|
| |
Dr. Louis
N. Sandowsky
Phenomenology
and Existentialism
Lecture One: The
Horizon[s] of Phenomenology
The old ontological doctrine, that
the knowledge of 'possibilities' must precede that of actualities (Wirklichkeiten) is, in my opinion, in so
far as it is rightly understood and properly utilized, a really great truth.
Edmund Husserl. Ideas 1. sec 79.
1. What
is Phenomenology?
The word phenomenology is
derived from two Greek components. The meaning of phenomenon is that which shows itself in itself or from
itself. Logos makes reference to reason,
the word, speech.
In principle
phenomeno-logy literally means the science of letting that which shows itself from itself give itself precisely as it
speaks.
Here, the word phenomenon
does not specifically refer to any existent material. It precedes any
existential or metaphysical standpoint because it first indicates the
possibility of ‘the showing’ or ‘visibility’ of that which we would accord
actuality status as a presently existing Thing.
The ‘giving,’ like the
‘standing-outside-itself’ of the word ekstaticon, also refers to both more and
less than presence. It expresses the opening of a ‘horizon’ as distinct from
any particular Thing. Extension, in spatial terms, such as depth, foreground
and background, and extension of a temporal order, are not simply added to
present or existing things. The ‘showing,’ ‘giving,’ ‘standing-out,’ or
‘extending’ about which phenomenology speaks all refer to the pre-conditional
horizon of the possibility of a presently existing Thing.
The word logos refers to
a kind of ‘giving’ or ‘standing-out,’ which, in line with Martin Heidegger’s
definition (in Sein und Zeit / Being and
Time) as speech (rede), expresses a ‘speaking-out.’ We find the sense of
such a speaking in the phenomenological call: To return to the things or matters themselves. On first appearance,
this seems to be a direct challenge to Imannuel Kant’s claim that we cannot
know Things as they are in themselves (see the Critique of Pure Reason). Actually, Kant says that we must still
allow room for faith, but this is a faith that is in service to a residual
metaphysic, which is undermined by his own methodological orientation.
Edmund Husserl, the father of modern phenomenology, has a serious (and radical) aim when, in contradistinction to Kant, he maintains that phenomenology actually directs itself to-the-things / matters-themselves. However, the project is not to establish yet another metaphysical ‘system.’ There is a kind of super-skeptical form of methodology in play that prohibits such construction. However, this does not lead to the inverse form: negative theology. In one sense, Husserl’s directive parodies the Kantian standpoint.
To say that we cannot know things-as-they-are-in-themselves is to cling to a traditional metaphysical divide that places consciousness in a box. Kant constructed an incredibly rich and complex map of consciousness and its structures – the ways in which experience is organized. However, he does not sufficiently escape the container-view of the mind and still leaves us with the impression of a certain insufficiency in consciousness that somehow cuts it off from existents. Husserl suspends judgement (abstains from taking up a position) concerning the actuality or inactuality of that which touches us in our experience. If we are to look for ‘evidence’ of existence then this is articulated by experience itself. Existence stands-out in terms of complexes of meaning. The ‘actual’ signs itself upon and through experience. Such signatures are the proper subject of study for a descriptive phenomenology, which seeks to avoid metaphysical explanation.
Although Kant’s ground-breaking, Critique of Pure Reason, establishes the
horizon of a possible phenomenology, it is not a work of phenomenology as such.
It is still mesmerized by the chimera of that which is postulated to lie
‘beyond’ experience.’
In sum, the phenomenological
standpoint turns toward ‘evidence.’ Therefore, according to Husserl, it is
senseless to look for evidence outside experience. Evidence is the speaking-out
of things through experience. In
these terms, the logos of phenomenology makes reference to the ‘style’ of the speaking-out of that which shows itself:
the ‘as-it-gives-itself.’
Phenomenology indicates a
‘descriptive’ form of interrogation that is oriented toward that which
stands-out precisely as it ‘gives’ itself.
