapeutic” is meant in the sense of preserving health and well being, which includes the narrower meaning of curative therapy but is not limited in any way to it. Thus, therapeutics introduces a qualifier to the notion of landscape that connotes a valuational process. The surface of the earth supports life, but that does not entail that its landscapes are therapeutic. We have witnessed the “destructive” side of nature, which turns landscapes into anything but therapeutic for its life forms. But in some other sense, in the long run, or for the immediate good of the whole nexus of life over specific individuals, some of its devastating aspects actually may work for a more “distant” therapy. We must bracket for the moment the sorts of questions concerning “whose or what” therapy is at stake, temporal and spatial mediacies and immediacies, and the more specific sense of the agency of curative therapy. One purpose of grounding the concept of the therapeutic landscape is to provide a framework for such questions. Since the broader

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definition includes the narrower definition of the curative, it seems as if, for example, natural devastation is viewable as an unhealthy set of circumstances for which there should be a cure. Thus, it may seem that I advocate human intervention to an ambitious extent. But these “ideological alarms” must also be bracketed until the sense of “curative treatment,” or human participation, is also framed within a philosophical grounding. The preliminary guiding sense suggests that a therapeutic landscape would provide a nexus of places where living entities thrive and enjoy a high quality of life, but in a way that contributes to the overall quality constituting the landscape. Thus, the notion of therapeutic implies something more than supplying the possibility for the maintenance of life; it engenders an enrichment of life. In order to ascertain a preliminary, guiding understanding of “placial nexus,” the notion of place must be examined. Place implies a qualitative differentiation marking off a specific spatial sector. “Down-by-the-willowgarden” implies a sector of space alongside a grove of willow trees that gathers itself through exuding some other marked qualities that differentiate it from other immediate circumambient sectors of space. Because no single place allows for sustaining life, a landscape must be understood as a placial nexus. Even the non-locomoting living entities require a placial nexus. The plant distinguishes places by growing toward the direction of the sun, or rooting itself around rocks or other plants. The root systems of plants can compensate for the lack of locomotive capacity by creating a symbiotic interrelation in the underground landscape such that “communication” across distances, a sharing with other flora the placial nexus of which they are all dependent, is made possible. So, a landscape provides a nexus of places required for the maintenance of life, health, and well being for all biotic entities. Deprivation of certain places within the nexus, e.g. a shady place out of the sun, can lead to diminution in the quality of life or even its destruction. Placial nexus, then, is the interrelation of qualitatively differentiated sectors of space making up a landscape. The fullest sense of therapeutics cannot be reduced to the characteristics of a single “place,” because no single place can function to meet all of the needs and desires of living entities. A landscape as a nexus of places potentially meets the multifarious criteria for therapy. However, a single place can be acknowledged as therapeutic without meeting the extensive criteria, provided that it is a component of a nexus constituting a landscape. Most of the case studies in geography investigate sites that, for one reason or another, are acknowledged as therapeutic – wilderness, sulphur springs, hospitals. In other words, therapeutic sites are specific sectors of space constituted, constructed, or set aside by humans for the rejuvenation of

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human health. The implicit presupposition of such studies is that such sites return the vistor in a greater state of health and well being than when they arrived. Geographers continue to expand the range of these site studies. My sense of therapeutic landscape has greatly expanded the extension of the term in order to measure all landscapes. So, there are therapeutic landscapes, therapeutic places, and therapeutic sites. There can be no exact determinations that keep these categories completely distinct. By “health” I mean a quality of the living self-individualizing system across all of its functions whereby the entity is free of characteristics that reduce the quality of life or lead to its destruction. By “well being” I mean a quality of the living system across all of its functions whereby the entity has the potential to thrive to its fullest capacities. Health implies “freedom from” disease and diminution of existential possibilities, and well being implies “freedom for” a high quality of self-organizing actualization in a supportive environment. Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life offers the most comprehensive philosophical context to exhibit and exfoliate the concept of therapeutic landscapes in its multifarious profiles. It offers an open dynamic systems approach to the construction and progress of life, and it especially captures the specificities of the Human Condition. One direct point commending this viablity is that Tymieniecka applies her theoretical tenets to several specific areas that correspond to key themes and issues for the Geographies of Human Health. As is especially apparent in her praxeology, which includes her writings on the subjects of psychiatry and medicine, she shares the same concerns with socially oriented health geographers, which recommends her phenomenology as a sympathetically resonant theoretical basis.2 These shared practical concerns include issues of the plight of institutionalized/deinstitutionalized persons along with the question of environmental supports (healing landscapes). Tymieniecka’s praxeological tenets, which promise a far-reaching global policy of therapeutics, parallel and complement the empirical investigations by geographers of therapeutic sites and policies. Her praxeologies are founded on the basis of the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Condition. Another overlapping area of investigation is the shared focus upon place as a fundamental component of significance.3 The nature and significance of place, place-identity, and the human need for place (the passion for place) are major concepts in cultural geography generally as well as in this subdiscipline of the geographies of health. Tymieniecka traces the meaningful differentiations of spatial sectors in the genesis of the basic processes of spatialization

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inherent to evolutionary structurizations of life itself. Life’s progressive construction occurs through the agency of self-individualizing real entities. Real entities, as inwardly/outwardly functional systems, are stations of relatively stable organizations that maintain their dynamic equilibrium and development through “spacings.” “Spacings” is the ontopoiesis (first makings) of places. The developmental interiorization of spacings involves morphological and “psychological” processes. The externalization of spacings involves the entity’s relationship with circumambient sectors of landscapes, which becomes the individual’s milieu through establishing a placial nexus within the given environmental conditions. There is an ongoing inner/outer exchange such that the entity’s boundary is fluid and the two spacings are moments of an interrelational dialectic (functional system) that is the primary structure. Life spacing involves valuational and measuring principles of selection that form a dynamic inclusory/exclusory matrix. Tymieniecka grounds the human passion for place as a fundamental human significance in its emergent processes of spacing. Her further investigations of the esoteric passion for place, which is crystallized in the arts, have an affinity with the interests of Swiss geographer Bertrand Levy.4 Levy has investigated what he calls the geopoetique, and he has investigated the connections between place and nature in literary writings. Tymieniecka has edited two volumes of essays that illustrate how the passion for place and the esoteric passion for place are crystallized through what she calls the fabulations of the poetic sentiment. Her explorations of the passion for place follow from her theoretical basis in the evolution of life. The parallel concerns and interests with those of contemporary geographers nominate her Phenomenology of Life as a viable theoretical system. More importantly, it is her general doctrine of Ontopoiesis at the core of her Phenomenology of Life that allows for the establishment of the propaedeutic, or framework, for the conceptualization of therapeutic landscapes. In this exposition the main tenets are explicated and certain key structures are examined and related to therapeutic landscapes, and from that certain parameters for ethico-valuational praxes can be derived. Ontopoiesis offers a comprehensive model that integrates physis, bios, societal, and cultural emergent organizational levels within the system of life. The Phenomenology of Life traces the genesis of relatively stable meaningful patterns of life as they emerge along the evolutionary scale of dynamic progression.5 This contextualization of meanings as functions of life’s phases is illuminated through the grounding of the emergent human sense-bestowing functions. It is necessary here to bracket traditional formulations of idealism

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or realism, construction or apprehension of reality, for these are loaded philosophical “isms” that will foil an understanding of this phenomenology and the phenomena to be investigated. The question: “what constitutes a therapeutic landscape,” then, is not merely profiled by a plethora of research techniques, types of definitions, interpretive perspectives, and human level sense-giving functions. Instead, a coherent organization of evolutionary processes in relatively stable structural levels is made evident by tracing the ontologico-geneses of meaning inherent to life. Life’s dynamic structurings progress through greater complexities of organization, which include the emergence of the human level of existential meanings. By expanding the language of meanings and significance beyond the sense-bestowing functions of consciousness into the very structurings of life itself, the Phenomenology of Life is able to ground a comprehensive conception of therapeutic landscapes. The notion of therapeutic landscapes applies to all of the levels of ontologico-genetic processes so as to be constitutive of the whole nexus of life forms. In this way the analysis of therapeutic landscapes avoids a purely anthropocentric interpretation, and at the same time it avoids the stipulatory operational definitions employed in case study geographies. I will outline the most basic patterns and phases of meaning inherent to the evolutionary system of life, from its emergence in pre-life to its flowering in the three primary sense-bestowing functions at the human station. This genetic pattern mapping within the progressive systematizing of life will allow for an exploration of the ontologico-genetic parameters constitutive of the phenomenon of therapeutic landscapes. This mapping extends to the three sense-bestowing functions that emerge at the human level so that the meanings inherent to therapeutic landscapes can be drawn into the higher patternings of human life. These investigations allow for the axiological parameters constitutive of therapeutic landscapes to be philosophically grounded. T H E H I S TO R I C A L C O N T E X T I N T H E D I S C I P L I N E O F G E O G R A P H Y OUT OF WHICH THE CONCEPT OF THERAPEUTIC LANDSCAPES HAD BEEN CONCEIVED

The concept of therapeutic landscapes is directly traceable to the work of geographer Wilbert Gessler.6 Gessler’s work ushered in a paradigm shift from mostly quantitative to predominantly qualitative studies, which also yielded a paradigm shift in geography’s subdiscipline. Gessler’s work itself was open to an expansion of the concept of therapeutic landscapes beyond his own

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parameters. Gessler offers various definitions as he develops his notion and engages different case studies. “Therapeutic landscape becomes a geographic metaphor for aiding in the understanding of how the healing process works itself out in places (or situations, locales, settings, milieu).”7 Therapeutic landscapes/places exhibit an “enduring reputation for achieving physical, mental, and spiritual healing.”8 “Places achieve positive or negative reputations because people perceive that they do or do not fulfill basic human needs such as providing security, a feeling of identity, material wants, or aesthetic pleasure.”9 The Geographies of Health continues to expand and progress in terms of types and scopes of studies, types of landscapes, and the employment of research models. This growth is partly due to further development of the definition of the term. “The concept of therapeutic landscapes has many applications that have yet to be formally explored. The literature points to the use of therapeutic landscapes in the healing and recovery of illness (Gessler 1992, 1993), but the concept of therapeutic landscapes can also be used in the maintenance of health and well-being.”10 With Allison Williams’ definition, many more kinds of case studies have been included in the geographies of health: national parks, summer camps for children, city geographies, the meaning of the street for the homeless, etc. My philosophical project is to provide a most general framework that will expand radically the concept of “therapeutic landscapes” so that it pertains to all landscapes within the earth’s horizon and to all levels of life’s constructive evolution. Gessler’s work not only introduced a burgeoning concept that has stimulated much research; it functioned as the core catalyst in the subdisciplinary paradigm shift from Medical Geography to the Geographies of Health. To properly frame the notion of therapeutic landscapes, it is important to “place” it in the historical context of geographical research, that is, the nature of the paradigm shift must be explicated and its various expansive strains must be enumerated. Medical Geography of the 1960s and 1970s was heavily influenced by the positivistic paradigm, which advocated quantitative methodologies. The tradition of geographer-as-explorer has bestowed an occupational heritage … The ultimate expression of the geographer’s vocation was the reduction of place to a location, a dot on a map. For medical geographers places were where disease agents, vectors, hosts, and culture traits came together or where facilities such as hospitals were located.11

In the earlier Medical Geography, people were classified primarily as patients, which meant the assumed acceptance of the medico-centric paradigm of

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health. In the disease-ecology tradition, disease functions as the primary category, which is mapped through methodologies of spatial-analytics, and which means that diseases were abstracted from human subjects and mapped according to their own demographic processes. Reviewing the interrelation between behavioral geography and environmental psychology, Christopher Spencer and Mark Blades’ report of 1986 shows that the shared research techniques between these two subfields in their short history of socially shared knowledge were quantitative statistical measurement methods. “In addition to using the questionnaire, interview and participant observation techniques common to the social sciences, geography has also made creative use of semantic differentials, repertory grids, cloze techniques, and, occasionally, personality tests, drawn from various areas of psychology.”12 This quantitative heritage is comprised of much explanatory exegesis but is very limited concerning understanding and interpretation. Practiced exclusively without recognition of qualititative research, or even more to the point, integrated with qualitative research, it is questionable as to what it is that is being explained other than the abstract constructs or operational inventions of the researcher. Tymieniecka has reviewed two paradigms of health, the biologicoanalytical and the holistic theories.13 These two orientations oppose each other in their conceptions as to what constitutes the norm for health, but ultimately stake their claims on underlying assumptions concerning the nature of the human being. One paradigm focuses on the organism and the other focuses on functioning. Tymieniecka is able to expound on the merits and deficiencies of each paradigm in a way that forms them into complementary and interrelated investigations by relating them to her framework of the ontopoiesis of life. The human being is the progressive organization of phases of life. All of the phases must be accounted for as well as their interrelation. So, as I work through the history of this geographical discipline of health I do so with the intention of examining its various strands as relating to levels of research that need not be oppositional but complementary within a progressively constructed dynamic system of organized processes, which is what ontopoiesis offers. It was not until the 1990s with Gessler’s crucial work that the field has been led to new theoretical turns and to the practice of qualitative research methodology. The renaming of the discipline as Geographies of Health has entailed a norming, which has legitimized an open creative investigation of the concept of therapeutic landscapes.14 The recognition of the relation of health and well being to place is a fundamental component of the paradigm shift. No longer viewed as sites of disease, which reduces place to

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homogeneous grid-space, place is recognized as a process where meanings and valuations are generated. People are situated in the process of place (spacings), which as the medium of their experience constitutes social and cultural dynamics. Social and cultural theories have been introduced into the geographer’s research repertoire. Landscape is treated not as a merely passive perceptual apprehension, but instead is interpreted to involve the active agency of human creative powers. Humanist geographers earlier had added existential dimensions such as emotions, moods, and spirit to the study of place.15 A place is recognized as a gatherer of meanings. There is a growing literature on the relation of place to identity. “Place identity answers the question – Who am I? – by countering – Where am I? or Where do I belong? From a social psychological perspective, place identities are thought to arise because places, as bounded locales imbued with personal, social, and cultural meanings, provide a significant framework in which identity is constructed, maintained, and transformed.”16 The research goals to uncover the meanings that landscape have for people have been influenced by postmodern and feminist philosophies. This has led to “the strengthening resolve by geographers to be the (co)creators of storied knowledge(s) of health experience.”17 The issue of multivocality has emerged in cultural geography and methods that include the voice(s) of the other(s) have been increasing. Semiotics and deconstruction have led to exploring landscape as text and symbol. Social geographers have implemented research starting from the basis of the social construction of landscapes. Poststructural theories “regard text as a set of beliefs made intelligible through the organization of space as a symbol, and in spatial symbols as such. Dominant meanings are ascribed to places and landscapes are “produced.” Interpretation of such meanings in textual landscapes is, of course, always unstable and contested through the production of alternative meanings.” 18 Creativity is the Archimedean point in Tymieniecka’s system and thus efforts of geographers (e.g. Robin A. Kearns cited above) to study the creative production of place is well grounded in her doctrine of ontopoiesis. Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life provides the basis to organize this plethora of methods and techniques that have been employed in the empirical study of therapeutic landscapes. The word “ground” is not intended to mean a reduction to a realm that provides the foundation for everything else. Rather, like the open systems paradigm of science, the Phenomenology of Life allows for a coordination of, and cooperation between, the sciences, such that the multiple senses of the various forms of investigation are recognized in their interrelations. Through the Phenomenology of Life the multi-leveled

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significances concerning therapeutic landscapes that have been uncovered in various forms of research can broaden even more without losing anchor in the organizing system of life itself. In the philosophical grounding of the concept of therapeutic landscapes, we transcend the limits of empirical definitions in which a landscape has been denoted as therapeutic (e.g. hospitals, holy places of spiritual renewal), and we transcend the operational definitions employed by the geographer-scientist for specific data–producing purposes. We situate therapeutic landscapes in the ontologico-genetic system of life. T Y M I E N I E C K A’ S P H E N O M E N O L O G Y O F L I F E A N D I T S D E PA RT U R E S F RO M C L A S S I C A L P H E N O M E N O L O G Y

The first task is to differentiate Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life from the classical approach to phenomenology – a radical departure in several ways. The first fundamental modification is that meanings are a function of life and thus are not solely the product of the transcendental function of human consciousness, which is only one of many relatively stable, meaningfully organized stations that have evolved through life’s constructive expansion. Meaningful patternings are inherent to each of the dynamic systems-levels of life, which are open phases for constructive and progressively complex reorganizations of meanings. This expansion of meaning radically transcends Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work on the phenomenology of the lived-body and his recognition of meaningful patterns in the perceptual fields that include those of the more simply organized life forms. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived-body establishes a level of meaning that is neither consciousness nor thing, but an ambiguous meaningful structure that manifests in the fields of perception, visceral images, and somatics. Merleau-Ponty decenters the subject by placing meaning in the autochtonous structure of the perceptual field. Tymieniecka radicalizes this trend in phenomenology to expand sense-bestowing agencies by recognizing pre-intentional forms of sense-bestowal constituting structures through uncovering various levels of meaning as functions of life’s becoming. In other words, meanings do not suddenly emerge at the level of consciousness or the lived-body, but rather are already manifest at organizational levels that are pre-intentional. It is worth interjecting here that it might seem that “therapeutics” is a word that only applies to the human level of meanings, which would then call into question the alleged pertinence and viability of Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life. Let us challenge this caveat by citing a single example. Certain bacteria and

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plants exist that absorb and break down toxic pollutants in a process that biologists call “bio- and phyto-remediation.”19 This is a natural therapeutic process in the narrower curative sense. There should be no question concerning the descriptive nature of the term therapeutics, which through Tymieniecka’s standpoint includes in its sense valuational and measuring processes that are primogenital to the moral agencies emerging at the human station of life. Thus, it can be claimed that “therapeutics” is descriptive of “nature,” and is not an anthropocentric intrusion. What is gained in Tymieniecka’s approach is an investigation of the meaning-bestowing functions throughout life as constituted within the sensebestowing functions of human life, which genetically emerge as a contextualized progressive phase within the whole of life. Human consciousness emerges as that system of life organization that alone is capable of apprehending (in a manner of accumulation and degree) the meaning processes and structures of the other system-levels of life. And thus, human sense-bestowal alone is capable of apprehending what constitutes therapeutic landscapes for the whole of life. In this way Tymieniecka recognizes the unique situation of the Human Condition, which parallels that of the transcendental function of classical phenomenology. The difference, though, is the contextualized genesis of meanings that are a function of life, even though the human condition is uniquely “privy” to the entire constructive progression of ontopoiesis. The second important departure from classical phenomenology concerns the uncovering of two non-objectifying functions of meaning-bestowal emergent at the human station of life. The objectifying function of intentional consciousness, the founding act of all acts in Husserlian phenomenology, is called the Intelligible or Objective Sense in Tymieniecka’s system. Besides the Objective Sense, she uncovers two non-objectifying senses, which she labels the Aesthetic Sense and the Moral Sense. All three sense-bestowing functions emerge at the human level through the transformational function of the Imaginatio Creatrix. The Imaginatio Creatrix forges the pre-conscious stirrings, motions, or forces within the organism, which belong to the vital significant inwardly/outwardly function of the organism, into passions. The passions crystallize into the three senses. In the grounding of the notion of therapeutic landscapes, it is necessary to acknowledge that landscape is itself a process that promotes, maintains, and develops the healthy functioning of all three processes of sense-bestowal. In other words, a landscape must be able to support the existential needs of human life.

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The Phenomenology of Life traces the genesis of meaning as it emerges from pre-life through the teleonomic levels in the progressively complex system that culminates with the emergence of the sense-bestowing functions at the human station. The genetic examination of the meanings emergent at the human station show the perdurance of prior meaningful organizations that are open to constructive re-organizations, which results in the emergence of the three human sense-bestowing functions. The structurings and processes of life at the human station are prepared by virtualities in earlier phases that become newly patterned in emergent forms of human significance. From the standpoints of the Intelligible Sense, Aesthetic Sense, and Moral Sense, the constitutive features in the notion of therapeutic landscapes can be articulated. It is only through these three emergent constitutive functions of consciousness that the objectivating, social/moral, and cultural patternings of life emerge at the system-level called the Human Condition. A therapeutic landscape is an environmental nexus comprising contexts of “places for” meaningfully related elements, which supports the progressive integration, progress, and expansion of these three emergent human components of sensebestowal without partitioning them from their primogenital supports. A therapeutic landscape is not merely a condition in service to human sense–bestowal; rather human sense-bestowal participates in the genesis-ofsignificance-in-life and must play its integrated role within the entire system of life. However, the human sense–bestowing functions constitute the significance of therapeutic landscapes for itself and all of life’s phases, and at the same time are cultivated within the placial nexus of such landscapes. The third important departure concerns the creative sense-bestowing function. Creativity emerges at the human station and it depends on the constitutive system of classical phenomenology for meanings from which it turns in revolt.20 Another function of the Imaginatio Creatrix is to dig into the darkest regions of the soul (pre-intentionalities) in order to disassemble the meanings of the constitutive system so that novel sense-bestowing processes can result in creative productions. Within these dimmest regions of the soul in terms of consciousness, the organic/vital organizational phases are creatively transformed into new human patternings of significance. This function accounts for cultural developments and progressions of human societies, and is especially apparent in the creative work of scientists, artists, and philosophers. The very conception of therapeutic landscapes is the product of the creativity that emerges at the human station of life. Thus, the role of the human station of life is addressed in the investigation of the emergent

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creative function. Unless human freedom recognizes the need for the quality of life as a function of landscape through its creative activity contextualized within life, the human station will only fortuitously at best advance therapeutic qualities within the landscapes. These three departures from classic phenomenology (life as inherently meaningful; non-objectifying senses at the human level; the creative function transcending the intentional system) will organize the parameters of my propaedeutic. From the first departure we can establish the system of meaningful phases of life, which will allow us to draw out implications for therapeutic landscapes. From the second and third departures, it is possible to recognize the organizational patterns that emerge at the human station of life so that a therapeutic role can be established, and it is possible to establish the agency of human praxis in the creation of therapeutic landscapes. M E A N I N G F U L P H A S E S I N T H E E VO L U T I O N O F L I F E

In establishing her philosophical point of departure, Tymieniecka claims to be carrying out a cosmological inquiry, which she differentiates from the ontological and metaphysical. Ontology generally is restricted to the structures of the appearances of being and metaphysics is speculation about the ultimate source of those appearances. According to Tymieniecka, cosmological inquiry restricts itself to the circumscribed universe alone, but seeks to uncover the processes by which the existing universe unfolds. The sciences, which seek to acquire knowledge of the inner workings of “nature,” inform the Phenomenology of Life through their advancing discoveries and new directions. The Phenomenology of Life corroborates and complements the scientific paradigm of open dynamic systems. However the two paradigms differ in emphasis. The dynamic systems paradigm addresses the observed processes and relatively stable structures through the language of systems and causalities. The Phenomenology of Life addresses these same phenomena from the standpoint of meanings, emergent sense-bestowing principles within the dynamic processes. The starting point of cosmological inquiry is the significance of the real individual being, because it exhibits the self-organizing role of distributing forces into its own patternings of meanings in co-operation or co-existence with other types of beings and the circumambient milieu. Scientific evidence provides insight into the fundamental character of the dynamic system-levels of real individuals (living entities) within the world context. The determination of the intrinsic patternings of the real individual necessarily implies

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the context of the world, for the differentiation of the individual depends upon its relation to other beings and its place within the world-context for its perdurance. It is appropriate then to recognize the levels that differentiate real individual beings in the congenital context of the world. “If we aim at the discovery of the nature, final aim, and reasons of the individual, we necessarily inquire as to his place within this world context. … This ingrownness reveals a microcosm that discloses not only its own system of operations but also points beyond to the system of the whole.”21 The perduring individual maintains itself as an inwardly/outwardlyoriented functional system. The living being emerges “at the crossroads of two opposite tendencies.”22 The individual exhibits the processes of valuation and measure (meaning-bestowing principles), which regulate the openness toward the taking in and expelling of external forces and materials. The individual exists as a self-governing agency. The individual distinguishes himself as the only self-sustaining factor within the flux of change. He sustains himself in a specific fashion as an autonomous, self-centered and self-contained individual. However, the way of his perdurance is by no means static. On the contrary, the real being exists caught in development, becoming, and progress.23

The evolutionary process of life proceeds through self-individualizing processes, which result in relatively stable stations where meaningful patternings of life are established. But the stable stations in turn must allow for (open) enough chaotic disturbances such that the dynamism of progressive development can occur. It would be a mistake to view self-organizing entities developing against a horizon of chaos. The world context is not something other than the existing network of developmental relations. So, the whole itself is a dynamic system that continues to change. This is not an undebated point, but many believe that evolution proceeds through a progressive diversity of complex taxonomies. These points must be kept in mind so as to guard against an individualism, holism, or substantive ontology that is not meant here. The Phenomenology of Life does not advocate individualism, because the meaning-function of life is the process of self-individualization, not individuals as static substantive things. And it does not advocate holism, because processes of becoming are not mistakenly reified into some sort of super-organism. Individuating forces of self-organizing systems do not create monads; rather the progressive developing self-organizing systems are implicated in a nexus of the developmental whole. A perduring individual is immediately interrelated within a concrete, relational and dynamic spatiality

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of the world-context, a circumambient landscape, which forms another kind of relatively stable organizing pattern that is no less real than those forming the individual biotic organism. The difference is the fact that the relational circumambient system includes the non-living forces and entities in its perduring organizing context. But the constructive aspect of the overall system of life, its evolution, depends on ever-developing complexities of selfindividuating living entities. This general cosmological description already allows us to draw some fundamental inferences concerning therapeutic landscapes. Life proceeds through a constructive progression of self-individuating entities within a world-context or network of relatively supportive relations. The first principle here is that life emerges out of pre-life forces that continue to remain in existence. One reason why “nature” appears indifferent or even hostile to life is the fundamental fact that pre-life forces are not “tamed” by life; they remain what they are and they fortuitously have allowed for life on earth, nothing more. Life may be benefited or may be destroyed by pre-life forces, but the self-individuating forces of life are progressively constructed valuationally in order to sustain life’s vitality. In order to sustain life, a landscape must exhibit the capacity to promote conditions for individuals to maintain their relatively stable systems as well as to provide dynamic, constructive “disturbances” in those systems, which serves to support progressive development. These life-serving processes occur in terms of providing a placial-environmental nexus. This means that for a landscape to be constituted as therapeutic, it must at minimum provide a suitable environment for the individuals’ perdurances through their progressive developments. Pre-life forces constituting the physicality of the landscape must maintain a relative stability to support certain lifeforms. Major disruptions in those forces lead to changes in the life-supporting qualities of the landscape. Since life is inherently and progressively valuating and measuring, as evolution proceeds through the emergence of more complex individuating forms, it is a descriptive fact that a therapeutic landscape necessarily supports these biotic processes. A therapeutic landscape must accommodate the varying natures of individuals’ selective processes. But, on the other hand, individuals must contribute to the well being of the whole; individuals are sustained in a network of relations, which they can ruin through destructive activities. A therapeutic landscape is not one that “encourages” the maleficence or destructive diminution of self-organizing systems. At levels of life other than human, destruction is usually collective. Again, this is a

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descriptive claim and entails no moral prescription. For example, overgrazing can destroy a habitat. On the other hand, an overabundant food supply can lead to overpopulation and to later harsh consequences. When an individual or collective exhibits negating tendencies towards destructuring supportive networks, the therapeutic landscape can no longer function as such and an alternative form of landscape organization that helps to cure regressive destructurization would constitute a therapeutic landscape. A therapeutic landscape must not be seen as something other than that which makes it up; it is not a container. It is a function of the contextualization of individualizing processes of life, which is the dynamics (becoming) of an open interrelational matrix. These claims do not as yet carry any moral significance in terms of implying direct human praxis. What we gain here is that therapeutics can only be understood in terms of the entities that concretely exist, that is, a therapeutic landscape is for them, but it is not wholly of them as pre-life conditions indifferent to life necessarily remain constituents of the landscape. By recognizing the self-individuating progress of life, the term therapeutic landscape acquires a descriptive basis. A landscape (which is made-up of biotic and abiotic entities) supportive of the progress of self-individuating processes is to be called a therapeutic landscape. Obviously, though, the particulars of the question remain – what entity or entities, one, some, or all? THE FIVE PHASES OF LIFE AND THE UNFOLDING OF E VO L U T I O NA RY M E A N I N G S

Life’s meanings emerge in autochtonous phases of organization, which can be delineated according to respective functions of measure and valuation. There are five phases in the life-individualizing progress of the real individual: “(1) the ‘pre-life’ virtualities coming together in the lifeindividualizing process; (2) the entelechial-oriented organic/vital phases; (3) the vital/sentient phase; (4) the sentient/psychic phase; and (5) the psychic/conscious phase.”24 This dynamic constructive progress unfolds by establishing relatively stable patterning complexities or inwardly/outwardly functional systems. The individual is the engine of its own articulation through which it progressively differentiates itself from the circumambient conditions that sustain it. The individual maintains an open dynamic boundary due to its inwardly/outwardly functionings and establishes the meaning of its interior spacings, physiological/psychological, and also the meaning of its exterior spacings, the circumambient conditions or milieu, in terms of its own needs-relevancies (valuating and measuring). In pre-life the

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coordination of needs (for material stability) and means is merely haphazard, for there is no valuational function present. It is possible to see the prototype of valuation and measure in the concept of fitness, which appropriately describes the process of coordinating forces at this systems-level. The indifference to life of such forces, under certain cosmological conditions, (the earth’s relation to the sun and other celestials) may be fit to support certain forms of life. Obviously, life’s individuating morphologies would have been different given a modification in gravitational force. Valuation and measure begin at the organic/vital phase through the process of solicitation response. The emerging complex of living individualizing elements under the teleonomic principle intrinsic to it seeks and solicits elements for its progressive satisfaction toward further progress. In the vital/sentient phase valuation and measure produce a patterning based on the principle of acquiescence and rejection, which transcends automatic and mechanical satisfaction of needs. Sentient discrimination qualifies the elements in the circumambient world as those that are congenial to the individual’s needs. Sentient/psychic functionality emerges through the valuating and measuring principle of recognition/estimation/appreciation, which leads to responsive acceptance or qualified refusal. A self-individualizing entity that organizes itself at the vital/sentient phase of acquiesence and rejection still depends upon functions at the organic/vital level of its organism. The selection processes that constitute the development and symbiotic workings of the animal’s physiology/morphology are still operable, even though a more complex organization at the sentient level emerges that “influences” those “earlier” organizational processes. At the human station the previous organizations are still operable in its being, even though human consciousness valuates and measures its meanings through recognition/estimation/appreciation (Objective, Moral, and Aesthetic Senses). What is to be drawn from these observations is that a more complex phase of life is not free from the earlier phases upon which it depends. The phases of life are interlinked. It is possible to illuminate the inadequacy of certain limited conceptions of therapeutic landscapes that do not meet requirements based on this interlinking. Since Tymieniecka does not advocate a substantivebased taxonomy of types, a particular set of “facts” emerges from the system of life. Meanings are a function of life in its progressive construction according to emerging principles of organization. If there are destructive events that affect a certain phase of the system, they will affect other phases of organization as well. If a human being is under great stress at the more complex level of conscious organization, this will affect the organic/vital

