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CONTENT – SOMMAIRE – INHALT – CUPRINS
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY?
Delia POPA, Iaan REYNOLDS, Critical Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Critique .............................................................................................................. 7
Stella GAON, Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Critique. A Derridean
Perspective ...................................................................................................... 21
Christian FERENCZ-FLATZ, Naivität als Kritik * Naiveté as Critique .......................... 47
Laura McMAHON, Phenomenological Variation and Intercultural Transformation:
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Abu-Lughod’s Ethnography in Dialogue .... 67
Yasuhiko MURAKAMI, The Rhythm of Reorganizing the World. Maldiney and the
Theory of Crisis ................................................................................................ 99
Sterling HALL, The Mending of a Fractured Self. On the Self as a Produced and
Sustained Entity ............................................................................................. 117
VARIA
István M. FEHÉR, Hermeneutische Überlegungen zu Heideggers Schwarzen Heften
und zum Neudenken Seines Denkwegs (I) * Hermeneutical Considerations on
Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and on the Revisiting of his Path of Thinking (I)... 139
Christophe POINT, La Philosophie pour enfants : une piste pour réconcilier
enseignement disciplinaire et vie scolaire ? * Philosophy for Children: a Way
to Reconcile Disciplinary Teaching and School Life? ...................................... 163
Imola RESZEG, The Normality of the Consciousness and the Normality of the Body.
Husserl’s View on Normality .......................................................................... 179
Wojciech STARZYŃSKI, Roman Ingarden’s Egology and Cartesianism.................. 189
BOOK REVIEW
2400 Years of Thinking with Aristotle, Mircea Dumitru, Cristian Iftode, Savu Totu
(eds.), Editura Universității din București, 2020 (Radu SIMION) ..................... 213
Issue Coordinators: DELIA POPA & IAAN REYNOLDS
Publishing Date: April 2021
STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 7-20
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.01
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL
CRITIQUE
DELIA POPA∗, IAAN REYNOLDS∗∗
ABSTRACT. Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of
a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical
crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory
article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North
American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person
approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While
reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s
critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics from the standpoint
of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent
character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as
an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is
interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources
for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory.
Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community,
normativity
Whether exemplified in Kantian criticism, Marxian political economy, or
critical theory, philosophical critique has traditionally been driven by the effort to
disentangle humankind from the hold of prejudices and disempowering political
conditions. In this tradition of thought, clarity can only be obtained through a
struggle whose epistemological dimensions are necessarily connected to the social
and historical aspects of human experience. In critical social theory, more specifically,
emancipatory thought is oriented toward a reflection on the social and epistemological
effects of an exploitative social order, whether this order is understood in terms of
reification, alienation, oppression, or more recently, colonization. Our aim in this
special issue is to reflect on the way in which the phenomenological project is connected
to these critical approaches through the ethos driving its research and its continuously
revised philosophical methodology.
∗
∗∗
Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA. Email: delia.popa@villanova.edu.
Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA. Email: creyno14@villanova.edu.
DELIA POPA, IAAN REYNOLDS
Since its earliest stages, phenomenology articulated a radical reflection on
the possible uses of the philosophical method in light of a responsibly anchored
world-vision.1 Meditating on “the ultimately constitutive achievements of the heart
and the will,”2 Edmund Husserl thus experimented with various methodological
tools – such as eidetic variation, phenomenological reduction and the recourse to
intuition (Anschauung) – in order to gain clarity of philosophical vision and expression.
Through methodological investigation, phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve
the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and
immersed in historical crises brought by complex processes of objectification and
estrangement. As phenomenology shares this orientation with the broader critical
tradition, reflection on the specifically phenomenological approach to critique is likely
to provide insights to contemporary projects in critical social philosophy.
Critical phenomenology has become a growing field of philosophical research.
Recent years have witnessed the appearance of a journal dedicated to the topic,3
an edited volume describing key terms for the field,4 and several monographs.5 In
its departure from the classical phenomenological tradition, North American critical
phenomenology has emphasized various modalities of the intersubjective life of
gendered, racialized, and otherwise marginalized subjects. In these contributions,
methodological tools such as the first-person account of lived experience and the
bracketing of the natural attitude are used to disclose the “quasi-transcendental”
structural conditions of the world, while contesting classical phenomenology’s
presupposed lack of focus on contingency, due to its stress on transcendental
eidetics.6 Yet, is phenomenological eidetics truly incompatible with a critical approach
of the experience of social marginalization? Is the first-person account of lived
experience the only way to access it?
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
As Andrea Staiti argues, the phenomenological worldview is about visualizing the world as a whole
before theorizing (judging) it. Andrea Staiti, Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: Nature,
Spirit, Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 267.
“The highest and ultimate responsibility, however, arises in the cognition in the transcendental
attitude concerning the ultimately constitutive achievements of the heart and the will.” Edmund
Husserl, First Philosophy (Hua VIII), Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts
(1920-1925), transl. S. Luft and T. N. Naberhaus (Dordrecht: Springer, 2019), 194.
Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology: https://journals.oregondigital.org/index.php/pjcp.
Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology
(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020).
See, e.g.: Michael Marder, Phenomena–Critique–Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology
(London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Lisa Guenther, Solitary Confinement: Social
Death and Its Afterlives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
E.g.: “But where classical phenomenology remains insufficiently critical is in failing to give an equally
rigorous account of how contingent historical and social structures also shape our experience, not just
empirically or in a piecemeal fashion, but in what we might call a quasi-transcendental way.” Lisa
Guenther, “Critical Phenomenology,” in Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy, and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50
Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, 12.
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
Regarding the second question, Yasuhiko Murakami has argued that
instead of developing a first-person account of lived experience, phenomenology
should rather be seen as the study of the lived experience of the “other”, in such a
way that even when I attempt to describe my own experience, I have to see it as
“another”. Yet, I can embody myself in the other’s life through my fantasy-lived
bodily (Phantasieleib) experience, re-articulating its sense in close relationship to
the situation in which it is lived. Phenomenological investigation is thus ultimately
about “an interpersonal experience that opens an unexpected space of mutual
comprehension.”7 As for the first question concerning the relationship between
transcendental eidetics and critical phenomenology, it is important to remember
that “transcendental eidetic inquiry necessarily relies on historically embedded
types and concepts,”8 channeled by processes of meaning-sedimentation that
continuously recreate the phenomenal cohesion of the world through hyletic
relations of fusion and contrast.9 Owing to this material character of eidetic analysis,
Andreea Smaranda Aldea further argues that “transcendental phenomenology
understood as radical immanent critique is able to diagnostically and normatively
tackle not solely the eidetic, necessary, and ahistorical structures of experience, but
also its historical, contingent, conceptual, and discursive ones.”10
But if phenomenological criticism is about thinking through the crust of
already sedimented meanings, interrogating their inner sense and hidden teleology,11
the normativity at stake in phenomenological description still remains to be questioned.12
Rather than endorsing the problematic task of directly apprehending and “setting7
8
9
10
11
12
Yasuhiko Murakami “La communication avec les patients en état végétatif. Une approche
phénoménologique” in Delia Popa, Benoit Kanabus and Fabio Bruschi (eds.) La portée pratique de
la phénoménologie. Normativité, critique sociale et psychopathologie, (Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang,
2014), 247. (Our translation).
Andreea Smaranda Aldea, “Phenomenology as Critique: Teleological–Historical Reflection and
Husserl’s Transcendental Eidetics,” Husserl Studies, 32, 2016, 21–46, 23.
“Affective unities must be constituted in order for a world of objects to be constituted in
subjectivity at all. But for this to be possible, affective hyletic unities must become and must
intertwine with one another homogeneously in essential necessity, initially in the hyletic sphere,
that is, again, initially in the living present.” Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and
Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic (Hua XI), transl. Anthony Steinbock (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, [1918-1926] 2001), § 34, 210. See also Ibid., Appendix 21, 522.
Andreea Smaranda Aldea, ”Comments on Johanna Oksala’s Feminist Experiences,” Continental
Philosophy Review, 52, 2019, 125-134, 126.
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Hua VI),
transl. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, [1938] 1970), 16-17.
See: Maren Wehrle, “ ‘There Is a Crack in Everything’. Fragile Normality: Husserl’s Account of
Normality Re-Visited” Phainomenon, 28, 2018: 49-75. See also, Thiemo Breyer and Maxime Doyon
(eds.), Normativity in Perception (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
9
DELIA POPA, IAAN REYNOLDS
right… the wrongs perpetrated by failures of justice,”13 isn’t phenomenology’s aim to
reflect on how such wrongs are even possible and how they modify our
understanding of our humanity and of our situation in the world? A rapid leap from
description to prescription threatens to cover the deep levels of meaningformation whose provenance and development the phenomenological method is
called to reflexively observe and question.
This methodological caution mainly concerns objectifications of social
norms that leave little room for further inquiry and analysis. Alia Al-Saji discusses
such an example of objectification in her phenomenological analysis of the
temporality of colonial racism when she writes:
To move on, leaving it [racism] unchallenged in the background, allows its
colonial construction of the past to become normative—adherent, generalized,
and atmospheric. Critique requires not only the recognition of simultaneous,
multiple durées, but resistance at the level of the past: reconfiguring its
relations to generate intervals of buoyancy, ebb and flow, to make the past
hesitate.14
As a critique of objectification, phenomenological methodology offers
resources for a disruption of sedimented or instituted meanings and practices that
hinder access to a shared life-world, where self-exposure, hesitation, and vulnerability
shape our human connections and the practice of our freedom. If, as Lewis Gordon
puts it in his comments on Sartre’s “bad faith,” “freedom involves taking responsibility
for living in a world with others,”15 phenomenological critique is a grounding
component of such a responsible exercise of freedom. In support of the idea of a
“critical freedom,” Emmanuel Levinas points out in Totality and Infinity that “the
knowing whose essence is critique cannot be reduced to objectification; it leads to
the Other,”16 who is understood as the source of an ethical awakening. However,
following Levinas, this awakening is only possible if the movement of epistemological
thematization is inverted, unifying spontaneous freedom and a critique “where
freedom is capable of being called in question.”17 Opening itself to an alterity preceding
13
14
15
16
17
Gayle Salamon, “What’s Critical About Critical Phenomenology?” Puncta: Journal of Critical
Phenomenology, 1(1), 2018, 8-17, 12.