In other words, it names an attitude that listens to that which speaks; it is
not concerned with the development of a ‘system’ that would speak on its
behalf. Phenomenology is not a philosophical monologue. It is concerned, at a
methodological level, to avoid simply bouncing up against its own projections.
The form of its movement and encounter is to be continually engaged in dialogue
with phenomena. To paraphrase Gaston Bachelard’s comment concerning the ways in
which perception projects its own character onto the world (see, The Psychoanalysis of Fire), we may say
that phenomenology inaugurates itself in the understanding that much of what we
think we know about the world actually tells us far more about ourselves than
it does about the world.
Thus, phenomenology is
primarily a ‘method of description’ that maintains a healthy critical relation
to its own modes of orientation. There is a double-edged form to
phenomenological movement that is best summed up by the title of Husserl’s
published text of 1913: Ideen zu einer
reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (Ideas
Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy).
The focus of the practicing phenomenologist must not restrict itself to the
object of interrogation. There must be also a distanciating shift in
perspective through which the motivation and form of the interrogation itself
is taken into account. Most importantly, the structurality of its movement and
the style of its passage are to be made thematic. A pure phenomenology works
hand in hand with a phenomenological psychology / philosophy.
2. Intentionality:
Phenomenology and Consciousness
Husserl’s intentional
phenomenology is not to be confused with Hegel’s dialectical philosophy.
Although there is a degree of methodological overlap, Hegel erects a formidable
‘system’ with which the method becomes confused in metaphysical speculation.
Husserl’s intentional phenomenology utilizes a methodology that specifically
suspends the moment of metaphysical decision. The only Absolute is the
directedness of consciousness in its multifarious forms of comportment: its
intentionality.
Husserl’s discourse on
intentionality has little to do with ‘psychological’ intentions. It concerns a
deeper dimension, which is the primordial condition of possibility of their
constitution. The term intentionality refers to the fundamental character of
consciousness and its engagement with phenomena: its transitivity.
Consciousness is always
consciousness of something.
The preposition ‘of’ is
the sign of the principal defining quality of consciousness. Every desiring has
a desired, for every perception there is something that is perceived. Of
course, in these general terms, we do not necessarily need to speak of
existents. Many different kinds of phenomena speak to consciousness, e.g., the
imagined of the imagining, the remembered of the remembering, the anticipated
of the anticipating, etc. The existent, or that which is actual, is only one
kind of phenomenological value. It is not primary. The only primary existential
value is consciousness in its directedness toward something. This is not to say
that it is only consciousness that is fundamentally real. Even consciousness
itself is nothing without its fundamental structure of directedness: its
intentionality. We do not speak of consciousness and existence in terms of two
distinct regions that fortuitously come into contact with one another, but of
the originary intertwining of an encounter. The classic bi-polar models of
existence suggest independent, hermetically sealed regions in themselves (e.g.,
the Cartesian dyad, res cogitans and res extensa), which somehow enter into
relation. In a sense, this is to put the cart before the horse. Such
polarization already involves an encounter / a relation through which their
crystallization can first be constituted – through which they can give
themselves from themselves. They stand-out through a relation of
differentiation. In other words, they give themselves from themselves by
standing out from one another.
Imagine two circles
intersecting one another. In this instance, neither circle represents a
particular existential domain in itself (also consider the ‘one’ image of two
sides of the same coin). Only when the two circles overlap can we address the
issue of existence. The space of the overlap – the between – is the horizon of
phenomenological investigation.
Far from being imprisoned
in a box, consciousness is already out amongst the things. It exists through its encounter. It is only by
virtue of the fact that consciousness stands-outside itself (is
self-transcendent) that there is consciousness at all.
3. The
Cartesian Problem
Descartes’s metaphysical
dualism – res cogitans and res extensa – is responsible for virtually three
centuries of feverish scientific and philosophical inquiry into what
constitutes the interface that connects them. Descartes’s own efforts to
uncover how these two dimensions interact with one another led him to suggest
that the interface is situated in the pineal gland of the brain. Needless to
say, he was not able to substantiate his claim.
There have been countless
mind / brain identity theories, but all of them stem from the following basic
perspectives.