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relatively stable organization, e.g. a heart attack. Or, if the organic/vital phase is being destroyed by disease, the vital/sentient phases can be affected, e.g. the blind diabetic. So, we cannot call a landscape therapeutic if it makes human beings quite happy on the level of consciousness, but contributes to the destruction of vital functionings. And, a perfect environment in terms of physical comforts does not make a landscape therapeutic, if it is devoid of psychological interests. The notion cannot be reduced to a purely psychological concept. In other words just because a landscape “feels” therapeutic psychologically does not mean that it is. The Nazis made their death chambers appear psychologically therapeutic in that they disguised them as pleasant bathing houses. And for human therapeutics, a landscape must support all three emergent senses. Even if a landscape does provide for a truly aesthetic expansion of life, if aesthesis is promoted at the expense of the moral, such a landscape cannot be constituted as therapeutic. If a healthy moral fabric pervades a landscape, but out of the paucity of materials or opportunities, it does not allow for an aesthetic expansion of the self in enjoyable self-experience and outwardly projected creative expression, then the landscape would lack a therapeutic component. Thus the phases of the self-individualizing progress provide criteria that determine whether or not a landscape is therapeutic and why it is or is not therapeutic. Let us in a simplistic fashion take the example of a coalmine. It is unlikely that any one will say that a coalmine can be constituted as a therapeutic landscape. By why does it not qualify as a therapeutic landscape or at least a component place in the placial-nexus of a therapeutic landscape? Let us say that workers are able to unfold their skills in productive work and the work provides them with a way to make a living, that is, a way to meet the economic demands of life. Through the form of life that is organized around the placial nexus there exist situations for socal interaction and meaningful social relationships of teamwork, shared identities, and friendships. These characteristics do not disqualify the coalmine as a therapeutic landscape. The main disqualifier occurs at the organic/vital phase of self-individualizing systems. The workers’ lungs, which solicit oxygen from the air necessary for the vital significance of survival, cannot avoid the inspiring of coal dust. Eventually the dust destroys the lungs’ organic capacity to function properly. Any landscape that exhibits a misrelation between the proper organic/vital functionings of individuals and the specific conditions within that landscape would be disqualified as a therapeutic landscape. But further consequences must be drawn from the fact that meaning is a function of life’s ontopoiesis and not a function of entities. Let us say that

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certain destruction of aquatic life is the result of human practices, e.g. the mutational destructive effects of chemical productions on frogs. Upon a substantive ontology and phenomenal taxonomies, we might be able to say that the landscape is therapeutic for humans, but not so for frogs. We still want to make distinctions such as this, but from the framework of the ontopoiesis of life, this factual “surface” partitioning is inadequate and the phenomena must be further explicated according to the inner workings of life’s ontopoiesis. Destruction of life is occurring at a phase in life’s organization that will have effects on other phases of its life’s organization. It is only from a shallow phenomenal epistemological basis that this consequence is not recognized. So, the interlocking system of life’s ontopoiesis calls into question the notion that a landscape can be therapeutic when one organizational phase of life benefits at the expense of another, even across species of self-individualizing entities. In Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life, human beings are not privileged through an anthropocentric standpoint. All individualizing processess resulting in beingness – the relatively stable equilibriums of real individuals – are significant within the dynamics of the whole system of life. A pond in which deformed and sickly frogs attempt to survive cannot be considered a therapeutic landscape, regardless of its picturesque quality from the walkway upon which human beings pass by. Dysfunctionings affect the progressive dynamics and sickly frogs mark a disturbance in the progression. S PAC I N G S

Spacing, which is the entelechial (measured and valuated) shaping of material extension, the development of the inwardly/outwardly functional system according to the emergence of inherent self-individualizing teleonomic principles, is the arche-first device of life. This constructivism, which is the dynamic essence of life, progresses as the self-positing-within-a-network, which includes biotic and abiotic beings and natural forces. “It belongs, in fact, to the essence of life for it to promote itself through individual, singular spacing as well as through projecting the network of the community of everything-there-is-alive within a simultaneously varying and relatively wellgrounded system of spatial interrelations that acquire different modalities of significance.”25 In the primogenital beginnings of life there is immediately a springing forth in a morphological expansion, transformation, and differentiation – a process of space projection for the sustenance, maintenance, and growth of self-organization. In this spacing of organic significance in open

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dynamics, there occurs selection – repelling and absorbing, and also releasement/expulsion. In the existential unfolding there is a symbiotic relation or an “orbital spacing” whereby the individualizing process is supported by a qualitative relation with its environs. The individualizing system forges a dominion through both adaptation and appropriation, giveand-take. Plant-life is determined by organic functioning and must make its living by adapting to the circumambient conditions of its environment. Mobile animals scope out their territory for the purpose of satisfying their vital needs and establishing their lairs. However, in the constructing of their morphologies, self-individualizing entities are already spacing themselves among other entities. They project their self-organizing needs into the common orbit of life, which involves sharing-in-space. Individualizing life expands through external spacings, interactions that form the conundrums of worlds. We say “worlds” in the plural because each species of life experiences existence in different ways, which has been well established by ethologists such as Jakob von Uexkull.26 Thus, a landscape consists of worlds, which are functions of the various life cycles of biotic taxonomically distinguishable entities. These “comparative” worlds intersect in a biosphere, a sharing-in-space. Individualizing requires the making of spacings into a dominion; a placial nexus serves vital interests. Spacings are endowed with various meanings that mark the differentiations of places. The foremost place in the spacings of selfindividualizing involves concretizing the functional significance of nesting. The nest-home is “spaced,” situated within a specific circumference. Nature’s nest emerges as “home” at the human station primarily through the Aesthetic Sense. Many geographers of various “schools” have recognized “home” as the most important place in terms of personal significance. Home is “the central reference point of human existence.”27 And as animals mark off various spacings within the circumambient world as other aspects of their spacings – feeding grounds, courting grounds – so do human beings. Williams remarks that humanist geographer, Anne Buttimer (1980) “implies that a particular balance between ‘home’ and the surrounding geography, or ‘horizons of reach’ is necessary for the maintenance of self-identity and emotional well-being.”28 Human spacings involve desires, intentions, passions, projected outward in a measuring and valuating, which is an apportioning that results in the placial nexus called landscape. Carried by the vital sense the function of enjoyment is restricted to meaning for life-survival. The contents of experience are tonalized, which means that consciousness vacillates between the extremes of enthusiasm and

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indifference. Enjoyment makes the self feel alive through the qualitative spreading out of its vital significance. But the vital sense is restricted to the here and now of life’s needs. Loaded with expectations in life’s open horizons, the processes of aesthesis are enjoined to the imagination from which the constitutive and inventive functions emerge. A new level in the significance of life emerges through the fully human consciousness, which expands its own beingness beyond its inwardly/outwardly boundary through the Aesthetic Sense. THE AESTHETIC SENSE

These spatial apportionings at the human station are fundamentally related to the Aesthetic Sense, which is a non-objectifying expansion and consumption of the self.29 In the emergence of the Aesthetic Sense, enjoyment is not to be considered an experiential state, but rather a function. In its relation to the intentionality of the Objective Sense, aesthesis is the immediate spontaneous enjoyment by consciousness of its own acts. The living in its acts, the subjective pole of consciousness, is not possibly an object within mundane experience, but rather the spontaneous self-awareness that accompanies the constituting activity. Aesthesis contains the emergent significance of consciousness experiencing its own acts, which promotes significant selfexpansion, through spontaneous self-enjoyment. However, the experiential pulp of consciousness that manifests through its embodiment is not first that of a rational, intentional ordering of the Intelligible/Objective Sense. The full self does not initiate the emergence of the embodied acts, yet it feels itself alive in the life of those acts. The self is carried along upon this living power upon which it feels itself alive. The function of enjoying is to carry states of consciousness, including the immediacy of embodied awarenesses, within a self-reposement. Enjoyment is self-absorption, unlike the intentional direction for consciousness to direct itself outside of itself toward the world. Experience immediately becomes conscious experience (a necessary a priori for human conscious experience – eo ipso, mine) in virtue of enjoyment, which is the non-reflective consciousness of being conscious in all human acts. The ego that accompanies all now phases of its temporality dwells in enjoyment of itself and immediately unites its acts as a stream through self-absorption: it feels itself in its living temporality. Since the enjoyment function is self-consuming, the temporal structure of existence is immediately “my life.” This immediate enjoyment of the self of its own acts should be construed neither as pleasure nor as some form of narcissism.

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Instead of treating the phenomenon as an accompanying consciousness of being conscious (a marginal modality in Gurwitsch’s phenomenological field psychology), which is a limited intellectualist perspective, Tymieniecka links self-enjoyment to the entire functioning organism. It is linked to the vital survival processes of the organism, a preservational valuating by which a sentient entity immediately reacts to danger. The self-individualizing involves “exterior” spacings, the outwardly experiential “tentacles” that spread out into the life-world. However, spacings are reabsorbed “inwardly” through self-enjoyment. Thus, through the Aesthetic Sense, we learn that landscapes are not then mere containers of our actions, but rather a meaningful field of our own expansion. Landscapes are not wholly our own existential productions, and we are not free of their demands and moldings. There occurs an overlapping and lamination in which our identities are inextricably “landed.” The temporalization through selfenjoyment manifests a history of spatial experience that is no less of a selfexpansion than the temporal spreading of the “interior” stream.

P L AC E - I D E N T I T Y

The relationship of therapeutic landscapes to the self-individualizing process of outwardly expansion into a nexus of meaningful places involves the Aesthetic Sense at the human station. At all phases self-individualizing entities and places form a symbiotic relation. Both landscape processes as a relational nexus of circumambient conditions and the individuals as selforganizing systems must exhibit sufficient plasticity for developmental change and growth. But at the human station, personal identity dynamically expands. Geographer Allison Williams states that if the fit (symbiotic relation) is good, then the identity of the individual seems to flower as a selfexpanding process inscribed in landscape dynamics.30 Williams’ doctrine of place-identity is situated quite well in Tymieniecka’s investigation of “spacings” of the Aesthetic Sense within ontopoiesis. In particular, “external” spacings, the spreading out of the self-individuating human being into the circumambient milieu, which results in the making of a placial nexus, immediately involves a particularly important modality of the aesthetic function of self-consumption. Through the Aesthetic Sense, the placial nexus is fundamentally and intimately related to the self-identity, because an ineluctable interfusion of life’s spacings saturates the material givenness of the earth. Self-expansion and self-absorption/consumption imply one another, and thus so do self-identity and place-identity.

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Tymieniecka’s doctrine of the Aesthetic Sense grounds the discussions by geographers concerning place-identity. Classical phenomenology treats selfawareness as a marginal function of the objectifying sense, even if its concomitance is a necessary a priori of experience. But then, place-identity could only be explained on the basis of thematic acts of the objectifying sense only. In other words, we would only develop a place-identity to the extent that we turn our reflective attention to such. But this runs counter to evidence. On the other hand, Williams notes, “The characterization of place identity as an unselfconscious state by … theorists creates some problems; the perspective implies that place identity cannot be described or communicated.”31 But, the dilemma is solved through the non-objectifying Aesthetic Sense. Spacing, as a fundamental process of ontopoiesis, the constructive significance of life, accompanies objectifying consciousness in its relation to the environs. Thus, identity as place-identity accompanies the making of a placial nexus, environmental meaning. The identity making of human beings through home, garden, homeland, etc. can be described and communicated, as well as explicated through the Phenomenology of Life. T H E PA S S I O N F O R P L AC E

The elemental passion for place must be recognized to have a central role in human life, due to its obviously close connection to the fundamental inwardly/outwardly individualizing principle of life – spacing. The function of the Imaginatio Creatrix at the human station of life is to forge human meanings through the transformations of vital forces into human passions. Due to the fundamental processes of spacings, the passion for place is of fundamental importance. This passion accounts for the desire for existential place-meanings. The Imaginatio Creatrix also establishes the inventive function of human creativity. At the level of transformation that is informed by imaginative sense-giving, our animal nature – the animal psyche, the natural soul – is partly illuminated by the intelligible factor, and thereby … acquires the specifically human emotional coloring. … In the response of the human being the elemental passions are released raising the tonality of his experience above that of a strictly natural being.32

Through Tymieniecka’s exploration of the esoteric passion for place, the importance of the geopoetique investigations of geographer Bertrand Levy is illuminated. Human creativity emerges in revolt to the already constituted system of meanings. The passion for place becomes “esoteric” as the already constituted meanings fail to satisfy the passion for place. By

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digging deep into the subliminal regions of the human soul the creative function dissembles and re-organizes the constitutive system of meanings in order to create a novel meaning of place. The Aesthetic Sense crystallizes into the poetic sentiment, which calls us away from the routine vital operations to the inward spectacle where self-enjoyment experience meets the beautiful and the sublime, which then opens the self out to the infinitity of possible worlds. Aesthesis seeks to creatively expand and with the help of the Objective Sense, aesthesis objectivates those subjective activities, which provide and enhance the meaning of life through aesthetic production. Thus, Levy’s study of the meaning of place in literature, which by the way has been the subject of extensive studies by Tymieniecka and her followers, becomes an integral part of the investigation of place, and not merely a marginal interest for geography. The ability of human beings to imagine possible place-identities and placial-meanings formulates the human being’s utopian (in the Mannheimian sense) relations to place and subsequently brings about changes in real conditions. No geography is complete without studying the esoteric passion for place. Thus, imagination cannot be left out of the meaning of therapeutic landscapes – this intuition is obvious in such thinkers as Gaston Bachelard. THE MORAL SENSE

The Moral Sense is a non-objectifying sense-bestowing function that emerges at the organizational level of the human station. Life’s progress along the five organizational phases of life also involves more complex existential interactions. The need/satisfaction dynamics that occurs in the selforganization of the inwardly/outwardly functional system crystallizes into the gregariousness of the higher animals. This is the expansion into a sharing in the preservation and propagation with other individuals. The coordinating principle of “sharing” is the vital sense. Animals band together and develop signals between one another in order to promote vital interests. At the human level, the Moral Sense introduces trans-actions with others. Moral experience requires a measure and valuation between two opposing propensities or attitudes towards one’s own self-interests and the interests of the Other. The passions, which are directed by the two attitudes and which move in opposite directions, are subjected to a valuational scrutiny that devises reconciliation through measure. The deliberating process must transcend the tension between competing desires, emotions, and feelings by achieving the quality of equipoise.

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The valuational aspect involves a constant process of interrogation, which is a non-objectifying sense-bestowing function. The Moral Sense is not some innate mechanism, but a virtual sense-giver that can expand or diminish. As an inwardly/outwardly functional system, self-interpretation through the Moral Sense outwardly manifests in the intersubjective actions that produce the dynamics of the social world. Inwardly, the subject who performs moral valuations through decision-making and actions potentially fulfills individualizing authenticity. “In moral experience we valuate acts, feelings, emotions, actions, attitudes toward other[s] …, seeking to endow them with a specific moral quality.”33 This brief, very incomplete description of the Moral Sense still allows us to sketch the propaedeutic or framework concerning therapeutic landscapes. The Moral Sense is a function of the evolution of life at the level of the human station. The freedom inherent to human life is a function of life’s constructive process, which proceeds by complexities that continue to sustain the continuance of life. The Moral Sense is an emergent product of life, of “nature.” Human freedom allows for greater self-expansion, which can only continue to serve life if indeed self-expansion is checked by the Moral Sense that emerges at the level of the human station. We may ask a metaphysical–sounding question: why would life risk the progressive construction of freedom, a freedom that can choose between serving the interests of life or turning against it? This freedom is not the mere “indifference” of pre-life forces. The emergence of human freedom creates a level of life that can serve both its own beingness and the beingness of Others, and that can destroy both as well. “Life” has made a leap of faith in the emergence of significance at the human station. The “hope” is that human beings will employ the Moral Sense to serve life. The Moral Sense engenders greater responsibility in exchange for human freedom; it is the measuring and valuating device for the equipoise that can continue to sustain life and to contribute to the enrichment of its health and well being (the perduring individuals, taxonomies, and supportive milieu). The Moral Sense, through the benevolent sentiment, involves taking into account the self-interests and other-interests of Others. There is no other systems-level of life that can enact moral trans-actions. The taking into account of Others is then the human responsibility to life itself. The quality of that responsibility has much to do with whether or not a landscape is therapeutic, neglected, hostile, etc. The idea of letting nature take its course, for example, is a decision concerning moral trans-action; humanity cannot escape its responsibility as therapeutic agency.

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G A RY BAC K H AU S T H E C R E AT I V E F U N C T I O N : T R A N S C E N D I N G T H E C O N S T I T U T I V E SYSTEM OF THE INTELLIGIBLE SENSE

What this study has gained so far from Tymieniecka’s approach is an investigation of the meaning of the sense-bestowing functions of human life through their relation and contextualization as an emergent form in the whole of life. Human consciousness emerges as that system of life organization that alone is capable of apprehending the meaning processes and structures of the other system-levels of life. And thus, human sense-bestowal alone is capable of apprehending what constitutes therapeutic landscapes for each of life’s systems. The freedom emerging at the human station brings about “ultimate” possibilities to enhance or to destroy life. With that freedom, then, responsibility emerges through the Moral Sense. The human evolutionary station involves the newly emergent patternings of the participant-observer. The genesis of the participant-observer system in the evolution of life means that the nature of this emergent patterning still sustains elements from previous organizations in its own organization. So, its own self-organizing system participates in the earlier systems of life, which is the ground for its observational/participatory function as consciousness. Contained within its own being is the entirety of life’s progressive system dynamics. What follows from this dynamic progressive construction of life is that the human station is vitally linked to the stratified meaning-complex as each system-level of life will require that its own parameters must be met in the very self-individuating processes of the human organism. Because human being entails the systems levels of other beings within it, we are not hampered by the fact that we do not know what it is like to be say, a bat (bat consciousness). We are vitally linked within the same systems and can learn the self-individualizing particularities of the bat and its spacings such that we can apprehend what a therapeutic landscape would be for that species. Ethology attempts to reconstruct its life-world objectively such that we can make informed moral decisions. This is one sense of participation/observation. The systems of constituted meanings of the everyday world and the sedimented knowledge of theoretical inquiry appear to consist of static ideal meanings, but we must remember that life itself is an open dynamic system differentiated by phases of relatively stable organizations. The sedimentation of constituted meanings into a system serves to supply habituations that both dim the progress of human life and free the human mind for new thoughts that can advance life through creative productions. The constitutive apprehension of meanings and the creative invention of meanings are the two interdependent systems emerging at the human station. The creative function

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bypasses the constitutive system by dipping down into the vital forces at the darkest regions of the human soul, which disassembles the constitutive system in order to re-fashion, creating new schemas and subsequent productions. It is only by penetrating the “natural” forces and circuits (vital phase of human life) that creativity can function. The results of creative thinking are new ways to apprehend reality, but a reality in which we participate, and thus by apprehending reality in a new way we are participating in a new reality. “The main requirement of the new science is that the subject be seen as belonging to the same ontological region as the world and as interacting with it.”34 Evolutionary progress has allowed the participant/observer the freedom to change reality through the creative reorganization of our participant/observer function. Contextualized in the dynamics of life, the unique feature is not merely that human beings can “know” reality, but in knowing it, they participate in it and change reality. All phases of life are affected through the modalities of human participatory/observation. The newly emergent patterns of creative production can become subsumed within the constitutive system, which accounts for the dynamics in human cultures. Once in the constitutive system of meanings, the object pole of observation appears as objectively real. In the “constitutive attitude” we slip from recognizing the creative participatory function in the dynamics of reality that has been granted to the human station. But all of reality is affected in our mere knowings, for knowing is a modification of reality – it is a participation in the forging of reality. C O N C L U S O RY R E M A R K S

Let us draw our conclusions. Human beings have the cognitive abilities to recognize (through great effort and care) the quality of life throughout life’s systems. The manner and content of that cognition is already a participatory modification of reality. Humans affect the quality of life and thus cannot escape the ultimate fact that life has given them a unique role in its advancement. The moral responsibility of humanity is the entire system of life’s progression. Tymieniecka states it well: The specificity of the uniquely human role consists of three points: (1) the human person is selfconscious of the universal life-conditions and capable of appreciating, inventing and planning the routes of life; (2) in virtue of the moral sense, the human person is capable of making judgments of decisions for conduct and action; (3) the human person manifests benevolence and moral responsibility for the well-being of all living beings. … In the perspective of the human condition the human person emerges in its highest significance as being THE CUSTODIAN OF THE EXISTENTIAL BALANCE OF EVERYTHING-THERE-IS-ALIVE.35

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It must then be recognized that the study of therapeutic landscapes is a most important aspect of humankind’s highest calling. Morgan State University N OT E S 1 Tymieniecka develops her Phenomenology of Life throughout her many edited volumes of the Analecta Husserliana series in her introductions and essays, and in Phenomenological Inquiry, which is published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, of which she is founder and president. 2 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., “The Moral Sense and the Human Person within the Fabric of Communal Life,” in The Moral Sense in the Communal Significance of Life: Analecta Husserliana XX (London: Kluwer Academic Press, 1986), pp. 3–100. 3 See two volumes devoted to the study of place: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., “De Patria Mea: The Passion for Place as the Thread Leading Out of the Labyrinth of Life,” in The Elemental Passion for Place in the Ontopoiesis of Life: Analecta Husserliana XLIV (London: Kluwer Academic Press, 1995), pp. 3–20; Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., “The Esoteric Passion for Place,” in Passion for Place: Between the Vital Spacing and the Creative Horizons of Fulfilment: Analecta Husserliana LI (London: Kluwer Academic Press, 1997), pp. 3–10. 4 Bertrand Lévy, “L’empreint et le déchiffrement–géopoétique et géographie humaniste,” in Cahiers de Géopoétique (1991), pp. 27–35. Also see, Bertrand Lévy, Hermann Hesse, Une Géographie Existentielle. (Paris: Editions José Corti, 1992). 5 Tymieniecka’s system corroborates the open dynamic systems and self-organizing systems theories of the new scientific paradigm. See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Ontopoiesis of Life as a New Philosophical Paradigm,” in Phenomenological Inquiry 22 (October 1998), pp. 5–59. 6 See, Wilbert M. Gessler, The Cultural Geography of Health Care (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991). See Wilbert Gessler, “Therapeutic Landscapes: Medical Issues in Light of the New Cultural Geography,” in Social Sciences and Medicine 34 (1992), pp. 735–46. See Wilbert Gessler, “Therapeutic Landscapes: Theory and Case Study of Epidaurus, Greece,” in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11 (1993), pp. 171–89. Also see, Robin A. Kearns and Wilbert M. Gessler, eds., Putting Health into Place: Landscape, Identity and WellBeing (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998). 7 Gessler, “Medical Issues,” p. 743. 8 Gessler, “Epidauros, Greece,” p. 171. 9 Gessler and Kearns, p. 17. 10 Allison Williams, ed. “Place Identity and Therapeutic Landscapes: The Case of Home Care Workers in a Medically Underserviced Area,” in Therapeutic Landscapes: The Dynamic Between Place and Wellness (New York: University Press of America, 1999), p. 71. 11 Kearns and Gessler, p. 5. 12 Christopher Spencer and Mark Blades, “Pattern and Process: A Review Essay on the Relationship Between Behavioral Geography and Environmental Psychology,” in Progress in Human Geography 10, (1986), p. 233. 13 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Ontopoietic Design of Life and Medicine’s Search for the Norm,” in Life: The Human Being Between Life and Death: Analecta Husserliana LXIV,

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eds. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Z. Zalewski (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. 13–36. 14 For discussion of the normative function of naming, see L. D. Berg and R. A. Kearns, “Naming as Norming? ‘Race,’ Gender and the Identity Politics of Naming Places in Aotearoa/New Zealand,” in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14: 1, pp. 99–122. 15 Anne Buttimer, Values in Geography, Commission on College Geography Research Report no. 24. (Washington, D.C.: Commission on College Geography, 1974). E. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London: Pion, 1976). Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1974). 16 L. Cuba and D. Hummon, “A Place to Call Home: Identification with Dwelling, Community, and Region,” in Sociological Quarterly 34 (1993), p. 112. 17 Robin A. Kearns, “Narrative and Metaphor in Health Geographies,” in Progress in Human Geography 21:2 (1997), p. 269. 18 Denis Cosgrove, “A Terrain of Metaphor: Cultural Geography,” in Progress in Human Geography 13:4 (1989), p. 568. 19 “Biologists have been working for more than a decade with plants and bacteria that absorb and break down toxic pollutants.” Bio-tech Brief, Sierra (July/August 2001), p. 42. 20 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Ontopoiesis of Culture, Book 3. (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990). 21 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing (Netherlands: Royal VanGorcum Ltd., 1966), p. 14. 22 Tymieniecka, op. cit. p. 30. 23 Tymieniecka, op. cit. p. 42. 24 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana XX, 1986. 25 Tymieniecka, Passion for Place, op. cit. p. x. 26 Ethologists explore the life-worlds of sentient creatures. Ethology is an important empirical science for ontopoiesis and the guiding principle of therapeutic landscapes. See Jakob von Uexküll, Unwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (Berlin, 1921). Von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt is that each species inhabits its own life–world through its sensory equipment and its own organizations of space and time. A very good raising of philosophical questions is found in Michael Bavidge and Ian Ground, Can We Understand Animal Minds? (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1994). 27 Relph, op. cit. p. 20. 28 Williams, op. cit. p. 76. Also see, Anne Buttimer, “Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place,” in The Human Experience of Space and Place, eds. Anne Buttimer and David Seamon (London: Croom Helm, 1980). 29 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., “Aesthetic Enjoyment and Poetic Sense. Poetic Sense: The Irreducible in Literature,” in The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition: Poetic – Epic – Tragic: Analecta Husserliana XVIII (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984). 30 Williams, op. cit. p. 71. 31 Williams, op. cit. p. 76. 32 Tymieniecka, Logos and Life Book 3, op. cit. pp. 71–72. 33 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., “The Theme: The Human Being – Individual and Moral – as the Articulating Factor of the Human Sciences,” in Foundations of Morality, Human Rights, and the Human Sciences: Analecta Husserliana XV (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983), p. 13. 34 Tymieniecka, The New Paradigm, op. cit., p. 29. 35 Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana XX, p. 44.

SECTION IX S O M E C O N T R I BU T I O N S TO T H E S C I E N T I F I C I N T E R P R E TAT I O N O F T H E O R I G I N S O F L I F E

MARGARETE DURST

B I RT H A N D NATA L I T Y I N H A N NA H A R E N D T

1 . B I RT H A S A N “ E V E N T ”

In the reflections of Hannah Arendt the theme of birth enjoys privileged status, above all in respect to the theories of action and politics, which make up a sector central to the thought of this authoress, who wanted to establish her professional competency precisely in that field. The centrality of this theme can be considered by now a given,1 and not only in the feminist studies that focused on it first,2 as they identified there a way of doing philosophy that was not homologated to the canons of the logocentric tradition.3 Given how birth recurs in Arendt’s works, one can, however, speak of it on the same level as a dominant theme, inasmuch as the multiple problems of politics, existence, Judaism, education, etc., that our authoress addresses all reconnect sooner or later to birth. An example is her constant reference to Augustine as the author who most emphasized the specifically innovative character of birth. The continuity of her reference to Augustinian thought, present from her PhD thesis4 to The Life of the Mind,5 is indicative of how the human capacity to be an initium, in the precisely causal and not only temporal sense, represents for this authoress the focus of a constellation of problems inherent in the human condition. And in fact, it is in Active Life: The Human Condition – written in close relationship to the thought of Heidegger, her first “professor,”6 and published in the mid-1950’s7 by when she had finalized her detachment from the forms of currently reigning socialization – that, undertaking a renewed comparison with the question of existence, Arendt fully explicates the topic of natality. While she criticizes the nihilistic and vitalistic notions of life and the corresponding activism of a homo faber capable of calculating but not of thinking, the authoress “intones a hymn to the singularity of the birth of anyone who is able to inaugurate what she does not hesitate to call ‘the miracle of life,’” 8 a miracle that consists in man’s capacity to be an initium (not a principium) that introduces the new into the course of history, that same history in which anyone who is born comes to find himself 9 inserted not by his own choice: “the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. The fact that the man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible

777 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 777–797. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world.”10 The paradoxical shared presence of both necessity and freedom that is seen right away in birth – inasmuch as one is born of others but is not the result of others – is indicative of an innate ambivalence to being as specific human modality of coming into the world. For that matter, birth can be taken as emblematic of the unions, as indissoluble as they are logically unjustifiable, that characterize the human condition, starting with that which constrains us to conjugate into the plural the unique and unrepeatable individuality of each of us since our first entrance into the world. Birth, from this point of view, is the tangible sign of how the relationship of alterity marks the entire length of our life, because the fact of being born causes alterity to emerge both in the form of conditioning and in the form of difference, that is, from the dependence to which our coming into the world is subject, and from the caesura that each new human being introduces into the continuity of others’ history. Thus alterity constitutes an encumbrance to freedom, in the sense that it is foundational for and limited to a time by which an encumbrance can turn out to be a factor of development. This is so much so that each birth exceeds its givenness, since one born precisely because “he is brought into the world” is never the result of a total of addenda. This impression of alterity that marks every human life from birth is a condition of possibility so that such life may unfold not only repetitively but innovatively, also in the specifically creative sense – a possibility that offers itself as much to the one born, appearing as “newcomer,” as it does to the one who sees and recognizes in that newborn a new human being, rediscovering the innovative force of the authentic “beginning.” Each birth, in the limits of its concreteness, can thus represent an experience of natality that draws attention to human life’s non-reducibility to datum, transforming the episode of birth into an “event.” Anchorage to birth as an episode, though in itself accidental and precarious, is however fundamental so that a similar transformation does not translate itself into an alienation from the world, from the earth, which for Arendt is a fundamental condition of human life. The Arendtian rejection of any essentialistic and dualistic conception of reality is very explicit and accompanies a constant call to the worldly sphere, the only one that exists for man, by which birth, on the same level as alterity, does not ever exclude the belonging to the world, the inter-esse that characterizes the individual and plural existence of each of us. Precisely this union, as evident as it is paradoxical, of individuality and plurality joins the multiplicity of men who dwell in the world, inasmuch as it constitutes a form

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of primary belonging tied to the fact that human beings are born and bring into the world other human beings, who they acknowledge as an integral part of themselves. In this situation of inter-esse freedom finds its space of expression, that is, its condition contemporaneously of limitation and of possibility, starting precisely from a birth that sees the newborn, by his own same need for care, exposed to the unforeseeability of a history yet to be written. Inasmuch as it is a tangible sign of a joint between necessity and freedom that gives the possibility of beginning something new, birth constitutes a paradox of existence equal to a “miracle”: a fact – absurd from the logical point of view – that, without being at all transcendental in the metaphysicalontological sense, happens in the normality of life: “because they are initium, newcomers and beginners by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are prompted into action. [Initium] ergo ut esset, creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit … said Augustine … This beginning is not the same as the beginning of the world; it is not the beginning of something but of somebody, who is a beginner himself. With the creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world itself, which, of course, is only another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when man was created but not before.”11 From a similar miracle comes our capacity to be free, in the precisely original and limited sense, and thus the exercise of the will as a chiefly human faculty, without which freedom would be an empty word. The will, according to Arendt, can constitute the key to understanding the potentialities that human life draws from its very contingency, that in fact make it free. Just as in the thought of Augustine and Duns Scotus, who associated together the will and the experience of beatitude in which desire is renewed and finds peace, men can find a point of reconciliation between the conflicting entreaties that animate them. But where the two philosophers tied such reconciliation of the will to the love of God, for our authoress beatitude is achieved in the full acceptance of the human condition – marked by birth, world, action, discourse, death – hence in “amor mundi,” in saying yes to the world in which life continues renewing itself, miraculously beginning again in each newborn.12 A similar vision, in a certain way epiphanic, thus works itself out in an absolutely intra-worldly horizon and evokes an entirely immanenticized hope that sees the miracle of the initium realized on earth. The utopic heft of this vision does not permit deviations in the ideological sense, with their easy absolutist and totalitarian implications; 13 utopia however should be understood here literally, as u-topos: reality that exists in the mind of the one who sees it, granting it real consistency.14 This refers to an experience rooted in the