Alia Al-Saji, “Durée” in Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy, and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50 Concepts for Critical
Phenomenology, 103.
Lewis Gordon, “Bad Faith” in Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy, and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50 Concepts for
Critical Phenomenology, 22.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An essay on Exteriority, transl. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, [1961] 1979), 85.
Ibid., 89.
10
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
objectification, phenomenological critique thus discloses the abyssal responsibility
pervading human relationships.18
In this regard, Husserl’s genetic phenomenology is an invaluable resource,19
since this underappreciated methodological direction understands the ethical form
of life to result from an “essential formation”20 of human existence whose historical
dimension is necessarily bound to the irreducible contingency of the social world.
Here Husserl abandons the static polarity between the intentional act of grasping
and its content (Auffassung-Inhalt), in order to measure the temporal dynamic and
material depth of lived experience in its motivational genesis and its plurally
intentional implications.21 A promising development of this genetic path is found in
Marc Richir’s phenomenology, for which lived experience presents the double dimension
of being blindly absorbed in what it posits on the one hand, and of critically
addressing it on the other.22 From Richir’s architectonic perspective, the transcendental
dimension of phenomenological investigation depends on a critical viewpoint that
observes the temporal journey of the self toward itself (auto-traversée de soi)
through implicit past meanings and anticipations that intermittently blink and
overlap. Interestingly, for Richir, the suspension effected by the phenomenological
reduction allows for a new engagement of the self in its experience that frees it from
its blind absorption in the values it posits, opening it to a “common presence.”23
Similarly, in his commentary on Husserl’s famous manuscript, The Origin of
Geometry, Jacques Derrida develops a genetic account of the meaning of
phenomenological critique. Following his interpretation, the ultimate legitimation
(Endstiftung) of phenomenology lies in the operative approach towards an idea
whose direct determination is impossible, being only announced in a “concrete
consciousness which is made responsible for it despite the finitude of that
consciousness, and insofar as it grounds transcendental historicity and transcendental
intersubjectivity.”24 This leads Derrida to locate phenomenological critique in “lived
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
See: Delia Popa “L’imaginaire de la vulnérabilité sociale. De la culpabilité à la responsabilité”
in Elodie Boublil (ed.), Vulnérabilité et empathie (Paris: Hermann, 2018), 283-309.
See: Christian Ferencz-Flatz and Andrea Staiti (eds.), Studia Phaenomenologica XVIII. The Promise
of Genetic Phenomenology (Bucharest: Zetabooks, 2018).
See: Donn Welton, The Other Husserl (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 199.
See: Bruce Bégout, La généalogie de la logique. Husserl, l’antéprédicatif et le catégorial (Paris: Vrin, 2000).
Marc Richir, Variations sur le sublime et le soi (Grenoble: Millon, 2010), 159. We offer here our own
interpretation of Marc Richir’s phenomenological account of social engagement. See Ibid., 158-161.
Ibid., 152.
Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry, an Introduction, transl. John P. Leavey Jr. (New
York: Stony Book, [1962] 1989), X, 141. Derrida opposes operative and thematic concepts, following
Fink’s methodological clarifications in “Operative Concepts in Husserl’s Phenomenology” in William
McKenna and Robert M. Harlan (eds. and transl.), A priori and the World (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
[1957] 1981), 56-170.
11
DELIA POPA, IAAN REYNOLDS
anticipation as a radical responsibility.”25 Through critique, phenomenology can
investigate ways in which this lived anticipation is shared and transmitted further,
cultivated in specific cultural contexts, and modified over time. But the formation
and transformation of cultural traditions also runs parallel to a history of loss and
forgetting.
How does an idea that has been discovered once outlive its momentary
oblivion? To this question articulated in The Origin of Geometry, Husserl’s answer
is an inquiry back (Rückfrage) and a reactivation (Reaktivierung) of the evidence of
its discovery, which can be thus renewed at different moments of the history of its
sense.26 However, this history is not only made of actualized versions of instituted
meaning (Sinnstiftung), but also of passive sedimentations entailing material processes
of association and leading to new sense-formations and modified attitudes.
Therefore, one question we need to raise in this context is about the historical
transformation of, and political resistance to, sedimented meanings whose weight
is oppressive and exclusive.
Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an
idealistic and rigid undertaking, his genetic phenomenology is deeply interested in
the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung). Critical reflections on this
material dimension of phenomenological investigation have been carried out from
Tran Duc Thao to Michel Henry,27 stressing the importance of the hyletic infrastructure
of lived experience. While Tran Duc Thao conceives of this infrastructure as a level
of experience organized by the dialectical temporality of empirical historicity,
Michel Henry attaches it to the self-affection of life in its inescapable singularity.
Yet, the proper critical dimension of a materialist phenomenology can only be
captured by an approach that takes into account a history whose genesis is
transcendental (and not only empirical, as in Thao) and whose element of alterity
and worldliness remains impossible to suspend (as opposed to Henry’s description
of life as pure immanence). Jean-Francois Lyotard’s attempt to push Thao’s
materialist reading of Husserl’s phenomenology in the direction of a revolutionary
historicism thus returns to the need for phenomenological investigations of the
consciousness specific to politically oppressive situations.28
25
26
27
28
Ibid.
See: Edmund Husserl, “The Origin of Geometry,” in Hua VI, [1936], 353-378.
See: Michel Henry, Material Phenomenology, transl. Scott Davidson (New York: Fordham University
Press, [1990] 2008); and Tran Duc Thao, Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, transl. Daniel
J. Herman and Donald V. Morano (Dordrecht: Kluwer, [1951] 1971).
“Faire à la phénoménologie sa part, c’est prendre en compte le rapport dialectique entre la conscience
et l’infrastructure économique, et par exemple, respecter l’épreuve qu’existentiellement, les hommes
font de leur liberté”. Daniel Giovannangeli, “Husserl entre Tran Duc Thao et Derrida” in Jocelyn Benoist
and Michel Espagne (eds.), L’itinéraire de Tran Duc Thao. Phénoménologie et transfert culturel
(Paris: Armand Colin, 2013), 133-146, 139.
12
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed connects precisely this dimension
of phenomenology to a program of social and political struggle. “In problem-posing
education,” writes Freire, “people develop their power to perceive critically the way
they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to
see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in process, in transformation.”29
The cultivation of new forms of perception – a collective historical transformation –
underlies Freire’s project of education as the practice of freedom. Drawing on
Husserl’s concept of horizon, Freire reflects on modalities of dismantling objectified
meanings in order to reorganize the social world through shared knowledge and
action:
That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper
implications (if indeed it was perceived at all) begins to ‘stand out,’
assuming the character of a problem and therefore of challenge. Thus, men
and women begin to single out elements from their ‘background awareness’
and to reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of their
consideration, and, as such, objects of their action and cognition.30
In Freire’s work, the philosophical tools of phenomenological methodology
are turned to the concrete task of transforming the consciousness of the oppressed,
supporting collective practices of struggle.
However, absent an engagement with historical approaches to critical theory,
even a practically oriented conception of phenomenology risks a reliance on
interpretive conventions shaped by institutions of the same oppressive social order
it strives to resist. This problem is particularly visible when it comes to the reading
(or the absence) of Marx and the Marxist tradition in recent contributions to critical
phenomenology. While many of these works orient their theoretical perspective
toward the improvement of an unjust social order, authors in the Marxist and
revolutionary decolonial traditions have often stressed the need to articulate a
materialist social theory criticizing, or even suspending, these idealized normative
conceptions.31 The way in which “critical theory” aligns with and relates to a commitment
to social improvement is a matter for extensive epistemological, political, and
organizational debate. Indeed, it has long been an open question whether social
29
30
31
Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, transl. Mira Bergman Ramos (London: Continuum,
2005), 83.
Ibid.
See, e.g., Frantz Fanon’s reflections on the normative force of the colonial order, for example:
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, transl. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, [1961]
2004); and, Max Horkheimer, “Materialism and Metaphysics,” in Critical Theory: Selected Essays,
transl. Matthew O’Connell (New York: Continuum, [1933] 1992).
13
DELIA POPA, IAAN REYNOLDS
critique should be normatively grounded at all, rather than focusing on a historical
genealogy of discursive formations,32 or a materialist analysis of social forces.33 For
many authors in these latter traditions, critique must interrogate precisely our
attachment to normative ideals themselves, as these are often screens behind
which power is allowed to flow unimpeded.
How can we ensure that our meaning of “justice” is not merely a reflection
of an exploitative social order, confirmed and sedimented through daily experiences
and shared practices? While contemporary approaches to critical theory inspired
by the Frankfurt School are often concerned with theoretically interrogating and
grounding the normative commitments guiding critique, whether through the
rational reconstruction of universal norms or historical learning processes,34 or
through a “metanormative contextualism” that seeks to combat the coloniality of
Enlightenment universalism,35 it is interesting to note that other approaches to the
Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory reject the project of normative
justification entirely.36 Far from offering a clear social or political orientation to a
prospective critical phenomenology, “critical theory” is itself a house divided. At
the same time, the debates over the methods and purposes of critique connect the
history of critical theory to the broader traditions of social and political philosophy
traditions critical phenomenology also indirectly benefits from.37
Relying on the methodological directions sketched in this introduction, we
would like to argue in favor of a phenomenological approach to a materialist social
theory. For the genetic perspective we have indicated, normative imperatives –
32
33
34
35
36
37
E.g., Niko Kolodny, “The Ethics of Cryptonormativism: A Defense of Foucault’s Evasions,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism, 22(5), 1996, 63-84.
E.g., Louis Althusser, For Marx, transl. Ben Brewster (New York: Verso, [1965] 2005).
These projects follow from the influential approaches of Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, for
example: Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, transl.
Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1985] 1998); Axel Honneth, The Critique of
Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, transl. Kenneth Baynes (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, [1985] 1993).
Amy Allen, The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
See, for example, Christian Lotz, The Capitalist Schema: Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), xii-xiv; Frieder Vogelmann, “One Step Forward, Two Steps
Back: Idealism in Critical Theory,” Constellations, Early View: https://doi.org/10.1111/14678675.12548, 2021; Fabian Freyenhagen, “What is Orthodox Critical Theory?” World Picture, 12,
2017; and the authors cited in note 38 below.
