Researcher in existential phenomenology, with particular emphasis on lived spatio-temporality, mental health and the practice of deconstruction. Phone: 07903305855
of specialization are phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and discourse on non-linear, ... more of specialization are phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and discourse on non-linear, pluri-dimensional forms of lived temporality. He received his doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, England (1996) and he is currently doing phenomenological research on the lived experience of different kinds of psychological problems – or what he prefers to call 'exotic' mental states – and articulating the temporal forms that are peculiar to them by utilizing an inside-out (or bottom-up) form of analysis. This article is a transcript of a workshop that Dr. Sandowsky presented to a group of philosophical counsellors and students on the condition known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Originally published in the Journal of Radical Psychology (JRP), Spring 2001 Vol. 2 (1) ISSN: 1561-8978.
This article is a transcript of a live workshop that Dr. Louis N. Sandowsky presented to a group ... more This article is a transcript of a live workshop that Dr. Louis N. Sandowsky presented to a group of philosophical counsellors and students (in Tel Aviv, 2000) on the condition commonly known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His specialization in phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and discourse on non-linear, pluri-dimensional forms of lived temporality is put to work on this spectrum disorder by means of an inside-out or bottom-up form of analysis. Dr. Sandowsky received his doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, England (1996), and he is currently doing phenomenological research on the lived experience of different kinds of psychological problems – or what he prefers to call ‘exotic’ mental states – and articulating the temporal forms that are peculiar to them.
This paper examines Edmund Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by David Hume’s critique ... more This paper examines Edmund Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by David Hume’s critique of the philosophy of the ego and the continuity of consciousness. The path taken here follows a continental and phenomenological approach. Husserl’s 1904/5 lecture course on the phenomenology of immanent / internal time-consciousness is a phenomenological-eidetic examination of how the continuity of consciousness and the consciousness of continuity are possible.
It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but which escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him.
In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its running-off impressions.
Ph.D Thesis -- University of Warwick. 1996 (submitted in October 1995)
"THE RULES OF THE GAME" --
Some of the principal themes of this Ph.D. thesis can be trac... more "THE RULES OF THE GAME" --
Some of the principal themes of this Ph.D. thesis can be traced back to an early article that I presented at an international conference in philosophy held at Warwick University in 1989, entitled: “Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?” – published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol.2, Issue 2, 1989. This paper explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridian non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre -- as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project – which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida’s deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction.
The present book develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida’s project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction, which urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction.
The expression of such a ‘beyond’ is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to Derrida’s own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction.
The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity – with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them – do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence – a violation of the ‘system’s’ own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) – but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed’s (textual analysand’s) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation.
In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules."
This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the ... more This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the form of analysis outlined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness in relation to the theory of intentionality developed by Brentano and Husserl. The principal aim of the paper is to establish a suitable starting point for a dialogue between these two forms of analysis, whose respective terminologies with respect to consciousness and the unconscious appear to cancel each other out.
Originally published in Existentia: An International Journal of Philosophy (Vol. XIV / Fasc.3-4, 2004. SOCIETAS PHILOSOPHIA CLASSICA).
This essay examines the methodological detours that are at work in Martin Heidegger’s writing bet... more This essay examines the methodological detours that are at work in Martin Heidegger’s writing between the years of 1924 (The Concept of Time) and 1962 (the lecture, “Time and Being”). The aim is to demonstrate how his style of phenomenological interrogation is driven on the basis of multiple moments of epoché, postponement, withdrawal, suspension, detour, etc., despite his resistance to the 'method' of epoché as it was developed by Edmund Husserl. Heidegger’s radical refinements of his own methods constitute a multiplicity of ‘turns’ – inevitably turning back to the issue of the epoché and the temporizing / delay / withholding of that which originally gives Being.
Originally published in Existentia: An International Journal of Philosophy. (Vol. XV / 1-2 – 2005. SOCIETAS PHILOSOPHIA CLASSICA).
"A Note on “From Space and Time to the Spacing of Temporal Articulation: a phenomenological r... more "A Note on “From Space and Time to the Spacing of Temporal Articulation: a phenomenological re-run of Achilles and the tortoise.”
My research in phenomenology and existentialism has always been drawn, through a deconstructive lens-piece, to the significance and key importance of the issue of temporality – that, indeed, consciousness [Bewusstsein], Being-there [Dasein], and Being-for-itself [Être-pour-soi] are other names for the articulation of time. The horizon of Temporality (Temporalität – with its transcendental character) could be said to refer to the absolute horizon of all horizons of Being.
In the following essay on the spacing of temporal articulation (based on a research paper of the same title that I wrote in 1989 during the period of my M.A. studies in Continental Philosophy at Warwick University), I examine some of the ways in which phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction have radicalized the treatment and conceptualization of time in contemporary philosophy. The principal focus is on how they have successfully exposed the kinds of aporia that infect the popular model in which time is expressed as a linear succession of 'discrete' moments.