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lived, that evokes Augustinian distensio animae, in which thought, drawing on the past, is able to substantiate the expectations of a future that seems in the present to be unrealizable. This activity, which for Arendt is “the life of the mind,” succeeds in freeing the intensity of desire from inquietude, placing us in a sphere of freedom in which thought reigns, unentangled in the meshes of acting, and thus able to inspire authentic action, in which “the unique and distinct identity of the agent”15 discloses itself. In this, its free activity, thought is always directed to the world inhabited by the plurality of men and, because moved not by cupiditas but by love, precisely constitutes the nourishment of intentional action, even if not consciously planned, in which the individual personality manifests itself. Against this background even the setback which action can encounter has a way to be redeemed, given that the one who acts offers in any case a testimony of the human capacity to imagine a world that can be a dwelling place for the plurality of men, and thus of universal humanistic value. The experience of birth returns to be heard here, flowering as in a filigree, no longer limited to the plane of animal life, in the weft of a thought that succeeds in saving human actions beyond their particular context of actuation. First and Second Birth In the natural fact of the birth, historically verifiable because one is born inasmuch as one is acknowledged by someone who is a witness of that fact, there is already in us the experience of natality that involves all humanity, in a form not of totality but of plurality. The very fact that birth is more or less implicitly permeated by discourse, due to the continuous sending back and forth of the word from one to the other of its two poles (newborn/relatives or those on their behalf) implies a generative process in which the expression said constitutes no more than the tip of an iceberg. Apart from the speaking that circles around the newborn even before he is brought into the world, he, exposed as he is to life, “speaks” to people who are around him, inducing them in a certain way to insert him into their history, and this communicative circularity grafts into the miracle of initium to which human life is subject. This discursive capacity brings to light the political importance of birth, since the ambit of politics is precisely that of discourse that sustains authentic acting, as the expression of the individual personality on the scene of the world: the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of

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initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities.16 In as much as they “are brought into the world,” human beings are immersed into a context of human relationships interwoven with actions and discourses, and draw from it incentive to prove themselves in the assembly of men, contributing with action and discourse to the common life. Thus politics draws from birth, politics understood as the intervention on the public thing (res publica), and especially/in the form of political theory, as reflection and discussion on the political interventions most consonant with the human condition. Precisely in the field of political theory, in which thought is most directly linked to action, Arendt associated the public expression of her personality, simply connecting there her profession; in fact, in her opinion, action permeated by thought – intrinsically different from “doing” as it is from any kind of instrumental activity, even though technically evolved – reveals “who” one is and not simply “what” one is.17 This highlights the indivisibility of the nexus between the initium constituted by birth and the start of anything new in the world. From this nexus every human undertaking draws that political value that allows it to modify in an unforeseen and unforeseeable way the context of actuation. Action and discourse constitute in this sense a unity of political importance because they allow the individual to creatively express his own humanity, thus his plurality, not alienating himself in the common. This coincides for Arendt in the manifestation of the “who”: of that plural/individuality that, succeeding in finding the point of conjunction between the public and private spheres of his life, shows himself before others in the wholeness of his “personality.” Thus one can say that in the “who” one expresses chiefly the natality that each human being can draw from birth.18 And yet birth, like action and discourse, realizes itself beginning from a determinant state of things: it inserts itself in an already started journey, which reduces its innovative potentialities. Indeed, if one places oneself on the natural plane, birth is not at all a form of human self-realization, inasmuch as in bringing the individual back to the species, and to his reproductive purpose, it subjects every undertaking, even creative, to an order of goals that precede and condition him. From the point of view of history as well, the individual is immersed in a growing and unstoppable flow of events that in dragging him along blur the more specific and singular aspects of his personality. In this perspective birth, the first source of action and discourse appears irrelevant by its consistency and length. Time and space then present themselves as two ambiguous coordinates: on the one hand they found and on

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the other they destabilize and dissolve the individual existence, given their capacity to absorb and metabolize the salient features of the human condition. Thus precariousness seems to dominate human life, subjecting even the memory that, notwithstanding its power to save the facts of life by transforming them into events, can illuminate human actions only at times, as if negotiating truces with the oblivion that follows close behind. Arendt neither eludes nor minimizes the vanity of human things, but rather observes it intently to grasp in the situations of life most visibly exposed to dissolution – such as the case of the newborn, needing everything and incapable of autonomy – the greatest potential, above all on the existential level. This potential is exalted by the precariousness that distinguishes every authentic initium: witness the preciousness that a newborn acquires by his very fragility, a newborn whose value is tied to the attribution of meaning that others confer on him. All this leads us to consider natural birth (“zoe”) no longer on the same level as a happening among others but as an event, that is, a fact of innovative importance the significance of which reveals itself in the reappropriation of animal-life’s level to cultural level, thus of human communication, which according to Arendt is that of life as “bios.”19 This implies a relational context from which the attribution of value can emerge that opens to the possibility of the new, or “second” birth expressed in the manifestation of the “who.”20 “With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and the insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and is not prompt by utility, like work …; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative.”21 The action revealing the “who” takes up again and transcends all the past that, starting from the first birth, flows out into that “who,” as is well summarized in the expression “the future at your back”: acting means reaffirming the past not in order to repeat it but to innovate it.22 Thus it is necessary to draw from one’s own birth in order to be re-born, testifying to the human community about the possibility to restart life. Between the first and second birth there would thus seem to run a delicate dialectic, but we know that Arendt did not favor dialectic, of which she feared the so-called Hegelian–type conservative overcoming.23 In effect, this “dialectic” is a dynamic within natality, understood as a specifically human disposition towards life, with a flowing together of pathic, empathic and sympathetic lived experiences that regard basic psychic situations for the process of

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individuation. Arendt does not examine this level of natality, that is the affective substratum of thinking activity, because she holds that it regards the hidden roots of intimacy, from which life draws strength only if they remain concealed.24 But how can one think of a public dimension, in which action and discourse happen, and of a private dimension, invisible to others, if the world is wholly a world of appearances, and if birth, as “first root” of action and discourse, is initium of the appearance of the “who”? The distinction between public and private sphere that Arendt elaborates on the model of the life of the polis does not resolve the problem of interiority, that is, of what is necessary for the formation of the sense of the self and of the “I.” The soul, which for Arendt is the seat of emotional life, cannot be cultivated only leaving it to develop in obscurity and safeguarding the private ambit of life, though that is necessary. Our authoress’ prejudicially critical stance towards psychology and psychoanalysis influences her approach towards interiority, keeping her from grasping the complexity of the elaboration of emotional lived experiences and its effect on the structures of discourse25 – although she insists on the fact that the gift of birth can bear fruit in time only drawing on the context of natality of the primary relationality. One can then say that birth constitutes the unavoidable condition for the development of human life, while natality takes on a categorical character and represents the prius of authentically human acting. In fact, one draws from natality every time one seeks to affirm oneself keeping in mind one’s own humanity, that is, the plural dimension in the singularity of each of us. Thus in natality, birth expresses itself in a more passive form: that for which one is born, and in a more active one: that for which one brings newborns into the world, beginning from oneself as actor on the worldly scene. In this outlook natality impresses on action that character of “event” that puts it in the plot of the feats narrated by history. 2 . T H E S E L F R E V E L AT I O N O F T H E “ W H O ” : A P P RO P R I AT I O N O R B E T R AYA L O F S E L F ?

If birth constitutes an initiation into natality for anyone who is involved and participates in it, first and second birth, then, are poles of the same dynamic; thus the meaning of life, played out always and entirely on the worldly scene, is tied to birth both as the life that comes to us from others, neither sought nor chosen, and as the beginning of a new life that introduces a caesura, an initium in a pre-existing path. For this reason, speaking of first and second birth does not imply the transcendence of human life in respect to the

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“world,” the “earth”; the distinction underlines man’s need to make himself aware of his own birth, which is always historical, and to pay attention to it, considering it something for which he is indebted to others, something he must recognize in order to set out, starting from birth, on a new itinerary in which it is possible to express “who one is.” From here the manifestation in birth of each man’s both singular and plural character, with each newborn natality proposes itself again to “the world,” and the acknowledgement of birth, of life as given, as history received in inheritance that independently of any preference is to be accepted,26 opens the field to unforeseen possibilities. The simple reception of birth can dispose one to discover “who” one is – not as the mere result of remote factors – when it constitutes a discovery and not a mere acquisition. In fact, cognition is never neutral and does not leave unaltered the order of things in which it actuates, even more so when one is dealing with the primary features of one’s very biography, in respect to which calculating reason can reveal itself to be inadequate. In fact, the emotional lived experiences can condense themselves around the clump of simple anagraphical datum, strongly engaging our capacity to learn from experience. When comprehending means assuming, suffering living over again the relationship of kinship that is at the origin of our single life, the appropriation of ourselves passes through the acknowledgement of the others who are part of us, and who with their weight give us the possibility of liberating potentialities that are ours alone, which, once liberated, make us feel different and unique. In this sense knowing birth can represent an experience comparable to a new birth, not only for ourselves but also for those who, witnessing it, have the occasion to discover, or rediscover, their own natality. The aggregating force of a similar comprehension is love, which acts like a weight (the Augustinian pondus) for the will, bringing it to resolve its internal conflict through a shift that modifies the focus on ourselves and on the world.27 When, questioned about the origin of her interest in politics, Hannah Arendt introduces “the peculiarity of my [her] family environment,”28 she indicates for us the place of origin for her personal way of being interested in politics, that is, in a principally human dimension of life. Only in becoming conscious of one’s own human condition, of one’s own being – inasmuch as born – linked to the ineluctability of the datum, can one draw from the dynamic potentialities of the initium present in birth. This interaction makes itself clear as soon as one manifests oneself before others without betraying or passively repeating his own history. For this reason, in showing the “who”

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the agent reveals himself not only to the others but also to himself: he discovers unknown aspects of his identity that action places before him. Acting has, from this point of view, a power to reveal and implies the experience of feeling and living as if contemporaneously equal to and different from oneself; which brings us back to birth as the place par excellence of paradoxical unions between necessity and freedom, between uniqueness and plurality, between past and future – paradoxical unions that interweave existence in its daily normality. From the way each of us relates to birth, drawing or not drawing stimulus for a renewing appropriation of self depends to a large part on whether one has the possibility of an autonomous existence, irreducible to the others, who are interwoven and conjoined with it. This is the juncture where Arendt situates the difference between pariah and parvenu, the two figures in which every individual’s extraneousness to others, even while in common human belonging, characterizes itself in the form of marginalization, forcing each person to make a radical comparison with his own birth, which is in fact a source of marginalization. The consideration of birth that imposes itself sooner or later upon every human being thus constitutes for the pariah and the parvenu the most direct and immediate experience of living with others in the worldly scene; and this impact, which marks an insuppressible difference between them and the world, is so incisive as to render them extremely sensitive on the existential plane, that is, towards the salient features of the human condition. In the pariah this sensitivity, which in and of itself would tend towards tenderness (understood as empathy towards every form of marginality), can burst out in violence to defend an identity that feels threatened and offended. In the parvenu instead this sensitivity means a fragility that exposes him to the violence of the other, not direct but subtle, inasmuch as it leads the parvenu to exchange his authentic identity with one serving social acceptance. In describing the two figures who distill the existential situations common to every human being, Arendt shows us that both the weakness of the parvenu and the strength of the pariah depend on how much they received or did not receive with birth, that is, having or not having had the possibility to benefit from the experience of “feeling at home.” Heimatgefuhl constitutes the intimate nucleus of the personal identity that functions as “first root,”29 without which one grows as if suspended in air, remaining always exposed to external pressures. This rootedness not only forms the foundation of the process of individuation but sustains one in facing adversity, because it gives nourishment in the moment of trial when the world presents itself as stranger

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and enemy. From this point of view, the disownment of birth imposed by society finds in the pariah a resistance that draws from the intimate awareness of being part of a different world, the value of which is unassailable from the exterior; the parvenu, on the other hand, boasts of belonging to the society that rejects his identity because he does not have an authentic interior experience of “who” he is. “Feeling at home” in his case did not have a way to make itself consistent enough to sustain the rejection that the dominant social world imposes on him.30 Sharing the same relationship with the social sphere,31 played out precisely on the side of marginalization, the pariah and the parvenu differ from each other in how they respond to such a situation determined by the basic biographical datum with which one comes into the world. That world, made up of the plurality of men, is one from which the social world would claim to exclude the pariah and the parvenu without realizing that, in respect to the world, the social world has no authority because it has refused to propose itself as dwelling place for the human plurality. It is from the acceptance on the one side and the rejection on the other of one’s own birth that the two prototypes of marginalized existence take on the respective clothing of pariah and parvenu. The first, ratifying his origins, looks at the society from which he is excluded, forcing that society to look at him and acknowledge him; he thus establishes a relationship that is critical and conflictual but that does not occlude the essential features of his existence,32 and in that way, at a price that is certainly very, if not too, high, he saves the nucleus of his identity and guards his dignity. Compared to the pariah, the parvenu’s position is weaker, even though the choice to renounce his origins and to take on a type of extraneous and in some way forced life allows him access to a society in regard to which simple belonging is already an occasion of privilege. The tree with its roots in the air, exemplified by Rahel Varnaghen,33 symbolically represents the existence of the parvenu, who can express himself, putting out branches and leaves, but remains always exposed to the risk of catastrophe, that is, of complete annulment. The life of the pariah, on the contrary, has deep roots but risks remaining wrapped up in himself, without being able to bear fruit; no matter how mutilated he may be, however, he never succumbs completely and can return to develop himself in the light of the sun. Both figures are forced to amputate something essential: for the parvenu, the foundations of his very history, that beginning from which natality draws, for the pariah, social ties, the relationships outside the ghetto that oxygenate and permit growth, just as roots guarantee anchorage to the earth from which nourishment is drawn. But why are they forced to do

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such amputations? And why does society operate within itself such a grave division, that cuts away at the roots the possibility of imagining a common world for the universal plurality of men? Aren’t we also dealing in this case with an inability to think of birth, to consider the human condition of natality? The World as the Place of Acting and the Risks of Action Pariah and parvenu represent borderline cases, in a certain way ideal types, while in the concreteness of life the positions are not so clear-cut, not only because the development of things can cause changes and turnovers, but because the same person can, in the course of his entire existence, live ambiguously, supporting inside itself more than one soul and behaving a bit like a pariah and a bit like a parvenu. In the case of Rahel Varnhagen, the example of a life as a parvenu who redeems herself, even though tragically, taking on the very identity of a pariah, the metamorphosis happens from within, through the intense activity of a lacerated conscience, the conflict of which emerges first sketchily and then strikingly. Jewishness becomes in this way a symbol for an existential ambiguity that is common to all men, that in the Jew makes itself radical: that of feeling contemporaneously inside and outside the earthly and historical world in which one is part without belonging there.34 None of the metaphors for human life preferred by postmodern culture correspond fully to this condition which the Jew symbolizes, inasmuch as he has an immediate identity by birth: he is a Jew because he was born a Jew, thus of a Jewish mother. The rootedness in birth and the belonging to a world is thus for the Jew unequivocable, and for this reason so natural as to mean a stronger entreaty of self-appropriation and, thus, of justification of its difference on a plane of universality. In this sense the Jew is necessary for the world, since his immediate “identity by birth” brings him to a more direct investment in the search for natality in the precisely human, and not merely naturalistic, sense. However, the strong consideration of birth can also debouch into the hybris of diversity, and render more difficult the second birth, in which the articulation of the “who,” involving the public sphere, makes itself a sign of the common human belonging. From here, also, we find Arendt’s difficult and controversial relationship with Zionism. But certainly she was not blocked by her existential ambiguity, given that she knew how to resolve it in action and in discourse, as, for that matter, she was taught to do. In respect to ambiguity both are doubtlessly discriminants, inasmuch as they happen in

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the moment of necessary choice, when one must show oneself univocally in order not to undermine the deep nucleus of one’s very identity, giving singularity and plurality a way to join themselves. Arendt holds that however difficult the choice, it is vital in order that there be the possibility of giving new life to who we are. One then understands why she extends to Walter Benjamin what Jacques Rivière says of Proust, speaking of him as of one “inexpert about the world” and, as such, “totally incapable of modifying the conditions of his life that had become lethal for him.”35 “The inextricable tangle” in which Benjamin found his life wrapped36 had no way to resolve itself with a discriminating action, and he found himself, a man who didn’t learnt to swim, in the position “on the top of the three” from where the tempest can be seen in advance.37 The world that marginalizes men such as Benjamin is not that in which the individual “conjugates himself into the plural” because he participates in a common humanity. But the renunciation of acting to lay claim to the very right to live in a human world, in which the individuality of each, including one’s own, can fully manifest itself in its dimension of plurality, thus on a public level, cuts away the very possibility of life. In her reflection on violence, comparing herself above all with Fanon and with Sartre, Arendt continually works around the problem of how it can be possible to act for a human world in a situation of radical marginalization and negation, aware that every action that is together as necessary as it is extreme, is exposed to risks. From this point of view one senses in the pariah the danger that threatens all “the damned of the earth” to dedicate themselves to a desperate heroism. To avoid this danger Arendt turns on the one side to the imagination, which making us “see”38 a world fills us with hope, allowing us to act even in a long-term perspective; on the other side she appeals to reasonableness, understood as practical reason that lives on communication among men and is nourished by human communication, above all working on the border zones between different territories, not diplomatically but dialogically.39 Reasonableness and common sense keep company with profoundly humanitarian feelings such as friendship, that friendship that Arendt felt even for the police officer who arrested her:40 a man with such an “open and honest face” that he inspired her trust, the same trust that she drew from him at first sight.41 The breach in the wall that separates us can thus be opened by an interpersonal relationship played through the affections. We are dealing with a first root that in order to have effect on the scene of the world must be able to translate itself into action, enlarging its purposes to a broader horizon that goes beyond the private dimension of life.42

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3 . P O S S I B L E H E RO I S M : E X C E L L E N C E I N AC T I O N A N D D I S C O U R S E

As stated earlier, action is the fullest expression of the “who” because in it the conjunction between singularity and plurality renders itself publicly manifest, and this public dimension of acting, rendered necessary by the need for “who” to have confirmation, instills strength as much as it exposes to risk, as is typical of every undertaking. From this point of view only discourse, and the precisely narrative function of language, enables the “who” to save itself from forgetfulness: discourse as narrative can distinguish life as “zoe” from life as “bios.”43 For this the zoon logon échon is the “who” that can be recounted by contemporaries and successors, and in this sense the story welds itself to history, fusing the contingency of action without annulling it. Every action that is an authentic expression of the one “who” accomplishes it has growing possibilities not only to be remembered but to be renewed by the fact that it appeared on the scene of the world, that it had witnesses who, remembering and speaking about it, enlarge its stage and strengthen its ability to win itself a public. The synergy between action and discourse thus extends to the narration, and produces between the narrator and the actor an intimate correspondence that intensifies the vitality of the “gestures,” that is, of actions and discourses which have become history: narrations which have become tradition that renews itself. Narration and history require commitment and effort to unify actions and discourses spread about on the worldly scene, identifying them and recomposing them to restore the consistency they had lost. This compositional work postulates a great effort of imagination because it involves giving form to fragments that would otherwise remain senseless pieces. Narration, in this perspective, saves the lives of men from dispersion and causes a rebirth in those lives. Narrating, telling, reporting the facts in the form of histories thus means drawing from natality, acting creatively on the actions produced by others, so as to cause different individualities to interact before the eyes of the world. Thus the narrator and the historian who gather the fragments of a life do not act as collectors who also gather fragments from the past, also belonging to living beings. In the one case those fragments are essential for recomposing a living unity, while in the other they are valuable inasmuch as they are fragments, that is, testimonies to a world that is no longer. Therefore birth appears to be a condition of possibility for the history narrated as well (which would seem to regard only the past), inasmuch as birth saves the history from being reduced to a collection of details, and enables it instead to give life again to men’s gestures, immortalizing them. This possibility is tied to the conjunction between the capacity

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of initiative of the actor and the narrator; a conjunction that can produce a “contagion” of natality, by which actions which are not necessarily noble are consigned to memory as “enduring works.” Narration thus highlights the effective innovative importance of action and unhinges the hierarchy of value of actions built on the basis of criteria of social and market opportunity, that is, of productivity in an instrumental sense, rather than creative. Such productivity, in fact, is tied to the capacity to draw advantage from one’s own works, exploiting social relationships, thus subjugating interpersonal relationships to extrinsic goals. A similar productivity – which “innately noble”44 individuals like Walter Benjamin do not know how to show – concerns the useful and not the intrinsic value of things, as is clearly understood in the Augustinian distinction between uti and frui. So then the ability of the historian and the narrator is largely staked in knowing how to grasp the heroic feature of actions that do not fit in the socially pre-set parameters of excellence, bringing them to light so that they can be admired and can re-awaken authentic feelings of excellence. For her part, Arendt abandons this path the more she immerses herself in the path of political theory; her way of looking at things, however, remains largely that of a narrator of stories and histories, who seeks in the happenings the element by which they transform themselves into “event.” Even her writing style tends towards narrative, above all because she involves the reader in her dialogue with authors and texts, often conducted so as to represent a scene of actions and discourses. One notes however an ambiguity in Arendt about the possibility that action can be saved by story-telling, that is by an art that joins memory and imagination. In fact, on the one hand she augurs that storytelling deigns to consider the importance of the anonymous gesture and illuminate its actor, while, on the other hand, she exalts the outstanding heroism of epic proportions in which the gesture seems to impose itself by its own strength. Arendt, however, does not insist on the theoretical resolution of the ambiguity that always risks crystallizing the vital dynamic by means of abstraction.45 The human condition characterized by birth is, to her mind, constitutionally contingent, thus ambiguity is a constant of life, and narration, like story-telling and history, permits us to represent it without amputating the tissue of existence. However, there remains the fact that action, precisely inasmuch as it is a revealer, involves a discontinuity in the course of things, and in this way contributes to avoiding repetition. One could consider it as the precipitate of a series of mental acts that takes on consistency in the uninterrupted flow of thought until it becomes thought action, thought in action;

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but this would move us too much on the front of thought as activity among the least political, and thus less public. Having tried to go around the problem, to no avail Arendt reproposes the ambiguity of the human condition that sees each of us as needy to show ourselves on the public scene as we are to maintain the nucleus of our own interiority concealed. Doubtlessly Arendt feels the presence of the Augustine of the quaestio mihi factus sum along her entire reflection, a presence that does not permit her to be appeased in any resolutive position.46 Observing Eichmann with the eyes of one who above all wants to “understand” (and not instead “excogitate ideas” to justify one’s own incapacity to manifest oneself in action) Arendt discovered that evil could permeate life in an apparently painless way, through the slow and daily corrosion of the space of personal initiative, of free expression of the personal individuality. This discovery brought her to focus her attention on every possible attack on free thought and action revealing the “who”; and this vigilance towards the perversions inherent in the normality of life introduces into Arendt’s writings a pathos tinged with pessimism. However, her foundational faith in the human capacity to initiate something new, drawing on natality, is not cracked, as much as it is at most consolidated less on operative acting and more on thought as activity that does not directly happen “in the fabric of human relations.” In effect we are only dealing with a change of accent, due to the recognition that in her existentially most important aspect action has become “an experience for the privileged few”47 – a fact that on the one hand accentuates the fragility of the human condition in contemporary society, inasmuch as “no other human faculty is so vulnerable” as thought, while on the other hand, opens out to new hope. In fact, if, “as a living experience, thought has always been assumed, perhaps wrongly, to be known only from the few, it may not be presumptuous to believe that these few have not become fewer in our time”.48 Certainly the writer of these words can be numbered among those “few” who being above all active in thought have given better proof of themselves in the arena of originality than in that of systematicality.49 The Human Faculty of “Working Miracles” The “miracle” of birth, of the new one who unexpectedly presents himself on the worldly scene, is always possible in human life, but this gift, as in the parable of the talents, can meet different fates, even while it cannot be entirely obliterated, given the tangle of singularity and plurality that characterizes the

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human condition. In order to set the fact of birth back to zero, it would be necessary that nobody, not even the mother (or whoever for her) had witnessed this event, so that with no testimony it would remain encapsulated in an animality lacking word and memory. One can say that the “miraculous” importance of birth unfolds itself in the start of a process of natality that expands from the one who is born to those who participate in that event, feeling themselves involved in it. Acknowledging in a new human being’s arrival into the world the occasion of an initium that opens life to unforeseen possibilities is already a sign of being put into the sphere of natality, of having been in touch with the newness that disposes us to think of the unexpected as possible. In this sense birth always involves an unavoidable factor of unforeseeability, but, like every happening, once it happens it is inalterable. The same happens with action, which is intimately linked to birth: having done it makes it irreversible. The horizon of possibility opened by birth and action seems for this reason to close in on itself, presenting as much one as the other on a level with links in a chain. The event would thus lose its innovative potentialities, leaving us exposed on the one hand to unpredictableness and on the other to the irrevocability of its effects. It would seem then that we are before a situation analogous to Pascal’s “pari”: throw the dice and risk, because freedom is only in the choice of making that gesture. But Arendt, like a good reader of Aristotle, tempers the radicality of the positions which she herself arrives at and, not isolating reason from the arena of human communication, links acting to the common context in which the mind as well, which lives from its interior dialogue, compares itself with others with whom it converses tacitly. In respect to the future, which appears unforeseeable, one can build the bridge of a promise that commits us not to betray trust, and thus to put into play our sense of responsibility. Also in terms of the past and its uneliminability, Arendt does not let herself fall into despair: the unavoidability of evil – of that evil so rooted that there is no remedy – can be flanked and give rise to a transformation through forgiveness that gives life a way to begin again, both for the one who did the evil and the one who underwent it. Even while leaving the event unaltered, forgiveness is an occasion of re-birth because it influences the intimacy of the person, and it is an occasion of life that comes to us from others, as with birth. But also the one who forgives draws from birth because the capacity to forgive is intimately linked to natality as the deep disposition to the new, to believing possible and starting an initium. We are not dealing here with a rational choice, but with being able to place oneself in a point of view that permits us to see the other in his singularity and at the same time from a more universal outlook, that puts his

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humanity in the light. Arendt, even while she advances so much into this territory, does not push so far as to say that forgiveness is a necessary step to put evil behind us, not therefore to erase it but to allow the wound to heal so that it does not irremediably invalidate our existence. However it is not easy that the vicious circle between tyrant and executioner be transformed into a virtuous circle between the forgiver and the forgiven. Forgiveness in any case appears as an action par excellence, and thus as a peculiar self-revelation of the “who,” also because it constitutes a “deviation” in respect to the behavioural automatism typical of men in contemporary society. It is stronger than the promise, because it is an action that inserting itself into the course of the world changes the world’s process, and in that sense “resembles a miracle” like every action par excellence: “it is ‘the infinite improbability’ which occurs regularly,”50 given that new human beings come into the world and can act authentically. “Action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man, as Jesus of Nazareth, whose insights into this faculty can be compared in their originality and unprecedentedness with Socrates’ insights into the possibilities of thought, must have known very well when he likened the power to forgive to the more general power of performing miracles, putting both on the same level and within the reach of man. The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born.”51 University of Rome “Tor Vergata” Department of Philosophical Researches. Italian trans. Sheila Beatty V.Piccolomini Cicarelli 21, 62032 Camerino MC N OT E S 1 Cfr. S. Forti, “Bibliografia degli scritti su Hannah Arendt,” in Hannah Arendt, ed. S. Forti (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1999), pp. 286–306; after 1996: F. Collins, L’homme est-il devenu superflu? Hannah Arendt (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1999), part: Eléments bibiographiques, pp. 325–329. Specifically on nativity cfr.: R. Beiner, “Action, Natality and Citizenship: Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Freedom,” in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed. Z. Pelczynski, J. G. Gray (London: The Atlone Press, 1984), pp. 349–375; S.Belardinelli, “Natalità e azione in Hannh Arendt” (Part I), in La Nottola III:3 (1984), pp. 25–39; Id., “Natalità e azione in Hannh Arendt” (Part II), in La Nottola IV:1 (1985); P.Bowen-Moore, Hannah Arendt Philosophy of Natality (London: Macmillan, 1989); A.Cavarero, “Dire la nascita,” in Diotima. Mettere al mondo il mondo (Milan: La Tartaruga, 1990), pp. 93–121; F. Collin, “Agir et donné,” in Hannah Arendt et la modernité, ed. S. M. Roviello and M. Wagenbergh (Paris: Vrin, 1992),

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pp. 27–46; F. Collin, “Du privé et du public,” in Les Cahiers du Grif 33 (1985), pp. 47–69 (above all prg. “Entre privé et public: la natalité,” pp. 55–57); F. Collin, L’homme est-il devenu superflu? Hannah Arendt, cit., (above all Chap. Pluralité et natavité, pp. 187–226); N. Depraz, “Naitre à soi-meme,” in Alter 1 (ENS de Fontenay-Saint Cloud, 1993); J. Kristeva, Hannah Arendt (Paris: Fayard, 1999), (Vol I. of the trilogy Le génie féminin. La vie, la folie, les mots. Hannah Arendt, Melanie Klein, Colette); A. Papa, Hannah Arendt. Per una filosofia della vita (Lecce: Pergola Monsavinium, 1993); E. Parise (a cura di), La politica tra natalità e mortalità. Hannah Arendt (Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1993); R.Rosolini, “Nascere ed apparire. Le categorie del pensiero politico di Hannh Arendt e la filosofia della differenza sessuale,” in DWF Donnawomanfemme 2–3 (1993), pp. 64–84. 2 As is known, Arendt, hardly a feminist, considered herself a conservative on the question of gender relationships; but the nexus between gender differences, birth and dimension of plurality that to her mind characterizes the human condition implies a relationship of equality in the difference between man and woman, as between groups and ethnicities at the same time different and equal, which is in sintony with the approach of the thought of difference. Cfr. M. Markus, “The ‘Anti-Feminism’ of Hannah Arendt,” in Thinking, Judging, Freedom, ed. G. T. Kaplan and C. S. Kessler (Sidney: Allen&Unwin, 1989) pp. 119–129; B. Honig, “Towards an Agonistic Feminism: Hannah Arendt and the Polics of Identity,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. J. Butler and J. W. Scott (New York-London, 1992), pp. 215–235; Id. (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt (Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); L. Boella, Parlare di Hannah Arendt (Brescia: Edizioni Università delle Donne, 1991); M. Forcina, Ironia e saperi femminili (Milan: Angeli, 1995), for the chapter Ironia contro metafisica, a feminist take on the analysis of the Arendt/Heidegger relationship done by J. Taminiaux, La Fille de Thrace et le penseur professionnel (Paris: Pavot, 1992). 3 Of particular interest are the ideas of Julia Kristeva (op. cit, pp. 59–60) on the creative potential in personalities who are more or less explicitly bisexual, as, in fact, she considers Arendt (of whom she speaks of androgyny and psychic bisexuality). This psychoanalytic theory, moving from Freudian tradition and drawing above all from the thought of Melanie Klein, emphasizes the influence that the dynamic of the diverse sexual components present in every individual exerts on creativity. The point of intersection with today’s thought of difference could be offered by the reflection on the primary relationship, that is on the context of natality in which the care of the new being come in to the world begins (on this topic cfr. M. Durst, “Forme della sublimazione e creatività femminile. Il caso Lou Salomé,” in Filosofia Donne Filosofie, ed. M. Forcina, A. Prontera, P.I. Vergine (Lecce: Milella, 1994), pp. 469–509; Id., “Il narcisismo: un capitale emotivo di riserva,” in Scuola Democratica 1, (1999), pp.; Id., “On the threshold of creativity: A hermeneutic interpretation of the myth of Narcissus,” in Analecta Husserliana LXI, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, in print). 4 H. Arendt, Der Leibesbegriff bei Augustin. Versuch einer philosophischen Intepretation (Berlin: Springer, 1929). J.Kristeva, insisting on the theme of natality (op. cit.) connects it constantly to Augustinian texts, which to her mind are fundamental for the entire reflection of Arendt. 5 H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, ed. M. McCarthy (New York-London: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1978); Italian trans. A. Del Lago (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987) (which has been used in the citations). 6 Cfr. Hannah Arendt’s letter to Martin Heidegger, October 28, 1960; in H. Arendt-M. Heidegger. Briefe, 1925–1975, und andere Zeugnisse (Frankfurt a. Mein: V. Klostermann, 1998–1999), p. 149, doc. 89 (cited by E. Ettinger, H. Arendt-M. Heidegger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

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7 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); German trans. (Vita activa oder von tatigen Leben) H.Arendt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960). 8 J. Kristeva, op. cit., p. 29. 9 As already noted, Arendt’s reflection lies outside the feminist outlook, so that the terms man and men include both genders. 10 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 178. 11 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 179. The quote from Augustine De civitate Dei XI, 32 also recurs often in The Life of the Mind. On the relationship between initium, action, liberty and plurality cfr. R. J. Bernstein, “Provocazione e appriapriazione: la risposta a Martin Heidegger,” in Hannah Arendt, ed. S.Forti, cit., pp. 226–248. 12 H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, cit., Part II, Chap. VI, prg. 4 (Italian trans. pp. 401–430). 13 Cfr. S. Forti, “Hannah Arendt: filosofia e politica,” in Hannah Arendt, ed. S. Forti, cit., pp.I–XXXIII, p.XXII, n.20. 14 In this sense the meaning of “utopia” transcends the “constructivistic” interpretation of P.P.Portinaro, “La politica come cominciamento e la fine della politica,” in La pluralità irrapresentabile. Il pensiero politico di Hannah Arendt, ed. R. Esposito (Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1987), pp. 29–45, pp. 33–34, n.11. 15 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 180. 16 Cfr. H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 9. 17 For the overcoming of the condition of “animal laborans,” in which one is compelled to mere repetitiveness, cfr. H.Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., Chap. IV. 18 In discussing the “who,” Arendt refers again to Augustine who was the first to distinguish between the questions of “Who am I?” (directed by man to himself: A man) and “What am I?” (directed by man to God: What is my nature?); but, unlike Augustine, Arendt believes that neither a divinity (not even the “the god of the philosophers”) nor science can resolve the so-called anthropological question; in addition, the conditions of human existence “can never ‘explain’ what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that they never condition us absolutely” (H.Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., pp. 10–11). “Who somebody is transcends in greatness and importance anything he can do and produce” (Ivi, p. 211); it is the creativity that thought and imagination infuse into action that can “disclose the ‘who,’ the unique and distinct identity of the agent” (Ivi, p. 180). 19 The life as zoe means animal life, and the life of bios means the cultural level of life that for Arendt appertains only to the animal-man. 20 With the manifestation of the “who” – that is, the “event itself,” the unexpected, the “wholly improbable” that “happens regularly” (H.Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 300) – “the manmade world of things, the human artifice erected by homo faber, becomes a home for human man, whose stability will endure and outlast the ever-changing movement of their lives and actions, only insomuch as it transcends both the sheer functionalism of things produced for consumption and the sheer utility of objects produced for use” (Ivi, p. 173). 21 A. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., pp. 176–177. 22 In The Life of the Mind (part I, Thinking, chapter II, The Activities of the Mind in a World of Appearances, Italian trans., cit., p. 170) Arendt offers an analysis of the capacity of the imagination to re-produce for the mind the objects perceived by the senses that provides the theoretical argument about the past/future relationship that the author expresses in narrative in other texts. 23 Arendt’s judgments about Hegel are very drastic, except those about his work in Phenomenology of Spirit (cfr. The Life of the Mind, Italian trans., cit., pp. 173–176).