We are referring here to the critical line of thought initiated by Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice MerleauPonty, Jacques Derrida, Gérard Granel, Tran Duc Thao, Jean-François Lyotard, and others, for whom
the discovery of phenomenology entailed a irreducible socio-political dimension. This line of
thought has been continued by the Nice school of phenomenology represented by Dominique
Janicaud and Françoise Dastur.
14
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
even if they are limited to a specific social context – tend to cover over living processes
of collective emancipation, in the same way in which for Husserl theoretical
substructions obscure the realm of the life-world, veiling its intuitive evidence and
disorienting the critical work of clarification.38 If this tendency toward abstraction
is rooted in the actual conditions of the production and reproduction of the social
world – a process some have called “real abstraction”39 – a materially-oriented
phenomenology can provide an indispensable set of resources for critical theory,
allowing for an in-depth investigation of the lived experience of social forms such
as reified individuality and abstract labor, as part of a broader critique of capitalism.40
Closer attention to the Kantian tradition seems necessary in this connection,
since Kant’s critical project underlies both the earliest works in phenomenology and
the methodological experiments with Marx in the early 20th century that would
eventually become critical theory. More attention to this shared historical background
is bound to show that the distance between classical phenomenology and critical
theory is less than is often implied, as well as revealing a richer, more nuanced –
and indeed, more critical – understanding of both traditions.41 Following Eugen
Fink’s early lead in situating Husserlian phenomenology in relationship to the
Kantian and post-Kantian critical project,42 we thus seek to revive the phenomenological
vision of criticism as a radical interrogation of the philosophical foundations of the
38
39
40
41
42
See: Hua VI, §34 (d), 127.
This theoretical conception, which originates in the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel, is one result of the
“New Reading of Marx” (Die Neue Marx-Lektüre) undertaken by some students of the Frankfurt School
in the 1960s, and carried on in works conceiving critical theory as a critique of political economy. See:
Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique of Epistemology (London: Macmillan,
1978); Riccardo Bellofiore and Tommaso Redolfi Riva, “The Neue Marx-Lektüre: Putting the Critique of
Political Economy Back Into the Critique of Society,” Radical Philosophy, 189, 2015, 24-36. For
contemporary work on critical theory as a critique of political economy, see: Werner Bonefeld, Critical
Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason (London:
Bloomsbury, 2014); Chris O’Kane, “The Critique of Real Abstraction: From the Critical Theory of
Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again,” in Antonio Oliva (ed.), Marx and
Contemporary Critical Theory (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 265-287.
For one example of a project moving in this direction, see: Anita Chari, A Political Economy of the
Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), as well as
the works by Freire and Tran Duc Thao above.
See: Lucien Goldmann, Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy, transl. William Q.
Boelhower (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, [1973] 1977).
Eugen Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,”
in R. Elveton (ed.), The Phenomenology of Husserl. Selected Critical and Contemporary Readings, transl.
Roy Elveton (Seattle: Noesis Press, [1933] 2000), 70-139. In his own work, Fink goes further, radicalizing
the Husserlian method from an analysis of the individual toward an analysis of the phenomenal field and
from mere description toward speculation. See: Ovidiu Stanciu, “La radicalisation de la phénoménologie
chez Eugen Fink” in Phänomenologische Forschungen (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2020), 27-48.
15
DELIA POPA, IAAN REYNOLDS
present time, of the different meanings of ongoing structural crises, and of the new
possibilities these crises reveal.
In Fink’s view, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology generated a question
that could not have emerged within Kantian transcendentalism, namely the question
about the genesis of the world. With its critical delimitation of philosophy’s reach
to the objects of possible experience, Kantian philosophy already understood the
world itself as a problem. However, this limitation also obstructed a view encompassing
the world’s genesis. According to Fink, Husserl found a way to go beyond the
Kantian methodological limitation through the multiple phenomenological reductions
leading ultimately to the life-world (Lebenswelt) understood as a sub-soil for a “wesubjectivity.”43 When the question of the origin of the world arises as a transcendental
problem, it sheds new light on the freedom characterizing transcendental subjectivity,44
and on the phenomenological community in which this freedom is both discovered
and cultivated.45
The question made possible through the unfolding of the Husserlian
transcendental project concerns not only the world as it can be currently experienced
and normatively evaluated, but also the ongoing genesis of its meaning for us,
within a system of motivations that is intersubjectively built, shared, and criticized.
It remains to be seen what this genetic viewpoint can reveal of the invisible aspects
of our social and political environment, whether it might yet free possibilities of
thought and action capable of combating exploitation at its deepest levels, and in
so doing, reorienting human life itself. If there is a phenomenologically embodied
mode of community that grounds all social interactions, our presence and absence
to each other is probably decisive for cultivating new modes of mutual attention
and resistance that liberate the world in its material genesis, rather than merely
reproducing the patterns of its exhaustion.
43
44
45
“Constantly functioning in wakeful life, we also function together, in the manifold ways of considering,
together, objects pregiven to us in common, thinking together, valuing, planning, acting together.
Here we find also that particular thematic alteration in which the we-subjectivity, somehow
constantly functioning, becomes a thematic object, whereby the acts through which it functions
also become thematic, though always with a residuum which remains unthematic—remains, so to
speak, anonymous—namely, the reflections which are functioning in connection with this theme.”
Hua VI, 109.
Eugen Fink, The Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method with Textual
Annotations by Edmund Husserl, transl. Ronald Bruzina (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
[1932] 1995), 140-149.
Marc Richir, “Community, Society and History in the later Merleau-Ponty” in Bernard Flym, Wayne
T. Froman and Robert Vallier (eds.), Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy (New York:
SUNY Press, 2009), 68.
16
CRITICAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL CRITIQUE
***
Bringing together scholars from a variety of geographical contexts and
phenomenological orientations, this special issue aims to open conversations on
the social and political aspects of phenomenological critique, in relationship to the
historical background in which it is articulated, and the ethical responsibility it
requires. From this perspective, Stella Gaon’s “Phenomenology, Deconstruction,
and Critique: A Derridean Perspective,” engages with recent literature in critical
phenomenology, putting these discussions into contact with the Kantian conception
of critique, and the treatment of this latter project in the work of Jacques Derrida.
Through an investigation of the “criticality” of phenomenology, Gaon shows that
Derrida’s deconstructive project has particular importance for a critique of normative
commitments. A similar historical sensitivity is at work in Christian Ferencz-Flatz’s
“Naivität als Kritik,” in which affinities and tensions between Theodor W. Adorno’s
and Edmund Husserl’s respective critical projects are uncovered through a reading
of the methodological role of naivety in their philosophical systems. Identifying a
meta-critical element in both Adorno’s critical theory and Husserl’s work, FerenczFlatz brings attention to a historical connection between early projects of critical
theory and phenomenology. Yasuhiko Murakami’s, “The Rhythm of Reorganizing
the World. Maldiney and the Theory of Crisis” develops a phenomenological account
of existential crises and the rhythms of moving through them. This paper’s attempt
to ground Henri Maldiney’s psychopathological and aesthetic phenomenology in
Kant’s third Critique, as well as its careful phenomenological attention to crisis – a
topic with increasing relevance in critical theory – interestingly connects critical
phenomenology to its clinical applications. In her “‘Phenomenological Variation and
Intercultural Transformation: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Abu-Lughod’s
Ethnography in Dialogue,” Laura McMahon develops an account of intercultural
understanding, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on science, as well as AbuLughod’s ethnographic investigations of Bedouin communities. Showing a path
between relativism and universalism in debates involving cultural difference,
McMahon’s paper questions prevalent social and political norms through the
phenomenological application of imaginative variation. In “The Mending of a
Fractured Self: On the Self as a Produced and Sustained Entity,” Sterling Hall
considers the persistence of subjectivity amid traumatic fractures as a problem
fitting for political critique in its own right. Drawing on Levinas and his theory of
subjective closure, Hall considers the moments of rupture characterized by the
colonial situation as problems disclosing the deeper dynamics of subjectivity at
work in the relationship to the other.
17
DELIA POPA, IAAN REYNOLDS
We would like to thank all our contributors for their inspiring reflections and
for their collaborative work on this special issue. We address special thanks to Ion
Copoeru and to the editorial team of Studia UBB. Philosophia for their support in the
process of preparing this dossier. Last but not least, we want to thank our readers for
their interest in the papers we have gathered here and in the phenomenological
problems they debate.
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Al-Saji, Alia, “Durée” in Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50 Concepts
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Eidetics,” Husserl Studies, 32, 2016, 21–46.
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New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
Althusser, Louis, For Marx, transl. Ben Brewster, New York: Verso, [1965] 2005.
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Political Economy Back Into the Critique of Society,” Radical Philosophy, 189, 2015, 24-36.
Bonefeld, Werner, Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and
Negative Reason, London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Breyer, Thiemo and Maxime Doyon (eds.), Normativity in Perception, London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015.
Chari, Anita, A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique, New York:
Columbia University Press, 2014.
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Ferencz-Flatz, Christian, and Andrea Staiti (eds.), Studia Phaenomenologica XVIII. The Promise
of Genetic Phenomenology, Bucharest: Zetabooks, 2018.
Fink, Eugen, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism”,
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Readings, transl. Roy Elveton, Seattle: Noesis Press, [1933] 2000, 70-139.
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– , The Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method with Textual
Annotations by Edmund Husserl, transl. Ronald Bruzina, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, [1932] 1995.
– , “Operative Concepts in Husserl’s Phenomenology” in William McKenna and Robert M. Harlan
(eds. and transl.), A priori and the World, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, [1957] 1981,
56-170.
Freire, Paolo, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, transl. Mira Bergman Ramos, NY, London:
Continuum, 2005.
Freyenhagen, Fabian, “What is Orthodox Critical Theory?” World Picture, 12, 2017.
Giovannangeli, Daniel, “Husserl entre Tran Duc Thao et Derrida” in Jocelyn Benoist & Michel
Espagne (eds.), L’itinéraire de Tran Duc Thao. Phénoménologie et transfert culturel,
Paris: Armand Colin, 2013, 133-146.
Goldmann, Lucien, Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a New Philosophy, transl. William Q.