The importance of the analyses undertaken by Husserl and Heidegger, in particular, lies in the way in which their 'horizonal' (horizontal and vertical) approach to time shows how the 'now,' far from being a discrete moment or extensionless point, is intrinsically 'spanned.' This represents much more than a mere reiteration of the obvious argument that a single point (parameter) means nothing without reference to at least one other point: that the 'now' must be the space-between two parameters. Such a model is still far too limited.
The 'now,' or rather the Living Present (lebendige Gegenwart) is, in the most primordial sense, an extended / extending field that carries its 'no-longer' and its 'yet-to-come' within it. Any parameters that limit its space are arbitrary. It is a pure overflowing – a horizon of pure extending / stretching that first provides the space (spacing) of such limits. As the title of this article suggests, the senses of extension or spacing are subjected to rigorous investigation, for these terms are irreducible to pure spatiality alone – hence the transition from the supplement ‘and’ to the preposition ‘of’ with respect to the relation between space and time – the time of space and the space of time: time-space / space-time. Here, the question of 'positionality' is encouraged to reveal a far deeper significance than the mere language of spatial location. Spatializing is always already intertwined with temporalizing.
The motivating idea for the following investigation announced itself, somewhat indirectly, through certain implications that arise when Zeno's paradox "Achilles and the tortoise" is treated to a phenomenological reading (I urge the reader to take a look at Jorge-Luis Borgès' extraordinary essay – extraordinary in terms of the tremendous scope of its observations and ideas, despite its narrative economy, regarding the many different manifestations of this paradox throughout the history of Occidental philosophy – “The Avatars of the Tortoise” [see bibliography], which served as a major inspiration for the present text).
This 'paradox' takes the notion of the 'infinite divisibility' of any magnitude as its principal theme and shows how it problematizes the question of the reality of motion. Through this treatment of motion we find that the infinite divisibility of space is also equally applicable to time and that the 'discrete' moments of measured time can be nothing more than fictional entities.
Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise still continues to fascinate and seduce those who wish to flex their philosophical muscles in an attempt to understand precisely why it is a paradox. However, despite the fact that it is still compelling in its narrative power to draw one into its surreal horizon, as an argument against the reality of change and motion, it remains little more than a logical curiosity. For reasons of strategy, however, I treat the 'narrative structure' of the tale seriously in order to show...
i...how Zeno adopts the status of 'privileged observer' thus positioning his discourse within the bounds of a traditional (objective) idea of reality and the presence of the present, even though ultimately pushing it to its limits.
ii...how, at the point of rupture, the paradox demands that we make explicit that which is not made thematic by the narrative, but is presupposed by its 'operation': namely, lived time.
iii...how the asymptotic relation between Achilles and the tortoise can be expressed in such a way as to open up a space for a sense of extension / extending that speaks of the pluri-dimensionality of time as articulated through the stretching-out of the now of lived-experience.
Ultimately, the provisional approach leads away, through various shifts in perspective on the aporetic traces that it leaves in its wake, from engaging the closed limits of an objective linear continuum to addressing time as a horizonal 'interplay' whose spacing resists the language of closure. The shift involves nothing less than a phenomenological-deconstruction of the expressions
time, space and motion – and, as such, it re-situates the question of what is meant when, like Zeno, we ask whether they are real. The 'real' is not that which can ever be totalized (like within an ideal Euclidean point or its 'objective' temporal counterpart in the traditional notion of time: the 'now' as a discrete 'piece' of time) – but exceeds objective determination or reification. We shall see that the power of Zeno's narrative can be said to lie in the way in which it puts the primacy generally assigned to presence and the present into question.
Therefore, the following reading of Achilles and the Tortoise does not follow the traditional path of logical analysis. The paradox is subjected to a phenomenological-deconstructive form of interrogation. The principal question that guides the investigation is: what would it be to experience a world in which the slowest of competitors in a race is always ahead of the one who is faster?
In contemporary phenomenological and deconstructive discourse, presence can no longer be privileged. Neither can there be any 'privileged observers' in a universe that is articulated, both spatially and temporally, through 'perspectives.' But, having said this, it is still necessary to ask about the conditions of the possibility of such perspectives, in terms of their formation and unity through change.
Consciousness of plurality is possible for an extended-extending consciousness only – a 'lived unity' which exceeds its finite moments. Consciousness is stretched within itself under the tri-horizonal form of the Living Present. It is fundamentally historical; a project, a projecting whose form is that of the extending of the Living Present. The 'now,' when thought according to this structurality, is pure opening and intertwining (Ineinander). In the speaking-out of the 'now' we always find a matrix of interwoven moments – a horizon that extends into both the past and the future. It is the 'field' of the Urgemeinschaftung [original communality] of the past, present and future. This intertwining is that which originarily constitutes the present as opening.