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On the topics of intimacy and the interior and private root of action, cfr. E. Capoccetti, “Politicamente abita l’uomo. Appunti sul Kafka di Hannah Arendt,” in La Cultura, XXXVI, 1 (1998), pp. 149–164. 25 Thinking about emotivity does not mean “rationalizing it,” but communicating with it, activating the “relationship of pure dialogue [that] is, more than any other, close to the original experience that takes place in interior dialogue” (H. Arendt, “Concern with politics in recent European philosophical thought,” in Arendt Papers (Washington: Library of Congress); Italian trans. (“L’atto originario della filosofia politica è lo stupore”) A. Del Lago, in La lingua materna. La condizione umana e il pensiero plurale [The Mother Tongue] (Milan: Mimesis, 1993), pp. 57–84, p. 81 (which was used in the citations). This is the source of the diversity between friendship and love, on the one hand, and fame on the other; in fact, for the latter the opinion of one person is insufficient: “the issue is that in society each person must respond to the question: ‘What am I?’ – a different question from ‘Who am I?’ – whatever his role and function, and naturally the response can never be. ‘I am unique’ ” (H. Arendt, “Walter Benjamin,” in Merkur XXII (1968); then in Men in Dark Time, ed. H. Arendt (New York-London: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich), 1968, pp. 153–206; Italian trans. (Il pescatore di perle. Walter Benjamin 1892–1940 [The Pearl Fisherman. Walter Benjamin 1892–1940]), A. Carosso (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), p. 6 (which was used in the citations). 26 In Judaism and Modernity Arendt said that she has always considered her Jewishness “as one of those unquestionable given facts of my life, that I have never wanted to change or repudiate, not even during childhood” (Italian trans. (Ebraismo e modernità) G. Bettini (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1993), 2nd ed. p. 222). Precisely on this point Arendt was interviewed by Gunter Gaus (“Was Belibt? Es bleibt die Mutter sprache” [The Mother Tongue. The human condition and plural thought], Italian trans. (La lingua materna. La condizione umana e il pensiero plurale), A. Del Lago (Milan: Mimesis, 1993), pp. 22–56, p. 32. On the relationship between Arendt and Judaism cfr. M. Lebovici, Hannah Arendt, un juive. Expérience politique et histoire (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998). 27 Cfr. H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Italian trans., cit., p. 414; in which she comments on Augustine’s definition of love as the weight of the soul, its law of gravity (Confessiones, XIII, 9); cfr. R. Bodei, Ordo Amoris, Conflitti terreni e felicità terrestre (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991). 28 H. Arendt, The Mother Tongue, Italian trans., cit., p. 35. 29 This refers to the title of a work by Simone Weil, an author who Arendt is close to in many aspects: Judaism, critique of professional intellectuals, interest in work and its organization, analysis of action as the expression of the person in his entirety (cfr. R. Wimmer, Vier judische Philosophinnen: Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt (Tubingen: Attempto, 1990); A. Nye, Philosophia. The Thought of Rosa Luxemburg, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt (London-New York: Routledge, 1994); R. Esposito, L’origine della politica. Hannah Arendt o Simone Weil? (Rome: Donzelli, 1996); G. Gaeta, C. Bettinelli, A. Dal Lago, Vite attive. Simone Weil, Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt (Genova: Edizioni Lavoro, 1996). 30 In this regard one can observe that, even though Arendt was aware from her childhood that she was Jewish, as a “datum of fact,” she declared that she never was made conscious of it in her family; the word “Jew” was never said in her family when she was a child, also because her mother, the central figure in her childhood life, was entirely irreligious (cfr. H. Arendt, The Mother Tongue, Italian trans. cit., p. 33), so that when she was “illuminated” hearing anti-Semitic observations of children in the street” (ibid.) the primary nucleus of her identity was already sufficiently consolidated. 31 About the meaning of “Social” cfr. The Human Condition, cit., Chap. II, prg.6, p. 38–50.

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Cfr. M. Forcina, Ironia e saperi femminili, cit., pp. 56–58. Cfr. H. Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (London: East and West Library, 1958); German ed. (Rahel Varnhagen. Lebensgeschichte einer deutschen Judin aus der Romantik (Munchen: Piper, 1959); Italian trans. L.Ritter Santini (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1988). 34 Cfr. H. Arendt, The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition (or.1944), reprint in Id., The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, ed. R. H. Feldman (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1978), pp. 67–90. 35 H. Arendt, The Pearl Fisherman. Walter Benjamin 1892–1940, Italian trans. cit., p. 13. 36 Ivi, p. 14. 37 Ivi, pp. 41–42. 38 Also bringing back H. Jonas, who she cites in The Phenomenon of Life (New York, 1966), especially the chapter on the nobility of sight (pp. 136–147), Arendt remarks on the passivity of hearing compared to sight and the inadequacy of language itself, even though it is “the only medium in which the invisible can become manifest in a world of appearances” (The Life of the Mind, Italian trans., cit., pp. 199–200). 39 This is a reference to the “ancilla vitae” philosophy that Kant imagines “preceding the beautiful lady with a torch rather than illuminating her clothes from the back”: a philosophy that is not arrogant towards the common world of men, that becomes “the mediator among multiple truths, not because it contains a truth that is valid for all men” (H.Arendt, “Concern with Politics in recent European Philosophical Thought,” cit., pp. 80–81). 40 H. Arendt, The Mother Tongue, Italian trans., cit., p. 31. 41 Ivi, p. 32. 42 It is significant that Arendt shows no doubts (though she regretted it) about the fact that lying to that man was a duty for her, since otherwise she would have put at risk the entire Zionist organization (H. Arendt, The Mother Tongue, Italian trans., cit., pp. 31–32). 43 According to F.Collins (L’homme est-il devenu superflu?, cit., p. 135), life as zoe only has meaning in life as bios, also because the historical naturalism that is at the origin of totalitarianism is connected with the former; this notwithstanding, the fact of birth should constitute the “gift” of the initium. It would be more correct then to speak of a relationship of reciprocal implication between birth (zoe) and natality (bios), consonant with the idea of “a tension of love” expressed by Kristeva (op.cit., p. 86). 44 H. Arendt, The Pearl Fisherman. Walter Benjamin 1892–1940, Italian trans. cit., p. 37. 45 Cfr. R.Esposito, “Irrapresentabile polis”, in Id., Categorie dell’impolitico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), pp. 72–124. 46 On the attention with which Arendt avoids resolving “ ‘philosophically’ a contradiction that is powerfully innervated in things, cfr. R. Esposito, “Tra ‘volontà’ e ‘rappresentazione’: per una critica del decisionismo” in La pluralità irrapresentabile, ed. R. Esposito, cit., p. 56. 47 The most important aspect is: “the revelatory character of action as well as the ability to produce stories and become historical, which together form the very source from which meaningfulness springs into and illuminates human existence” (H.Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 324). 48 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 324. 49 Arendt’s judgment on Augustine: “there is no doubt that Augustine is one of the circle of great and original thinkers. However, he was not a ‘systematic thinker’ ” (The Life of the Mind, Italian trans., cit., p. 403). 50 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., p. 246. 51 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, cit., pp. 246–247. 33

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P S Y C H O PAT H O L O G I E S A N D C U LT U R A L FAC TO R S : S O M E N E O - E VO L U T I O N I S T P E R S P E C T I V E S

In the recent Neuroscienze ed evoluzionismo per una concezione olistica delle psicopatologie e dei disturbi della personalità1 we present a detailed analysis of the influent factors that, proceeding from specific cultural “constellations”, could lead up to typical structures of personality and social behavior, driving dynamics of psych conditioning and exerting a weighty influence over the individual knowledge capacity and over all the advanced expressions involving the human brain. In that work we follow the direction previously suggested in Metamorfosi della Ragione: esegesi evoluzionistico psicosociologica di Genesi 1,3 ed implicazioni bioetiche2 and in Il Dio laico: caos e libertà,3 where we created a formal division of the sacred dimension into two main classes: “theoethotomies” as social structures based on a marked ethical role of divinity, and “religions”4 as metaphysical systems infused with a nonmoral divinity. In our essay we discuss a revision of the space where the environment modelling action and conditioning potentialities became operational. In fact, even though we do not reject the physical and biological foundation of genetic causes of psychic processes, concerning the species Homo sapiens,5 new theoretical proposals from neuroscience are upsetting the reference points by tracing out a new explanatory pattern in which brain development cannot be intended outside the structural contribution of external environment and learning process.6 These factors “carve” up human brain from an anatomic point of view, by selecting and fixing connections among different groups of neurons. More specifically, according to the evolutionist approach, conscience emerges as an essential consequence of cultural environment influence on individual senses, where psychic experiences are modeled. Therefore this new outline of conscience markedly includes that sphere of psychical experience where typical semantic values are expressed: ideas, language, cultural elements transmitted and acknowledged by the group, emotional constituents, and spiritual and philosophic perspectives. Our distinction between “theoethotomies” and “religions” allows us to describe a specific correlation between theological models and psychocultural conditioning, and gives us a key to interpretation that is attested to by 799 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 799–807. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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ethnological empirical data.7 Since the “Self” is structured as an expression of external cultural and biological reality (efficient from the point of view of evolution), the human brain and nervous system keep a psychic mark of that reality. Lots of psychical dynamics are subordinated to the social expression of typical pools of values which address individual development, just as characters working as the ideal reference mark for the growth itinerary of an individual inside the group. As analysis of human cultures show that they are structured around some specific ethical coordinate, the distinction we propose between “theoethotomies” and “religions” gives us a classification of cultures that follows a dichotomous way.8 We can see two antithetical psychical dynamics emerging from a comparison between theoethotomistic and religious models. The first distinction refers to the hypertrophied development of Super Ego, a consequence of the strong ethical and moral individual subjection towards the sphere of the Sacred. In this direction, we advance a first conclusion: where a full individual identification with the ideal of the Self is possible – i.e. in the religious systems – the conditions of an objective alienation from the ontological perfection that characterizes the theoethotomistic cultures tend to disappear. If we consider also other characters, different human cultures can be arranged according to three rising levels of aggressiveness, in a diagram reproposing the well-known classification in classes A,B,C outlined by Fromm in Human Aggressiveness Anatomy.9 From the analysis of the three classes, tied to constellations of typical factors, a positive correlation emerges with the appropriate theological model: religious for class A, theoethotomistic for B, anti-religious for C. In this context we set out in a new perspective some important questions emerging in ethno-psychoanalytic and ethno-psychiatric research. We finally provide a new interpretation of the term “psychopathology” that goes beyond all those expressions representing deviating or marginal elements from a standardized interpretation of a “correct” experience of faith, traditionally considered as “positive” and “orthodox” expression of religiosity. Our interpretation identifies a “sane” religiosity only in determined faith contexts (religious) and looks at the theoethotomistic models as pathologic forms of faith. In this direction, we can examine the existence of particular traits of individual and collective personality, by comparing theoethotomistic and religious cultures in the psychoanalytic and psychiatric description of the socalled “religious” psychopathologies. From the Giacomo Dacquino work

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entitled Religiosità e Psicanalisi,10 we mediate the definitions of “religious psychopathology” and “sane religiosity” through a new formulation of “religious immaturity” and, in correlation with the new idea of theoethotomies, identify pathological forms of anal, oral and phallic religiosity together with some important manifestations of religious neurosis. Schemes of religiosity known as narcissistic, dependent, masochistic, hypomaniac, also refer to this last one author bringing back to the same manifestations all the types of neurotic atheism, conscious and unconscious, as well as the most famous cases of neurotic conversion.11 The empirical test is based on data drawn from DSM IV Axis II; here are listed mental disorders that most likely lead to the psychopathogenous influence of religious model. The most important are: the schizotypical disorder of personality, the paranoiac and the dependent. In some cases, for example, the disorder is characterized by a great emphasis attached to a militant sense of religious belonging, or by an attitude of passivity and deference in comparison with the sphere of the Holy (other cultures encourage, in different ways, a dependent attitude). These disorders of personality tend to reveal themselves also through an excessive worry about lack of order, a tendency for some form of perfectionism and mental or interpersonal control. In a cultural system not so far from us, following an interpretative line referred to in the studies of Max Weber,12 a special emphasis is attributed to work and productivity, two elements here projected or intended in a sacral dimension: in these cultures these mental schemes and relevant attitudes are obviously not considered pathological. As far as the sense of guilt is concerned (as a formal and unequivocal lynch-pin of the integration of the religious sphere into the moral one, according to the permeating modality typical of theoethotomistic contexts), we follow Dacquino’s view, in which the origin of a conscious or unconscious sense of guilt is connected with the sentiment that in the first years of life allows the individual to form moral categories of the Good and Bad, either through gustative, motive, or acting experiences. Individual maturation should occur according to schemes leading to an autonomous and authentic adult phase, where an individual can interpret some mature needs of the Super Ego. During adolescence, a necessity is expressed through the Super Ego, developed (…) just from an encounter among the irrational unconscious impulses and the precept imposed by external authority (parents and educators);13 during the full development process of the Super Ego, it becomes representative of an important dynamic element of individual evolution because, apart from checking the emotional

Religious Religious

Religious Religious

Theoethot. Theoethot. Theoethot.

Theoethot.

Theoethot.

Theoethot.

Class A Zuni Arapesh

Aranda Semang

Class B Manus Samoa Inca

Catholic

Lutheran

Calvinism

Express type of faith

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes No Yes

No No

No No

Concept of sin (extensive)

Competitive inhibitory Competitive inhibitory Competitive inhibitory

Apollonian Mild and dignified Libertarian Mild and moral

Ideal of Ego

Strong

Strong

Strong

Yes * Strong

No No

No No

Authoritative patriarchal sex-repressive complex

Negative

Negative

Negative Free positive Religious chastity Negative

Positive Positive

Positive Positive

Attitude toward sex

Yes

Yes (principle) Yes

*

Strong

Scarce Scarce

Scarce Scarce

Private ownership development

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Anti religious

Kwaktiutl

Yes Yes

Concept of sin (extensive)

* = This value is not extensively proved.

Anti religious

Theoethot. Theoethot.

Mazdeism Islamic Class C Dobu

Express type of faith

Competitive suspicious Competitive dionysiac

Inhibitory

Ideal of Ego

Yes*

Yes*

Strong Strong

Authoritative patriarchal sex-repressive complex

Negative

Negative Negative

Attitude toward sex

Strong

Strong

* Yes

Private ownership development

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needs (…), it meets the interior ideal of the Self (…). So the Super Ego rules, got part of inner life, take part not only in the individual psychological evolution, but also in his moralization, in his social life.14 A sane maturation, consisting of a mechanism which tends to absorb the Super Ego and its immature needs formed in the early age, represents a psychological and ontological objective that an individual cannot realize if placed in a theoethotomistic dimension, where the dogmatic imperatives resulting from the rules set by divinity appear continuously in front of him. The ethical model proposed in these systems fixes the individual Super Ego at an intrusive and irreducible stage since the Bad is not only a simple primordial metaphysical principle (just as can be found in the myth and in religious folklore typical of the most pre-permanent polytheistic cultures) but also becomes an essential element pervading the individual ethical sphere, broadly present in the daily dimension, a source of everlasting tearing interior conflict, impregnating individual attitudes with a sense of unworthiness, inadequacy and frustration compared with an infallible authority. On the contrary, in a religious context where there is no place for a sense of guilt since all the repressive activities are not irrevocably crystallized, an individual can rely on precious irreplaceable help to get to an adult condition objectively sane, without immature aspirations but following some stabilizing dynamics of development (see fig. 1). In the book of Genesis, especially according to the psycho-sociological interpretation given in Metamorfosi della Ragione,15 an immediate consequence of the knowledge of Good and Bad is just the acquisition of a sense of shame, connected with the consciousness of nakedness. This makes as clear as ever the relation between the metaphysical cultural dimension and some important deep psycho-sexual manifestations, often pathological, frequent in human nature. Given the special origin of the Ideal of the Ego in a theoethotomistic model, the development of the Super Ego and behavioral practice that follows the necessity to lead the Ego to a continuos mediation between the conflicting needs of Super Ego and Es, is a “witness” of the socio-cultural conditions and, then, of a psychical reality that can precede serious psychopathologies characterized, according to a psycho-analytic language, by fixations and pre-genital regressions. Cultures inspired by religious models seem able, on the contrary, to aid the development of “normal” and “sane” personalities, according to the typical pathologies ascribed to the cultural dimension; they transmit social and cultural expressions that hinder the development of psychopathologic

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Super Ego (immature) Ego (immature) Ego Ego Es Birth Religious culture

Es Infancy/Adolescence

Es Adult age

Moral Divinity Ego (immature)

Es

Super Ego (immature)

Super Ego (adult)

Ego

Ego

Es

Es

Concept of sin Birth Infancy/Adolescence Adult age «THEO-ETHO-TOMISTIC» culture Fig. 1

deviations and are a necessary premise for an authentically autonomous development of an adult personality. Our work proposes an interpretation rich in socio-cultural implications, since during the historical process towards the affirmation of a standing civilization, agricultural practices, social structure, according to the hierarchic principle and state-authority, and the definition of an ethically weighty entity have occupied a very special place. According to our thesis presented here, that evolution seems to have heavily marked individual and group history, and to have started, in western civilization, a process leading to a progressive stiffening in collective and individual psychological structure. We open a revisional perspective, from an evolutionist point of view, for the traditional ideas of “normality” and “illness”, so creating a radical re-statement of the idea of mental disease. In this view hypertrophied Super Ego and oedipal dynamics are no longer incurable features or factors of psychological nature of human personality; they roughly represent contingent solutions, structured

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according to a particular level of individual development or collective conscience. Starting from our hypothesis of a connection between some special shaping and functioning mechanisms of the human brain and cultural evolution process – i.e. religious – we attribute a great importance to the formal distinction between 1) societies where the notion of authority is central – i.e. where a remarkable ethical merit content is typical of the ultramundane dimension – and 2) “primitive” societies, motivated by some “natural” religious expressions. We then analyze the correspondence between individual free choice and the behavioural model proposed by the culture to which an individual belongs. From this perspective we draw some interesting points of reflection about cases of collective adaptation dynamics, or the psychological “anomaly” as a product of the discordance between natural inclinations and a group’s behavioral expectations, and about the origin of the uneasiness seen in contemporary individuals. It concludes with a critical opinion on the typical “diseases” of our society and on the border shared by normality and deviation. The question in hand suggests a line of inquiry involving some new discriminants about a questionable angle of traditional psychopathological analysis, and finds a relational link between the new meaning we attribute to the sacred dimension and the most innovative developments in present-day psychology. Università di Camerino; Università degli Studi Roma Tre N OT E S 1 F. Petrelli, R. Verolini e L. Venturi, Neuroscienze ed evoluzionismo per una concezione olistica delle psicopatologie e dei disturbi della personalità (Camerino: Università di Camerino, 2000). 2 R. Verolini e F. Petrelli, Metamorfosi della Ragione: esegesi evoluzionistico psicosociologica di Genesi 1,3 e implicazioni bioetiche (Camerino: Università di Camerino, 1994). 3 R. Verolini, Il Dio laico: caos e libertà (Roma: Armando, 1999); <www.diolaico.it>. 4 From this point on, all terms based on the root religio, written in italics, are intended in a meaning unlike the habitual; they specifically denote those theological systems marked by the presence of non-moral divinity, or where we point out a concept of sin which could not be taken back to the peculiar beliefs of the occidental culture. 5 L. Braconi, Personalità: eredità e ambiente, Milano, Rizzoli, 1972; C. Holden, The genetics of personality, Science, n. 237, agosto 1987, pp. 598 e segg.; N. Galli, L’educazione sessuale nell’età evolutiva, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1994, pp. 23–66; S. H. Washburn, Vita sociale dell’uomo preistorico, Milano, Rizzoli, 1971, in A/P Antropologia-Psicologia, Bollettino del Seminario “Biologia e Cultura”, nn. 1–2, 1994, p. 4.

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6 G. Corbellini, Teorie immunologiche e darwinismo, Le scienze, n. 348, agosto 1997, pp. 52–58; G. M. Edelman, Sulla materia della mente, Milano, Adelphi, 1993; ID., Darwinismo neurale: la teoria della selezione dei gruppi neuronali, Torino, Einaudi, 1995, p. 19; ID., Il presente ricordato. Una teoria biologica della coscienza, Milano, Rizzoli, 1991. 7 M. Brillant e R. Aigrain (a cura di N. Bussi E P. Rossano), Storia delle religioni (Alba: Edizioni Paoline, 1970); R. Biasiutti, Razze e popoli della Terra (Torino: UTET, 1967); M. Harris, Antropologia Culturale (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1990). 8 Verolini e Petrelli, op. cit.. 9 E. Fromm, Anatomia dell’aggressività umana (Milano: Mondadori, 1975). 10 G. Dacquino, Religiosità e Psicoanalisi (Torino, SEI, 1980). 11 ID., op. cit., pp. 119–208. 12 M. Weber, L’etica protestante e lo spirito del capitalismo (Firenze: Sansoni, 1965); ID., Le sette e lo spirito del capitalismo (Milano: Rizzoli, 1977). 13 ID., op. cit., p. 230. 14 ID., op. cit., pp. 230–231. 15 Verolini e Petrelli, op. cit.

S I LVA NA P RO C AC C I

A N H I S TO R I C A L A P P ROAC H TO O N TO P O I E S I S O F L I F E AND MIND. THE PHILOSOPHY OF J. C. SMUTS

1 . T H E AU T H O R A N D H I S P H I L O S O P H Y O F H O L I S M

The work that I present below regards an historical reconstruction of the thought of J. C. Smuts and his philosophy of “Holism,” to show the interconnections with some epistemological questions about science and its method to study complex phenomena, like living organisms. In fact, the value of the analytic method is considered inadequate to investigate nature, so another viewpoint has been attended to find better solutions to these problems. The erosion of the classical mechanical paradigm has opened again the ancient debate between Holism and reductionism. Taking occasion to this querelle, the present contribution intends to clarify if not the origins – immemorial – at least about the author and the date that gave notoriety to Holism. In every effect, Holism points to two notions: the first is that wholeness, like in a living organism, “is more than the sum of its parts,” and the second is that if “these parts are taken to pieces the organism is destroyed and cannot be reconstituted by again putting together the severed parts.”1 These issues are very ancient and widespread in the works of many authors, but the creation of the English term “Holism” can be awarded to General J. C. Smuts in 1926. Smuts was born on a farm near Cape Colony, in South Africa, in 1870. His parents was Afrikaaners and he studied in the college of Cambridge, where he graduated in law. He was a South African statesman, soldier, scholar and philosopher. He was prime minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and again from 1938 to 1948. He fought in the Boer was and in World War’s I and II. He died at his home in Irene, near Pretoria, in 1950. During the Boer war he commanded a force against the British with the rank of General. In this period, he published A Century of Wrong (1899), a vitriolic attack against British policy in South Africa. When World War I broke out he became a staunch defender of the Allied cause. In 1918 he published a pamphlet entitled The League of Nations, which helped to form Wilson’s idea.2 In the intervening period, during which he was not tied to the government, he completed his more important philosophical work, Holism and Evolution, in which he traced a new Weltanschauung of the theory of evolution. In connection with this idea, he wrote his Plans for 809 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 809–820. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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a Better World in 1942. During World War II, he involved South Africa on the side of the Allies against Germany and Nazism. After the general elections in 1948, he dedicated the rest of his life to oppose the National Party, guided by F. Malan, his political opposite, the upholder of the sad doctrine of apartheid. Smuts had many honours: he was a privy councillor (1917), Companion of Honour (1917) and a member of the Order of Merit (1947), rector of the University of St. Andrew’s (1931–34), and chancellor of the University of Cape Town (1936) and of Cambridge University (1948); he was a British field marshal (1941), and he was awarded many honorary degrees.3

2 . T H E O N TO P O I E S I S O F L I F E A N D M I N D

We will begin with a clarification of the term Smuts coined. Holism is a word derived from the Greek “holon,” “whole” and, as we have just noted, was introduced for the first time in 1926, when Smuts wrote his Holism and Evolution, a book that deals with some of the problems which fall within the debatable borderland between science and philosophy.4 As the same author says, this work regards the point of contact between the two disciplines with the purpose of describing the tendency towards complexity in nature. Smuts distinguishes wholes in the strict sense from mere aggregates, mechanical systems, and chemical compounds. In a true whole, thinks Smuts, the parts lose forever their prior identity, while in aggregates, mechanical systems, and chemical compounds the identity of the parts of elements is not lost, but is always recoverable. In spite of this, there are certain entities, such as biochemical systems, which appear to have an intermediate status. These systems form the vast ladder of life. At the bottom of the ladder, mechanistic features predominate, while at the top there are holistic features. True wholes, free of any admixture of mechanism are exemplified in minds or psychic structures, which first appear among higher organisms, and in particular in the human personality, “the supreme embodiment of Holism”. Smuts sometimes speaks of atoms and molecules as wholes because even these structures are complex systems. All the great main types of existence are due to them. In fact, long before organisms or minds arose, the holistic factor was producing elementary wholes of a purely physical kind. Later, through a series of creative leaps, it became more fully embodied in biological structure, the most perfect of which are minds and persons. In the sphere of spiritual values Holism finds its clearest embodiment.