Boelhower, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, [1973] 1977.
Gordon, Lewis “Bad Faith,” in Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50
Concepts for A Critical Phenomenology, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
2020, 17-22.
Guenther, Lisa, “Critical Phenomenology” in Gail Weiss, Ann V. Murphy, and Gayle Salamon
(eds.), 50 Concepts for A Critical Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 2020, 11-16.
– , Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2013.
Habermas, Jürgen, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, transl. Frederick
G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1985] 1998.
Henry, Michel, Material Phenomenology, transl. Scott Davidson, Fordham University Press,
[1990] 2008.
Honneth, Axel, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, transl.
Kenneth Baynes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1985] 1993.
Husserl, Edmund, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Hua VI),
transl. David Carr, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, [1938] 1970.
– , First Philosophy. Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920-1925)
(Hua VIII), transl. S. Luft and T. N. Naberhaus, Dordrecht, Springer, 2019.
– , Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic (Hua XI),
transl. Anthony Steinbock, Dordrecht: Kluwer, [1918-1926] 2001.
Kolodny, Niko, “The Ethics of Cryptonormativism: A Defense of Foucault’s Evasions,”
Philosophy and Social Criticism, 22(5), 1996, 63-84.
Levinas Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, transl. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, [1961] 1979.
Lotz, Christian, The Capitalist Schema: Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction, Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2014.
Marder, Michael, Phenomena–Critique–Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology,
London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
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Murakami, Yasuhiko, “La communication avec les patients en état végétatif. Une approche
phénoménologique” in Delia Popa, Benoît Kanabus and Fabio Bruschi (eds) La portée
pratique de la phénoménologie. Normativité, critique sociale et psychopathologie,
Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2014, 245-258.
O’Kane, Chris, “The Critique of Real Abstraction: From the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique
of Political Economy and Back Again,” in Antonio Oliva (ed.), Marx and Contemporary
Critical Theory, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 265-287
Popa, Delia, “L’imaginaire de la vulnérabilité sociale. De la culpabilité à la responsabilité”
in Elodie Boublil (ed.), Vulnérabilité et empathie, Paris: Hermann, 2018, 283-309.
Richir, Marc, “Community, Society and History in the later Merleau-Ponty” in Bernard Flym, Wayne
T. Froman and Robert Vallier (eds.), Merleau-Ponty and the Possibilities of Philosophy,
New York: SUNY Press, 2009, 61-77.
– , Variations sur le sublime et le soi, Grenoble: Millon, 2010.
Salamon, Gayle, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?” Puncta: Journal of Critical
Phenomenology, 1(1), 2018, 8-17.
Staiti, Andrea, Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology: Nature, Spirit, Life, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Sohn-Rethel, Alfred, Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique of Epistemology, London:
Macmillan, 1978.
Stanciu, Ovidiu, “La radicalisation de la phénoménologie chez Eugen Fink” in Phänomenologische
Forschungen, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2020, 27-48.
Thao, Tran Duc, Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, transl. Daniel J. Herman and Donald
V. Morano, Dordrecht: Kluwer, [1951] 1971.
Vogelmann, Frieder, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Idealism in Critical Theory,”
Constellations, Early View: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12548, 2021
Weiss, Gail, Ann V. Murphy, and Gayle Salamon (eds.), 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology,
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020.
Wehrle, Maren, “‘There Is a Crack in Everything’ Fragile Normality: Husserl’s Account of Normality
Re-Visited” Phainomenon, 28, 2018: 49-75.
Welton, Donn, The Other Husserl, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000, 199.
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STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 21-46
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.02
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE:
A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
STELLA GAON∗
ABSTRACT. Critical phenomenology is gaining currency as a progressive philosophy
of emancipation, but there is no consensus on what its “criticality” entails. From a
Derridean perspective, critique can be said to involve radical self-interrogation; a
philosophy that questions its own conditions of possibility or grounds is one that
opens itself to its auto-deconstruction. Deconstruction produces undecidability,
however, which means that the philosophy in question can no longer account for its
political claims or its normative force. This is the predicament in which critical
phenomenology, like any other critical theory, will find itself when it takes its critical
injunction to heart.
Keywords: Critical theory, Derrida, Gödel, Kant, politics, post-phenomenology,
undecidability
Introduction
One might well ask, as Gayle Salamon does in the inaugural issue of Puncta,
“What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?”1 The question obviously echoes
one that Nancy Fraser had asked many years earlier, namely, “What’s Critical about
Critical Theory?”2 The answer, however, will depend on just what one means by
the terms “criticality” and “critique.” In Fraser’s view, for example, a “critical theory,”
unlike an “uncritical” one, is avowedly partisan; it satisfies Marx’s criterion of
contributing to the “self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.” As Fraser
puts it, “A critical social theory frames its research program and its conceptual
∗
1
2
Department of Political Science, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada. Email: stella.gaon@smu.ca.
Gayle Salamon, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology,
1(1), 2018, 8.
Nancy Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender,” New German
Critique, 35, 1985, 97.
STELLA GAON
framework with an eye to the aims and activities of those oppositional social
movements with which it has a partisan though not uncritical identification.”3 This
definition underlies Fraser’s inquiry into the relationship between Jürgen Habermas’s
critical theory of society and the contemporary women’s movement, and it allows
her to demonstrate how and where his theory falls short.
If Fraser’s definition is viable, then questions about the relationship between
a philosophical description of the nature of experience and various oppositional
social movements can be asked with respect to phenomenology as well. Salamon
mobilizes this particular perspective herself, for instance, when she notes that recent
developments in so-called “critical phenomenology” investigate its relation to issues
of queerness, feminism, traumatic violence, and colonialism.4 But the issue is not
nearly so straightforward. First, how is one to decide between oppositional social
movements that are emancipatory and progressive, and those that are regressive
or reactionary? White supremacist and anti-immigration groups also embody
contemporary struggles. But it is highly unlikely that anyone working in the areas
of critical theory or critical phenomenology will encourage the inclusion of these
oppositional social movements in their research programs in the way that Fraser
proposes. Second, even if a criterion for distinguishing between progressive and
regressive social movements could be delineated clearly, how would one impose a
limit on the number and variety of social or political issues that must be addressed
before a theory can qualify as “critical”? By what additional criterion, in turn,
would this limit be set?
To be sure, Fraser undertakes a persuasive, immanent critique of Habermas’s
theory of communicative action to show that it is blind to its gendered subtext.5
This is evidenced by the way in which his theory falsely bifurcates the distinctions
between the public and private spheres, and between paid and unpaid labour,
among others. The theory thereby obscures rather than illuminates “the situation
and the prospects of the feminist movement.”6 Of course, Habermas’s socialtheoretical framework also obscures rather than illuminates many other struggles
3
4
5
6
Ibid.
Salamon, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?” 15. This is not the only definition of
“criticality” which she and others provide. I address the different understandings of the term “critical”
in the literature on “critical phenomenology” below.
The fact that contemporary forms of gender identification such as trans, gender queer, non-binary,
and so on were not commonly invoked or understood by critical theorists writing in 1985 does
not necessarily limit the power of Fraser’s analysis. Her strictly binary understanding of gender
could (arguably) be extended or modified to address other oppositional struggles. But this is not
decisive with respect to the argument I develop here.
Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory?” 97.
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PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
as well, including those related to ecological crises, violence against animals, queer
and trans issues, Indigenous rights, race relations, and so on. If these particular
movements were all encompassed by the theory, would it then be definitively
“critical”? Would a social theoretical framework have to include every issue ever
raised by every marginalized group before it would qualify as sufficiently partisan?
Could it do so, even in principle? Or, would it only have to support some of these
issues, in identification with only some of these groups? How would this be
determined?
These questions suggest there is a problem, but it does not lie with Fraser’s
immanent critique of the theory of communicative action. On the contrary, her
analysis is careful, perspicacious, and important, particularly given that it was
published during the height of Habermas’s influence in the broad field of social
and political thought. The problem, rather, stems from the definition of “criticality”
itself, which is too vague to be of use, notwithstanding the effectiveness of the
article’s title or the compelling reference to Marx which appears to support it.
Indeed, when the meaning of “critique” has been refined, as I undertake to do
below, it becomes evident that Fraser does not show that Habermas’s theory of
society is insufficiently critical. She shows that it is not empirically adequate as a
description of social reality with respect to the particular issue of “male dominance
and female subordination.”7 As a result of this inadequacy, Habermas’s descriptive
framework arguably reinforces certain hegemonic, asymmetrical, and unequal social
relations between women and men, rather than egalitarian ones, notwithstanding
the theory’s own normative claims. But this demonstrable political failing does
not make it any less critical.
As far as its criticality is concerned, rather, the limitation of Habermas’s
theory of communicative action (and the theory of communicative ethics associated
with it) concerns his attempt to legitimize a principle of normative judgement – a
standard of critique in the narrow, ethical-political sense – on the basis of his
inquiry into its philosophical grounds (a “critique” in the broader, philosophical sense).
For, like any other theory that involves a philosophical inquiry into the conditions
of possibility for judgement, whether theoretical, practical (as in this case), or
reflective, the theory will be vulnerable to deconstruction. That is to say, the
theory will be open to a quasi-critical interrogation of its own claim to critical
responsibility. This means, essentially, that a theory can be critical or it can be
prescriptive, but it cannot simultaneously be both. Consequently, the relationship
between philosophy and politics must be differently construed. A critical theory or
7
Ibid.
23
STELLA GAON
critical phenomenology can intervene politically, I will venture, not because it
provides a truer or better description, but on the contrary, to the extent that it
undoes or disrupts the assumptions and norms that constitute our descriptions of
the social order at any given time or place. This disruption, I conclude, is the
opening in which political struggle takes place.