The title of this article incorporates a form of play in which the classic difference that separates discourse on time from that of a spatial order is put into suspension. The following inquiry does not settle for the traditional disjunction that defines time as an 'order of successions' as distinct from space as an 'order of coexistences.' The discourse on the intertwining of space and time is not a question of adding two discrete horizons – as implied by the use of the supplement 'and.' The intertwining of which I speak names a field that is earlier than such a disjunction. It is the horizon of the spacing of temporal articulation.
A contribution to the internet project:: On The Future of Husserlian Phenomenology. The New School for Social Research – The Husserl Archives in Memory of Alfred Schutz. Received February, 2007.
The Warwick Journal of Philosophy: Autumn Edition (Vol.2, Issue 2, 1989).
This paper focuses on Edmund Husserl's aims in his initiation and development of the phenomenolog... more This paper focuses on Edmund Husserl's aims in his initiation and development of the phenomenological enterprise, brings to light certain errors in some of the ways in which the meaning of his form of research has been misappropriated, and provides a rejoinder to the accusation that phenomenology is a totalizing / foundationalist philosophy entrenched in a 'naive' metaphysical tradition.
The principal intention is to gauge the legitimacy of some of Jacques Derrida's criticisms and characterizations of phenomenology (as expressed in his text, Speech and Phenomena) by showing the points of congruence and divergence between Husserl's and Derrida's respective styles in order to highlight the meaning of the latter’s non-teleological 'strategy' (throughout the deconstructive thematization of différance) in terms of its rootedness in the Husserlian movement of epoché – transcendental- phenomenological reduction. This involves an analysis that insinuates itself within the margins of Derrida's text. By focusing on certain footnotes in Speech and Phenomena – playing within its margins in contrast to the main (foreground) passages of this text – I endeavour to bring out what is theoretically operative, but not explicitly thematized in Derrida's own writing.
of specialization are phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and discourse on non-linear, ... more of specialization are phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and discourse on non-linear, pluri-dimensional forms of lived temporality. He received his doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, England (1996) and he is currently doing phenomenological research on the lived experience of different kinds of psychological problems – or what he prefers to call 'exotic' mental states – and articulating the temporal forms that are peculiar to them by utilizing an inside-out (or bottom-up) form of analysis. This article is a transcript of a workshop that Dr. Sandowsky presented to a group of philosophical counsellors and students on the condition known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Originally published in the Journal of Radical Psychology (JRP), Spring 2001 Vol. 2 (1) ISSN: 1561-8978.
This article is a transcript of a live workshop that Dr. Louis N. Sandowsky presented to a group ... more This article is a transcript of a live workshop that Dr. Louis N. Sandowsky presented to a group of philosophical counsellors and students (in Tel Aviv, 2000) on the condition commonly known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. His specialization in phenomenology, existentialism, deconstruction and discourse on non-linear, pluri-dimensional forms of lived temporality is put to work on this spectrum disorder by means of an inside-out or bottom-up form of analysis. Dr. Sandowsky received his doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, England (1996), and he is currently doing phenomenological research on the lived experience of different kinds of psychological problems – or what he prefers to call ‘exotic’ mental states – and articulating the temporal forms that are peculiar to them.
This paper examines Edmund Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by David Hume’s critique ... more This paper examines Edmund Husserl’s fascination with the issues raised by David Hume’s critique of the philosophy of the ego and the continuity of consciousness. The path taken here follows a continental and phenomenological approach. Husserl’s 1904/5 lecture course on the phenomenology of immanent / internal time-consciousness is a phenomenological-eidetic examination of how the continuity of consciousness and the consciousness of continuity are possible.
It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but which escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him.
In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its running-off impressions.
Ph.D Thesis -- University of Warwick. 1996 (submitted in October 1995)
"THE RULES OF THE GAME" --
Some of the principal themes of this Ph.D. thesis can be trac... more "THE RULES OF THE GAME" --
Some of the principal themes of this Ph.D. thesis can be traced back to an early article that I presented at an international conference in philosophy held at Warwick University in 1989, entitled: “Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?” – published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol.2, Issue 2, 1989. This paper explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridian non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre -- as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project – which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida’s deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction.
The present book develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida’s project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction, which urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction.
The expression of such a ‘beyond’ is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to Derrida’s own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction.
The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity – with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them – do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence – a violation of the ‘system’s’ own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) – but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed’s (textual analysand’s) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation.
In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules."
This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the ... more This essay examines the similarities and dissimilarities between Freudian psychoanalysis and the form of analysis outlined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness in relation to the theory of intentionality developed by Brentano and Husserl. The principal aim of the paper is to establish a suitable starting point for a dialogue between these two forms of analysis, whose respective terminologies with respect to consciousness and the unconscious appear to cancel each other out.