The Idealistic
orientation: which maintains that because there is interaction between mental
events, it only appears that there is interaction with physical events.
Furthermore, it is generally said that there is not any inherent connectedness
between physical states. (Note:
Psychophysical
parallelism: which states that things merely coincide through some form of
pre-established grace.
Occasionalism: says
something similar to psychophysical parallelism in that it is maintained that
the relation of congruence between things and / or two horizons is not of a
horizontal order (between two dimensions), but a vertical relation through God
– as the first cause or divine architect.
Epiphenomenalism: is a
radical physicalist doctrine, which likens mental events to the image of smoke
above a factory. The essential point is that mind is said to be an emergent
process and that mental events do not actually interact with one another. It is
argued that all interaction occurs purely at the physical level in the factory
of the brain (this is the precise inverse to Berkeleyan idealism).
Descartes’s philosophy
organized itself on the basis of a subject / attribute logic in the discourse
on consciousness and the ego. The shift from the recognition that doubt, as a
mode of consciousness, cannot doubt itself to the idea that this consciousness
must be the property of a thinking Ego / Thing / substance constitutes a
massive metaphysical leap.
With the statement cogito ergo sum, Rene Descartes found
the key to the door of phenomenology. He even placed this key in the lock and
turned it. However, he failed to open the door. He was primarily interested in
reconstructing the world according to a traditional metaphysical schema. He
failed to see that the work of de-con-struction is a horizon of research in its
own right.
Any attempt to push out
beyond consciousness as a hermetically sealed sphere of mental objects
inevitably leads to an infinite regress. How can the criteria of verification
exist beyond consciousness?
...Consider the third man
argument.
...However, this is not
to say that consciousness is simply a sphere of representations of
representations...
In contrast to
traditional image-theories, phenomenology maintains that Objects (in the broad
sense) are not inherent in consciousness itself. They are intentional objects.
The form of the encounter is described in terms of the noetic-noematic
parallelism of intentional consciousness. The noetic is the seeing (the
extending of interest toward the world) and the noematic is the seen precisely as it is seen. For example, when one
speaks of the victor at
The relation between
noeses and noemata is not a doubling of the relation of inner and outer, the
subjective and objective, or experience and world. It is a relation of
intentionality, which originally constitutes such a framework. It marks out the
horizon of any encounter or dialogue. This structure, arrived at through the
movement of phenomenological and eidetic reductions (eidetic / eidos = shape,
form, essence), is that which is always already at the core of any possible
discourse on consciousness and world.
4. 4. David Hume and the Problem of Personal
Identity: Proto-Phenomenology
For Hume, the mind is
nothing more than a ‘bundle of impressions.’ He maintains that consciousness is
a flux of rapidly changing experiences – and that there is no abiding
impression of Self that remains throughout the movement (see A Treatise of Human Nature, the section
‘Of Personal Identity’). Hume was the most radical of the empiricists in that
he utilized the methods of empiricism so rigorously that it was pushed to the
moment of aporia. He showed that even empiricism must ultimately fall back on
certain metaphysical presuppositions and, therefore, it is undermined by its
own internal principles and language. These aporetic traces remain insoluble
within its stated limits.
In this sense, Hume’s empirical
method is not in service to an empiricism. This means that the empirical method
is turned upon itself in the form of a critique (a deconstruction) of its own
metaphysical assumptions.
However, Hume did not
effectively take into account the question of how consciousness can be aware of
itself as a flux of changing
impressions. There is an ‘abiding’ of some kind, even if one can no longer
invoke the ego or some Thing. The form of this abiding or continuity is, of
course, TIME.
Hume could not solve the
problem of the continuity of experience within the logical borders of the
language that he put into use. His own comments in on this issue (in the
appendix to the Treatise) express his frustration and the hope that
either he or someone else will eventually solve the problem.
Husserl’s lectures on
internal time-consciousness can be seen as a positive response to the Humean
dilemma, which provide some intelligible solutions.