Undecidability or différance
The problematic concerning “criticality” that I outline above can be spelled
out as follows. On one hand, the demand for the foundational conditions of possibility
(the imperative associated with the principle of reason), is the philosophical demand
itself. As Derrida elaborates,
To respond to the call of the principle of reason is to “render reason,” to explain
effects through their causes, rationally; it is also to ground, to justify, to
account for on the basis of principles or roots. Keeping in mind that
Leibnizian moment whose originality should not be underestimated, the
response to the call of the principle of reason is thus a response to the
Aristotelian requirements, those of metaphysics, of primary philosophy, of
the search for “roots,” “principles,” and “causes.” At this point, scientific and
technoscientific requirements lead back to a common origin. And one of the
most insistent questions in Heidegger's meditation is indeed that of the
long “incubation” time that separated this origin from the emergence of
the principle of reason in the seventeenth century. Not only does that
principle constitute the verbal formulation of a requirement present since
the dawn of Western science and philosophy, it provides the impetus for a
new era of purportedly “modern” reason, metaphysics and technoscience.8
This is why Kant undertook the critique of pure reason, why Habermas developed
the theory of communicative reason, and why Husserl, for his part, insisted that
he could not call himself a “philosopher” unless he was prepared to take on the
general task “of the critique of logical and practical reason, [as well as] of
axiological reason in general.”9 Husserl’s project, as is well known, involved the
8
9
Jacques Derrida, “The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils,” transl.
Catherine Porter and Edward P. Morris, diacritics 13(3), 1983, 8.
Edmund Husserl, diary entry, September 25, 1906, cited in the “Introduction” to Die Idee der
Phänomenologie. Fünf Vorlesungen, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), vii,
quoted and translated by Michael Marder in Phenomena–Critique–Logos: The Project of Critical
Phenomenology (London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 15.
24
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
attempt to identify the subjective conditions of possibility for experience. His
intent was to produce knowledge that can be qualified as apodictic – “both
necessary and certain”10 – and thereby to overcome the “crisis of the sciences” by
sending logos back to “the things themselves.”11 Husserl’s later turn to the question
of genesis further reflects his recognition of the same requirement. As Michael
Marder reminds us, Husserl mobilizes the arguments of Aristotle and Kant to justify
phenomenology as “prima philosophia,” insofar as it “reunites under one roof all
questions of possibility.”12 But this is not surprising, given that the need to respond
to the demand for grounds is the philosophical imperative as such.
On the other hand, however, when this call is answered rigorously in any
particular case, without compromise, one finds that “roots, principles, and causes”
cannot be determined without an ideological move that closes or halts the critical
investigation. This is because, as deconstruction shows, the difference between
logic and rhetoric is strictly undecidable. The rhetorical, figurative, or literary
dimensions of language cannot be finally separated from its logical and grammatical
functions, and this undecidability must be covered over ideologically. In reading
after deconstructive reading, the fundamental logical oppositions through which
various philosophical arguments are constructed are shown to come undone. This
outcome is evident throughout Derrida’s oeuvre, whether one considers his
deconstruction of the logical distinctions between law and violence in Walter
Benjamin texts, or between politics and friendship in those of Carl Schmitt, or
whether one turns to Derrida’s consideration of the fraught relation between
ethics and ontology in his reading of Levinas, or of the difference between
expression and indication in his reading of Husserl’s analysis of the sign.13 In these
and countless other cases, we find that the logical condition of possibility for the
fundamental difference on which the argument rests is a spatial and temporal
“movement,” an irreducible spacing and deferral within meaning as it were, which
Derrida calls différance.
10
11
12
13
Duane Davis, “The Phenomenological Method,” in Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy, and Gayle Salamon
(eds.), 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
2020), 6.
Marder, Phenomena–Critique–Logos, 24.
Ibid., 19.
The works by Derrida to which I refer are, respectively, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation
of Authority,’” in Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson (eds.), Deconstruction
and the Possibility of Justice (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 3–67; “The Politics of
Friendship,” transl. Gabriel Motzkin, The Journal of Philosophy 85(11), 1988, 632–644; “Violence
and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,” in Writing and Difference, transl.
Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); and Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction
to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology, transl. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 2011). The list of possible examples is immense.
25
STELLA GAON
This notorious neologism, différance, expresses the Gödelian idea of
“undecidability” to which I have just alluded. Kurt Gödel, it will be recalled,
demonstrated in 1931 that for any formal axiomatic mathematical system (or
calculus) whose consistency is given, it is possible to derive a mathematical
proposition that belongs to the calculus, but which cannot be determined as
either true or false on its basis. This is referred to as the “undecidability” theorem,
because it states that “if the calculus is consistent, neither G nor ∼G [not G] is
formally derivable from the axioms of arithmetic.”14 Gödel then showed that
although formula G is literally “undecidable” in formal terms, it is a true arithmetical
statement.15 This second theorem formulates the condition of consistency itself as
a mathematical proposition, and states that the proposition can be proven as both
true and false within any formal axiomatic system. Thus Gödel showed (through
a recursive move) that one of the key conditions for any calculus, namely, its
internal consistency as reflected in its capacity to exclude contradictions, cannot
be established mathematically. In this sense, the second theorem also demonstrates
the structural incompleteness of every calculus. Together these theorems show
why the fundamental conditions of possibility for formal mathematical systematization,
namely consistency and completeness, must necessarily escape the possibility of
arithmetical proof (that is, they are logically impossible), notwithstanding that
they nonetheless must be assumed for the calculus in question.
Derrida’s readings demonstrate that the Gödelian insight applies to
philosophical systems too. An unremitting investigation into a philosophy’s own
conditions of possibility, namely, the demand for decidable, logical grounds, will
result in the inevitable discovery of its conditions of impossibility; that is, it will
reveal the undecidability (and, hence, the inconsistency and incompleteness) on
which the philosophy is based. Différance is thus closely related to Gödel’s formula G
because, like the Gödelian theorems, it discloses what is neither an intrinsic feature
of, nor external to, the closed philosophical system. Différance is what is undecidable
by the system or claim, and yet logically inseparable from it.
Once revealed, différance thus undoes (or deconstructs) the logical
differences on which the system depends. And, insofar as deconstruction exposes
the irreducibly undecidable dimensions of logical, philosophical thought, it reveals
that a certain dogmatic quality must attend the determination of any principled
judgement, including an ethical one. This dogmatism will have to be covered over
if a principle of judgement is to stand. In other words, whenever principles or causes
are determined for particular forms of judgement, they will (have to) have been
14
15
Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman, Gödel’s Proof (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959), 86.
Ibid., 85, 86.
26
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
established illegitimately. As a result, the critical demand for grounds, the very
imperative by virtue of which normative legitimacy is established, will not have
been fulfilled.
The Kantian paradigm: Critique and/or critique
This paradox, whereby the conditions of possibility for criticality are necessary
and yet impossible due to the ineradicability of logical undecidability, comes into
its sharpest relief in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant’s critical project provides
not only a paradigmatic example of the undecidability that conditions the possibility
of systematic knowledge in general. Beyond this, Kant designed the original blueprint
for the logical structure and reach of ethical-political “critique” in particular. Thus,
his critical architectonic is the quintessential test case regarding the question of
how critical judgement is possible.
Specifically, Kant set out to establish the a priori principles underlying all
the interests of human reason. These interests were embodied in three critical
questions: what may one know (the conditions of theoretical reason); what ought
one to do (the conditions of practical reason); and for what may one hope (the
conditions of reflective, teleological judgement).16 His intention was to produce a
doctrinal account of the conditions of possibility for knowledge in general, based
on his principled answer to each question. And, indeed, his critical project (the
“critique of pure reason” as a whole) culminates in a set of principles that are said
to determine the legitimacy – the scope and limitations – of each of the forms of
knowledge under investigation. Taken together, these would then constitute an
architectonic plan of the transcendental conditions for knowledge in general. From
this perspective, in other words, critique is none other than the radical interrogation
of philosophical grounds or conditions; it entails the interrogation of the claim to
“science” in the philosophical sense of systematicity. The Kantian undertaking was
aimed, accordingly, at producing a “scientific” account of reason, an epistemological
doctrine of knowledge in all its essential forms, in order to fulfill the modern
project of replacing ideology, dogma, and opinion with enlightenment.
Now, this “critical” project writ large is what I will call “Critique” in the
meta-sense; it is designated by a capital “C.” It is what Habermas was up to when
he undertook his analysis of communicative action, an analysis that is similarly
intended as a part of a systematic account of how different forms of rationality
are possible. This project bears directly on “critical theory” in the narrow, political
16
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, transl. Norman Kemp Smith (London: MacMillan, 1929), 635.
27
STELLA GAON
sense of the term, because a Critical inquiry into the conditions of practical reason, in
particular, is needed to establish a standard of ethical-political critique. A standard of
judgement is the basis for “critique” in Fraser’s sense (lower case “c”); it allows one to
criticize, that is, to decide what one ought and ought not to do. Put briefly, a Critique
establishes the conditions of possibility for (ethical-political) critique (for krinein) by
determining its governing principle. Thus, just as Kant’s Critique of pure reason is said
to authorize the principle of the moral law in terms of “freedom” or “autonomy,” so
Habermas’s theory of communicative action is intended to authorize the moral
principles of solidarity and dialogical reciprocity. Such normative principles, in turn,
can then be mobilized by a particular critical theory (such as one based on feminism
or anti-racism, for example) which is aimed at the eradication of a particular form of
injustice. This is how a critical theory, as such, is typically thought to intervene.
From a structural or logical point of view, then, the criterion that is specified
is not what matters. Nor, for that matter, does it matter which philosophical approach
one adopts for the broader Critique. What matters is their logical relationship.
Unless a particular standard of moral judgement is justified by its connection to a
larger conceptual framework (whether epistemological, ontological, phenomenological,
or pragmatic, for example), one cannot lay claim to a legitimate, ethical-political
critique. For, in this case, one will not have escaped the possibility that one’s values
are merely relative. For the modern era, in other words, what is at issue as far as
criticality is concerned is not any particular moral value or approach, but rather
the structural connection (designed by Kant) between a philosophical justification
in general (a consistent, systematic Critique), and a logical principle of normative
judgement in particular (the moral lever for critique).
When deconstruction is brought to bear on the relationship between
“Critique” and “critique” within the Kantian architectonic, therefore, it will have
significant implications for any theory that purports to be “critical,” including those
associated with the burgeoning field of critical phenomenology. For deconstruction
shows that the principle of moral action that is needed to qualify a critical
conception of reason cannot be transcendentally established, because the distinction
between Critique and critique cannot be logically sustained. Consequently, the system
is neither consistent nor complete.17
As I elaborate below with respect to phenomenology, this structural
relationship between Critique and critique holds regardless of the partisanship of
the conceptual framework; the problematic thus displaces Fraser’s definition of
17
The discussion of Kant here and in what follows is the schematic of an argument I have elaborated at
length elsewhere. For the full account see, The Lucid Vigil: Deconstruction, Desire and the Politics
of Critique (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), esp. 59-69, 70-81.