Originally published in Existentia: An International Journal of Philosophy (Vol. XIV / Fasc.3-4, 2004. SOCIETAS PHILOSOPHIA CLASSICA).
This essay examines the methodological detours that are at work in Martin Heidegger’s writing bet... more This essay examines the methodological detours that are at work in Martin Heidegger’s writing between the years of 1924 (The Concept of Time) and 1962 (the lecture, “Time and Being”). The aim is to demonstrate how his style of phenomenological interrogation is driven on the basis of multiple moments of epoché, postponement, withdrawal, suspension, detour, etc., despite his resistance to the 'method' of epoché as it was developed by Edmund Husserl. Heidegger’s radical refinements of his own methods constitute a multiplicity of ‘turns’ – inevitably turning back to the issue of the epoché and the temporizing / delay / withholding of that which originally gives Being.
Originally published in Existentia: An International Journal of Philosophy. (Vol. XV / 1-2 – 2005. SOCIETAS PHILOSOPHIA CLASSICA).
"A Note on “From Space and Time to the Spacing of Temporal Articulation: a phenomenological r... more "A Note on “From Space and Time to the Spacing of Temporal Articulation: a phenomenological re-run of Achilles and the tortoise.”
My research in phenomenology and existentialism has always been drawn, through a deconstructive lens-piece, to the significance and key importance of the issue of temporality – that, indeed, consciousness [Bewusstsein], Being-there [Dasein], and Being-for-itself [Être-pour-soi] are other names for the articulation of time. The horizon of Temporality (Temporalität – with its transcendental character) could be said to refer to the absolute horizon of all horizons of Being.
In the following essay on the spacing of temporal articulation (based on a research paper of the same title that I wrote in 1989 during the period of my M.A. studies in Continental Philosophy at Warwick University), I examine some of the ways in which phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction have radicalized the treatment and conceptualization of time in contemporary philosophy. The principal focus is on how they have successfully exposed the kinds of aporia that infect the popular model in which time is expressed as a linear succession of 'discrete' moments.
The importance of the analyses undertaken by Husserl and Heidegger, in particular, lies in the way in which their 'horizonal' (horizontal and vertical) approach to time shows how the 'now,' far from being a discrete moment or extensionless point, is intrinsically 'spanned.' This represents much more than a mere reiteration of the obvious argument that a single point (parameter) means nothing without reference to at least one other point: that the 'now' must be the space-between two parameters. Such a model is still far too limited.
The 'now,' or rather the Living Present (lebendige Gegenwart) is, in the most primordial sense, an extended / extending field that carries its 'no-longer' and its 'yet-to-come' within it. Any parameters that limit its space are arbitrary. It is a pure overflowing – a horizon of pure extending / stretching that first provides the space (spacing) of such limits. As the title of this article suggests, the senses of extension or spacing are subjected to rigorous investigation, for these terms are irreducible to pure spatiality alone – hence the transition from the supplement ‘and’ to the preposition ‘of’ with respect to the relation between space and time – the time of space and the space of time: time-space / space-time. Here, the question of 'positionality' is encouraged to reveal a far deeper significance than the mere language of spatial location. Spatializing is always already intertwined with temporalizing.
The motivating idea for the following investigation announced itself, somewhat indirectly, through certain implications that arise when Zeno's paradox "Achilles and the tortoise" is treated to a phenomenological reading (I urge the reader to take a look at Jorge-Luis Borgès' extraordinary essay – extraordinary in terms of the tremendous scope of its observations and ideas, despite its narrative economy, regarding the many different manifestations of this paradox throughout the history of Occidental philosophy – “The Avatars of the Tortoise” [see bibliography], which served as a major inspiration for the present text).
This 'paradox' takes the notion of the 'infinite divisibility' of any magnitude as its principal theme and shows how it problematizes the question of the reality of motion. Through this treatment of motion we find that the infinite divisibility of space is also equally applicable to time and that the 'discrete' moments of measured time can be nothing more than fictional entities.
Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise still continues to fascinate and seduce those who wish to flex their philosophical muscles in an attempt to understand precisely why it is a paradox. However, despite the fact that it is still compelling in its narrative power to draw one into its surreal horizon, as an argument against the reality of change and motion, it remains little more than a logical curiosity. For reasons of strategy, however, I treat the 'narrative structure' of the tale seriously in order to show...
i...how Zeno adopts the status of 'privileged observer' thus positioning his discourse within the bounds of a traditional (objective) idea of reality and the presence of the present, even though ultimately pushing it to its limits.
ii...how, at the point of rupture, the paradox demands that we make explicit that which is not made thematic by the narrative, but is presupposed by its 'operation': namely, lived time.
iii...how the asymptotic relation between Achilles and the tortoise can be expressed in such a way as to open up a space for a sense of extension / extending that speaks of the pluri-dimensionality of time as articulated through the stretching-out of the now of lived-experience.