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3 . T H E F I R S T A I M : T H E B R I D G E B E T W E E N M AT T E R , L I F E A N D M I N D

Naturally, Smuts is not only a creator of a term, but in particular it was he who organised from a philosophical viewpoint the doctrine of Holism. His first aim is to suggest a new vision of ontopoiesis of matter, life and mind. In particular, matter, life and mind are three phenomena that remain, during the history of culture, separated. Nevertheless, as we all know, many philosophers and scientists have proposed solutions that see an interconnection among them. Apparently indeed the differences between matter, life and mind remain insuperable, but these produce separate knowledge in three different kingdoms. But they do not only co-exist in the human condition; we can see that they are genetically interrelated and rise with each other throughout the course of evolution. For this reason, Smuts thinks that a connection between them has to be postulated on the facts of experience – unless one is to assume that the human phenomenon is unintelligible or is a mere chaotic jumble of disconnected elements. This project is even more comprehensible if we admit a reformed conception of the fundamental concepts like matter, life and mind. Today it is generally accepted that life is developed from matter, and that the mind has an evident physical basis. In the mind there is the same substance as in the rest of the universe: we are sons of the stars. But from this fact, the materialist “proceeded (quite illegitimately) to infer the primacy and self-sufficiency of matter in the order of the universe, and to reduce life and mind to a subsidiary and subordinate position as mere epiphenomena, as appearances on the surface of the one reality, matter.5 This viewpoint was derived from the influence of the hard physical concepts of cause and effect which played such a great part in the science of the nineteenth century. As Smuts observed, “there could be nothing more in the effect than there was already in the cause; and if matter caused the soul, there could be nothing more in the soul than there already was in matter.”6 In this respect, the soul and all spiritual phenomena were merely appearances and no real substantial advance on matter. This was in fact the origin of the opposition between evolutionists and spiritualists – those who affirmed the theory of evolution tended to be materialists, while those who were spiritualists were forced to deny the reality of natural evolution. This empasse can be exceeded now with the introduction of a new conception of evolution in which the absolute equation of cause and effect does not hold. In this manner, as Smuts says, “we can believe in Genesis which by its vary nature is epigenesis.”7 If the theory of evolution is right, if life and mind arise in and from matter, then we can no longer conceive the

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universe as a purely physical mechanism; instead we must adopt a vision which involves a real place for life and mind. For the same reason, Darwin’s theory of descent is, for example, inadequate. In fact, natural selection is usually but erroneously taken as an external cause, as a purely mechanical factor, derived from a broad, generalised, statistical view of the causes of elimination of the unfit. But Darwin awards more and more importance to the psychical and organic causes expressed in sexual selection, in which operate emotional and beauty-based discrimination. Smuts considers the mind the third great fundamental structure of the holistic universe, after the atom and the cell. In the first place it is a continuation of the system of the organic regulation and co-ordinates all the experiences. In the second place, the mind is an instrument of individuality: through the mind, Holism arrives at the main tenet of organic evolution. But the individual becomes conscious of himself only in society and from knowing other minds like his own. On this level, the main results are the social instrument of language and the development of the abstract concepts that govern the world of experience. Another character of mind is its partial freedom from organic determination. While the animal is hidebound in its own hereditary characters, the human personality can learn from the vast world of experience and from social environment. With the appearance of the mind, not only a new system of organic regulation and control is developed, but also the individuality and free creative power which characterise a new form of control of and interrelation with the natural world. In the field of mental activity we can define human personality as the highest and most complete whole in the universe. In fact, human personality is a creative synthesis in which the earlier material elements, organic and psychical, are incorporated into a new complex whole. As Smuts underlines, “human personality takes up into itself all that has gone before in the cosmic evolution of Holism. It is not only mental or spiritual but also organic and material …; the structures of matter, life and mind are inseparably blended in it, and it is more than any of them.”8 Naturally, the importance of mental or spiritual factors must not obscure the essential physical factors: they are not independent; and disembodied mind and disminded body are both impossible concepts. 4. HIS COSMIC VISION

Smuts’s cosmic vision regards the increasing of complexity and the real value of the evolutionary process from matter to life and mind. He wants to

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guarantee the novelties of the development. Therefore he distinguishes between two conceptions. One regards all reality as given in form and substance at the beginning, either actually or implicitly, and the subsequent history as merely the unfolding, the evolution of this implicit order. The other views evolution as truly creative and not merely explicative of what was given before, because it is not possible to foresee the future course of a natural process. Matter, life and mind cannot be considered as separable realities, but as a unique result of the evolutive process: what we named “life” is derived from matter and – at a complex level of organisation – involves the phenomena of spirit and the human mind. This way of conceiving these phenomena is very contrary to the mechanistic explanation, which admits that in the effect there is not contained more than in the cause. Nevertheless, this principle neglects the place of novelties, creativeness and wholeness in natural evolution. For this reason, the statistic interpretation of natural selection in Darwin’s theory is not acceptable because it neglects the inner interactions of the biological organisms.9 Smuts thinks that both matter and life consist of unit structures whose ordered grouping produces natural wholes which we call bodies and organisms. He sees this character of “wholeness” as fundamental in the universe: wholes are not mere artificial constructions of human thought but the signs of a real great evolutionary process. Their appearance was explained by postulating a primordial whole-making, or “holistic” factor in the universe. Therefore, “Holism” is the term coined to describe this fundamental tendency in the universe to create wholes. Every organism, even the atom, is a whole, with specific internal organisation and self-direction. The conception of wholes therefore covers a much wider field than that of life, traceable from the inorganic form of nature to human associations like the State, and to the creations of the human spirit in all its greatest activities. So a whole is not an artificial construction, but an organic unity in which “all the parts appear in a subtle indefinable way to subserve and carry out the main purpose or idea.”10 That characteristic shows the existence of a tendency or energy in the universe to produce wholes. Evolution is properly the progressive development of the resulting wholes at all stages, from the inorganic to the most organised phenomena, like the human mind. In relation to the new physical conception of nature – derived especially from General Relativity – and to new research about the cell and the organic structure, Smuts proceeds to show the tendency in nature to constitute wholes such as atoms, cells or living organisms: this tendency, better than a vague and indefinable “élan vital”, constitutes the real factor of cosmic evolution:

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he names this whole-making tendency as Holism, operating in all stages of existence and not merely in the organic field. The whole conceived by Smuts is not simple, but composite and consisting of parts. These parts are in active relation to each other in the function of the organic whole. A whole, which is more than the sum of its parts, has internal structure and function, specific inner relations which constitute that more. The mechanical approach loses this more; it loses the interrelations of the organic structure in studying only the sum of the behaviour of the individual parts. For holistic methodology, “the whole is not something additional to the parts: it is the parts in a definite structural arrangement and with mutual activities that constitute the whole. … Thus water as a chemical compound is … a whole in a limited sense, an incipient whole, differing qualitatively from its uncompounded elements Hydrogen and Oxygen in a mere state of mixture; it is a new specific structure with new physical and chemical properties.11 A whole therefore is a complex of parts, but so closely interconnected that the characteristics and activities of them are affected and changed by the synthesis. In this sense we can say that the whole appears to posses a power of regulation and correlation in respect to its parts: the system becomes a synthesis qualitatively different from the sum of the parts. 5 . T H E O R G A N I S M I C V I S I O N O F NAT U R E

Smuts considers the acceptance of evolution as a fact so that the origin of life-structure from the inorganic must lead to a complete revolution in our idea of matter and of causation. Now, matter holds the promises and potency of life and mind; the hard and narrow concept of causation which dominated the nineteenth-century science changes. Smuts, like Boutroux, rejects the concept that there could be no more in the effect than there was in the cause as soon as creativeness and real progress become impossible.12 The narrow concept of causation again arose from a wider intellectual error of narrowing down all concepts into hard definite contours and wiping out their indefinite surrounding “fields”. As with The Origin of Species, the Theory of General Relativity has changed the manner in which we see nature. In fact, after Darwin, time assumes a fundamental function in defining the nature of things, especially with Einstein. Smuts introduced the concept of the field to describe the fluid plastic facts of nature, the fact that the “things” are all interconnected. After Einstein, space and time cannot be considered as autonomous and independent realities

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in front of things. In particular, we cannot conceive space as a mere box in which things go, but we must consider things to be events that involve at the same time both space and time. From the point of view of Relativity, bodies and things as merely spatial are not real but abstractions; only events which involve both space and time form reality. Thus, the “combined effect of our limited sensibility and the practical selective character of our intelligence accounts in part for the fact that things appear to us limited in size and form, with definite contours and margins and surfaces beyond which they do not go and come to a dead stop. This dead stop is an illusion largely due to the defects of our natural apparatus of observation. The activities which constitute the thing go beyond the sensible contours. The material part which we popularly call the thing is merely the concentrated sensible focus which disclosed itself to our limited sensibility and selective intelligence.” 13 We obtain a vision in which all the phenomena are interconnected but we cannot rigidly determine them. In this sense the fluidity of nature is in opposition to the strictness of our intellectual abstractions and this must be considered in our development of reality. Even matter itself cannot be considered as purely inertial. The periodic table of the elements shows the fluidity of matter, its great capacity to form complex aggregates. Particularly interesting is the colloid state. In the colloid state the very minute particles of a material are dispersed throughout one another. The minuteness of the dispersed particles means the exposure of a maximum surface area as compared to their masses. For this reason certain chemical and physical reactions show peculiar selective properties that approach strangely to the biological type. The intention of Smuts’ argumentation is to break down the old concept of matter as something inert, dead, passive, as something with absolute contours without any active interrelation with life and mind. The knowledge opened up by the new physics shows us that the “difference between matter and life is no longer measured by the distance between deadness or absolute passivity on the one hand, and activity on the other – a distance so great as to constitute an impassable gulf in thought. The difference between them is merely a difference in the character of their activities. So far from matter being pure inertia or passivity, it is in reality a mass of seething, palpitating energies and activities. … Its inertia, which is apparently its most distinctive quality and has been consecrated by Newton in his First law, has received its death-blow at the hands of Einstein. From the new point of view the inertia of matter is simply the result of the movement of Nature’s internal energies; its apparent passivity is merely the other side of its real activity. Matter itself

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is nothing but concentrated structural energy, energy stereotyped into structure.”14 So the very nature of the physical universe is activity or Action and the object can be defined holistically only as event in its field. Considering this aspect, the reflection of Smuts is nearest to the process philosophy of A. N. Whitehead. Naturally, this characteristic is more evident in the living organism in which, from the level of the cell to the organism as a whole, we can see the phenomena of reproduction, regeneration, and regulation, which are not the mere sums of constituent parts. As we have seen structural order as the characteristic of inorganic matter, similarly but in a much more intensive manner, we can see active co-operation and unity of action in the organism. 6 . S O M E C R I T I C S TO S M U T S ’ C O N C E P T I O N O F H O L I S M

First of all, we have seen how Smuts distinguishes wholes in the strict sense from mere aggregates, mechanical systems, and chemical compounds. Moreover, if he sees the creation of organic structures (wholes) as fundamental in the universe, it is not clear why it is only as an abstract behaviour of our intellect that we think of wholes as separate things.15 For this reason we do not understand why Smuts presents making wholes as the fundamental activity in an evolving universe and then considers an object – that is, in a general sense, a whole – as a mere abstraction of our knowledge. In other words, for Smuts’ assumption to be coherent it seems that the definition of a whole depends on the subjective knowledge or construction of a phenomenon during a precise historical moment. From this, we can deduce that a whole is not something objective in nature. But if this is true, how can we define evolution as a holistic increasing of wholes? The major critics to Holism probably examine the doctrine of emergence in relation to the properties of the whole. In fact, as Hempel and Hoppenheim later say, the “emergence of a characteristic is not an ontological trait inherent in some phenomena; rather it is indicative of the scope of our knowledge at a given time; thus it has no absolute, but a relative character; and what is emergent with respect to the theories available today may lose its emergent status tomorrow.”16 In the second place, Smuts ascribes to the term “Holism” even the function of a real, operative factor that produces the wholes in the universe, a vera causa; it is not only a concept. The broader use allows him to affirm that the factor of Holism is responsible for the total course of evolution, inorganic as well as organic. In this sense, it is used as a metaphysical agent.17 Smuts

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stresses the creative nature of evolution, its engendering of novelties whose presence invalidates mechanistic materialism. In this sense, there are many resemblance between Smuts’ philosophical view and that of other authors like Bergson. But Smuts seems to differ from them in refusing to state explicitly that the holistic factor is spiritual or akin to the mind. But at bottom it remains as inscrutable as Bergson’s élan vital. If we want to overcome this empasse, we can observe that Holism is coherently used by Smuts only as a general description of the synthetic activity of nature. In this sense it is the general expression of the astonishment of humankind in front of the incredible organisational capacity of nature, but it cannot be considered a scientific principle. Smuts says that the major critic considers Holism to be “a mere assumption which may have a philosophical or metaphysical value, but it has no scientific importance, as it cannot be brought to the test of actual facts and experiments. … Even assuming that there is such an activity as Holism at work in the universe, it would have no value for Science. To be of interest to Science, it must make a difference to actual facts and therefore be capable of experimental verification. But clearly Holism, owing to its pervasiveness and universality, cannot be so tested.”18 Nevertheless, Smuts maintains his thought in spite of the objection above, showing instead the weakness, or rather the one-sidedness and partiality of the scientific vision. In particular he supports, to go alongside the analytic investigation, the synthetic one, observing that “no description of the parts is a complete description of the whole object; it is only a partial description, and falls short of a true and full account in proportion as the object partakes of the character of the whole. … We may say generally that wherever an object shows structure or organisation (as every object does) a full description of it would involve at the very least an account of this structure or organisation as a whole, in addition to its detailed mechanisms and functions.”19 But, we can repeat, do we not consider science as studying the relation among the elements, searching to discover the structure of the whole object? And even if we investigate this relation, as science really does, is it not impossible to know an object exhaustively, as Kant notes? In the second instance, Smuts observes that science has need of a general explanatory ground-plan that lies beyond the area of scientific observation and experiment. He cites the case of ether to support that even if it was not observed, it was long accepted as one of the conceptual entities which were necessary to complete the coherent system of the undulatory theory of the transmission of radiant energy. For the same reason we must consider Holism

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like a plan or scheme of the universe: certainly it is not verifiable, but it is useful to account for the facts and phenomena of evolution, both organic and inorganic. Obviously, Holism can be considered a concept which furnished the science of a new framework. But we can observe that, in any case, it remains absolutely unverifiable and, worst of all, it is not translatable into mathematical formalisations. However, it remains in the domain of philosophy a new Weltanschauung used to understand the incredible phenomenon of organisation at all the stage of evolution. For this reason we are inclined to agree with Smuts to consider Holism a concept, but not a real and verifiable factor. In other words, the extraordinary whole-making capacity of the universe, that is the fundamental character of this universe to be active in the production of organised system, remains still unexplained. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the reflections of Smuts are not isolated: during the first half of the twentieth century, many philosophers and scientist were engaged in trying to understand the phenomenon of complex organisation.20 Moreover, this is the major theme of the contemporary science of complexity, but certainly this opens up another field of research. In particular, in more recent times we can speak of a revolution in the scientific outlook, and the ontopoiesis of life has become a new philosophical paradigm.21 Today, we are probably the witnesses of the end of the mechanistic age, represented by the Newtonian science in which all reality was described by a deterministic and mechanical model and the world originated deterministically from initial conditions. But in more recent times science has undergone a radical transformation such that the world is describes by instability and fluctuations, disorder from which rises much order, irregularity from which rises organisation. It is the process, the becoming of a whole that is primordial.22 8 . S O M E P I VOTA L I N T U I T I O N S F O R A A P P R E C I AT I O N O F H O L I S M F O R A PHILOSOPHY/PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE

At the end of the present article we would specify the stimulus derived from Smuts’ cosmic vision and the contemporary science of complexity toward the construction of a philosophy and phenomenology of life. In particular it considers the new awareness of the temporality of events, processes, transformations in the organic as well in the inorganic sphere. The nature of developments, that is, of the irreversible processes that carry the whole – inorganic as well as organic – onwards is and must be the main argument aroudn which our philosophical and scientific research has to be focused.

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Strictly interconnected with this first point is the question of the formation of complexity, which permits us to confront nature and the human sciences, from physics to politics. Thirdly, there is a narrow interconnection between matter, life and mind, an expression of the rising novelty in the course of cosmic evolution. University of Perugia Italy N OT E S 1

J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973), p. 101. During War World I, he spent a lot of time in England because he was drawn into international affairs. At the peace conference of Versailles, the English economist J. M. Keynes regarded him as the greatest protagonist of a moderate peace that would not crush Germany, and he may justly be called one of the principal protagonists of the League of Nations. After War World II, Smuts represented South Africa at the 1945 San Francisco Conference at which the Charter of the United Nations was drafted. 3 Among his works we remember J. C. Smuts, “A Century of Wrong. Issued by F. W. Reitz, State Secretary of the South African Republic,” (London: Review of Reviews Office (1899)), The Coming Victory (London, New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917); The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (New York: The Nation Press, 1919); “The Scientific World Picture of Today,” Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1931): pp. 1–18; The Basis of Trusteeship in African Native Policy (Johannesburg: R. L. Esson, 1942); Toward a Better World (New York: World Book Company, distributed by Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1944); Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of Personality (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1973); Memoirs of the Boer War (Johannesburg: J. Ball, 1994). For a monograph about this author see S. Procacci, Alle radici dell’olismo. La filosofia della natura in J. C. Smuts (Università degli Studi di Perugia: ESI, Napoli, 2001). 4 J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution (London, New York: Macmillan & Co. 1926), but for the citations we have considered the reprint of 1973. 5 Ivi, p. 8. Naturally, this materialism is most hotly contested by those who held to the spiritual values and realities. For this question, “they denied not only the primacy of matter but also that life or mind sprang from it and were dependent on it in any real sense,” ibid. 6 Ivi, p. 9. 7 Ibid. 8 Ivi, p. 264. 9 In particular, the theory of the sexual selection, since it introduced the active function of psychism, permits us to show the limits of that reductive conception. 10 Ivi, p. 98. 11 Ivi, p. 104. 12 É. Boutroux, De la contingence des lois de la nature (Alcan: Paris, 1929); De l’idee de loi naturelle dans la science et la philosophie contemporaines (Vrin: Paris, 1949). But we must conceive the causality of the whole not as something over and above the influence of the parts. The causality of the whole is not an additional factor, but simply the causality of the parts in the 2

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synthesis of the whole. In the whole, in fact, there is not an individual separate action of the parts as studied in the mechanistic analysis, but there is an inseparable holistic unity: it is in this sense only that the whole is a cause. 13 J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution, op. cit., p. 112. 14 Ivi, p. 51. 15 Ivi, chap. V. 16 C. G. Hempel, and P. Hoppenheim, “Studies in the logic of explanation,” Philosophy of Science: 15 (1948), pp. 135–75. For the citation we use the reprint in C. G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essay in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press, 1965), p. 263. 17 W. McDougall, “The Confusion of the Concept,” Journal of Philosophical Studies. 3 (1928), pp. 440–2. 18 J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution, op. cit., pp. 321–2. 19 Ivi, p. 322. 20 We can remember S. Alexander, H. Bergson, P. Teilhard de Chardin, E. Russell, C. Lloyd Morgan, J. S. Haldane, A. Meyer. 21 As A-T. Tymieniecka has pointed out, for example, in “The new paradigm. The ontopoiesis of life as a new philosophical paradigm,” Phenomenological Inquiry: 22 (1998), pp. 12–59. 22 As is known, the prominent scientific researcher I. Prigogine introduced the notions of complexity and the distinction between a “closed system” and an “open system.” See I. Prigogine, and G. Nicolis, Exploring complexity (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1989).

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SCIENCE AND REALITY

T H E S C I E N T I F I C C O N D I T I O N O F C O N T E M P O R A RY M A N

The fact that the earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around, is one of the most fascinating discoveries in history. It is also one of the most disquieting because it is in conflict with our immediate daily experience. We see the sun rise and set with infinite beauty, and we feel that the earth under our feet is solid and firm, as indeed the Bible maintains. The heliocentric theory placed the archaic vision of the cosmos in a state of crisis and opened up a new way of interpreting the world. This is why 1543, the year when the work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium by Copernicus appeared, is seen as the date when human beings crossed the threshold of the modern scientific revolution.1 There can be no doubt that we now find ourselves in the modern condition of science opened up by Copernicus. In other terms, perhaps one can affirm that the human condition of today’s man during this epoch of science, after the Copernican-Galilean revolution and subsequent revolutions, is rightly a scientific condition, just as the human condition of ancient Greek man was (after the birth of philosophy) a philosophical condition. This means not only that science and technology have revolutionised our way of living and our very vision of the physical, the biological and in a certain sense the anthropological world, but with them the vector which indicates the deep movements of the spirit has also changed direction. In the search for truth one no longer proceeds from the physis to man, as was the case in ancient times, nor from the created being to the Creator and from God to man as was the case during the Christian age, but from man to man within the horizon of science. Today it seems, and this is especially the case in the western Atlantic geographical area which is the heir to the great Greek-Roman civilisation, that almost everything (everywhere) – in art, in literature, even in religion as we will observe later in this paper (not to speak of the mass media!) – revolves around man and man according to the model described to us by science, and through science, by technology. In this sense, the scientific conception of the world is characterised not only by its own theses but also by a basic approach, by the overall points of view that it proposes, and by the direction in research that it imposes. The principal goal is unified science, that is to say the attempt is to connect and harmonise the results of individual researchers in the various fields of science and technology in a project 821 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 821–833. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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involving the reduction of the various forms of energy of the elementary, cellular, atomic and sub-atomic forces, quarks, neutrinos, etc., to an elementary fundamental force. The so-called empirical or “hard” sciences are thus with increasing impetus invading the whole space of awareness and in part seeking to fulfill the possibilities of exploring in vivo, beyond any conceptual reflection which does not belong to verifiable science, the meaning that man has for man in a dual opening up: what is the human being in the world that he finds as nature and what is man in the world that he realises as culture and history? TOWA R D S A N E W R E A L I S M

A purely Kantian position according to which time and space are the a prioris of sensibility, that is to say the formal structure of phenomena, seems to be by now superseded in the epistemology of science. Expressed in Kantian terms, science goes beyond the sphere of pure impressions advanced by Hume – not to bring us to things as realism wants, but rather to raise us to the unitary synthesis which is actuated in these impressions. The conditions of science are neither immanent nor transcendent – they are purely transcendental, that is to say they depend in the final analysis on the “I think in general.” The world is thus the representative structure of phenomena, that is to say “the mathematical total of all appearances, and the totality of their synthesis.”2 Today, however, these are not the positions we encounter. The scientific community, even with the late Popper of Kantian origins and with his postulates of fallibility, has drawn near to a new form of realism of a Galilean kind whose basis is the method of experimental verification. “Given that science can make real discoveries,” writes Popper when outlining his third concept, “I line up with Galileo against instrumentalism.”3 Indeed, Popper, who was always favourable to realism, argues: “I share the idea implicit in classical theory of truth, understood as correspondence, according to which we have to define as real a state of things if, and only if, the statement that describes it is real.”4 However, this is not a statement of simple and unitary realism, nor is it in fact possible to separate realism from anti-realism in a net way, because contemporary scientific positions are extremely differentiated and rich and above all because a researcher can be realistic about certain questions and anti-realistic about others, something which makes the panorama of the present-day debate really very complex and impossible to schematise. As is well known, the most convincing and widespread argument in favour of realism is the so-called inference to the best explanation

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(formulated by Barman in 1965), which has been utilised by many epistemologists (see for example the important subsequent formulation produced by Boyle) and altered by – amongst others – Popper himself.5 The idea here is that the empirical success of theories cannot be due to chance or a miracle but simply to the fact that they are real, that is to say that they correspond to reality or anyway are very near to the truth and thus speak about the reality of things: if today one can reach the moon by following a certain mathematical calculation and not another, this clearly means that the science which has been used corresponds to the reality of things. However, as a preliminary step certain distinctions should be made. The first is to be located between an ontological realism and a scientific realism. The first of these realisms poses the question of what really exists, and thus concerns the external world (whose existence was not denied even by such idealists as Berkeley). The second form of realism, or scientific realism, raises instead the problem of the cognitive value of scientific theories and tries to answer questions about the relationship between theory and reality, the subject of the theories themselves, and their cognitive status. The various forms of realism are distinguished from each other in admitting the existence of different entities and in offering different criteria to demarcate entities which are held to be real from those which are not recognised. In the scientific sphere such entities are identified by the special matter in every individual thing which expresses in its corpus its own reality through the realisation of its own quantity with the parts of that individual thing’s material structure: atoms and sub-atomic structures, molecules, cells, organs, DNA. Such entities are different and diversified in the variety and complexity of present-day science, in the different qualities of elements and particles, in the difference of cells and organs, etc. Hence we have the realisation of attributes which are the specific properties and functions of the real, in subordination and correlation, which always constitute the almost inexhaustible subject of research for scientific investigation and technological planning. F O R A NA L O G I C A L K N OW L E D G E

It does not, therefore, seem exact to say that science in general and modern science in particular are only concerned with the exterior properties and qualities of material reality, of phenomena. It is true that Galileo wrote to M. Welser: “Trying to discover the essence, is for me an endeavour no less impossible and in terms of effort no less vain in the near elementary substances than in the very remote and celestial … But if we want to arrive at

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the understanding of certain affections, it does not seem to me that we should lose hope of being able to do this with the bodies which are very far from us as well as with those which are very near …”6 In reality, however, especially as regards the powerful instruments of research that the complex theories – which from time to time the results of investigations suggest – have available today, complicated experimental operations of a very high level of precision, after a certain fashion, not only reach “certain affections” but also reach the essence of corporeal reality as such, even though they do not always manage to understand it to the full extent as regards its final, unifying and unitary, structure. One is certainly not dealing here with an exaggerated realism of the Platonic kind, but rather with an Aristotelian analogical realism which is always open to the perfectibility of knowledge. In a certain way, modern science and technology recognise this through the very fact of the following each other, and unification, of various hypotheses, where the hypothetical element is supposed and pre-supposed as a means of inquiry proposed and accepted by the researcher. St. Thomas Aquinas himself does not seem very far from this method for the purposes of certain experimental sciences when in relation to the theories of archaic cosmology on the movement of the astral spheres and the contrast between Aristotle and Ptolemy he upholds the hypothetical approach to moving forward in the truth: “Unde hoc non est demostratio sed suppositio quaedam.”7 And he goes on: “The hypotheses invented by the astronomers are not necessarily true; in adopting them they thought they were explaining the facts, but we are not obliged to think that they were right. It may be that a model which is still unknown will manage to explain all the phenomena of the astral world.”8 From a philosophical point of view, however, the specific constituent of beings is proper to them, and for Aristotle corresponded to the specific properties expressed in the definition9 of every material, vegetable and animal body, whatever the precise boundaries of the various species. For that matter, today nuclear physics and molecular biology are rather on the side of the idea of structures or differentiated forces, thereby being in agreement (per analogiam) with the qualitative realism of the Aristotelian form and the Thomist participation of the act. A N E N C O U N T E R T H RO U G H A NA L O G Y O F P H I L O S O P H Y A N D S C I E N C E

And it is perhaps here that the Aristotelian philosophy of the potential and the actual, together with the Thomist philosophy of participation of being, can meet, through analogy, contemporary physics and biology. Indeed, in this

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metaphysical horizon, which is specific to Thomist-Aristotelianism, matter is not understood in the mathematicised sense of Platonism, which was later taken up by early mechanist modern science (Galileo, Descartes). The point is that matter in the corporeal reality is not everything but rather the positive and not negative potential. Aristotle defined it by what it is not: “I call matter that which, in itself, is neither something determined nor a quantity nor any other of the determinations of the being.”10 He said that primary matter is known only kat’analogian, that is to say by analogy.11 It was no matter of chance that the famous German physicist, W. Heisenberg, supported the Aristotelian concept of power, observing that it offered a credible way of thinking about elementary particles.12 For St. Thomas Aquinas, in virtue of the creation, primary matter is demonstrable through the notion of participation: matter participates in being as pure potential and has in its own way its idea in God.13 The positivity of the whole of the physical reality of matter is thus freed and removed from the emptying of reality effected by mathematisation (Descartes). And Aquinas can argue that imperfections do not come either from God or from matter but because the creature comes from nothing.14 In this way, as well, the human body is raised to the image of God (and is not a mere vestige) because it is formed by a spiritual soul.15 As a differentiating principle, and thus constituting the species, the Aristotelian axiom forma dat esse in all its philosophical breadth is valid.16 St. Thomas developed this axiom and applied it beginning with the convergence of the Aristotelian principle, on the one hand, of “vivere viventibus est esse” and thus the “essence is in all things the cause of being,”17 with, on the other, the principle of creation which suggests the metaphysical affinity between the form and its matter – an affinity previously asserted by Aristotle. Thus the compound of power and action in bodies is completely positive. In this formal moment of essence, the principle forma dat esse has an essential determining meaning, that is to say the form confers on the body its fundamental differential quality through its own matter. This difference is not known directly in itself but only indirectly through the convergence of the constituent unity of its properties. This importance of the formal cause in physics is brought out today by the famous historian of science, T. Kuhn, who observes: “the structure of physical explanation has today a notable resemblance to that developed by Aristotle in his analysis of formal causes. Certain effects are deduced from a certain number of properties and the explanations which are deduced correspond to those of Aristotle. Cause in physics has once again become cause in a broad sense, that is to say explanation.”18

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Hypothesising this encounter through analogy between the new realism of science and Thomist Aristotelian philosophy, certain basic reflections emerge. The first is the impossibility of simplifying physical reality by eliminating every distinction between mass and energy, whenever they are considered equivalent (or at least analogically correspondent) to the philosophical copy of matter and form. The second is the utility (within a philosophical context) of coordinating the system of physical forces in relations of dependence whatever they may be. The third could be that the various forces, answering to the variety of physical forms, can subordinate themselves to a primary force: for bodies a fundamental physical energy (for example of an atomic structure), and for living beings a fundamental vital energy (for example of a cellular character). Contemporaries speak about the “hologrammatic” principle, which is a reformulation of the Aristotelian and neo-Platonic organicist principle of the nexus of mutual reference or mutual co-belonging and subordination between the parts and the whole. In a hologram every point of a configuration (organism, cell) contains “almost the totality of information” (E. Morin). Clearly, this mutual belonging and subordination does not mean unification, which would involve the end of their very form and thus of their very reason for being. In this sense, Aristotelian physics has recently been reassessed by Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, as an expression of a conception of reality which is more similar, than the Newtonian conception, to the “new alliance” between philosophy and science which has followed on from the developments in thermodynamics. Indeed, according to Prigogine, Aristotelian physics adopts the development of all earthly realities, in particular of living organisms, as a model for all phenomena. This development is an irreversible process dominated by real time, which flows in a single direction. Instead, Newtonian science adopts the movement of celestial bodies as a model for the explanation of phenomena. This is a phenomenon which is perfectly reversible, like, for that matter, the working of a machine, in which the direction of time is totally irrelevant.19 Thermodynamics, with its consequent discovery of entropy, has instead demonstrated that in physical phenomena as well there is an irreversible tendency, and that thus the entire universe has its own development and its own history which are dominated by the “arrow of time.” Thus becomes necessary a new alliance between philosophy and science, no longer based upon the Newtonian-Galilean tendency to apply the model of these celestial phenomena to earthly phenomena, but based upon the opposite tendency – that of applying earthly models to celestial phenomena as well, which is the specific tendency of

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Aristotelian physics.20 And this is not to speak of the topical relevance of Aristotelian biology, and in particular its theory of generation, in relation to which the American biologist, Max Delbrueck, of the Pasadena Institute of Technology, even declares that Aristotle had discovered DNA, identified by him as “form”, that is to say the eidos, pre-existent in the father and reproduced in his descendants.21 Another American biologist, Ernest Mayer, maintains that Aristotle must be seen as the father not of teleology (a term which refers to the metaphysical theological finalism of Thomist origins) but rather of “teleonomia”, that is to say of the idea according to which “a teleonomic process or form of behaviour is that which owes its orientation towards a end to the action of a programme.”22 On the topical relevance of the biological finalism developed by Aristotle, for that matter, there is a vast literature which has involved philosophers, philologists and scientists.23 On this point an important attempt is that proposed by Anna–Teresa Tymieniecka. Life, which is radical reality, acquires its profile in a process of self-individualisation that has the character of constructive progress in the dialectic of “self and the other”, realising itself as “ontopoiesis of life.” At this point Tymieniecka makes Aristotle’s insights regarding entelechia, energeia, and areté live again. The principal thing that science observes in the process of the individualisation of beings, beginning with the simplest, such as for example the cell, is that they consist in themselves. Not only are they identical from a logical, numerical, and temporal point of view, but they have their own consistency. A cell is not only itself, i.e. different from other cells and its own origins, but possesses a rule for its own development beginning with itself. Naturally, the notion of entelechia as already realised perfection and as perfection to be realised as subsequent areté, contains this idea, that is to say that movement tends to realise a telos, that it is teleonomical. As Tymieniecka observes, Aristotle in particular begins with this principle in De Generatione, and to emphasise the dynamic meaning of this individualisation Tymieniecka calls “virtuality” that which remains in the single being, rather than form or eidos. In this sense, the vision of Tymieniecka presents life “not as an ontological region of static structures of beings, but as a flux of generation and decay which has its own internal nucleus that proceeds in a perpetual interconnection with the vital environment which is formed in this same nucleus.”24

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One can say that the field of research into scientific truth and the path of science proceed gropingly according to the variety of their subjects and

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the diversity of their methods, but the reduction of reality of both immediate experience and scientific experience to mere “phenomenon”, defining such experience as mere “empiria”, behind which is superimposed or introduced as a substitute the sole reality of an already empiricist and already idealist Everything which amasses together the reality of phenomena as an absolute reality, does not appear to be exact – indeed today this is contradicted by the facts. Contemporary science, in microphysics and microbiology, is clearly moving towards seeing forces as qualitative forces in an opposed sense to the ontological levelling of certain philosophies of immanence which have completely disengaged from science; indeed, they have declared it to be an unusable road. In this respect it is significant that René Thom, the inventor of the “theory of catastrophes” has presented the physics of Aristotle as “semiophysics”, i.e. as an expression of that physics of purpose, or of “significant forms”, capable of giving meaning to experience and thus rendering reality intelligible, of which his theory of catastrophes aspires to be a fundamental element.25 Thom writes: “Aristotle has been for centuries (perhaps for millennia) the sole thinker of the continuum; this in my eyes is his principal merit.” He also adds that he found in Aristotle the concept of genericalness (the “for the most part”), the idea of “stratification” (the composition of the organism into emeomere and anomeomere parts), and the idea of the breaking up of the genus into species as an image of “bifurcation”, and he sees all this as amazing.26 It may seem paradoxical to speak about the contemporary relevance of Aristotle’s physics given that modern science came into being specifically through criticising it. But at the basis of this criticism there is a great misunderstanding, condemned by Kuhn himself with clarity. In describing how he came to discover the concept of “scientific revolution”, which made him famous, Kuhn says that he turned to the study of Aristotle’s physics to find that “in a world in which qualities are primary, motion was necessarily a change in state rather than a state.”27 If local motion, in the light of the modern principle of inertia, can be considered a state, and thus has no need of a cause, the change is however a change in state and as such requires, for modern physics as well, a cause. It was to this type of change that Aristotle applied his principle according to which “everything that moves is moved by something.”28 Another well-known contemporary epistemologist rightly asserts that in Aristotelian science there are no problems, such as the relationship between the mind and the body, which modern science is not able to solve.”29

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F O R S C I E N C E O P E N TO P H I L O S O P H Y

However, there is a basic approach in this new experimental realism which we can define as physicist, as Aristotle did with the pre-Socratics, that is to say “reductionist”, in that scientific truth is only linked to experimentation, both because it is still the heir to a certain Kantian or post-Kantian horizon and because it is necessarily tied to the verifiability of the experiment. This involves not recognising any other truth as having scientific value other than that which passes by way of the senses either through immediate experience or through the most sophisticated instruments, and is then verifiable by experimental tests. Thus the admission of the existence of unobservable beings is connected to the possibility of obtaining the results of such experimental tests. An experiment as a verification of facts thus turns out to be the only scientific means available to us by which to reasonably decide about the ontology to adopt. Here there is a question of principle: that of the impossibility of directly experiencing realities by external senses (within space and time) or by the most sophisticated instruments of science which do not belong by nature to physics or biology. It is clear that I cannot have a direct experience or carry out a direct experiment of a physical order in relation to realities which are by nature spiritual and not material. I refer here principally to the human soul and to God. Therefore, the exponents of such scientific positions admit the existence only of observable physical realities, and for them other realities belong to the sphere of values, which are, however, not always universal, and even less based upon an objective reality.30 One can, however, say that today, after the recognition of the new and growing importance of the phenomenon of religions with its various disruptive forms of fundamentalism, a new challenge to philosophy presents itself, which is that of the emerging centrality of ecology and the environment required by science in line with a certain kind of new religiosity. Given that for scientists, science is the principal form of drawing near to the real, and given that it demonstrates the dynamic expanding of matter on the horizon of space and time, if there is an absolute reality this cannot but be conceived as being within the totality of nature, that is to say as nature, as was the view of Spinoza and the pre-Socratics before him. Thus, if the position of anti-religious neo-positivism typical of the generation of the post-Second World War period leads to a kind of separatism between science and the other forms of knowledge, or better to a kind of denial of the possibility of demonstrating in epistemic terms the reality of the spirit and of the spiritual soul, and God as an intelligent and loving person,