5. The
Kantian Transcendental Aesthetic
According
to Kant, space and time are not objects that are out in the world. They are forms of experience. In other words,
they organize that which is experienced rather than actually being experienced
in themselves. We seem to know what space and time are only until we actually
try to describe them. Space and time are the pre-conditions of the possibility
of description itself, but they tend to resist adequate description in
themselves. This is not an absolute, it is just that special care must be taken
when they are brought into account in any form of descriptive discourse. In the
case of time, some of the most penetrating meditations on this problem can be
found in
For Kant:
Space is the form of all outer experience.
Time is the form of all inner experience.
It is Kant’s
transcendental aesthetic (in relation to his “Refutation of Idealism) that goes
some way toward reconciling some of the main principles of rationalism and
empiricism. It is acknowledged that all knowledge begins with experience, but
it is also demonstrated that there are structures that condition the
possibility of its constitution (which are not actually the Cartesian innate
ideas against which the empiricists polemicized so vigorously).
However, Kant’s
conception of time and space as forms of experience is basically Euclidean in
character. So, these forms are principally linear in character and come
ready-made. Husserl developed a transcendental aesthetical discourse of his own
that focused on the constitution of the many different forms of these forms.
According to his phenomenological inquiries on the issue of temporal
experience, the linearity, which we take so much for granted, is also
constituted. Husserl digs deeper than Kant.
6. Phenomenology
and its Relation to Existentialism
Existentialism is a
particular application of the language and methods of phenomenology. It is
‘phenomenological-ontology.’
The existentialist
orientation begins with the intentionality of consciousness – as
self-transcending comportment in the world. Consciousness is pure
transcendence. Transcendence is part of its essence – that is, if we were
permitted to speak of essence here. Actually, we are not really at liberty to
do so because consciousness, as an existential projection, necessarily precedes
its essence while simultaneously extending beyond it (e.g., Sartre’s classic
formulation: consciousness as Being-for-itself (Être pour soi] is what
it is not and is not what it is). This signs a shift from “to be is to do” to
“to do is to be.” Since consciousness is pure nothingness without its
engagement-with the world (where the nothingness opens the space of meaning),
existentialism deals with the manifold structures at work in the different
forms of comportment that make up the life of consciousness as a whole. Here,
the expression ‘whole’ is not to be confused with completeness. There cannot be
completion. The only terminus is death, which, in a sense, is to end without
finishing. In life, death is the only certainty. Only the date is uncertain.
Martin Heidegger (the
father of existentialism), a former pupil of Husserl, puts this at the centre
of his inquiries in his magnum opus, Being
and Time. The discourse on time is not that of the infinite time of
traditional scientific and philosophical discourse, but the lived temporality
of ‘finitude.’ Temporality is not an abstract object that we come to out of
simple scientific curiosity. It is the very source and structuration of our
existential motivation. Heidegger’s whole philosophy basically says – it is
time to live because we are eventually going to die!
7. The
Methodological Epoché
At
the heart of phenomenological interrogation is a method known as the reduction
or epoché. This is one of the most important elements in phenomenological thought.
Lecture Two will explore this theme.
Note:
The texts that are given
in the General Bibliography below are particularly relevant for the themes that
are adumbrated in this lecture. Take a look at some of them and see if you get
some kind of feedback. The important thing is to familiarize your self with the
basic themes discussed here. To this end, any secondary text on phenomenology
will be useful. Phenomenology is a notoriously difficult field when it comes to
the availability of good introductions. Try and find some kind of introduction
to this field with which you feel comfortable. The situation gets a lot better
when it comes to secondary texts on the more popular field of existentialism.
For the first few weeks of this course, the point is to develop a basic
awareness of the principal themes in phenomenology that extend into
existentialist writing. The book list will become more specific as we move into
the latter sphere.
For now, the most important
existentialist texts to obtain are:
1. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.
2. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.
* * *
General Bibliography
Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. Penguin.
Guide for Translating Husserl.
The Fall.
(1957). Translated from the French (La
Chute) by Justin O’Brien. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Myth of Sisyphus. Penguin.