Ultimately, the provisional approach leads away, through various shifts in perspective on the aporetic traces that it leaves in its wake, from engaging the closed limits of an objective linear continuum to addressing time as a horizonal 'interplay' whose spacing resists the language of closure. The shift involves nothing less than a phenomenological-deconstruction of the expressions
time, space and motion – and, as such, it re-situates the question of what is meant when, like Zeno, we ask whether they are real. The 'real' is not that which can ever be totalized (like within an ideal Euclidean point or its 'objective' temporal counterpart in the traditional notion of time: the 'now' as a discrete 'piece' of time) – but exceeds objective determination or reification. We shall see that the power of Zeno's narrative can be said to lie in the way in which it puts the primacy generally assigned to presence and the present into question.
Therefore, the following reading of Achilles and the Tortoise does not follow the traditional path of logical analysis. The paradox is subjected to a phenomenological-deconstructive form of interrogation. The principal question that guides the investigation is: what would it be to experience a world in which the slowest of competitors in a race is always ahead of the one who is faster?
In contemporary phenomenological and deconstructive discourse, presence can no longer be privileged. Neither can there be any 'privileged observers' in a universe that is articulated, both spatially and temporally, through 'perspectives.' But, having said this, it is still necessary to ask about the conditions of the possibility of such perspectives, in terms of their formation and unity through change.
Consciousness of plurality is possible for an extended-extending consciousness only – a 'lived unity' which exceeds its finite moments. Consciousness is stretched within itself under the tri-horizonal form of the Living Present. It is fundamentally historical; a project, a projecting whose form is that of the extending of the Living Present. The 'now,' when thought according to this structurality, is pure opening and intertwining (Ineinander). In the speaking-out of the 'now' we always find a matrix of interwoven moments – a horizon that extends into both the past and the future. It is the 'field' of the Urgemeinschaftung [original communality] of the past, present and future. This intertwining is that which originarily constitutes the present as opening.
The title of this article incorporates a form of play in which the classic difference that separates discourse on time from that of a spatial order is put into suspension. The following inquiry does not settle for the traditional disjunction that defines time as an 'order of successions' as distinct from space as an 'order of coexistences.' The discourse on the intertwining of space and time is not a question of adding two discrete horizons – as implied by the use of the supplement 'and.' The intertwining of which I speak names a field that is earlier than such a disjunction. It is the horizon of the spacing of temporal articulation.
A contribution to the internet project:: On The Future of Husserlian Phenomenology. The New School for Social Research – The Husserl Archives in Memory of Alfred Schutz. Received February, 2007.
The Warwick Journal of Philosophy: Autumn Edition (Vol.2, Issue 2, 1989).
This paper focuses on Edmund Husserl's aims in his initiation and development of the phenomenolog... more This paper focuses on Edmund Husserl's aims in his initiation and development of the phenomenological enterprise, brings to light certain errors in some of the ways in which the meaning of his form of research has been misappropriated, and provides a rejoinder to the accusation that phenomenology is a totalizing / foundationalist philosophy entrenched in a 'naive' metaphysical tradition.
The principal intention is to gauge the legitimacy of some of Jacques Derrida's criticisms and characterizations of phenomenology (as expressed in his text, Speech and Phenomena) by showing the points of congruence and divergence between Husserl's and Derrida's respective styles in order to highlight the meaning of the latter’s non-teleological 'strategy' (throughout the deconstructive thematization of différance) in terms of its rootedness in the Husserlian movement of epoché – transcendental- phenomenological reduction. This involves an analysis that insinuates itself within the margins of Derrida's text. By focusing on certain footnotes in Speech and Phenomena – playing within its margins in contrast to the main (foreground) passages of this text – I endeavour to bring out what is theoretically operative, but not explicitly thematized in Derrida's own writing.
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Papers by Louis N Sandowsky
It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but which escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him.
In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its running-off impressions.
Some of the principal themes of this Ph.D. thesis can be traced back to an early article that I presented at an international conference in philosophy held at Warwick University in 1989, entitled: “Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?” – published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol.2, Issue 2, 1989. This paper explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridian non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre -- as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project – which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida’s deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction.
The present book develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida’s project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction, which urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction.
The expression of such a ‘beyond’ is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to Derrida’s own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction.
The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity – with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them – do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence – a violation of the ‘system’s’ own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) – but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed’s (textual analysand’s) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation.
In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules."
My research in phenomenology and existentialism has always been drawn, through a deconstructive lens-piece, to the significance and key importance of the issue of temporality – that, indeed, consciousness [Bewusstsein], Being-there [Dasein], and Being-for-itself [Être-pour-soi] are other names for the articulation of time. The horizon of Temporality (Temporalität – with its transcendental character) could be said to refer to the absolute horizon of all horizons of Being.