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this last position, which today is emerging and rides the new religious wave characteristic of our generation, leads instead to a kind of simplistic “concordism” between science and religion, whose centre is the ecology of nature and its “rights.” In this approach, man is merely an epiphenomenon of nature who can even be superseded by a new type of being superior to him. And the god of this new pseudoscientific religion is nothing else but the impersonal totality of nature, certainly an infinite god, but a god along the lines of the pre-Socratics, Spinoza, and perhaps Einstein. A god, therefore, so “weak” that it certainly does not have the attributes to be “the thought of thought” which moves everything because it is loved, to cite Aristotle (the father of physics), and even less the Ipsum esse as an essential act which from nothing He makes beings, and especially man in His image, participate in being, as propounded by Aquinas. TOWA R D S P H I L O S O P H Y T H AT I S N OT A N A LT E R NAT I V E TO COSMOLOGY

Thus, more than ever before we now need a revival of metaphysics which, certainly, takes into account the new realism of science, but which should also claim and uphold its own spaces of truth and certainty without the conditioning effects of experimental tests, on the one hand, and on the other, is able to rise to new horizons beyond sensibility beginning both with the self, intelligence, free will, and the soul of man, and nature or a being as a being as conceived of by the ancient Greeks and medieval thinkers. Metaphysics for today but like the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, and thus not as an alternative to anthropology or cosmology. Within this evolving process, one can point out that on the part of the intellect there is an aspiration to an increasingly accurate assessment of the truth, or rather an assessment which is increasingly close to the truth, of the concrete, through the employment of more precise observations and through the experience of more powerful and sophisticated techniques both in nuclear and sub-nuclear physics and in the most advanced forms of biology and physiology. We have to recognise that during the last century man certainly achieved greater progress if not in relation to knowledge about himself, certainly in relation to knowledge about the macrocosm and the microcosm, than was the case throughout the whole of the rest of the history of mankind. For this reason, the “vision of the world” of contemporary science is no longer that of Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas, but this does not involve a change on the metaphysical horizon of the relationships between matter and

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form, between accident and substance, between material reality and spiritual reality, between God and the world, and in general between act and potential, between the Self-Being and participating beings. However, this calls for special caution in the direct application to the real of philosophical categories which are still linked to the ancient vision of the world. Perhaps Thomist-Aristotelian philosophy is called to once again enter the field of physics, of biology, and of cosmology, and present a theory of knowledge which provides explanations for them. There is at least one question in which all men who think are interested: that of understanding the world we live in and thus ourselves (given that we are part of the world) and our knowledge of it. It is totally irrelevant, in seeking to solve the contemporary problem of scientific truth to cite the successes of modern physics, or to take pleasure in the inexactitudes that Aristotelian cosmology handed on to the medieval age or Hegelian dialectics introduced into the modern period. The question is much more serious because, as has already been observed in this paper, it is not confined to the sphere of physics or biology but extends far and wide to the point of involving the whole being and acting of man who is in his body and needs the world to live, feel and know. And without it happening that this being of man neglects the problem of the world (something it should not do), it is nonetheless certain that the whole destiny of philosophy and of the being of man are involved in the truth of the world. St. Thomas Aquinas here as well provides us with the example of the last years of his life when he found the time to provide comments in particular on the cosmological and biological works of Aristotle, and even wanted to comment on Plato’s Timaeus. Pontifical Academy of Science N OT E S 1

Cf. William Shea, “Copernico”, Le Scienze, IV, n. 20, April 2001. “We have two expressions: world and nature, which at times are interchangeable. The first means the mathematical total of all appearances, and the totality of their synthesis, both in the large and in the small, or rather in the progress of this synthesis both through composition and through division. This very world, however, is called nature, because it is seen as a total dynamic, and one looks not first at aggregation in space and time to constitute the world of quantity but rather to the unity of appearances in existence” (Kant, KrV, A 419/B 447). 3 Congetture e confutazioni. Lo sviluppo della conoscenza scientifica (Bologna, 1985), p. 198. 4 Ibid., p. 200. 5 The importance of the method of “inference to the best explanation” is emphasised by, among others, Dr. Canon Peacocke (winner of the Templeton prize) in his article “Double Helix”, Church Times, 11 May 2001, p. 16. 2

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6 Opere (Florence, 1929–1934), vol. V, pp. 187ff. In order to learn about and measure these affections, Galileo employed mathematics. All the other methods have as their premise that “the great book of nature is written in mathematical figures” (ibid., p. 16). 7 In I De caelo et mundo, I, 1, no 28 (Turin, 1952), p. 15. For St. Thomas the science of astronomy “proceeds from appearance according to the senses in relation to the astral spheres” (ibid., II, 14, no 427, p. 212), whereas the philosophy of nature “sees the order of things which human reason finds but does not make” (In Eth., I, 1, no 2, Turin, 1964, p. 3). 8 Ibid., II, 17, no 451, p. 226. And more fully in a text of a previous date, cf. S. Th. I, 32, 1 ad 2. 9 Cf. Metaph., VI, 10, 1034 b 20ff. 10 Metaph., VII, 3, 1029 a 20f. For a more detailed analysis, see M. Sánchez Sorondo, Aristotele e San Tommaso (Rome, 1981), pp. 57–100. 11 “As regards primary matter, it is knowable only by analogy” (Phys., I, 7, 191 to 8). 12 Physics and Philosophy (New York, 1958), pp. 41, 53, 70, 73, 110, 160, 166, 180–186. 13 “Considerandum est quod sicut materia prima dicitur informis per defectum formae, sic informitas attribuitur ipsi primo Bono, non per defectum, sed per excessum; et sic, secundum quamdam remotam assimilationem, similitude Causas primae invenitur in materia prima” (In De Div. Nom., ch. 4, lect. 2, Turin, 1950, no 297, p. 97). Cf. S. Th., I, 44, 2; De Ver., II, 5; De Pot., III, 1 ad 12, 13, 14. 14 “Si tamen aliqua imperfectio in creaturis sit, non oportet quod sit ex Deo neque ex materia; sed in quantum creatura est ex nihilo” (De Pot., 3, 1 ad 12). 15 In III Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, sol. 1 ad 2, Moos, III, p. 67. 16 For a more detailed analysis see C. Fabro, Partecipazione e causalità (Turin, 1960), esp. pp. 330ff., 370ff., 393ff. ~ ~ 17 ’ ␫␣ (De anima, II, 4, 415 b 12). ␶ò ␥␣` Œ ␣’´␫␶␫␱␯ ␶␱υ~ ε ’␫␯␣␫ ␲␣␴␫␯ ␩’ ␱υ␴´ 18 T. Kuhn, La tensione essenziale (Italian translation, Turin, 1985), p. 35. 19 I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, La nuova alleanza (Italian translation, Turin, 1981), pp. 40, 78, 276. 20 Ibid., p. 268f. 21 M. Delbrueck, “Aristotle-totle-totle”, in J. Monod and E. Borek (eds.), On Microbes and Life (New York, 1971), pp. 50ff. 22 E. Mayr, “Teleological and Teleonomic: a New Analysis”, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 14, 1974, pp. 91–117; (Italian translation, see Biologia ed evoluzione, Turin, 1982). 23 Cf. E. Gilson, D’Aristote à Darwin et retour (Paris, 1971). 24 A.–T. Tymieniecka, “La fenomenologia critica della ragione”, in M. Sánchez Sorondo (ed.), L’atto aristotelico e le sue ermeneutiche (Rome, 1990), pp. 247ff. See also A.–T. Tymieniecka, Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason; Logos and Life: Book 4, in Analecta Husserliana, vol. LXX (Dordrecht, 2000), pp. 87–93. 25 R. Thom, Esquisse d’une sémiophysique. Physique aristotélicienne et théorie des catastrophes (Paris, 1988). 26 Ibid., p. 12f. 27 T. Kuhn, La tensione essenziale, p. x. 28 Phys., VIII, 4, 255 b 31–256 a 2. 29 P. Feyerabend, “Una lancia per Aristotele”, in G. Radnitzky and G. Andersoon (eds.), Progresso e razionalità della scienza (Rome, 1984), pp. 121–161. For a detailed outline of Aristotle’s physics and its contemporary relevance see E. Berti, “La nascita della ‘Fisica’ in Aristotele”, in M. Sánchez Sorondo (ed.), Physica, Cosmologia, Nuovi approcci (Rome, 1993), pp. 1–14.

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On the question of values Bertrand Russell’s conclusion is representative: “I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know” (Religion and Science, Oxford, 1961, p. 243).

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The world is populated with entities displaying internal unity and complexity. Organisms, societies and even atoms possess a structure which guarantees their stability as units of which the whole character emerges out of the sum of their parts. All levels of the organization of reality display phenomena1 which share these characteristics, but we do not possess a universal epistemological mechanism to formally deal with their holistic and complex nature. Contemporary science has followed the reductionistic route which Husserl described in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, and which has continued with the dissection of reality into ever finer levels of detail, leaving aside the phenomenological unity of the objects it studies. The concept of system offers the possibility of approaching complex phenomena which cannot be treated as a simple sum of the parts. However, this concept doesn’t possess a unique acceptance nor is it always directed toward the type of phenomena that are of interest to us here. The concept tends to deal with an abstraction which serves to describe defined entities through the interaction of their parts, without necessarily considering the emerging nature of the whole. As an example let’s look at the first definition of system given by Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary (1993): a group of objects or units so combined as to form a whole and work, function or move interdependently and harmoniously.

The definition offered by Webster’s focuses its characterization on a group of objects and leaves the whole as a mere description of the group. This approach also describes the more elaborate use that is given to the concept in the context of abstract systems such as mathematic ones which denote equation structures associated with the coupling of their variables; in this case, the interacting objects are the equations, and the system is defined by the ensemble they form, without reference to any emerging whole. However, systems with phenomenal existence that emerge from the complex organization of elements cannot always be reduced to a mere sum of their parts. On the contrary, there are many phenomena in the world where the observation of the whole predominates over the observation of its 835 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 835–854. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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composition. Living beings are probably the most discussed, but are by no means the only case (Küppers 1990, ch. XI). The school of thought which attempts to use the concept of system to describe the emerging whole in all levels of reality was derived from the study of living beings; this school is know as Systems Theory or Systems Science, although it does not constitute a theory in the scientific sense, but rather an ensemble of ideas of diverse disciplinary classification, grouped under the epistemological principle of holistic approaches to complex objects. This article shares this same interest in describing complex systems where the totality cannot be reduced to its parts, but it is also concerned with the specific problem of studying their phenomenal character: what epistemological conditions should the concept of system fulfill to describe emerging entities with internal complexity? The concept of system can be used to represent complex entities if it is reconstructed in adequate phenomenological terms. Thus, the aim of this article is to discuss the elements to be considered for a reconstruction of this nature. The notion of system is commonly defined in terms of a relation of elements. We will attempt to establish a conceptual framework for the study of systems which uses the traditional notion of related parts, but which, additionally, clarifies the very notion of relation, offers an ontological foundation to the concept of system and clarifies the nature of the system as an emerging and unitary whole. In order to achieve this aim, Niklas Luhmann’s idea of operation is proposed as a minimal conceptual unit for understanding the notion of system in terms of events which take place in real time. The fundamental place for the concept of operation in the systemic scheme will be justified resolving the tension between the concepts of relation and operation; we will then pass on to the ideas of structure, distinctness, emergence and self-replication, to finally propose a definition of phenomenal systems. I . R E L AT I O N A N D O P E R AT I O N

The general starting point for the demarcation of a system is the existence of an ensemble of entities which are independently specifiable but also related in such a way that they form a unity. Niklas Luhmann (1995), when developing a general theory of social systems rejected the use of the concept of relation to describe a system because, in his opinion, this implied that the description is dependent on the observer. In its place, he proposes the concept of operation as a primary characteristic of the system. Thus, Luhmann attempts

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to reach a mechanism for observation which does not depend on the observer. Luhmann’s argument, however, fails to consider that the concept of relation can be used as an instrument of observation to indicate an independent reality in the same way as the operation concept. The relation between a theory and the phenomenon which it attempts to describe is not given through a dual association between phenomenon and theoretical concept, but through the coupling that the theory, as a network of meanings, establishes with a determined observational universe. Our theoretical development attempts a minimal characterization of the type of phenomenological behavior indicated by the term “system.” In this sense the concepts of operation and relation are linguistic constructions forming part of a theoretical plot which attempts to point out certain aspects of the reality where the notion of system fits in. This does not mean that these concepts are epistemologically equivalent. The notion of operation has its own particular space which increases the capacity of the traditional systems theory to indicate a given phenomenology in relation to time events, but it does not eliminate the functionality of the concept of relation in the description of systems. This concept conserves its theoretical function in a level of abstraction superior to that of operation because it generalizes a description of the system’s internal associations without establishing a specific time location. The notion of relation complements the notion of operation: operations can only be understood in a theory which uses relations as a means of specifying operational possibilities. Relations are necessary concepts in a systems theory so long as there are partitions in the system which act as descriptive mechanisms. A relation is a rule of association which indicates how the state of one component (a selection of the partition) depends on the state of another component. Luhmann himself makes use of partitions: for Luhmann, the elements are the operations themselves that continuously reproduce the system. Each operation is phenomenologically associated to the preceding and the following ones. Thus, the associability is also present in Luhmann’s plan and therefore, the notion of relation, although with a very specific character: Luhmann introduces physical temporality as an existential condition of the association between operations. Luhmann’s ontological negation of relations appears to rest on the negation of any time other than the present as a description of the real. If only the existence of the present is accepted, then relations cannot exist, since they are a-temporal. However, the problem doesn’t only concern the concept of relation. Other concepts such as emergence, structure, etc., are located in a

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level of abstraction which is similar or superior to that of the concept of relation. These are, however, also used by Luhmann. Even if the historicity of the system is the ontological starting point for a systems theory which overcomes certain preceding limitations, other levels of abstraction seem inevitable. Additionally, the reticular nature of the concepts of any theory generate an undissolvable link between all the concepts which shape it. As a result, the meaning comes to depend on the same notion of operation in the semantic network that gives substance to the theory. The systems theory itself is a conceptual system which tries to recognize certain types of phenomena. These phenomena are not only represented as events, but also as relations, structures, etc. The relevant question is then whether we require the concept of relation, and others which are not understood as events, to construct our representation of systems. Luhmann’s objection to the concept of relation can also be true of the concept of operation: just as the observer selects the system’s descriptive relations, he also selects descriptive operations which depend on the observation perspective. For example, Luhmann’s choice of the communication act as the operation of social systems has been questioned.2 The concepts of operation and relation depend on an ontological starting point relating to the system: the acceptance or rejection of the relations or operations as existing independently (or not) of the observer. We do not therefore accept that the notion of relation should be eliminated from a systems theory because it lacks historicity or because it permits a representational selection by the observer. However, if we want to maintain the concept of relation in our approach, we should demonstrate that this concept has an irreducible position in the theoretical plot. We will attempt this after adequately introducing the notion of operation. Luhmann’s concept of operation, as a starting point for a general concept of system, allows its theoretical demarcation to be based in a very precise epistemological level: temporality. If systems exist, then they exist in time. To the contrary, the concept of relation fails to make the necessary reference to real time: the components of an arbitrary partition are necessarily related but the ontological nature of these relations is usually ignored. Tradionally, attempts to formalize a systemic framework begin with the existence of relations and pass on to establish adequate properties of the system as a totality (c.f., von Bertalanffy 1975). The holistic condition is of course part of the distinctive character of a systemic approach, but the concept of operation does not oppose this characterization; on the contrary, it adds a descriptive level and perfects an adequate conceptual framework, as we will see further on.

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We can describe an operation as an event in real time in the internality of the system. Luhmann defines operations in such a way that their occurrence is instantaneous and can only be followed by other operations (Luhmann 1995). The concept of operation is the most fundamental ontological level in the description of a system. The system only exists when a continuum of operations constantly restitute it. The operation is thus a characteristic element of a system which only occurs in the concrete and always instantaneous present. As such, the comprehension of particular systems should not part from the specification of system relations but from the operation which characterizes them. The operational foundation of the concept of system shows the phenomenological character of this approach in accordance with the continuum of events which are developed in historical time and which also provide a base for its classification, in virtue of the type of operations which constitute them. Thus systems are primarily a continuum of events and in a second observational order, structures of relations. Operations are physical events and relations are descriptions of the conditions in which operations are given. Although we accept that the notion of operation allows us to treat the problem of the demarcation of the concept of system from a more fundamental conceptual framework than the notion of relation, we insist that the latter cannot be eliminated. The notion of relation contains the condition of composition which is necessary for the existence of a system in any phenomenological dimension. Relations associate conditions of state of the partitions of the system in such a way that each partition depends on the rest of the system, generating a structural condition which is necessary for the unity of the whole composition. The introduction of the notion of operation in the conceptualization of systems does not eliminate the concept of relation, since it remains through the clarification of the operation/relation distinction which makes both concepts interdependent. Specification of the operation which characterizes a system requires a partition of the system. The system’s operations can only sustain themselves if the relations of lower organizational levels among the parts of the system maintain structural continuity within a collapse threshold. The continuity O(t) of the operation materializes in the specific instant t0, but the conditions for this operation are established in relational terms in such a way that the operation depends on the relational conditions between the involved parts in each specific instant. If S1 and S2 are components of the system S (according to a given partition) and R12 is the existing relation between them, then R12(t)

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describes the temporal continuity of the association between S1 and S2. If S1 and S2 are parts involved in the compositional conditions for the occurrence of the operation O(t0), then a relational dependence of the operation exists as the operation is dependent on the existing relation in that instant as described in clause A: A: O(t0) => R12 (t) when t = t0 This condition does not imply that the operation can be derived from relational conditions. The operation occurs in the emerging level where the system appears as a unity, and relations are established in the compositional level of the system. Then clause A only establishes that the operation is only possible if certain relational conditions are fulfilled. The notion of operation in Luhmann’s systems theory primarily points to social systems. Although the author also frequently refers to psychic systems – as a frontier to social systems – and to biological systems – as a source of theoretical analogies – it is social systems operations, with communication as their characteristic operation, which interest Luhmann. For communication to occur, the interaction of individuals exchanging a certain type of structure is necessary. Thus, communication is only possible if there are specific relational conditions: shared language, conditions for the physical transmission of signals, etc. The communicational act occurs in the social dimension that emerges out of the relation of psychic systems (i.e., a psychic system cannot communicate with itself), but requires relational conditions in the material structure of the system. Whichever, the notion of operation can generally be applied to all possible classes of systems. Let’s look at the case of an atomic hydrogen system as an example. The relation of electromagnetic interaction between the system electron and the proton is the structural condition for the system’s stability given by Coulomb’s Law where k is a constant, A12 the attraction force between both particles with charges of q1 and q2, respectively, and r the distance between them: A12 (t) = k (q1) (q2)/r2 The structure of a hydrogen atom is determined by the existence of the relation A12(t). So long as a physical event which annihilates the system’s unity does not take place, the relation between the system’s proton and electron remains as the structure of the system. The A12(t) function does not describe the strength of particles in any particular instant. However, A 12(t) can be evaluated in the particular instant t0 with the particular distance r0 to give us the value A12(t0, r0) which represents the intensity of the physical

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interaction between the electron and the proton in a specific instant. Such an interaction is a concrete physical event in the present which expresses itself as the system’s operation. This operation occurs in the quantum order level that maintains the atom’s unity (other quantum conditions are necessary for the total specification of the operation). The components S1 and S2 are elements of a material partition in the atomic system which establish the relational conditions of possibility of the atom as a unity. Without such relational conditions, the specific character of the operation cannot be solved. A12(t) indicates a relational condition and A12(t0, r0) indicates an operational expression. Both system descriptions are complementary. This example allow us to observe the complementariness of the concepts of operation and relation. The operation occurs in a particular instant, but can only be completely specified making use of an atemporal partition where the structural conditions of the system can be established in terms of relations. An explanation of the concept of structure in the scheme that we are proposing follows. I I . S T RU C T U R E

Another concept closely linked to the demarcation of systems is structure. This notion is associated with the assumption of invariant conditions in a system. Laszlo (1983) defines structure as follows: A structure is defined by the set of transformations which is reducible to an invariance. As a square is invariant with respect to rotation in space at 90°, so a social structure is invariant with respect to certain transformations, such as reversal of kinship systems, totems, forms of communications, etc. The invariances constitute the fixed parameters of the structure which reappear in various transformations. (Laszlo 1983, p. 102)

The idea of invariance as a definition of structure brings us to a paradox when we accept the possibility of change in a system which conserves its identity. This is particularly critical when we talk about biological systems or orders of superior complexity. For example, a human individual is characterized by the transformation of his or her biological and psychic structures. Although Laszlo talks about transformations, these types of transformations appear only to allude to reconfigurations of the description of the system and not to changes in the phenomenological level. On applying the definition to a system with evolutionary capability, epistemological problems are inevitably generated. If we wish to maintain Laszlo’s definition, we need to specify what kind of invariance we can identify in evolutionary systems or, alternatively, renounce the concept of structure when we talk about open and

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changing systems. Luhmann signals the deficiency of a connotation of the concept of structure based on the notion of permanence: the fundamental problem is not only the paradox which is produced when we try to embrace systems whose internal nature is one of continual transformation, but the subjective approach which is generated through the association of permanent relations and structure (Luhmann 1995). Luhmann questions the subjective election of descriptive relations which imply subjective consequences in the concept of structure. He insists on a theoretical treatment which is capable of positioning the system in a phenomenological dimension that is independent of the observer. Operations are events that occur in real time and as such liberate the object of knowledge – in this case the system – from a subjective perspective. This notion of time appears to be inscribed in the Newtonian paradigm as absolutely independent of the observer. Although this notion should be studied in terms of its relation to subjectivity, we accept this approach to the demarcation of the concept of system given that it offers us the possibility of effectively treating the definition of structure from a general framework which serves for any type of system and not only in those cases where the notion of invariance can be applied. Thus, according to Luhmann, the concept of structure should be related to the concept of operation and located in the dimension of real time. Trying to achieve this, Luhmann proposes a concept of structure which is not an ensemble of invariant relations but the ensemble of restrictions which concretely condition the flow of system operations. Thus, structure is also a condition given in time. The perception of permanence is a result of the conservation of structure but that conservation does not need to be a conservation of constant relations. In a physical system, the structure is given in actualized physical laws in the time disposition of the system. For example, in a communicational system the structure is an ensemble of expectations of participants which conditions the possibilities of each communication, but communication can go on while expectations are changing. We should emphasize the notion of internality as the possibility of establishing the system’s structure because external structural conditions with which the system connects also exist. These conditions establish the possibility for the existence of the system but they are not part of the internal structure of the system. Thus, the external structure conditions the space of possibilities of systemic operations in restricting the space of possibilities of the internal structure. A drop of water needs certain pressure and temperature conditions to maintain itself as a unity; pressure and temperature are

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parameters of structural connection between the environment and the drop of water, not of its internal structure, even if they establish the environmental conditions under which the drop of water remains differentiated from the environment. What is more, the structure of a system should be specified referentially to an adequate partition and it is therefore a compositional description. Once again, we accept Luhmann’s position, which takes the concept of structure to the dimension of time as fundamental phenomenology, but we insist that the concept of relation is necessary for structural specification. The limit conditions can only be established in relation to associations between elements, so that operations take place in a space of possibilities that maintain the system’s unity. Let us look once again at the example of a hydrogen atom. We can refer to monadic properties of the particles of the system as structural and as relational: the position of the proton, for example, is not a relational property in terms of spatial distribution but it is a relational condition in terms of electromagnetic interaction because this interaction of the particles depends on their relative coordinates. The argument is the same as in the previous section: the notion of composition is necessary for the definition of structure. We take the compositional character as necessary for the specification of the structure as border conditions that are needed for a minimal description of the system. Also, structure is a necessary condition to arrive at the other fundamental characteristic of systems: unity. The association between structure and unity will allow us to build a bridge between the phenomenology of operations and the emergence of the system as a coherent whole. The concept of unity transfers the continuity of the system as a totality to a descriptive level superior to that of structure and thus solves the paradox resulting from the concept of structure as invariance. The system can be permanent without having to conceive the structure as an ensemble of invariant relations. This approach to the notion of structure can be found in Maturana and Varela (1980) in the treatment of biological phenomena, which was Luhmann’s theoretical inspiration. It is not the components themselves which determine the unitary character of the structure, but the conditions that they establish. Maturana and Varela signal that the specific components of a particular system can be changed without altering the system’s identity. It is in this sense that the structure constitutes the system’s particular unity. It is not the specific components which define the structure, but the relational conditions in which the components are participating. The existential condition of the system’s components and the interactions between them make the structure

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the time basis of the system’s unity. In accordance with the phenomenology of Luhmann, structure is a condition given in time. We can conclude this section proposing the following definition of structure which excludes the concept of invariance while capturing the temporal dimension of operations: The structure of a system is the relational ensemble of internal limit conditions that specify the possibilities of each operation, maintaining the system’s unity. I I I . D I S T I N C T N E S S B E T W E E N S Y S T E M A N D E N V I RO N M E N T

The existence of structure provides the conditions for the emergence of a system as a unity differentiated from the environment if there is enough energy to generate the system’s characteristic operation. In order to reach this condition, a distinction between the system and its environment is required. Inwardly, the system possesses an operational closure; outwardly, the system appears as a differentiated unity. The emergence of unity only occurs if the structure provides the conditions to maintain the continuity of the system. That is why the durability of the system is usually associated with the concept of structure. As we have seen, when radicalized, the concept of structure is defined in terms of invariance and leads us to the paradox of the impossibility of change. Otherwise we have defined the structure in such a way that the possibility of its transformation is made intelligible in the temporal configuration of the conditions which mark out the system’s operations. Such a configuration should however be conserved within a certain threshold if we want to affirm that the system has continuity. The limits of the structural reconfiguration are the conditions needed to maintain operations in the system’s internality. To affirm that a system has internality requires a differentiation in relation to its environment. In other words, the system’s unity can only be understood in terms of the existence of a frontier between the system and what is not the system. The idea that systems should primarily be recognized in their differentiation to the environment is formalized by Maturana and Varela (1980) as a theoretical framework for the approach that the authors use to treat the problem of the biological foundations of knowledge. Using this idea, Luhmann extends the application of the concept of differentiation to psychic and social systems. Here we propose the application of the concept of distinctness as ontological and epistemological criteria for the demarcation of any type of system and not only for biological ones. A system only exists materially insomuch as its structure is internalized and separated from its

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environment and from other systems. In fact, the differentiation with respect to an external environment is a characteristic of any entity which possesses individual identity, as Salthe indicates with the criteria he proposes for the identification of material entities in a cosmological context. The criteria for discerning entities … are (1) distinctness from their environment; (2) limitation to a single scale range; (3) if with discernible parts, these covary over time. (Salthe 1991, p. 48)

With this quotation we would like to point out that our position is realist in relation to the existence of systems. Systems are real entities that fulfill Salthe’s criteria. The distinction with the environment that we have pointed out in the Luhmannian framework is clearly laid down by Salthe: distinctness from their environment. The limitation to a single scale range sustains our affirmation concerning the specific level of emergence in each system; and the condition of covariance of the parts is a condition of the system’s structural continuity. Here, we are particularly interested in elaborating the first of these conditions. Distinction from environment is a condition for the unity of the system which requires the existence of a frontier. This boundary exists because the operational closure necessarily occurs on the inside of a system. On this point it should be made clear that we are not talking about spatial interiority, but phenomenal, that is, operations occur in particular kinds of phenomenal spaces. For example, the nervous system in biological organisms works with a closed circuit of electrical signals that have biological sense only to the nervous system. Outputs of the nervous system couple as a whole to other organic systems establishing conditions for their operations, but nervous operations are always kept self-referential (Maturana and Varela 1980). No operation of a system acts on the interiority of any other system. The existence of closure in a system also requires that all of its elements interact with other elements in such a way that the topology of interactions becomes a network where the system’s stability depends on the totality of interactions. All the system’s components are interlinked by the network of interactions although they only have immediate contact with some of them. If the system is dynamic, we can talk about networks of interactions where the flow of energy through the elements of the system always returns to whichever element we take as a reference. The structure provides the restrictions which permit a flow of operations so that they lead to the completeness of the circuits. This condition for the operational closure is only possible if the system keeps continuity. If operations surpass their structure threshold, conditions for closure are not given and the unity collapses, that is,

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the system disappears. An ecological system is a good example: the flow of nutrients in an ecological system is such that the system’s stability depends on the equilibrium of the totality of the components, although interactions occur specifically between pairs or small sets of elements. The reduction or increase of the population of one single element of the food chain in a given ecosystem can break the stability of the whole system or even destroy it, although the component only interacts directly with another element of the system. The observer’s criteria of distinction requires a logically marked out discursive universe to describe the operational closure of a system. In other words, the description of systems, and more generally, the description of phenomena also show operational closure. Dyke (1988) focused on this condition of scientific discourse outlining its origin in Newtonian physics. Translated into mathematical terms, the closure of an epistemological system can be achieved through the election of an ensemble of independent variables which form a phase space where the system’s dynamics can be described. The postulation of every system’s own phase space sustains the observational distinction between each system and the environment, if there are independent internal states for every system. The ensemble of logical variables which determine the phase space have the function of specifying the possible states in a specific observational dimension. Variables can take a determined ensemble of values which define the borders of phase space. For example, our physical space model has three orthogonal dimensions which define a geometric space where any point can be specified giving the distance to the origins of three axes positioned at 90° from each other. Three mathematical variables specify this phase space. A particular state of this system is determined by three particular values which specify the state variables. The phase separation occurs when a system is individualized because its internal states follow an independent dynamic to that of the environment; thus, changes in the internal state of other systems cannot directly affect other system’s states. In other words, the dynamic history of a system in its phase space belongs exclusively to this system and not to any other. As such, a particular system possesses unity and individual identity because it is differentiated from the environment. A related problem – which will not be addressed here – is the question of individual identity of the system modified by the substitution of elements. We ask ourselves what quantity of substitutions are permissible for the maintenance of the system’s identity. The possible limit of substitutions in order to conserve the identity of a system is generally unclear. Let us consider, as an example, the replacement

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of a vital body organ such as the heart. The identity of the person who received the transplant is apparently not in question, although with a hypothetical extension of the replacements (nowadays made possible through medical technology), we might ask which parts of the system are effectively replaceable, or whether the system’s identity does not necessarily rest on the conservation of certain essential parts. I V. E M E R G E N C E , H O L I S M A N D R E D U C T I O N I S M

On proposing that a system exists as a unity differentiated from the environment we are making reference to a level of complexity superior to that of the parts. This means that the system arises in an emergent and irreducible phenomenological level. It is not possible to reach a complete description of a system at the level of the parts, although the emergence of any system requires the association of parts. The question of emerging entities and properties can be found in the center of controversy between reductionistic and holistic epistemological positions. Radical reductionism proposes total ontological and epistemological primacy of the parts; radical holism defends ontological and epistemological primacy of the totality. In the reductionistic perspective, a human individual, for example, is no more than the sum of cells. To the contrary, holism describes the existence of an individual as a totality whose behavior can only be understood from a understanding of its psychic unity. In a radical holistic version, it would be from the unity of the individual that the behavior of levels of inferior complexity is determined: biological, molecular, etc. The position defended here does not ascribe to either of these two extreme perspectives. We assume that the parts and the whole are dialectically sustained. We have already discussed the existence of a level of composition in systems by dealing with the concepts of relation and structure but we have also proposed the condition of unity for system existence. We now need to use the notion of emergence to justify the unity of the system in a superior level of organization to that of the parts. We will continue a negative argument to justify the necessity of the concept of emergence: given that reductionistic projects have not achieved an effective reduction of the properties of a level that has been postulated to be reducible to the properties in which parts are found, explanations or theories in the superior level are then maintained as epistemic descriptions which optimize our knowledge of the system. Once again we are faced with the problem of composition. Composition is a necessary condition in order to explain the nature of systems. This appears