Derrida,
Jacques
Edmund Husserl's "Origin of
Geometry": An Introduction by Jacques
Derrida. Translated with a preface and afterword by John Leavey, Jr. University
of
Margins of Philosophy.
Trans. Alan Bass. The Harvester Press. 1982. Marges de la Philosophie.
Speech and Phenomena. Trans. David B. Allison. [Preface by
Descartes,
Rene
Discourse on Method and The Meditations. Translated with an introduction by F. E. Sutcliffe.
Penguin.
Article:
"Phenomenological Deconstruction: Husserl's Method of Abbau." The British
Society For Phenomenology. Vol.21. No.1. January. 1990.
Heidegger,
Martin
The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Trans. Albert Hofstadter.
Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (7th edition).
Blackwell. 1962. Sein und Zeit
Tubingen: Max Niemeyer. 1927.
Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. (Copyright 1971 – Heidegger).
Hume,
David
A Treatise of Human Nature. Analytical index by L.A. Selby-Bigge. Second Edition with
text revised and notes by P.H. Nidditch.
Husserl,
Edmund
Cartesian Meditations. Trans. Dorion
The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David
Carr. Northwestern University Press. Hua
VI: Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale
Phänomenologie.
Experience and Judgement: Investigations in a
Genealogical Logic. Revised and edited by
Ludwig Landgrebe. Trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Introduced by J.
S. Churchill and Lothar Eley. Northwestern University Press. 1973. – Erfahrung und Urteil. Edited by Ludwig
Landgrebe.
Husserl: Shorter Works. Edited by Peter McCormick and Frederick Elliston.
Foreword by Walter Biemel. Copublished by
The Idea of Phenomenology. Trans. W.P. Alston and G. Nakhnikian. Martinus Nijhoff.
1950. [lectures of 1907]. Hua II: Die
Idee der Phänomenologie. Edited by Walter Biemel.
Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology. Trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson.
Collier/Macmillan. [first translation 1931] Original German text – 1913. Hua III.1: Ideen zu einer reinen
Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie: Erstes Buch. Edited by
Karl Schuhmann.
The Phenomenology of Internal Time
Consciousness. Edited by Martin Heidegger.
Trans. J.S. Churchill.
Kant,
Immanuel
Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. 1929 Macmillan. [Original
German text – 1787].
Kockelmans,
Joseph [editor]
Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Husserl and
its Interpretation. Doubleday & Co. Inc.
[Anchor Books]. 1967.
Landgrebe,
Ludwig
The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Edited by Donn Welton [various translators] Cornell
University Press. 1981.
Levinas,
Emmanuel
The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's
Phenomenology. Trans. Andre Orianne. Northwestern
University Press. 1973. [First published in
Merleau-Ponty,
Maurice
Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. R.K.P. 1962.
The Primacy of Perception. Edited, with an Introduction by James M. Edie.
Northwestern University Press. 1964.
Mohanty,
J.N.
Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning. Martinus Nijhoff. 1969.
Murphy,
Richard T.
Hume and Husserl: Towards a Radical
Subjectivism. Martinus/Nijhoff. 1980.
Ricoeur,
Paul
Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology. Trans. E.G. Ballard and L.E. Embree. Northwestern
University Press. 1967.
Sartre,
Jean-Paul
Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes.
Existentialism and Humanism.
Nausea.
Trans. Robert Baldick. Penguin. [Originally published in 1938].
Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. Trans. by Philip Mairet. Preface by Mary Warnock.
The Transcendence of the Ego. Trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick.
Octagon. 1972. [Original French text, 1936-7].
Sokolowski,
Robert
Husserlian Meditations. Northwestern University Press. 1974.
Wood,
David
The Deconstruction of Time. Humanities Press. 1989.
Derrida: A Critical Reader. Edited by David Wood. Blackwell. 1992.
"Différance
and the Problem of Strategy." [from Derrida
and Différance.] Parousia Press. Edited by David Wood and Robert
Bernasconi.1985.
Philosophy at the Limit. Unwin/Hyman.1990.