In the following essay on the spacing of temporal articulation (based on a research paper of the same title that I wrote in 1989 during the period of my M.A. studies in Continental Philosophy at Warwick University), I examine some of the ways in which phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction have radicalized the treatment and conceptualization of time in contemporary philosophy. The principal focus is on how they have successfully exposed the kinds of aporia that infect the popular model in which time is expressed as a linear succession of 'discrete' moments.
The importance of the analyses undertaken by Husserl and Heidegger, in particular, lies in the way in which their 'horizonal' (horizontal and vertical) approach to time shows how the 'now,' far from being a discrete moment or extensionless point, is intrinsically 'spanned.' This represents much more than a mere reiteration of the obvious argument that a single point (parameter) means nothing without reference to at least one other point: that the 'now' must be the space-between two parameters. Such a model is still far too limited.
The 'now,' or rather the Living Present (lebendige Gegenwart) is, in the most primordial sense, an extended / extending field that carries its 'no-longer' and its 'yet-to-come' within it. Any parameters that limit its space are arbitrary. It is a pure overflowing – a horizon of pure extending / stretching that first provides the space (spacing) of such limits. As the title of this article suggests, the senses of extension or spacing are subjected to rigorous investigation, for these terms are irreducible to pure spatiality alone – hence the transition from the supplement ‘and’ to the preposition ‘of’ with respect to the relation between space and time – the time of space and the space of time: time-space / space-time. Here, the question of 'positionality' is encouraged to reveal a far deeper significance than the mere language of spatial location. Spatializing is always already intertwined with temporalizing.
The motivating idea for the following investigation announced itself, somewhat indirectly, through certain implications that arise when Zeno's paradox "Achilles and the tortoise" is treated to a phenomenological reading (I urge the reader to take a look at Jorge-Luis Borgès' extraordinary essay – extraordinary in terms of the tremendous scope of its observations and ideas, despite its narrative economy, regarding the many different manifestations of this paradox throughout the history of Occidental philosophy – “The Avatars of the Tortoise” [see bibliography], which served as a major inspiration for the present text).
This 'paradox' takes the notion of the 'infinite divisibility' of any magnitude as its principal theme and shows how it problematizes the question of the reality of motion. Through this treatment of motion we find that the infinite divisibility of space is also equally applicable to time and that the 'discrete' moments of measured time can be nothing more than fictional entities.
Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise still continues to fascinate and seduce those who wish to flex their philosophical muscles in an attempt to understand precisely why it is a paradox. However, despite the fact that it is still compelling in its narrative power to draw one into its surreal horizon, as an argument against the reality of change and motion, it remains little more than a logical curiosity. For reasons of strategy, however, I treat the 'narrative structure' of the tale seriously in order to show...
i...how Zeno adopts the status of 'privileged observer' thus positioning his discourse within the bounds of a traditional (objective) idea of reality and the presence of the present, even though ultimately pushing it to its limits.
ii...how, at the point of rupture, the paradox demands that we make explicit that which is not made thematic by the narrative, but is presupposed by its 'operation': namely, lived time.
iii...how the asymptotic relation between Achilles and the tortoise can be expressed in such a way as to open up a space for a sense of extension / extending that speaks of the pluri-dimensionality of time as articulated through the stretching-out of the now of lived-experience.
Ultimately, the provisional approach leads away, through various shifts in perspective on the aporetic traces that it leaves in its wake, from engaging the closed limits of an objective linear continuum to addressing time as a horizonal 'interplay' whose spacing resists the language of closure. The shift involves nothing less than a phenomenological-deconstruction of the expressions
time, space and motion – and, as such, it re-situates the question of what is meant when, like Zeno, we ask whether they are real. The 'real' is not that which can ever be totalized (like within an ideal Euclidean point or its 'objective' temporal counterpart in the traditional notion of time: the 'now' as a discrete 'piece' of time) – but exceeds objective determination or reification. We shall see that the power of Zeno's narrative can be said to lie in the way in which it puts the primacy generally assigned to presence and the present into question.
Therefore, the following reading of Achilles and the Tortoise does not follow the traditional path of logical analysis. The paradox is subjected to a phenomenological-deconstructive form of interrogation. The principal question that guides the investigation is: what would it be to experience a world in which the slowest of competitors in a race is always ahead of the one who is faster?
In contemporary phenomenological and deconstructive discourse, presence can no longer be privileged. Neither can there be any 'privileged observers' in a universe that is articulated, both spatially and temporally, through 'perspectives.' But, having said this, it is still necessary to ask about the conditions of the possibility of such perspectives, in terms of their formation and unity through change.