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to lay the foundations for reductionistic approaches that deny the epistemological independence of the whole. From these perspectives, the properties of the whole have always to be explained in terms of the properties of their parts. Wimsatt (1976) called this position compositional explanatory primacy. Despite reductionistic declarations, the absence of specific reductive achievements of this approach result in it lacking in proof. If systems have to be explained in terms of composition, the reduction only takes place when phenomena of superior order are translated in terms of phenomena of inferior order. A systemic property P(S), where S is a system can be translated as the function f(P(S1), P(S2), …) where P(Sn) indicates the properties of the component Sn. If the translation does not take place, then the reduction has not been made. Under this condition, reductionistic intentions have effectively achieved very little. Unity and operation are the fundamental emerging characteristics of any system. Unity is sustained in the operational closure, and closure is compositionally sustained in the system’s structure. The emerging level and the compositional level interact bi-directionally: the structure’s compositional modifications alter the operational possibilities of the whole, and the whole’s properties restrict the structural possibilities of the parts. Biological evolutionary systems illustrate this point: an organism evolves as a consequence of mutations in punctual elements of its compositional structure – DNA – while the organism’s behavior as a whole conditions the possibility of stable structures (i.e., adapted organisms with the capacity to survive). The unity of each type of system is expressed in the categories of the emerging level. As such, there is expression of unity in the atomic, the psychic, the social levels, etc. Thus, the system exists on a phenomenal level clearly different from that of its parts. Human thoughts are not qualities of organs or cells; similarly, the life of a cell is not a quality of its molecules. The emerging order is maintained insomuch as the unity is capable of maintaining a frontier with its environment. In explaining a phenomenon, we can use descriptions of the level of the phenomenon without the need for an explanation at the level of parts. Human thoughts, for example, are maintained closed to the biological dimension, in the sense that they are continually linked to other thoughts but never directly to the biological functions of the human body. Even so, there are necessary correlations between both levels: the actions of a psychic system can alter the structural conditions of the related biological organism (e.g., psychosomatic phenomena) and the behavior of a biological system can modify the course of mental operations

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(e.g., neurophysiological effects). Both levels mutually impose structural conditions, as we will see in the next section. V. S Y S T E M I C I N T E R AC T I O N A N D DY NA M I C S

On stating the closed character of a system’s operations its absolute isolation is not affirmed. Systems have relationships with other systems and their environment but these relationships are defined in mutually exclusive operational spaces. The environment establishes certain structural conditions that restrict the space of possibilities of other operational trajectories. Inverting the relationship, each system can be found in the environment of others and can interact with them, imposing environment restrictions. A first condition for interaction between a system and its environment is established by energy dissipation routes which restrict the space of possibilities of the system. The action of continuous system reconstitution requires a flow of energy which sustains the energetic cost of the operations. In some systems, energy comes from internal interactions; in others, energy comes from the environment. The first type of cases are systems where structural relations are maintained in equilibrium (e.g., a hydrogen atom which is maintained stable by means of electromagnetic and nuclear force). The second type of cases are dynamic systems which maintain a material and energetic exchange with the environment; in this case, systems are thermodynamically out of equilibrium. Prigogine and Stengers (1984) called these types of entities dissipative structures. Examples of these are biological organisms, human beings, and even cities (Dyke 1988). A dissipative structure maintains its unity in relation to its capacity to canalize resources from the environment to its internal operation and discard degraded materials and energy. Energetic coupling comes from structural interaction as do all the possible cases of interaction between system and environment. A system can carry out structural interactions such as acquisition of energy resources from the exterior to maintain its internal operation, although operations continue to be self-referential and closed to the exterior. On the other hand, the environment establishes conditions which restrict or modify internal possibilities. Operations always occur on the inside of the system, but the structure is sensitive to the environment and transfers the effects of outside events to the inside. This is why Luhmann characterizes all types of interaction between system and environment as structural coupling. Thus, Luhmann resolves the apparently paradoxical consequence of the notion of operational closure: how is the interaction of a system with its environment possible, if the system is

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operationally closed? The reconceptualization of structure as a condition of possibility for operations, rejecting the notion of invariance, allows the construction of a conceptual framework for treating the system’s transformations and interactions. Structural coupling is an interaction between different levels of organization. As such, the environment is a superstructure with regards to the system. The system interacts with other systems in different organizational levels, while its own interactions require the selection of specific structural spaces which are capable of coupling. A system’s structure functions as a means for selective coupling just as a jigsaw can only be connected to pieces with the correct outline. A psychic system, for example, selects its communicational interactions with other individuals, in relation to structure, expectations, and linguistic conditionings: language is a filter which significantly reduces communicational possibilities. The same example shows us a double flow of interactions between different levels of organization: the communicational interaction supposes an interaction space of superior order to that of individuals, although an environment of psychic systems is the necessary material condition for the existence of the communicational system. At the same time, conditions imposed by the communicational system determine spaces of possibility of psychic systems in their internal processing of representational states. This causal flow between different orders of complexity is trapped in the concept of structured structuring structures (Dyke 1988): all structures establish and receive structural conditions from the organizational levels with which they are in contact. When structural coupling is established as a dynamic correlation that endures in time, we have a special type of structural coupling that should be distinguished. Luhmann calls it interpenetration (1995). For example, when talking about human beings, the unity of their communicational, psychic and biological character tends to be implicated; at times we talk about the individual as a thinking conscience, at times as a biological body, and at times as a social component. Strictly speaking we are talking about three different entities which maintain their unity in relation to different types of operations. We are not trying to deny the unity of these dimensions in human existence, but we are indicating the different nature of the three systems involved. In relation to a specific event we can have various reference perspectives which indicate the psychic system (individual conscience), the social component (communicational coupling), or the biological system (organism). Referential unity is conserved when the three references are found in a relationship of interpenetration where all levels evolve correlationally.

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The concepts of structural coupling and interpenetration take time ontology as their departure point. Operations and structural couplings are proposed as historical events and not as mere abstractions of the system’s properties. These concepts are the starting point for understanding the transformation of systems. Each time an operation occurs, the system actualizes the possibility of generating a differential replication, which results in a change in the structural conditions. Structural changes can take place in the internality of the system’s structure or can be given by modifications which occur by structural coupling. We find an example of the first case in a biological unicellular system which is subject to the possibility of mutations in the transformation of hereditary information. On the other hand, simple physical systems and static structures generally have less probabilities of transformation due to differential operational replications. The steel frame of a building is a static system whose operations replicate the conditions of equilibrium of the mechanical and gravitational interactions of their elements, and whose stability tends to be relatively lasting. A dynamic theory of systems should be applied to open systems that cannot remain invariant when faced with restrictions imposed by the second law of thermodynamics. Whatever the case, all systems, static or dynamic, are permanently subject to the possibility of differential replication that results from possible changes in border conditions with the environment. An earthquake can modify the structural interaction conditions of a building and generate a new state of equilibrium or collapse the structure and annihilate the system. Even atoms appear to have a cosmic history and origin and are subject to the possibility of annihilation or molecular combination. In fact, static or closed systems do not exist in a strict sense (leaving aside the question of whether or not the universe is a closed system). Although in relative terms we can consider that some systems are in permanent equilibrium, it is always possible to find a temporal scale where the differential dynamics of the system is evident, even if on the scale of cosmic dimensions. All systems are subject to a continual temporal process of operations which reconstruct or transform them. This is a fundamental condition which results from the temporal and physical existence of systems. V I . S E L F - R E P L I C AT I O N

Continuing with Luhmann, the scheme we are proposing for the analysis of the systemic dynamics is an evolutionary scenario. We are not attempting a

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punctual transferral of the theory of biological evolution to the theory of systems. Quite simply, the picture that Luhmann offers us of the system’s dynamics is evolutionary because its departure point lies on three notions which have their traditional application field in the theory of biological evolution: i. self-replication, ii. production of variations, and iii. stabilizing selection. The way in which these notions will be used here should be understood in reference to the conceptual scheme that has been proposed in the context of systems theory and not in reference to biology. Self-replication of systems signifies here that a system sustains its unity through operational continuity. There is nothing particularly biological in this, although we also try to apply it to biological systems. Under invariant structural conditions, operations are closed in trajectories that do not lead to any differentiation. This constitutes a limit case of the evolutionary process where system transformations are not produced. However, structural conditions can change and produce a new space of possibilities in the flow of operations; in each case, we are talking about open systems. Structural changes occur in open systems because they are subject to thermodynamic pressure that requires continual reproduction of the structure to avoid collapse as a result of increasing entropy. Variations in operational flows are produced as a consequence of the change in structural conditions. In contrast to the biological interpretation of selection, the stabilized selection of new operational routes does not result from a principle of greater adaptation to the environment, but out of the system’s capability to sustain its unity under new structural conditions. Operations and structural couplings can occur simultaneously. Open systems are found in structural interaction with changing environmental conditions, forcing the system’s operations to be reconfigured in new routes. Using this scheme we can also understand how systems collapses are produced: operations are not able to sustain closure when faced with thermodynamic death or an excessively violent structural coupling. On the other hand, the scheme also gives us the possibility of understanding the multiplication of unities out of the generation of operational routes which are internally divided. Here we have a sufficiently flexible scheme to explain all of the variational possibilities, from a limit case where the system remains invariant, to other limit cases where emergence of new systems occurs. CONCLUSION

We have discussed the nature of systems as actual phenomena. To be identified with complex emerging totalities, these type’s of systems are

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required to exist in the time dimension and their materiality expressed through energy flow events. The notion of operation tries to satisfy this condition. Systems are also entities composed of a specific order: they possess a structure given by the ensemble of relations of their parts. The structure’s continuity enables the system’s continuity whenever there is enough energy to sustain self-replication. Eventually self-replication is differential and leads to emerging types of entities which did not exist before. As a synthesis of these conditions we propose the following working definition of the phenomenal system: A phenomenal system is an emerging entity differentiated from its environment that self-replicates in a continuum of closed operations under the relational conditions established by its structure. Technologico de Monterrey CCM, Mexico N OT E S 1

By phenomenon we understand an event structured in time which is intersubjectively validated by a shared perception of the pertinent epistemic community (Rubio 2001). 2 Maturana, for example, whose theory of biological systems inspired various of Luhmann’s central concepts, questions the capability of Luhmann’s theory’s to capture the notion of the social if it only considers the communicational dimension.

REFERENCES Dyke, C. The Evolutionary Dynamics of Complex Systems: A Study in Biosocial Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Küppers, B. O. Information and the Origin of Life (Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press, 1990). Laszlo, E. “Systems and Structures – Toward Bio-Social Anthropology.” Theory and Decision, 2, 1971. Reproduced in Systems Science & World Order. Ervin Laszlo (ed.) (New York: Pergamon Press, 1983). Luhmann, N. Social systems (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995) (Translated by J. Bednarz, Jr. from N. Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: GrundriBeiner allgemeinen Theorie [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984]). Maturana, H. R., and E. J. Varela. Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1980). Prigogine, I., and Stengers, I. Order out of Chaos (New York: Bantam Books, 1984). Rubio, J. E. “Phenomenology and Levels of Organization in Science,” in A.–T. Tymieniecka (ed.) Life-Truth in its various perspectives (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). Salthe, S. N. “Formal considerations on the origin of life.” Uroboros, vol. I, num. 1, (1991). von Bertalanffy, L. Perspectives on General Systems Theory. M. von Bertalanffy (ed.) (New York: George Braziller, Inc. 1975).

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Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc., 1993). Wimsatt, W. C. “Reductionism, Levels of organization, and the Mind-Body problem,” in Globus, G. et al. (eds.): Conciousness and the Brain: a Scientific and Philosophical Inquiry, (New York: Plenum, 1976), pp. 199–267.

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Today there are two basic approaches to the existence of possible worlds.* According to the first approach possible worlds are real and our actual world is one of a whole series of possible worlds. David Lewis is one of the well–known philosophers of such an approach. Against this philosopher the second group claims that possible worlds are ideal, subjective or linguistical; Carnap, Kripke, and Rescher are some of the representatives of this group. For these philosophers, only this world of ours (the actual world) is real, and there cannot be other non-real possible worlds. Something’s missing, because although possible worlds for him are concepts, they are nevertheless real because they exist in the mind of God. In this sense, Leibniz’s philosophy is a conceptually realistic stand. What makes possible worlds individual and real is their place, namely in the mind of God. According to Leibniz, the universe – the actual world – is one of an infinite number of possible worlds existing in the mind of God. God created the universe by actualizing one of those possible worlds – the best one. Leibniz’s system is a philosophy which seeks to find answers to two basic questions: The first concerns the reasons for the existence of the present world and for its being what and how it is; the second concerns the things that are possible in the absolute sense. Although both are taken to be fundamental questions in the history of philosophy, I came across no article treating of the first question while reading the literature on possible worlds. In other words, the Leibnizian question concerning the reason for the way the actual world has turned out to be as it is is not taken into consideration in the current literature on possible worlds. Leibniz attempts to answer the first question by resorting to the “principle of sufficient reason.” According to this principle the reason a world actually exists is that it contains a maximal measure of being or realizes a maximal measure of good. In other words, only when their ingredients are so ordered do worlds become actual. This is what the principle of sufficient reason dictates, and is based on the belief that God will deign to create only absolute perfection. This approach, however, implies that any essential alteration will lead to the total change of the world in its entirety. 855 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 855–866. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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One of the principal questions directed to Leibniz in correspondence with contemporary philosophers was whether God is capable of violating this restriction – capable, in other words, of creating less-than-perfect worlds. Leibniz gives equivocal answers to such questions, asserting that God is indeed capable of doing just as he likes, but willing to do anything short of the perfect would be incompatible with his own perfections. What follows from the above considerations is that in Leibniz’s work a sort of necessity conception, deriving from the necessity of perfection in divine creation, supersedes the notion of possible worlds: I am uncertain, however, concerning whether the notions of possibility and necessity do or do not apply to divine creation. Contemporary literature I have encountered does not address the question concerning why this particular world has been singled out for actualization, although the problem of demarcating the actual world from merely possible ones is vigorously discussed. Allowing that any sort of world would require some sort of medium in which to unfold itself, Leibniz is obliged to find place for all his possible worlds. He holds they are all in the mind of God, thus implying that the set of all possible worlds is a completed entity ready-made in God’s mind. Another major component of Leibniz’s philosophy is the “principle of non-contradiction.” Leibniz gives an ontological expression of the principle, according to which it is not possible for anything to “have being” together with its contradictory. In this context “having being” credibly needs to be spelled out as “having being in the same world,” and the notion of possible worlds does facilitate explanation in such cases. Contemporary philosophers would need to be told what “the contradictory of something” is, however. If necessity holds in all possible worlds, and possibility is the negation of necessity, possible situations hold in only some worlds. But Leibniz goes on to introduce a derived notion, some sort of a congruence relation defined over possible worlds, i.e., “compossibility.” In modern language, compossible worlds are those from among which no pair of contradictory statedescriptions could be selected. In other words, compossible worlds could be merged into a single possible world, maybe with an augmented domain. While this inter-worlds relation is reminiscent of modern accessibility relations, the parallel is incomplete. The modern conception of possible world is that of a maximally consistent set, and no two maximally consistent sets are compossible, by construction. Hence no two Kripkean possible worlds are compossible; this is proof that the Leibnizian notion of possible world is essentially different from that adopted in the contemporary literature.

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I came across no evidence that Leibniz conceives of necessity and possibility in the modern way, as holding in all and in at least one possible world, respectively. His notion of necessity attaching to the being of the actual world does not further facilitate reading his remarks in the light of contemporary established meanings. Leibniz’s work may have initiated interest in modal notions, but much has flowed under the bridges of intellectual endeavor. In my survey of the contemporary literature I couldn’t find a similar approach in the ontology of the possible worlds. In my classification I do not take heed of conceptual realism. Yet, I do think that conceptual realism has to be taken into account in the explication of the ontological status of possible worlds. However, the philosophers who defend modality today do not make up an undifferentiated whole in their approach to the possible worlds semantics. Not all of them, today, accept the legitimacy of the possible worlds semantics. There is a certain tradition who tries to formulate a different semantics for modal inferences. Bas C. Van Fraasen is the main representative of such an approach. He is trying to construct a semantic which is based on the notion of “logical space.” Also there is a certain reductionist tradition which tries to reduce modal notions into physical empirical characteristics. Adam Morton and F. Mondadori are the main representatives of such a reductionist approach. They speak of “a disposition, for instance, soluble applies to an object if it has a definite property, namely that property, which is responsible for things of the kind dissolving if they are immersed.”1 “In order for a disposition to be intelligible, we have to know how to describe the property in question.”2 Modal statements have truth values which depend on the presence or absence of physical properties and conditions of actual objects, independently of our knowledge and conventions. “Modal properties are properties of individuals whose characterization involves a reference to non-modal properties of individuals.”3 In the quotations, we can see the tendency of reducing modal characteristics to non-modal characteristics, by rejecting the notion of giving any kind of legitimacy to possible worlds semantics. However, contrary to the claims of the philosophers who try to construct different semantics for modal inferences, today possible worlds semantics is being accepted as the standard semantics by the majority of modal logicians. Many different philosophers have constructed theories that attempt to explain the notion of possible worlds. In general, their theories can be divided into two groups: One is Modal Realism and the other is Modal Actualism.

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The most well developed version of Modal Realism is accredited to David Lewis. According to Lewis’s theory, possible worlds and possible objects are things of the same sort as this physical world and objects in it; and possible worlds as well as the actual world exist in logical space in the same manner. On the other hand, according to Modal Actualism, it is not necessary to make such ontological commitments as Lewis’s to accept the framework of possible worlds semantics. In Modal Actualism, possible worlds are not physical entities but abstract entities which exist in this concrete world and represent possibilities. So, in the framework of Modal Actualism the appeal to possible worlds semantics does not commit us to such a radical realism as Lewis’s. My classification, likewise, is not an absolute one. In my classification I focus on the distinction of actual-possible, the crucial distinction outlined above. I will now get a bit more specific and say something about the actual path we shall follow. I will first give a short summary of my schematization of the approaches to the ontological status of possible worlds. A S H O RT S U M M A RY O F M Y S C H E M AT I Z AT I O N O F T H E A P P ROAC H E S TO T H E O N TO L O G I C A L S TAT U S O F P O S S I B L E WO R L D S

Firstly, I divide my schema into two: 1) Proponents of possible worlds semantics: Approaches that accept the necessity of possible worlds semantics for modal logic in explicating modal concepts of necessity and possibility. 2) Opponents of possible worlds semantics: Approaches that reject the necessity of possible worlds semantics in explaining modality. They try to construct different types of semantics for modal logic. The discussion between these two camps is continuing on the question of whether possible worlds semantics is the standard semantics for modal logic. Secondly, I divide the proponents of possible worlds semantics into two: 1) The approaches that postulate an ontological status of reality to the notion of possible worlds which is used in possible worlds semantics. These can be called Possible World Realism. 2) The approaches that reject the ontological status of reality to the notion of possible worlds. This type of approach defends the view that possible worlds are ideal, or linguistical or conceptual. They do not exist. Thirdly, I divide Possible Worlds Realism into two: 1) Possibilism in Possible World Realism.

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2) Actualism in Possible World Realism. According to Possibilism in Possible World Realism: 1) All the worlds have the same ontological status. 2) To be actual is an indexical expression. Every possible world is actual through itself. Indexicality of actuality saves the contingency of actuality.4 3) Identity through worlds is not possible. Only the counterparts of an individual exist in other worlds. According to Actualism in Possible World Realism: 1) All the possible worlds are real. (Instead of “real” some philosophers use “exist.”) 2) However, there is an ontological distinction between the actual world and other non-actual possible worlds. This world (actual) is the instantiated world. 3) Identity is possible through worlds because an individual can carry his essential characteristics in other possible worlds. I also divide Actualism in Possible World Realism into two: Modal Actualism of Possible World Realism and Non-Modal Actualism of Possible World Realism. Modal Actualism of Possible World Realism is so-called because in addition to the above characteristics of Actualism, Modal Actualists defend the view that the contents of possible worlds are de-re or de-dicto units. I also divide Modal Actualism into two: De-re Modal Actualism and De-Dicto Modal Actualism. I also divide De-re Modal Actualism into two: Plantinga’s Version and Stalnaker’s Version. According to Plantinga’s Version: 1) The contents of possible worlds are obtainable states of affairs. 2) A possible world is a maximal obtainable state of affairs. 3) The actual world is the obtained maximal state of affairs.5 1) 2) 3) 4)

According to Stalnaker’s Version: The contents of possible worlds are “ways things might have been.” A possible world is the total ways things might have been. The actual world is the way things are. The actual world is the instantiated world.6

On the other hand, Non-Modal Actualism of Possible World Realism defends a view that the contents of possible worlds are non-modal units at the same time possible worlds are real. However in the literature I couldn’t find a

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defender of this view. In my schematization, there is another group of philosophers which adheres to what I call Non-Modal Actualism. This group is not a subgroup of the Actualism of the Possible World Realism group, because the proponents do not defend that possible worlds exist ontologically. This group is the subgroup of the approaches that reject the ontological status of reality to the notion of possible worlds. This type of approach defends the view that possible worlds are ideal or linguistical or conceptual. They do not exist. The characteristics of this group are: 1) Only this world is real. 2) Possible worlds are not real. They do not exist really. 3) Possible worlds are linguistical or ideal entities. 4) The contents of these possible worlds are not modal units. I also divide Non-Modal Actualism into two groups. Linguistical Instrumentalism and Conceptualism. According to Linguistical Instrumentalism: 1) Possible worlds are certain sets of sentences which are state descriptions and possible worlds are linguistical. The defender of this view is Rudolf Carnap. According to Conceptualism possible worlds are concepts that we derive from the actual world. The defender of this view is Nicholas Rescher. CONCLUSION

Through the study of various theories of possible worlds, I came to realize the following two facts: 1) Irrespective of whether possible worlds are physical or abstract, possible worlds should be understood as things which represent possibilities, and 2) in explaining our ordinary modal opinions and intuitions we don’t need complete possibilities in the absolute sense. Concerning the first point, if we understand possible worlds as entities which represent possibilities, then possible worlds do not have to be physical as long as they play the role at representing possibilities. I think that various ways things-could-be can play that role. I believe in the existence of ways-things-could-be and they are, in a sense, properties which exist in this world. So, they are neither strange nor extraordinary. Concerning the second point, if in order to explain our ordinary modal opinions and intuitions it is neither good nor necessary to have the notion of complete possibility in the absolute sense, then the condition of maximality that is commonly imposed on possible worlds has to be reconsidered. Most philosophers who try to

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develop a theory of possible worlds understand the term “maximal” in the absolute sense: “maximality” is the absolute condition which any possible world should satisfy independently of the context. In my view, this is not a good strategy, since in order to explain and understand modal notions, we don’t need the condition of maximality used in the absolute sense. In order to explain modal notions, what we need is the condition of maximality used in the relative sense. That is to say, the application of the term “maximal” should be dependent on the context in which the notion of possibility is employed. From my survey of the literature I have realized that there is no current, ontological interpretation of possible worlds. While solving some of the problems, each ontology creates also new problems. Each approach to the nature of possible worlds solves at least one problem which the other approaches cannot solve. However, each approach creates its own problems and I think this is unavoidable in philosophical theories. So maybe we must talk about “more appropriate” ontology, defining “appropriate” as, for instance, solving more problems. Lewis is somewhat right in saying that we must believe in the existence of worlds “because the hypothesis is serviceable, and that is a reason to think that it is true.”7 Lewis takes an instrumentalistic stand in choosing an ontology and I think he is right. “If we want the theoretical benefits that talk of possibilia brings, the most straightforward way to gain honest title to them is to accept such talk as the literal truth.”8 It seems that from this argumentation of Lewis to show that possible worlds do not exist, we must develop a different theory-instrument which is more benefical in solving problems. I have seen also that the ontology you choose is determined by the philosophical problems you try to solve. If you try to solve everything by the concept of possible worlds, then you take possible worlds as primitive, but the price is an intuitive understanding of possible worlds. If you want to introduce possible worlds more expicitly, then you take a modalist stand, but in that case you cannot explain de-re or de-dicto modality, because you have to suppose they are already well-understood. If possibilism and actualism are two different ontological frameworks, then the question becomes, “which ontology must we choose?” Personally I do not believe that there is a true ontology. As I have remarked above, ontological choice is laden with conventional and instrumental considerations. In this sense, ultimate justification of an ontology is not possible. As in the case of a scientific theory, coherence, simplicity, parsimony, may be used with different weights. David Lewis, for instance, gives two criteria to

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choose a metaphysical analysis of mind. Firstly, the theory must be systematic, and secondly; the analysis must respect those of our prephilosophical opinions to which we are firmly attached. If the theory does this better than any alternative we have thought of, we give it credence. Lewis in no place clarifies the issue of systematicity. However, I don’t think that any theory is less systematic than the others. So lack of systematicity cannot be used as a counterargument and I think that conventionalism and instrumentalism exist in all philosophical theories to a certain extent. Anadolu University Eskisehir, Turkey N OT E S * Editor’s Note Let us attract attention to the Third, Phenomenological approach to this great issue. Yet The Phenomenological Realism of The Possible Worlds, Analecta Husserliana, vol. III, Kluwer Acad. Publ. 1 F. Mondadori, A. Morton, “Modal Realism: The Poisoned Pawn” in The Possible and Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Michael Loux (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 241. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 256. 4 David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford, Basil Blackwell Press), pp. 93–94. 5 Alvin Plantinga, “Transworld Identity or Worldbound Individuals,” in The Possible and Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Michael Loux (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 50. 6 Robert Stalnaker, “Possible Worlds”, Nous, 10, p. 228. 7 David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, p. 3. 8 Ibid., p. 4.

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Quine, W. V. “On What There is,” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953b). Quine, W. V. “Reference and Modality,” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953c). Quine, W. V. “The Problem of Interpreting Modal Logic,” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953d). Quine, W. V. “Worlds Away,” Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976), pp. 859–863. Rescher, Nicholas “The Ontology of the Possible,” in Loux (ed.), The Possible and Actual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979). Rescher, Nicholas, and Parks, Zane “Possible Individuals, Trans-World Identity, and Quantified Modal Logic,” Nous, 7 (1973), 330–407. Reichenbach, Bruce R. “Must God Create the Best Possible World?”, International Philosophical Quarterly, 19 (1979), pp. 203–212. Richards, Tom “The Worlds of David Lewis,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 53 (1975), pp. 105–118. Rosenberg, A. “Is Lewis’s ‘Genuine Modal Realism’ Logical Too?”, Mind, 98 (1989), pp. 411–421. Schlezinger, George N. “Possible Worlds and the Mystery of Existence,” Ratio, 26 (1984), pp. 1–17. Stalnaker, Robert, “Critical Notice: On the Plurality of Worlds, by David Lewis,” Mind, 97, pp. 117–128. Stalnaker, Robert “Possible Worlds,” Nous, 10 (1976), pp. 65–75. Stalnaker, Robert Inquiry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984). Salmon, Nathan “The Logic of What Might Have Been,” Philosophical Review, 98 (1989), pp. 3–34. Salmon, Nathan. “Book Review: On the Plurality of Worlds, by D. Lewis,” The Philosophical Review, 97:2 (1988), pp. 237–244. Salmon, Nathan “Impossible Worlds,” Analysis, 44 (1984), 114–117. Seager, W., and Hunter, G. “Reply to Forbes,” Analysis (1982), pp. 224–226. Skyrms, Brian “Possible Worlds, Physics and Metaphysics,” Philosophical Studies, 30 (1976), pp. 323–332. Thomason, R., and Stalnaker, R. “Modality and Reference,” Nous, 2 (1968), pp. 359–72. Yablo, S. “The Metaphysics of Modality, Graeme Forbes, Book Review,” The Journal of Philosophical Logic (1988), p. 329.

From left to right: Jan Szmyd, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Piotr Mróz, Marta Kudelska.