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PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
“critique.” It is important to see, therefore, how the system comes undone.
Specifically, this outcome becomes evident when one attends to three significant
moments of argumentative slippage that occur at various levels of Kant’s analysis.
The first of these concerns the difference between a “doctrine” of knowledge and
its propaedeutic (or preparatory) “Critique.”18 The doctrine refers to “metaphysics”
or “pure philosophy,” according to Kant. It is said to encompass “everything that
can ever be known a priori as well as the exposition of that which constitutes a
system of the pure philosophical modes of knowledge of this type.”19 This is the
“idea of science,” or “transcendental philosophy.”20 The purpose of the Critical
project as a whole, accordingly, is to lay down an architectonic plan for that “idea
of science” by systematically establishing its a priori conditions of possibility.21 “As
such,” Kant insists, “it should be called a [C]ritique, not a doctrine, of pure reason.”22
Yet, despite the fact that these two terms are not identical, their meanings
are effectively collapsed. On one hand, the metaphysical doctrine is said to be
“inclusive of criticism” and thus all-encompassing.23 On the other hand, Kant says
that, together with metaphysics, it is “especially that criticism” of reason (the
“introduction or propaedeutic to metaphysics”) which “alone properly constitutes
what may be entitled philosophy.”24 Moreover, he also specifies that the intended
result of the Critical investigation – the architectonic plan for the scientific doctrine –
is itself “the doctrine of the scientific in our knowledge,” precisely because systematic
unity is what “first raises ordinary knowledge to the rank of science.”25 It would
thus appear that the propaedeutic Critique itself, when complete, constitutes a
“scientific doctrine” of pure philosophy, insofar as it provides a systematic, unified
plan of knowledge as a whole, which (when understood as pure philosophy) includes
its propaedeutic Critique. Critique is, thus, impossibly, the philosophical doctrine
of a doctrine of philosophy that includes it.
The slippage between the terms “doctrine” and “Critique” serves an important
purpose, because Kant actually needs to have it both ways. On one hand, the
Critique (of pure reason) has to be identified with the doctrine (of philosophy) as a
whole because, as the transcendental investigation into the conditions of possibility
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
I use the upper case throughout to distinguish this meta-level of logical analysis from an ethicalpolitical critique, as per the previous explanation.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 659.
Ibid., 60.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 58-59.
Ibid., 659.
Ibid., 665.
Ibid., 653, emphasis added.
29
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of knowledge, it is what establishes the scientific quality of each of reason’s
interests, including, most importantly, the preeminent, moral interest of pure practical
reason.26 Moral knowledge is verified scientifically by virtue of its qualification for
placement within the Critical (doctrinal) framework. Within this framework the
critical form of reason that Kant calls “practical” is governed by a distinct logical
principle. On the other hand, the Critique also has to be distinguished from the
doctrine, because moral (practical) knowledge can only be established as critical
in the narrow, ethical-political sense insofar as reason is explained in moral rather
than in strictly logical terms. For this purpose, a normative rather than an epistemological
mode of Critical inquiry is required.
The second moment of equivocation reflects this paradox. The Critical
inquiry can be distinguished from the encompassing doctrine of pure philosophy,
it turns out, but only insofar as its sense slides from the broad epistemological
into the narrower, normative meaning of “critique.” This becomes clear when we
examine Kant’s investigation into the conditions of practical reason in particular.
Here the intent is to provide the ground for moral knowledge in the form of a
logical principle that governs this specific form of judgement. On Kant’s view,
moral knowledge is governed by the law of “freedom”; this moral principle is
contrasted to the theoretical laws of nature and also (subsequently) to the subjective
principle of reflective (or axiological) judgement. But, unlike his determination of
the laws of nature, Kant’s Critical evidence for our knowledge of the law of
freedom rests on an ungrounded moral claim rather than on a logically definitive
one. Specifically, his answer to the question of how moral knowledge is possible is
essentially that the moral law of freedom is, itself, a subjective motive; it is a
“drive” that takes the form of a “purely nonsensuous interest” in “obedience to
the law.”27
This moral “feeling” of respect for the moral law – which is what “autonomy”
as self-legislation in its positive sense means – is the only feeling “we can know
completely a priori and the necessity of which we can discern.”28 It is therefore
the real ground of practical reason on Kant’s account. Hence, as I have put it
elsewhere,
26
27
28
For Kant’s claims about the superiority of practical reason among reason’s occupations, see the
Critique of Pure Reason, esp. 653-658, and Critique of Practical Reason, third edition, transl. Lewis
White Beck (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1993), 3, 128.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 83.
Ibid., 77
30
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
the “apodictic law of practical reason” through which the reality of freedom
is “proved” turns out to be not the principle of freedom as such, not the
moral law which expresses it, and not even the mere consciousness of the
moral law. What alone is “apodictic,” rather, is the specific experience of the
“sublime” feeling of “respect” for the law.29
What is most important, then, is that the a priori law of freedom can only be
established as a logical principle insofar as the subject is restricted, dogmatically, to its
capacity to respond to the moral law. What characterizes the rational subject as
such, in other words, is our responsibility (our response-ability) to the moral law.
Respect is simply given as the “mysterious and wonderful, but frequent, regard
which human judgement does have for the moral law.”30 It is because of what is
sublime about us, in short, that the moral good can be logically established as
such.
On one hand, it thus emerges, the moral feeling of respect is needed to
establish the logical principle of freedom; indeed, as far as Kant is concerned,
respect for the law “is morality itself.”31 We cannot establish the principle of moral
knowledge as freedom, in other words, unless we are already able to determine
the difference between what we ought and ought not to do, and it is only our
feeling of respect for, our subjective response to, the law of morality that makes
this possible. To this extent, criticality in its narrow, moral sense, that is, the
possibility of a judgement based on an ethical principle, precedes the epistemological
Critique in the case of practical reason, and provides its ground.
On the other hand, however, it nonetheless remains that Critique is also
the epistemological condition for “critique.” For, by virtue of a Critical inquiry into
the conditions of possibility for practical reason, the principle of moral knowledge
can be placed among the others within the architectonic of pure philosophy, and
thereby legitimated scientifically. Reason in its pure practicality qualifies for such
inclusion, in other words, because its a priori principle has actually been established;
this principle is specified by the Critical inquiry as “freedom,” that is, as autonomy
in its positive sense, as we have seen. Thus, just as the moral feeling of respect
grounds the possibility of moral knowledge, so the Critique of moral knowledge
grounds the principle of respect for the law, a principle that takes the form of
freedom, as expressed in the categorical imperative.
29
30
31
Gaon, The Lucid Vigil, 77. The internal quotations are from Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 3, 8.
Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 85n, emphasis added.
Ibid., 79.
31
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Importantly, this second equivocation – whereby the Critique is essentially
collapsed into the narrowly critical form of knowledge (i.e., into reason in its pure
practicality) – makes it possible to assert that the Critique and the doctrine are not
the same. For in this case the Critique establishes reason as normative (as critical),
not as scientific. And, once again, the slippage serves an important argumentative
end. It allows Kant to argue that, despite the fact that the Critique was initially
aimed at systematizing what is scientific in our knowledge, including the knowledge
of morality, Critique can also be called in, ultimately, to provide the normative
legitimation of reason in its scientificity. In particular, Kant writes towards the end
of the Critique of Pure Reason that, in addition to the “scholastic concept of a
system of knowledge which is sought solely in its character as a science,” there is
also “another concept of philosophy”; it is “the science of the relation of all
knowledge to the essential ends of human reason (teleologia rationis humanae).”32
In other words, the conception of philosophy with which Kant is most concerned
does not, finally, have to do with its character as science, but rather with its relation
to our ultimate moral vocation as human beings. This telos is reflected only in the
question of practical reason, namely, “what ought I to do?” It is precisely because
a Critique differs from a doctrine of pure philosophy that this ultimate conception
of philosophy can prevail.
Thus a third moment of logical undecidability actually underwrites the
other two: by virtue of the way in which the Critique becomes critical, reason can
be said to provide the moral justification for the very doctrine of philosophy that
was supposed to provide moral knowledge with its scientific legitimacy. While the
identity of the doctrine and the Critique establishes reason’s scientificity, so to
speak, their difference is necessary to establish reason’s normativity.
The argument is therefore bought at the cost of its logical consistency. For
it is only when “critique” is mobilized in both senses at once that Kant actually
instantiates the ethical-political ideal of critical reason; that is, an ideal of reason
that is simultaneously scientifically legitimate and practically normative. This
simultaneity is the logical condition of possibility for such an ideal. When they are
taken together, these distinctions entail a play on the term “Critique,” whereby it
oscillates between the meaning of “doctrine” and that of (lower case) “critique.”
This equivocation is not immediately apparent as long as only one of the distinctions
is being put to work at a time. But when they are mobilized simultaneously, it emerges
that “Critique” is both-neither “doctrine” and-nor “critique.”
32
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 657, 658.
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PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
And this means that what is strictly inside the critical system, and what
constitutes the system itself, is literally undecidable in the Gödelian sense. In play
at the heart of the Kantian architectonic, one finds, is what Derrida calls différance:
an undecidable movement between, in this case, the inside and the outside of the
conceptual system. For here “Critique” signifies not only a unified “doctrine” of
pure philosophy, or the frame of the Kantian architectonic, but also its “inside”; as
“critique,” Critique also indicates the standard for moral legitimacy in particular. A
différantial movement that one can designate as “C/critique,” therefore, seems to
be the logical condition of possibility for the fixed difference between “doctrine”
and “critique.” And this means, in turn, that the system cannot be complete.