Consciousness of plurality is possible for an extended-extending consciousness only – a 'lived unity' which exceeds its finite moments. Consciousness is stretched within itself under the tri-horizonal form of the Living Present. It is fundamentally historical; a project, a projecting whose form is that of the extending of the Living Present. The 'now,' when thought according to this structurality, is pure opening and intertwining (Ineinander). In the speaking-out of the 'now' we always find a matrix of interwoven moments – a horizon that extends into both the past and the future. It is the 'field' of the Urgemeinschaftung [original communality] of the past, present and future. This intertwining is that which originarily constitutes the present as opening.
The title of this article incorporates a form of play in which the classic difference that separates discourse on time from that of a spatial order is put into suspension. The following inquiry does not settle for the traditional disjunction that defines time as an 'order of successions' as distinct from space as an 'order of coexistences.' The discourse on the intertwining of space and time is not a question of adding two discrete horizons – as implied by the use of the supplement 'and.' The intertwining of which I speak names a field that is earlier than such a disjunction. It is the horizon of the spacing of temporal articulation.
The principal intention is to gauge the legitimacy of some of Jacques Derrida's criticisms and characterizations of phenomenology (as expressed in his text, Speech and Phenomena) by showing the points of congruence and divergence between Husserl's and Derrida's respective styles in order to highlight the meaning of the latter’s non-teleological 'strategy' (throughout the deconstructive thematization of différance) in terms of its rootedness in the Husserlian movement of epoché – transcendental- phenomenological reduction. This involves an analysis that insinuates itself within the margins of Derrida's text. By focusing on certain footnotes in Speech and Phenomena – playing within its margins in contrast to the main (foreground) passages of this text – I endeavour to bring out what is theoretically operative, but not explicitly thematized in Derrida's own writing.
It was by way of Husserl’s reading of Hume’s discussion of “flux” or “flow” that his discourse on temporal phenomena led to the classification of a point-like now as a “fiction” and opened up a horizonal approach to the present that Hume’s introspective analyses presuppose but which escaped the limitations of the language that was available to him.
In order to demonstrate the radicality of Husserl’s temporal investigations and his inspiration in the work of Hume, I show how his phenomenological discourse on the living temporal flow of consciousness resolves the latter’s concern about the problem of continuity by re-thinking how, in the absence of an abiding impression of Self, experience is continuous throughout the flux of its running-off impressions.
Some of the principal themes of this Ph.D. thesis can be traced back to an early article that I presented at an international conference in philosophy held at Warwick University in 1989, entitled: “Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?” – published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol.2, Issue 2, 1989. This paper explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida’s project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridian non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre -- as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project – which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida’s deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction.
The present book develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida’s project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction, which urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction.
The expression of such a ‘beyond’ is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to Derrida’s own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction.
The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity – with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them – do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence – a violation of the ‘system’s’ own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) – but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed’s (textual analysand’s) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation.
In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules."
My research in phenomenology and existentialism has always been drawn, through a deconstructive lens-piece, to the significance and key importance of the issue of temporality – that, indeed, consciousness [Bewusstsein], Being-there [Dasein], and Being-for-itself [Être-pour-soi] are other names for the articulation of time. The horizon of Temporality (Temporalität – with its transcendental character) could be said to refer to the absolute horizon of all horizons of Being.
In the following essay on the spacing of temporal articulation (based on a research paper of the same title that I wrote in 1989 during the period of my M.A. studies in Continental Philosophy at Warwick University), I examine some of the ways in which phenomenology, existentialism and deconstruction have radicalized the treatment and conceptualization of time in contemporary philosophy. The principal focus is on how they have successfully exposed the kinds of aporia that infect the popular model in which time is expressed as a linear succession of 'discrete' moments.
The importance of the analyses undertaken by Husserl and Heidegger, in particular, lies in the way in which their 'horizonal' (horizontal and vertical) approach to time shows how the 'now,' far from being a discrete moment or extensionless point, is intrinsically 'spanned.' This represents much more than a mere reiteration of the obvious argument that a single point (parameter) means nothing without reference to at least one other point: that the 'now' must be the space-between two parameters. Such a model is still far too limited.
The 'now,' or rather the Living Present (lebendige Gegenwart) is, in the most primordial sense, an extended / extending field that carries its 'no-longer' and its 'yet-to-come' within it. Any parameters that limit its space are arbitrary. It is a pure overflowing – a horizon of pure extending / stretching that first provides the space (spacing) of such limits. As the title of this article suggests, the senses of extension or spacing are subjected to rigorous investigation, for these terms are irreducible to pure spatiality alone – hence the transition from the supplement ‘and’ to the preposition ‘of’ with respect to the relation between space and time – the time of space and the space of time: time-space / space-time. Here, the question of 'positionality' is encouraged to reveal a far deeper significance than the mere language of spatial location. Spatializing is always already intertwined with temporalizing.