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As Merleau-Ponty wrote in the introduction to Phénoménologie de la perception, the appearing of phenomenology was announced not only by “the philosophical signals”, but also by art and literature, which pointed at different methods of reaching reality1. Husserl’s science, quickly, though not uncritically accepted by the young Frenchmen, proved to be an effective means of defeating superstitions and antinomies of all kinds that blocked access to objects themselves. However, one should keep in mind the fact that inspiration with Husserl – a group of methods and “tools” “in the hands” of the young Frenchmen – was in the first place used by them for actualising their own philosophical aspirations2. Spiegelberg is truly right when he states that it was mainly an anthropological turn, and the deviations (not only from the phenomenological way of thinking popularised by Husserl) concerned also essential matters3. The young Frenchmen turned into the direction of themes and problems not entirely explored by the master4. Thus, we have here many propositions but also deviations concerning the interpretation of such fundamental categories as: epoche, reduction, intentionality (although the French adepts and acolytes of phenomenology basically retained the phenomenological style of practising philosophical reflection). After many years, while doing a kind of retrospection, Merleau-Ponty defined phenomenology as a question (“about the world, objects, our access to them”) formulated in relation to the dialogue, marked by this désaveu de la science et la philosophie, distrust allowing to remove all that we were said to accept as certain and unquestioned knowledge5. Inspired by Husserl’s statement, we are to act as if we knew nothing about it all, as if we were to learn all that at first6. Therefore, to cope with the appeal for the return to the objects themselves, one should use the sphere of what has been directly given, not determined and not contaminated, so all that had been either left untouched by the doubts or already cleared from any theories, standpoints, postulates or alternatives that divide a subject and object. By the creative and at the same time critical use of Husserl’s epoche, reduction and “rule” of intentionality, MerleauPonty wanted to describe the concrete world, the field of our existence, experiences and fortunes. This brings back to memory – just as he wrote in the introduction to Phénoménologie de la perception – “the return to 867 A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana LXXIX, 867–876. © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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ourselves from the sphere of what is general or scientifically dogmatic, when we find ourselves not as a settlement of what is inside, but as a subject destined for the world”7 In this way, after having suspended seemingly impossible antinomies and superstitions, the philosopher wanted to return what had been so thoughtlessly wasted to us. It is, as one of the first Polish monographers of the subject notices, a continuation of the critical theme initiated in La structure du comportement which now, “strengthened” by German phenomenology, helps us solve the problem of a relation between consciousness and the world, rankling Merleau-Ponty8. The philosopher reached to Husserl’s late papers – to his conception of Lebenswelt – as a proper sphere of the authentic existence: to what is prereflective, pre-predicative, pre-mental. But here the first difficulties and misunderstandings show up. If this sphere were to be revealed by the phenomenological reduction, Merleau-Ponty would have accepted this reduction’s ideas without reservation. However, “the most important” result of the “eidetic” reduction of Husserl’s idealism proved to the access to the Transcendental Ego, the matrix of all acts, situated beyond time and space. What is more important, this relation between consciousness and the world was by Husserl made dependent on universal consciousness, but it was made at the cost of the world (transcendent reality). Therefore, in this idealistic perspective, it would be difficult to speak about some clearing away of “the phenomenal field”. Husserl was not able to get rid of “a problematic tenant”, “an occupant” of all subjectivity, treating him as a condition of undertaken measures, not solely as a final effect of the analyses. And, after all, the reduction, being the manifestation of “the astonishment” displayed while facing the world, gives us a different lesson, it “shows that it alone is totally impossible (…) if we were an absolute mind – added Merleau-Ponty – the reduction would not be a problem at all. But as we are in the world, as our reflections are carried by the flow or the wave of time, there exists no such a thought that would embrace all the thoughts”9 In the opinion of one of the commentators, Merleau-Ponty’s deviations from the Husserl’s canon base on the two corrections (changes). Firstly, the reduction emerged to Merleau-Ponty as an initial “looseness” of habits and customs, but as a result it led to strengthening “the perceptual belief” (foi perceptive), embracing the one and truly existing world. Secondly, the reduction displayed the simultaneity and “indissolubility”, “strict compression” of the three, equally treated elements: ego – cogito – cogitatum, in this way “emphasising” the incarnated connection between consciousness

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and the world10. Contrary to Husserl’s, this relation was not limited only to “the inspection” of beings (Wesensschau). So Husserl’s eidetics was not for the author of Phénoménologie de la perception the main object of philosophical consideration, and the motion alone, going from the existence to the being, was not the most significant problem11. On the contrary, it is beings that are tools only (and here Merleau-Ponty got rid of the remainders of Husserl’s transcendental idealism), compared vividly by the philosopher to the fishing nets. They serve to catch lived relations of experiences, concrete facts displaying themselves in their uniqueness. In this version of (genetic) phenomenology, beings are as if returned to existence, long before we are given the ability to form judgements, predications, express opinions – in brief – before the conscious articulation of anything12. We can see that the reduction served to Merleau-Ponty as something that strengthens the perceptual belief, the belief in the world, about which we “know” (i.e. we experience it) that it reveals itself like an object, an object “which rules of creation do not belong to me”, and all the more they do not in possess any transcendental Ego13. The world does not wait for my judgements, does not “demand” constitutional acts. It is rather a natural background, the arrangement of my behaviours, perceptions and images. It is finally a horizon – a field including all possible fields – but not a necessary or absurd one. It is – simply – existing. The second sujet célèbre of phenomenology – in Merleau-Ponty’ opinion – is intentionality. The acceptance of this fundamental law – in its every species and version – enabled Merleau-Ponty to articulate his conception, having no equivalent in the 20th century philosophy, of embodied consciousness (corps proper) – as something that authentically guarantees the validity of the thesis that consciousness is always consciousness of something14. In a text rarely cited by the commentators, Merleau-Ponty did not leave any doubt that he abandoned for good Husserl’s idea of pure cogitability. It is not a foundation of the transcendent world, but “it is consciousness of the body that is consciousness of objects”15. In other words, Merleau-Ponty’s modification of Husserl’s canon can be clearly seen in the sphere of Ich pole (a subjective part of the relation I-world) and also Welt pole – an objective part. While trying to reach the origins of reality, the philosopher changed fundamentally the character of consciousness; he abandoned the conception of Husserl’s transcendentalism. He “threw” the noematic sphere onto the sphere of so-called between (entre) which he understood mainly as a field of human existential abilities that appear before a being-in-world. Therefore the famous Cartesian “I think”, conditioning existence, was replaced by the prior to it “I

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can” (je peux)16. This experiential category of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology served him in the first place to emphasise the fact of primordial union of a man with the world, to “realise” his existence or rather coexistence with the world17. If Husserl’s orthodoxy made a man only a “bearer” of the transcendental Ego, and empiricism reduced him to a lived matter, Merleau-Ponty, consequently avoiding all the traps existing in the standpoints criticised, made the embodied subject a source and foundation of “world-for-man” – emphasising its “potential” side, exactly this je peux. As he declared: “I am an absolute source, my existence does not come from my ancestors, I am never what precedes me, in a physical or social environment (…) although my existence, my way of life goes in their direction, keeping them alive, embracing being-for-myself with lively intentions”18. This utter sourcerity, the acceptance of the primary I am above I think– stated MerleauPonty – allows after having conducted the monte véni experiment to separate the real cogito, the one which – firstly – coexists with the world, secondly – is incarnated and will be this corps phénoménal. So vrai cogito will always present me in a situation, in this unmediated relation with the world – an arrangement of such structures that come towards but also from noyoux rayonnants – luminous loops of meanings19. All truths, values, concrete signs of existing in the world, works of art, institutions, in brief – the world, for a man are joined by those meaningful loops. But – let us say this right now – this state of my co-existence against the world and the world against me has got a mark of something unfinished, incomplete, something ambiguous20. In other words, it is not a domain of rationality. Nota bene, Merleau-Ponty modified rationality’s meaning, the reason was completed with this déraison, just like those luminous loops are always flashed with the strands of “night and darkness”21. The sense is invariably accompanied by the nonsense because only in this way this basic, primordial Logos of the world can reveal itself, so everything that happens before any constitution, creation or rather co-creation, together with the world of object-for-me. The problem of the subjective side is not so different. Residuum of certainty shall not be found there, either. The famous l’homme intérieur – the egological individual, pure pour soi – is only a construct, theoretical fiction, not a place or settlement of knowledge and truth22. The ambiguous and open structure of the world has as if “an equivalent” in a similar to it nature of the embodied subject, existing in the world. This subject has not been differentiated against the background of reality. The human being, entity in the world, treated by Merleau-Ponty as an irreducible one, not brought back to external categories, is mainly the ability to “move”

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towards the world. While speaking about this ability, the philosopher always justified it with the ontic primacy of an object (resp. objects), on which we direct ourselves. It is about the world “that precedes knowledge, the world that is described by it theoretically, just like geography describes countryside in which we had learnt beforehand what a forest, a meadow or a river is” 23. And this “virginal”, untouched by science or philosophy countryside was of great interest to Merleau-Ponty. Now, when this sphere can be experienced, revealed, when this reduction – astonishment, displayed its activity, I experience the world at the same time as “strange”, “paradoxical”, “unfinished” and “opposing myself”, but a place I could not not inhabit, in which I could not not exist. It is – as the philosopher stated – full of colours, shades, tactile sensations, it is, finally, the field of my activities, acts, at the same time “the cradle of senses and meanings” in the phenomenal evidence (self-evidence) of objects24. Reality reveals itself as evident even before any thematisation, scientific or philosophical discourse, reflection (so before those acts that show themselves always after the experience, just like this beforehand given scenery). And this “I”, the embodied subject, discovers that the real world is something more that the word actually perceived, perceptually experienced – like a sum that differs in quality from the elements constituting it25. Thus this exploration of the sense of the primary being will become the aim of philosophy. The most significant modi of directing oneself to the world – perception – opens the field of abilities26, shows my relations with this and other corps proper, is finally my method of communication, and also co-constitution of object-for-me. For that reason Merleau-Ponty gave it so much space in his Phénoménologie de la perception. P E R C E P T I O N A N D C O R P S P RO P E R

Merleau-Ponty accepted the philosophical importance of the problem of perception and agreed with Husserl in this respect. However, he could not (which is understandable) accept the solutions proposed by empiricism and intellectualism. Perception is not an isolated, psychological phenomenon 27. Its rank is much higher: it is my primary connection, relation with the world. Or, in other words, it is the modus of being of an embodied subject. The philosopher defined the perceptual context (certainly not identified with only one sense – sight – as the term might suggest) as a state in which the world itself becomes the definition être-au-monde, moreover, the reality (the phenomenal field) creates for me the possibilities to reach the phenomena28. Therefore it should not be a surprise that Merleau-Ponty, claiming the

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primacy of perception (to remind the title of his treatise), stated that traditional analyses lost this phenomenon29. On the grounds of classical solutions, perception was reduced to “combining” the passive, not complex sensual sensations (sensations), impressions, pure experiential information affecting the iris. This information was to enable “seeing” the objects experienced30. In this case, perception would be something passive, mechanically cumulating the “mosaical” sensual information. That this sum of sensual information does not “correspond” to the object perceived was the mistake of the classic psychology (this psychology is being referred here after the philosopher)31. However, Merleau-Ponty argued that the model of perception so presented had lost this multiplicity of relations, this multiformity of the world as a whole that affects our senses due to figures and background. In other words, the reality rich in qualities lost its autonomy. And the colour, for example, cannot be reduced only to our subjective sensations (sensations) – it is this sensible (transcendent information for consciousness) and just like any other quality it does not belong to consciousness but it is a characteristic of object-for-me32. Thus sensual information, understood in a purely subjective way, cannot fully explain the phenomenon of perception. What is worse, the classics of psychology make a characteristic mistake, assuming at the beginning something that is to be explained later on. So when into this mosaic of senses – as e.g. the advocates of associationism want – we force the rules of combining and the rules of memory, we will not make the information more understandable or having more sense, because it is senseless by its very nature. These standpoints – existing under a common name of empiricism – darken the image of perceptual sensation because of the introduction of factors unfamiliar to the sensation. The standpoint of intellectualism (rationalism) also operates the superior category, but it at least gives back or returns its initiative to the subject, because – and such was Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion – the structures of perceptual sensations are potentially included in embodied consciousness. The philosopher agrees and partially accepts “intellectualistic solutions” within the range that perceptual sensation is invariably something more that just a sum of pieces of “information” included in sensual evidence. And although Merleau-Ponty could not totally agree to the rule proposed by rationalists, the rule of aperceptual integrity in the acts of “reading”, arranging this sensual mosaic, he was clearly attracted to “intellectualistic argument”33. The concept of cogito and the act of judging partially explain some certain – but secondary for the philosopher– spheres of our experiences, e.g. included and articulated in scientific theories. But only in this secondaire

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(that is basing on the primordial experience) it is valid to speak about the correlation between the subject and the world rationally or scientifically experienced, but the price we are to pay for the unreachable clarity or distinctness of perceptions is too high. Perception loses the character of this origins or authenticity – and how to explain the phenomena or experiences that are indistinct and less clear? Therefore they have to belong to those spheres (entre) “between”: between the mosaic, the chaos of sensations and the order, clarity or coherence revealing itself in our judgemental acts34. Merleau-Ponty stated that an experiential act of the embodied consciousness, this expérience du monde, perception of the world, is always something open, “ambiguous”, and though the world “is a secret structure”, a hieroglyph, it is never a chaos or disorder. However, it is far away from being something readable and clear, as the rationalists’ “constancy hypothesis” wants to convince us of35. Merleau-Ponty, using categories of pre-predicative and perceptive faith (foi perceptive) tried to make us realise that perceptual contact with the world, with its different fields, entering into new horizons, does not depend on facts and all the more not on consciousness. Perception is nothing more than “reaching” of the embodied subject to a certain context, background, to a bundle of relations and mutual references. Perception – and this probably the philosopher wanted to emphasise – is in the highest degree an intersensory phenomenon, is always situated, so “synonymous” to my mode of existence in the world, to orientating in it (note bene here is an ambiguity of the French word sens: it can mean direction and sense). It is the exit to something primary undefined, and the access to primordially unclear appearances (apparance) of the physiognomy of reality, and then its figures, senses and meanings. Contrary to what empiricist and rationalists thought, even the simplest (ordinary) perception – arranging figures against some background, differentiating them from some “context”, from a fragment of a given – existing – reality, making numerous variations or “changes” is always a creative activity. What is displayed in perception is not a senseless magma; perception’s objects are always marked with a primary, vital, emotive meaning. It is an “anthropological predicate” that does not have an equivalent in geometrical judgements36. We find it in operational fields of this je peux as an expression of our practical, theoretical or aesthetical directions towards world-as-whole. And this turn towards the wholeness of the world, its interrelationality, was by Merleau-Ponty identified with reaching to the genealogy of “being-for-us”, its sense and Logos revealed during the process37. It is in an experiential perceptual act that the world forms itself as if before our eyes,

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as something already meaning something, but never meaning entirely, never to the end. It is an act not dependent on any reflection or thought about the world. In other words, all thematisations, judgements, knowledge and cognition of the world are initiated by this primacy (origins). Therefore perception can be treated as an opening of oneself to the world, its different levels of existence, fields that – to remind – pervade and overlap. Similarly to what happened in the case of vrai cognito, Merleau-Ponty got rid of the elements of Husserl’s idealism in the conception of perception. He identified the non-separated “I”, but he identified it (in the positive sense) in some anthropological anonymity, universality realised individually by the human sensitivity: this universality itself opens to objects: their forms, shapes, smells, sounds. This primacy of what is not mediated by any ratio was of prime interest to the philosopher. All the acts of perceptual sensations are the expression of universal being-in-the-world that we are entitled to, so as if in a genetic order Merleau-Ponty began from non-personal self (“he”) claiming: “so, if I wanted to carefully describe perceptual sensation, I should say that it perceives itself in me, not that I perceive”38. Although Merleau-Ponty did not want to totally eliminate some mental elements of perception, grown up on the perceptual grounds, it “is not treated as a kind of thought about an object (…) it is our belonging, clinging to objects”39. Perception is, however, given some “activities” characteristic of judgemental acts, it is already on this level when we do some corrections, “introduce” some amendments, eliminating what is false or untrue. Thus for the philosopher it is the modi directed on the world, description of our “position” in it that immediately becomes the opening to “infinity of environments possible, on the world itself”40 full of gaps and slits, revealing so much about its ambiguous structure. Jagiellonian University, Kraków N OT E S 1

Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, p.16. Cf. S. de Beauvoir, Adieu – a Farewell to Sartre (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 178; cf. also Migasiñski, J. W stronê metafizyki: nowe tendencje metafizyczne w filozofii francuskiej poowy XX wieku, p. 30. Migasiñski effectively rendered the influence of phenomenology on the generation of the 1930s. This “invasion of phenomenology brought many further publications of such authors as J. Wahl, J. P. Sartre or E. Lévinas; and very often the publications were independent trials of applying the new method in their research. […] This invasion brought a new method of practising philosophy, a new outlook on the world and man […]. Because of all that, an essential turn took place in the French philosophy in the 1930s”. 3 Cf. Spiegelberg, H. op. cit. pp. 410, 411. 2

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4 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Résumés de cours, Collège de France, 1952–1960 (Paris: Gallimard, NRF, 1968), p. 160. 5 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Le visible el l’invisible – suivi de notes de travail. 6 Cf. ibid 7 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, p.5. 8 Cf. Syski, J. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Droga filozofii, “Humanitas”: 1978, pp. 230, 231. 9 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 9. 10 Cf. Lyotard, J.-F., Phenomenologie (Paris: PUF, 1962), pp. 16–17. 11 Cf. Syski J. Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Droga …, pp. 230, 231, 232; cf. also Lauer, Q. Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect (New York: Harper and Row, 1955). 12 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 3. 13 Cf. ibid p.5. 14 Cf. Syski, J. Do´s wiadczenie cielesno´s ci jako zjawiska trancendentalnego: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Humanitas” IV, 1980, pp. 180–191; cf. also: Maier, W. Das Problem der Leiblichkeit bei Jean-Paul Sartre und Merleau-Ponty (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1964), pp. 21–37. 15 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Préface, [in:] A. Hesnard, L’œuvre de Freud et son importance dans le monde moderne (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), pp. 8–9:”L’idéalisme phénoménologique est insuffisant – and further on – Il nous fait sentir qu’on manquerait à la philosophie en s’arrêtant à l’intentionnalité comme rapport à des objets idéaux”. 16 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, pp. 465-467. 17 ´ Cf. Maciejczak, M. Swiat wedug ciaa w “Fenomenologii percepcji” M. Merleau-Ponty’ego, (Toruñ: Wyd. Comer, 1955), p. 40. Merleau-Ponty wrote straightforwardly: “La conscience est originairement non pas un’je pense que’ mais un ‘je peux’” (M. Merleau-Ponty Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 160). 18 M. Merleau-Ponty Phénoménologie de la perception, p.5 19 Cf. ibid p. 7 20 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Éloge de la philosophie, pp.99–100. Ponty stated: “le philosophe trouve, non pas l’abîme du soi ou du savoir absolu, mais l’image renouvelée du monde, et luimême planté en elle, parmi les autres. Sa dialectique ou son ambiguïté n’est qu’une manière de mettre en mots ce que chaque homme sait bien…” 21 Cf. Spiegelberg, H. op. cit. p. 525; cf. also M. Merleau-Ponty Sens et non-sens, p.8. 22 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, p.5 23 Cf. ibid p.3 24 Cf. ibid p. 4 25 Cf. Mróz, P. The Perception of the Transcendent World – Merleau-Ponty Proposal, [in:] Volumes of Abstracts, 19th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Kraków: 1999, 9, 465. 26 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Éloge de la philosophie, p.28. 27 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 325 and others. 28 Cf. Migasiñski, J. Merlau-Ponty, pp. 37–38; cf. also Lyotard, F.-F. op. cit., p.67. 29 Cf. ibid. In Merleau-Ponty’s opinion, psychology of forms was helpful to phenomenology. 30 Cf. Manser, A. Sartre- a Philosophical Study (London: The Athlone Press, University of London, 1967), pp. 81–86 31 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Sens et non-sens, p. 85: “La psychologie classique considère notre champ visuel comme une somme ou une mosaïque de sensations dont chacune dépendrait strictement de l’excitacion rétinienne locale qui lui correspond. La nouvelle psychologie fait voir

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d’aord que, même à considerer nos sensations les plus simples et les plus immédiates, nous ne pouvons admettre ce parallélisme entre elles et le phénomène nerveux qui les conditionne”. 32 In the chapter Phénoménologie: la chose et le monde naturel Merleau-Ponty explained this issue, stating that: “La couleur réelle demeure sous les apparences, comme le fond se continue sous la figure, c’est-à-dire non pas à titre de qualité vue ou pensée, mais dans presence non sensorielle” (p. 352). 33 Cf. Carr, D. op. cit. pp. 400 and 401 34 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, pp. 27, 28 and 29 35 Cf. ibid, p. 15 36 Cf. Migasiñski, J. Merleau-Ponty, p. 37. 37 Cf. Merleau-Ponty, M. Phénoménologie de la perception, pp. 15,72 and 73. 38 Cf. ibid., p.249. Moreover – and this will be a very interesting moment for an aesthetician – the element of “imaginability” is already present in perception. Cf.: “Toute sensation comporte un germe de rêve…” 39 Cf. Migasiñski, J. Merleau-Ponty, p. 37. 40 Cf. ibid., p.38.

I N D E X O F NA M E S

–A– Aceron, W. N. 363 Ades, D. 454 Adorno, T. 44, 637–47 Anselm 471, 544–5, 547 Appolinaire, G. 496 Aquinas 567, 616, 824–5, 830–1 Arendt, H. 7, 303, 328, 486, 777–93 Aristotle 26, 88, 94, 134–5, 141, 168, 173–4, 334, 490, 611–2, 640, 729, 792, 824–5, 827–31 Auerbach, E. 491 Augustine 334, 847, 503. 778–9 Avenarius, R. 629

Braig, C. 132 Brentano, F. 53, 329, 528–9 Breton, A. 447, 452–6 Brochard, V. 374 Buber, M. 740, 742–3 Bubner, R. 638 Buchanan, S. 123, 124 Buckley, R. P. 659 Bultmann 48 Buttimer, A. 764 –C– Callicot, J. B. 742 Campanella 725 Camus, A. 488 Canguilhem, G. 349, 353, 357 Cardenas, L. 451 Carnap, R. 88, 855, 860 Casey, E. 168, 177–80, 329, 331 Ceccarini 375 Cervantes 356 Cezanne, P. 88 Changeux, J-P. 329–30, 337 Chaplin, C. 454 Chekov 556–7, 576 Chesterton, G. K. 124–7 Chipp, H. 447, 456 Christodoulidi-Mazaraki 381 Cicero 544 Clements, F. 740 Clifford, R. 429 Coe, M. 657–8 Copernicus 821 Comte, A. 571, 573–80, 583 Connel, J. 739 Conrad-Martius, H. 6, 98–108, 112 Cortazar, J. 437, 440 Costa 54 Croce, B. 631–5

–B– Bachelard, G. 349, 768 Bacon, F. 574 Balzac 557 Baur, M. 638 Bayertz, K. 537–8, 542–3, 548, 559, 563–4, 570, 573–4, 582 Beck, J. 421 Benjamin, W. 788, 790 Benson, E. 657, 661 Bergson, H. 41, 88, 94, 344, 442, 817 Berkeley, G. 148, 823 Bernstein, R. 486 Blades, M. 752 Blaga, L. 24–5, 28 Bloch, E. 725 Bloom, H. 487 Bloomfield 558–60, 571, 573 Boas 651 Bohr, N. 628 Bolzano, B. 158 Borges, J. L. 119, 125, 127, 440 Boutroux 814 Boyle, R. 549–51, 570, 823

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I N D E X O F NA M E S

–D– da Vinci, L. 88 Dabrowski, K. 88 Dacquino, G. 800, 803 Damaso, A 440 Danto, A. 485 Darwin, C. 545, 556, 589, 739, 812–4 Davies 569–70 de Beauvoir, S. 88 de Broglie, L. 628 de Chardin, T. 41, 94 Delacroix 450 Delbrueck, M. 827 Deleuze, G. 351–3, 632, 719, 723, 726 Derrida, J. 48, 201, 208–12, 330, 476–7, 487, 567, 653–4, 659 Descartes, R. xxviii, 69, 77–8, 88, 100, 102, 105–6, 118, 132, 134, 140, 162, 173, 224–5, 233, 240, 256, 340, 503–4, 507–13, 545, 547, 549–52, 554, 558, 577, 611, 623, 655–6, 731, 825 Dewey, J. 283–290 Dilthey, W. 42, 88, 92, 202, 427, 627, 633 Dreyfus, H. 360 Droz, G. 374 Drucker 567 Dunne, J. 88 Duns Scotus 779 Duval, R. 730, 733 Dyke 846 –E– Ehrenberg, I. 454, 456 Eichmann, A. 791 Einstein, A. 390, 557–9, 572, 628, 814–5, 830 Eliade, M. 28, 37 Eliot, T. S. 88 Elizondo, S. 440 Elton, C. 740 Euclid 47, 649 –F– Fanon, F. 788 Faure, E. 448 Feuerbach 578, 580 Feyerabend 547

Fichte, J. G. 108, 469, 471, 544, 547, 555, 633 Fiegl, H. 54 Fink, E. 52, 189, 261–2, 271 Fornari 376 Foucault, M. 349–62, 632 Frank, M. 357 Frege, G. 54 Freidel, D. 654–5, 660 Freud, S. 156, 381–5, 557 Frings, M. 147 Fromm, E. 800 Fukijama, F. 719 –G– Gaarder, J. 488 Gadamer, H-G. 44, 202, 206, 297–310, 337, 486 Gale, M. 453 Galileo 53, 550, 570, 649, 659, 661, 823, 825 Galimberti, U. 730 Garrison, J. 283 Gaudapada 668 Gerber, G. 402–3 Gessler, W. 750, 752 Gierulanky 605 Giotta 448 Goddard, P. 455 Godwin 574 Gould, S. 46 Gurwitsch, A. 766 –H– Habermas, J. 337, 354 Haeckel, E. 740 Haney, K. 217 Hare, D. 455 Harris, E. 474 Harris, H. S. 469 Hart 545–7 Hartmann, N. 88, 158 Hegel, G. W. F. 411, 468–81, 547, 555, 627, 633 Heidegger, M. xiv, 10, 42, 68, 72, 88–9, 129–44, 147, 153–4, 159–63, 201–5, 210, 217–8, 236–7, 269, 296–310, 329, 331–2, 337, 343, 345, 359–62, 477, 504,

I N D E X O F NA M E S 544, 554, 616, 627–30, 632, 637–47, 675, 730, 777 Heisenberg 53, 825 Hempel 816 Henry, M. 67–84, 183–5, 189–92, 732 Heraclitus 15, 340, 346, 641 Hering, J. 98 Hitler, A. 455, 544 Hobbes, T. 549, 580, 584 Homer 491 Hoppenheim 816 Horkheimer, M. 44 Hughes, A. 422 Hume, D. 53, 224, 240, 328, 340, 517, 555, 576, 603–4, 607, 822 Husserl, E. xiii–xx, xxii–xxv, xxvii–xxviii, 3, 10, 13, 15, 41, 52, 54–60, 67–76, 78–84, 88–92, 97–109, 113, 117–25, 154, 159–60, 183–91, 201–2, 205–9, 211, 217–37, 241, 243, 249, 259–63, 270, 273–6, 283–90, 313–15, 318, 329–32, 337, 356–8, 388, 393–4, 396–406, 408–10, 412–14, 437, 479, 492–4, 503–13, 515–30, 547, 617, 627–30, 632, 635, 649–60, 670, 675, 678–9, 713, 719–23, 726, 729–33, 736, 835, 867–71, 874 –I– Ibsen 556–7 Ingarden, R. xiii, xv–xx, xxiv, 88–92, 97, 99–100, 107, 321–6, 337, 435–40, 468, 476–81, 603–9, 611, 726 –J– Jabes, E. 213 James, W. 288 Jaspers, K. 48, 546–7 Jimenez, J. 407, 409 Jonas, H. 92 Joost-Gaugier, C. 421, 423 Jung, C. G. 94, 381–5 –K– Kahlo, F. 447, 451–3, 455 Kant, I. xiii, xxi, 24, 41, 43, 88, 104, 108–11, 118, 123–4, 130, 132, 134, 136,

879

140, 148, 176, 206, 211, 240, 276, 360, 387–8, 391469–74, 488, 503–4, 510, 515, 517, 520–9, 541, 544, 546–7, 552–60, 575–6, 580–1, 585, 588–9, 633–4, 725, 732, 817, 822 Katarbinski, K. 88 Kearns, R. A. 753 Kerr 572 Kersten, F. 120 Kierkegaard, S. 488, 634 Klages, L. 156 Krebs, E. 132 Kripke, S. 855 Kuhn, T. 566, 828 –L– Lacatos, I. 628, 635 Lambda, J. 447, 452–3, 455 Lanz 544 Lasmane, s. 343 Laszlo 841 Latour, B. 549 Lavell, L. 88 Leibniz, G. 88, 91, 168, 170–2, 176, 222, 233, 236, 503, 510, 855–7 Lenin, V. 451, 564 Leopold, A. 741, 743 Levinas, E. 88, 335–6, 617, 621 Levy, B. 749, 768 Levy-Bruhl 651 Lewis, D. 855, 858, 861–2 Liu Heng 705, 708, 711–3 Locke, J. 241, 541, 551, 582, 585, 587 Lovelock, J. 740 Luhmann, N. 836–44, 849–52 Luijpen 578–83, 587–8 Lunacharsky, A. 450 Lupasco, S. 22, 28, 37 Lyotard, J-F. 567 –M– Mach, E. 629 MacIntyre, A. 486 Malan, F. 810 Malinowski 651 Malreaux, A. 88 Mandelbrot, B. 47 Marcel, G. 548, 553, 78, 583, 588

880

I N D E X O F NA M E S

Marin, L. 449, 452 Marion, J-L. 69 Marnham, P. 452 Martin, J.L. 440 Marx, K. 541, 555, 563–4, 573–4, 577, 579 Masullo 58, 61, 269 Maturana 9, 843–4 Mayer, E. 827 Mencius 675, 680 Merleau-Ponty, M. xiv, 6, 10, 61, 64, 90, 119, 167–80, 192, 201, 206, 209–11, 239–56, 329–30, 337, 642, 722, 730–1, 736, 754, 867–74 Michelangelo 421–30 Miller 652, 656 Mirandola, P. 541, 544 Modotti, T. 449 Mondadori, F. 857 Monroe, M. 485 Montaigne 6 Moore, G. E. 26 Moore, T. 725 More, T. 574 Morin, E. 826 Morton, A. 857 Murdoch, W. 739 Murillo, G. 448 Mussolini 548, 574 –N– Nancy 734 Nasar, S. 495 Nash, J. F. 495 Natanson, M. 222 Natorp, P. 101 Newton, I. 390, 815 Nietzsche, F. 79, 132, 156, 328, 335, 402–3, 488, 544, 635, 642, 719 Nussbaum, M. 486 Nyenhuis 440 –O– O’Connor, B. 638 Odum, E. 741 Orwell, G. 495, 574, 589 Ovid 423

–P– Parmenides xiii, xiv, 113, 679 Pascal, B. 792 Patocka, J. 658 Paz, O. 437, 440, 442 Piaget, J. 88 Planck, M. 112 Plantinga 859 Plato 23, 26, 88, 94, 107–8, 113, 132, 136, 175–6, 342, 373–81, 385, 474, 487–9, 491, 567, 574, 635, 655, 679, 831 Podoroga, V. 722 Popper, K. 387, 390, 822–3 Prigogine, I. 45, 826, 849 Proust, M. 487 Ptolemy 824 Putnam, H. 337 Pythagoras 130, 635

Quesnay

–Q– 551–2, 554, 558, 575

–R– Ramsay, I. 614 Raphael 422, 424 Reagan, R. 570 Regtien, T. 564 Reinach, A. 98–100, 108, 159 Rescher, N. 855, 860 Reyes, A 440 Rial, N. R. 343 Rickert, H. 101, 629 Ricoeur, P. 327–37, 389, 486, 489–92, 705, 707–10, 712–3 Rilke, R. M. 88 Rimbaud, A. 415 Rivera, D. 447–56 Rogers, W. Kim 339 Romano 375 Rorty, R. 486 Rousseau, J. 552 Roussel, R. 355 Rowling, J. K. 495 Russell, B. 61 Ruyer, R. 732, 735 Rzepinska, M. 427

881

I N D E X O F NA M E S –S– Salthe 845 Sankara 665–6, 668–9, 671–2 Sartre, J-P. 44, 88, 239–56, 287, 456, 477, 579–81, 589, 788 Saussure, F. 395 Schapp, W. 402 Schele, L. 652, 654–6, 660 Scheler, M. 5, 11, 13, 41, 98, 147–63, 315–8, 329, 336, 515–7, 522, 524–30, 725–6 Schelgel, F. 41 Schelling 148, 156, 469, 633 Schleiermacher 547 Schopenhauer, A. 79, 148, 633–4 Schutz, A. 313–19 Sebbah, F-D. 82 Sedova, N. 447, 451–3 Seed, R. 571–3 Shakespeare, W. 112 Shargel, E. 283 Silins, E. 47 Simmel, G. 42, 92, 720 Simondon, G. 732, 736 Skinner, B. F. 537–8, 542–5, 558–64, 570, 573–4, 580, 582 Smith, A. 555, 575–6 Smuts, J. C. 742, 809–18 Socrates 23, 88, 168, 173, 175, 377, 380, 487–8, 605, 793 Soontiens, F. 340 Spencer, C. 752 Spiegelberg 867 Spinoza, B. 6, 132, 830 Stalin, J. 451, 455, 564 Stalnaker 859 Stein, E. 5, 98, 100, 107–13, 119 Steinberg, L. 426 Steiner, G. 436 Stengers 849 Stenzel, J. 402 Stormer 375 Stroeker, E. xxii Swiezawski, S. 612 –T– Tansley, A.

741

Tarski, A. 88 Taylor, C. 486 Taylor, E. 485 Tennyson, A. 555–6 Thatcher, M. 570 Thom, R. 828 Tischner, J. 611–23 Trotsky, L. 447–56 Turgot 552, 558, 574–5, 589 Tymieniecka, A-T. 3–16, 21–2, 25–37, 42–49, 87–94, 337, 339–44, 396, 421, 430, 485, 488–9, 492–4, 496–7, 719, 722–6, 731–4, 745, 748–9, 752–7, 761, 763, 766–71, 827 Tzara, T. 455 Tzedun, M. 485

Unamuno, M. de

–U– 25

–V– Valery, P. 88 van der Kooy, T. P. 543, 583–88 Van Gogh, V. 88 Varela, F. 9–10, 843–4 Varnaghen, R. 786–7 Vattimo 439 Vegleris 377 Venema, H. I. 335–6 Vico, D. 633–5, 705–8, 712–3 Virilio, P. 719, 721 von Frassen, B. C. 857 von Hartmann, E. 148, 155 von Hayek 558 von Hildebrand 336 von Humboldt 547 von Vexkull, J. 764 –W– Wagner, V. 556 Wahl, J. 88 Waldenfeld, B. 721 Wang Yangming 675–82 Warhol, A. 485 Watson 558 Weber, M. 803 Weil, S. 6

882 Welser, M. 823 Wheeler, J. 676 Whitehead, A. N. 41, 88, 92, 816 Williams, A. 751, 764, 766–7 Wimsatt 848 Wittgenstein, L. 44 Wolfe, B. 451, 456 Wolfe, E. 455 Wyss, B. 421

I N D E X O F NA M E S

y Gasset, O.

–Y– xxviii, 25, 402, 414, 485 –Z–

Zeno 606 Zhuangzi 675 Zhuxi 675 Zola 556 Zoungrann, J. 360