What’s critical? ... redux
If the Kantian problematic is generalizable, I have suggested, it is because
what matters is not the specific principle of moral (or critical) judgement that Kant
finds out. Rather, it is the logical structure by virtue of which what is normatively
“critical” can be established at all. Like any theory that attempts to determine the
conditions of possibility for judgement in general, a critical theory that determines
the grounds for ethical-political judgement in particular will be vulnerable to
deconstruction, because (ironically) it will be insufficiently Critical. This does not
mean the theory fails to illuminate a particular political struggle (i.e., that it is not
sufficiently partisan or not empirically adequate), but rather that it fails to acknowledge
its own implication in political and social forces (i.e., that it is already partisan, in
ways that are not avowed).
Specifically, I have argued that a philosophical doctrine or social-theoretical
framework that provides a logical criterion for a moral decision (for krinein) –
which is what a critical political theory always needs – will do so at the cost of
obscuring its own constitutive undecidability. In this case, the theory will have
betrayed the classic philosophical imperative, because it will have covered over
the theory’s own ungrounded ground – namely, the undecidable difference
between Critique and critique – on which the determination of what is progressive
and emancipatory, as contrasted to what is regressive or oppressive, depends. If,
as deconstruction persuasively shows, the rhetorical, ideological, or dogmatic
dimensions of Critical inquiry are irreducible, then we cannot get to the principle,
fundament, or root. Consequently, a logically-determined ethical norm, unsullied
33
STELLA GAON
by any unavowed ethical, political, or social interests, is strictly impossible.33 This
is the result of the recursive (Gödelian) move, whereby the conditions of possibility
of the Critical inquiry itself are subjected to interrogation. When a theory is made
hyperbolically “critical” in this way, by being turned back upon itself, it deconstructs
itself.
If the foregoing discussion is correct, it will have implications for a wide
assortment of critical theories, not just those based on Kantian ethics. For, I have
argued, no critical theory can do without a determinable standard of critique, and
such a standard must be grounded (the reason for it must be rendered) through a
Critical analysis of its conditions of possibility, regardless of the political agenda it
supports. On the view that I have presented here, a critical theory does not
merely identify with a given set of purportedly laudable political movements. It
offers a philosophical account of why those movements are laudatory, emancipatory,
or progressive to begin with. It specifies and justifies, in order to mobilize, a particular
criterion of ethical-political critique. Now, this understanding of the structural
requirements of “critique,” which is both gained from and problematized by a
deconstructive reading of Kant, is enormously useful. First, it makes it possible to
sort through the many ways in which “criticality” is defined in current phenomenological
research. And, second, it allows us to understand what is “critical” about phenomenology
and what is not. In other words, the deconstruction of the Kantian paradigm allows
us to recast the political limitations and possibilities of “criticality” in the wake of its
undecidability.
Before I outline those conclusions, however, it is necessary to review
some of the recent developments in critical phenomenology to illustrate the first
point. For, just as in critical theory more broadly, so too in phenomenology; scholars
working in this field are questioning some of its basic tenets with a view to making
phenomenology more relevant with respect to the social and political struggles of
the times. The question is, however, to what specific end?
33
Levinas’s phenomenological account of the ethical relation (as prior to or beyond being) appears
to bypass the demand for a logically-determined ethical norm, because the ethical relation is said
to precede cognition. A key question here is whether the argument can stand on strictly
phenomenological grounds, or whether it depends upon a phenomenologically unwarranted religious
belief. But in any case, Levinas develops a theory of ethics, not a critical political theory of society.
For my discussion of some of the difficulties associated with Levinasian ethics and with its relation
to political critique, see The Lucid Vigil, esp. 180-190.
34
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
Within the literature there is no solid consensus about what criticality can
accomplish. One finds instead a wide variety of claims about how a revised form
of phenomenology can contribute to, explain, or itself take the form of social and
political critique. For example, Duane Davis and Laura McMahon distinguish critical
phenomenology from its classic forms by virtue of its capacity to produce descriptions
that are themselves normatively prescriptive34 or, in Johanna Oksala and Lisa
Guenther’s terminology, politically transformative.35 For Marder and Salamon, in
contrast, what is specifically critical about phenomenological descriptions is that
they shore up new principles for political judgement, such as rupture, wonder,
openness, or affirmation.36 Davis also invokes this version of “criticality” when he
claims that phenomenology’s “paraxial promise” lies in its capacity to reveal
“instability” rather than “unshakeable truths.”37 Finally, the editors of the new
journal Puncta explain critical phenomenology differently again; they say (among
other things) that it offers descriptions that (themselves) participate in “the
ethical becoming of the social structures or essences” under investigation, which
therefore demand “responsible critique.”38 As McMahon expresses this idea, critical
phenomenological descriptions can “help us to articulate more honest forms of
cultural identity and more just forms of cross-cultural engagement” because they
offer more expansive accounts of the cultural differences that constitute our
“dynamic, historical world.”39
The plethora of definitions may seem confusing, but if one maps them onto
the Kantian blueprint, the variations start to make sense. Broadly speaking, critical
phenomenology is portrayed either as a) a philosophical description of experience
that can contribute to a critical theory of society once it has been adequately
“Criticized”; b) a meta-theoretical account of the conditions of possibility for
34
35
36
37
38
39
See Davis, “The Phenomenological Method,” esp. 4, 9n2; and Laura McMahon, “Religion, Multiculturalism,
and Phenomenology as a Critical Practice: Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence,” Puncta:
Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 3(1), 2020, 19.
Johanna Oksala, “Reply to Beata Stawarska,” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2(1),
2019, 42; and Lisa Guenther, “Critical Phenomenology,” in Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy, and Gayle
Salamon, (eds.), 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University
Press, 2020), 14.
See Marder, Phenomena–Critique–Logos, 12, 77, 83, 127; and Salamon, “What’s Critical about Critical
Phenomenology?” 11, 12, 15.
Davis, “The Phenomenological Method,” 7-8.
Martina Ferrari et al., “Editors’ Introduction: Reflections on the First Issue,” Puncta: Journal of Critical
Phenomenology, 1(1), 2018, 5, 7.
McMahon, “Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology,” 3, 21.
35
STELLA GAON
theoretical knowledge which, when properly undertaken, can explain how a
standard of ethical political critique is possible; or c) a normative, prescriptive, or
transformative description itself, so to speak, in its own right.
Consider the first definition, for example, which is that a “critical” form of
phenomenology is one which offers a better “Critical framework” (in my terminology)
because it is more expansive, dynamic, or inclusive. Guenther takes this approach
when she interrogates the methodological condition of possibility for a rigorous
account of experience (in the apodictic sense of Husserlian “rigour”), namely, the
perspective of first-person, singular consciousness, upon which Husserl insists.40
Through a ground-breaking analysis of the consequences of extended periods of
solitary confinement, Guenther shows that,
if one is deprived for long enough of the experience of other concrete
persons in a shared or common space, it is possible for one’s own sense of
personhood to diminish or even collapse, while the transcendental ego, or
the pure capacity for experience, remains, now unhinged from a shared
world in which its perpetual flow of impressions could receive the bodily
validation of others. Without the concrete experience of other embodied
egos oriented toward common objects in a shared world, my own experience
of the boundaries of those perceptual objects begins to waver.41
Unless intersubjectivity is seen as an essential condition for experience, Guenther
argues, the phenomenological description will be “insufficiently critical.” That is, it
will have failed to account for the ways in which “historical and social structures
also shape our experience, not just empirically or in a piecemeal fashion, but in
what we might call a transcendental way.”42 An immanent Critique of its own
conditions of possibility thus reveals that Husserl’s own phenomenological Critique of
experience, no less than Habermas’s social-theoretical Critique of communicative
action, is empirically and conceptually impoverished.
This interrogation of the conceptual framework (the overarching Critique)
is the form that “criticality” takes in a number of recent discussions. Salamon says
this explicitly, for example, when she submits that a “critical phenomenology” is
one which “reflects on the structural conditions of its own emergence, and in this
it is following an imperative that is both critical in its reflexivity and phenomenological
in its taking-up of the imperative to describe what it sees in order to see it
40
41
42
Lisa Guenther, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2013), xxviii.
Ibid., 34-35.
Guenther, “Critical Phenomenology,” 12.
36
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
anew.”43 The editors of Puncta make the same point. They write, “If phenomenology
is a descriptive practice, then critical phenomenology questions the conditions of
the possibility of a phenomenological description and, in so doing, modifies the
scope, content, and method of said description.”44 In a similar vein, Beata
Stawarska agrees with Oksala that classic phenomenology is insufficiently attentive
to gender and thus “needs to be transformed”; she merely contests Oksala’s assertion
that an “immanent critique” of the phenomenological method will result in a radical
break between phenomenology and what one might variously call “critical,” “political,”
“transformative,” or “post-phenomenology.”45
Whether the break between classic and critical phenomenology that the
immanent critique produces is definitive or not, however, does not alter the structural
point. For what is in question in all of these cases is the descriptive framework
itself, the Critical inquiry into the conditions of possibility for (in this case) experience,
not the critical standard of judgement by virtue of which a critique can be said to
intervene. In other words, while a duly Critical (i.e., a self-Critical) framework might
be more “honest” or more “encompassing,” it could not be considered more “just.”
For that purpose, it would have to be coupled with a critical theoretical standard
of judgement, which is to say, it would have to establish the conditions of possibility
for “critique” in its ethical-political sense. Merely modifying or transforming the
framework itself cannot accomplish that end. Thus, when McMahon asserts, for
instance, that “the epistemological commitment” to the recognition of different cultural
horizons “must also be an ethical-political commitment to the value of multiculturalism,”
we must underline that there is no immediate reason why it should.46
In fact, as Salamon explains, when philosophy directs “toward itself the
very same interrogation that it directs toward all forms of knowledge” as
Merleau-Ponty commends, the result is not “verification but strangeness.”47 This
is why, as she says, critical theory should not be dismissed: it is needed as a
“supplement to phenomenology,” because (unlike phenomenology) critical theory
is engaged with issues of violence, power, injustice, and inequality.48 Guenther
tacitly admits as much as well. In the conclusion to her book on Solitary Confinement,
she writes that not only is “phenomenology not enough,” but, “even critical
phenomenology is not enough. We must also build a social movement of
43
44
45
46
47
48
Salamon, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?” 12.
Ferrari et al., “Editors’ Introduction,” 3.
Beata Stawarska, “Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations by Johanna
Oksala,” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2(1), 2019, 39; and Oksala, “Reply to Beata Stawarska,”
42.