The motivating idea for the following investigation announced itself, somewhat indirectly, through certain implications that arise when Zeno's paradox "Achilles and the tortoise" is treated to a phenomenological reading (I urge the reader to take a look at Jorge-Luis Borgès' extraordinary essay – extraordinary in terms of the tremendous scope of its observations and ideas, despite its narrative economy, regarding the many different manifestations of this paradox throughout the history of Occidental philosophy – “The Avatars of the Tortoise” [see bibliography], which served as a major inspiration for the present text).
This 'paradox' takes the notion of the 'infinite divisibility' of any magnitude as its principal theme and shows how it problematizes the question of the reality of motion. Through this treatment of motion we find that the infinite divisibility of space is also equally applicable to time and that the 'discrete' moments of measured time can be nothing more than fictional entities.
Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise still continues to fascinate and seduce those who wish to flex their philosophical muscles in an attempt to understand precisely why it is a paradox. However, despite the fact that it is still compelling in its narrative power to draw one into its surreal horizon, as an argument against the reality of change and motion, it remains little more than a logical curiosity. For reasons of strategy, however, I treat the 'narrative structure' of the tale seriously in order to show...
i...how Zeno adopts the status of 'privileged observer' thus positioning his discourse within the bounds of a traditional (objective) idea of reality and the presence of the present, even though ultimately pushing it to its limits.
ii...how, at the point of rupture, the paradox demands that we make explicit that which is not made thematic by the narrative, but is presupposed by its 'operation': namely, lived time.
iii...how the asymptotic relation between Achilles and the tortoise can be expressed in such a way as to open up a space for a sense of extension / extending that speaks of the pluri-dimensionality of time as articulated through the stretching-out of the now of lived-experience.
Ultimately, the provisional approach leads away, through various shifts in perspective on the aporetic traces that it leaves in its wake, from engaging the closed limits of an objective linear continuum to addressing time as a horizonal 'interplay' whose spacing resists the language of closure. The shift involves nothing less than a phenomenological-deconstruction of the expressions
time, space and motion – and, as such, it re-situates the question of what is meant when, like Zeno, we ask whether they are real. The 'real' is not that which can ever be totalized (like within an ideal Euclidean point or its 'objective' temporal counterpart in the traditional notion of time: the 'now' as a discrete 'piece' of time) – but exceeds objective determination or reification. We shall see that the power of Zeno's narrative can be said to lie in the way in which it puts the primacy generally assigned to presence and the present into question.
Therefore, the following reading of Achilles and the Tortoise does not follow the traditional path of logical analysis. The paradox is subjected to a phenomenological-deconstructive form of interrogation. The principal question that guides the investigation is: what would it be to experience a world in which the slowest of competitors in a race is always ahead of the one who is faster?
In contemporary phenomenological and deconstructive discourse, presence can no longer be privileged. Neither can there be any 'privileged observers' in a universe that is articulated, both spatially and temporally, through 'perspectives.' But, having said this, it is still necessary to ask about the conditions of the possibility of such perspectives, in terms of their formation and unity through change.
Consciousness of plurality is possible for an extended-extending consciousness only – a 'lived unity' which exceeds its finite moments. Consciousness is stretched within itself under the tri-horizonal form of the Living Present. It is fundamentally historical; a project, a projecting whose form is that of the extending of the Living Present. The 'now,' when thought according to this structurality, is pure opening and intertwining (Ineinander). In the speaking-out of the 'now' we always find a matrix of interwoven moments – a horizon that extends into both the past and the future. It is the 'field' of the Urgemeinschaftung [original communality] of the past, present and future. This intertwining is that which originarily constitutes the present as opening.
The title of this article incorporates a form of play in which the classic difference that separates discourse on time from that of a spatial order is put into suspension. The following inquiry does not settle for the traditional disjunction that defines time as an 'order of successions' as distinct from space as an 'order of coexistences.' The discourse on the intertwining of space and time is not a question of adding two discrete horizons – as implied by the use of the supplement 'and.' The intertwining of which I speak names a field that is earlier than such a disjunction. It is the horizon of the spacing of temporal articulation.
The principal intention is to gauge the legitimacy of some of Jacques Derrida's criticisms and characterizations of phenomenology (as expressed in his text, Speech and Phenomena) by showing the points of congruence and divergence between Husserl's and Derrida's respective styles in order to highlight the meaning of the latter’s non-teleological 'strategy' (throughout the deconstructive thematization of différance) in terms of its rootedness in the Husserlian movement of epoché – transcendental- phenomenological reduction. This involves an analysis that insinuates itself within the margins of Derrida's text. By focusing on certain footnotes in Speech and Phenomena – playing within its margins in contrast to the main (foreground) passages of this text – I endeavour to bring out what is theoretically operative, but not explicitly thematized in Derrida's own writing.