McMahon, “Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology,” 21.
Salamon, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology,” 11.
Ibid., 13.
37
STELLA GAON
resistance to social death – a movement that makes good on the insights of
critical phenomenology with ethical responsibility and political solidarity.”49 As
Guenther puts it elsewhere, “critical phenomenology must go beyond a description
of oppression [by] developing concrete strategies for dismantling oppressive
structures.”50
Taken on its own, neither an epistemological nor a phenomenological Critique
of the conditions of possibility for knowledge can help to explain the meaning of justice
or the nature of the “responsibility” for which one calls, unless the Critique discloses
the a priori conditions for ethical-political judgement in particular. For this purpose, the
Critical doctrine must be separable from, so that it can authorize, a normative standard
of critique. If the philosophical framework is subjected to an interrogation of its own
conditions, however, this becomes impossible. For what we find when phenomenology
is subjected to Critique is that, as in the case of Kant, it deconstructs itself. The values to
which it purportedly gives rise are thus destabilized too.
This problem is evident when one adopts the second approach identified
earlier, namely, the attempt to explain how a standard of ethical political critique
is possible, especially in the wake of a phenomenological philosophy that already
has come undone. In other words, among those who take the Critical interrogation
of the conditions of possibility for phenomenology as read, we find the further
assertion that what is “critical” about this development is precisely that a new
criterion of critique is thereby revealed. For Salamon, for instance, the result of
the reflective and reflexive turns that Merleau-Ponty advocates is the recognition
that the goal of phenomenology is “an opening.”51 Marder develops the same point
at length. He writes,
There is – despite the persistent philosophical dream of a seamless integration
of judgement and experience, signification and perception, language and
things – a cut in the fabric of phenomenology in which phenomena are
kept apart from logos, even as they are intrinsically articulated with it. The
name of the cut, signalling this basic division, is, precisely, “critique”
(derived, as the reader will recall, from the Greek krinein: to separate, to
distinguish, to discern), which thwarts the closure of phenomenology in a
self-validating circle of ratiocination and sends the first cracks through the
façade built around a way of thinking that was never meant to achieve
doctrinal stability.52
49
50
51
52
Guenther, Solitary Confinement, 255.
Guenther, “Critical Phenomenology,” 16.
Salamon, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology,” 11.
Marder, Phenomena–Critique–Logos, 10, 12, 18, 77, 83, 127.
38
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
For Marder, accordingly, what gains critical force in this context is precisely the
power of the break, rather than the synthesis of the system, contrary to
traditional assumptions. Indeed, he asserts, phenomenologists have tended to
suffer from a “déformation professionnelle”; they “have grown allergic to splits,
fissures and caesurae of all sorts” and so, instead of acknowledging “the excessive
plentitude of givenness, they have left unconsidered the positive potential of
rupture and negativity.”53 Davis underlines the same potential when he submits
that “new ways to appreciate the phenomenological method might open up just
where it bespeaks instability and generates awe and wonder about the ever-shifting,
trembling ground.”54 Specifically, Davis continues, we need to recognize “the
encroachment and overlapping of differences both among us all and as the
intersectionality of differences which we are. In order to achieve a critical phenomenology,
phenomenology must be seen as a philosophy of difference rather than identity.”55
What Salamon, Marder, and Davis fail to appreciate, however, is that
différance does not equal difference, because it does not signify this thing or that.
As I have explained, différance is the spatial and temporal movement within
meaning – or, one might say, the opening, the rupture, or the irrecoverable
affirmation – that makes discernable differences possible. Thus, quite apart from
the point that (contra Marder) krinein signifies the latter (the cut or the decision),
rather than the former (the undecidable conditions of its possibility), what is
important is that différance is not an identity but a “trace.” It does not signify any
determinable thing. As soon as différance is determined as a concept (as in the
phrase, “differences which we are”), therefore, even as an ambiguous one, it is no
longer an undecidable trace. As Derrida explains,
Henceforth, it must be recognized that all the determinations of such a
trace – all the names it is given – belong as such to the text of metaphysics
that shelters the trace, and not to the trace itself. There is no trace itself,
no proper trace. Heidegger indeed says the difference could not appear as
such. (“Illumination of the distinction therefore cannot mean that the
distinction appears as a distinction.”) The trace of the trace which (is)
difference above all could not appear or be named as such, that is, in its
presence. It is the as such which precisely, and as such, evades us forever.
Thereby the determinations which name difference always come from the
metaphysical order.56
53
54
55
56
Ibid., 12.
Davis, “The Phenomenological Method,” 7.
Ibid., 8.
Jacques Derrida, “Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time,” in Margins of Philosophy,
transl. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 66, internal reference omitted.
39
STELLA GAON
What the acknowledgement of différance, “rupture,” or “opening” entails for
phenomenology, rather, is that neither the first-person perspective, nor the pure
description, nor the complete reduction, are methodologically sound. On the
contrary, just as the first-person, singular standpoint is made possible through
prior, intersubjective, embodied and concrete relations, so the eidetic reduction
depends upon the contingency of lived experience. As a result, neither the border
of phenomenological knowledge, nor its phenomenological objects, can be decisively
confirmed.
In an important respect, then, the deconstruction of the conditions of
possibility for Critique – the recursive, Gödelian move whereby one attempts to
systematize the very conditions for systematicity, as it were – is not a “critical
operation” in any ordinary sense. It does not endorse any particular social movement,
nor does it supply a critical standard of judgement (a foundational principle), by
virtue of which one can take a determinate, political stand. It cannot do so, as
Derrida says, precisely because “the instance of krinein or of krisis (decision, choice,
judgment, discernment) is itself, as is all the apparatus of transcendental critique,
one of the essential ‘themes’ or ‘objects’ of deconstruction.”57 Similarly, Derrida
writes elsewhere, deconstruction “always aims at the trust confided in the critical,
critico-theoretical agency, that is, the deciding agency, the ultimate possibility of
the decidable; deconstruction is a deconstruction of critical dogmatics.”58 Kant
establishes the possibility of the decidable dogmatically when he appeals to the
subject’s sublime responsibility to the law of reason as the ground of the moral
law, as we have seen. Scholars of phenomenology appear to be doing something
similar today when they identify the subject’s capacity for exposure, or wonder,
or awe as the basis for moral critique. Deconstruction thus disrupts the critical
operation itself, insofar as it reveals the particular, contingent, political interests
that are conveyed by those rhetorical figures, and which are not acknowledged, as
such, within the theories themselves. It effectively reveals the limits, harms,
occlusions, or violence of the philosophical inquiry or the critical theory itself.
One can show, for example, that the phenomenological description of pure
experience, or the bracketing that it calls for, is irreducibly entwined with norms
and suppositions that are socially-constituted.59 That demonstration is itself “critical”
in a certain way – it is quasi-critical, so to speak – but it does not make the philosophy
57
58
59
Jacques Derrida, “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds.),
Derrida and Différance (Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 3.
Jacques Derrida, “Ja, or the Faux-Bond II,” in Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994, transl. Peggy Kamuf
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 54.
See, for example, Ferrari et al., “Editor’s Introduction,” 3.
40
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
under investigation more critical as a result. It cannot do so, because the demonstration
of a philosophy’s inconsistencies or incompleteness does not legitimate any particular
political claim. Such a quasi-critical interrogation of a Critique may, arguably, support
a particular political struggle, insofar as one could approach the philosophical text
from a given position in order to contest it. But this would merely show how the
philosophy in question is complicit in oppression in ways that were not previously
seen – as, for example, Fraser shows when she argues that the theory of communicative
action is blind to the oppression of women, or Guenther shows when she argues
that phenomenology is blind to the violence of solitary, penitentiary confinement.
Such an interrogation of a given Critical doctrine does not give rise to any particular
standard of critique, however, nor does it transform the philosophical account into
a transformative practice.
This is why the third version of criticality listed above is not tenable either.
This is the idea that what is “critical” about phenomenology is its capacity to stand
as a normative or prescriptive description on its own. In its very capacity as
descriptive, it is claimed, phenomenology can produce social change. McMahon
invokes this notion, for example, when she suggests that, insofar as “phenomenology
can help us to bracket common prejudices regarding both the neutrality of our
own cultures and the monolithic simplicity of other cultures,” it can enable “more
honest and just visions of multicultural human existence and political transformation
to come to the fore.”60 Indeed, she concludes, “by descriptively attending to the
nature of such change, we can arrive at some normative prescriptions for how we
should approach intercultural criticism and dialogue going forward.”61 As the
editors of Puncta put the same point,
Critical phenomenology is an ongoing process of exposing the structures of
structures, and of challenging exhaustive understanding through a commitment
to tailor methodology to the shape-shifting objects of inquiry. In critiquing
phenomenology, then, we can say that critical phenomenology takes up
the task of social critique.62
From this third perspective, phenomenology is not said to be critical because it
provides a truer account of human experience that can contribute to a critical
theory, nor is it considered critical because it explains how a criterion for social
critique is possible. In this case, rather, it is the Critical doctrine as such, the descriptive
60
61
62
McMahon, “Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology,” 3.
Ibid, 19.
Ferrari et al., “Editor’s Introduction,” 3.
41
STELLA GAON
framework itself, which is said to be normatively imbued. On Davis’s view, even
Husserl’s phenomenology can be qualified as critical in this sense, “insofar as it
offers descriptions that reveal truths, thus which are at once prescriptive.”63
As I argued earlier, however, the collapse of the scientific Critique into the
ethical-political critique is logically unsound. In Kant, we saw, it involves the
paradoxical claim that even while an epistemological inquiry into grounds (a
Critique) is needed to establish the principle of moral judgement on a “scientific”
basis, so too is a moral inquiry into epistemology (a critique) needed to establish
the normative status of the science. Kant can only establish reason as both scientifically
and normatively legitimate – that is, as “critical” – by obscuring the tautology behind
his appeal to the intrinsic moral value of the transcendental subject. The same
must hold for phenomenology too: descriptions can constitute prescriptions only
to the extent that they are (transcendentally) true, which is precisely what cannot
be confirmed in the wake of phenomenology’s Critique. To say that a description
constitutes a prescription is to say, essentially, that whatever is, ought to be the
case, that what is more honest is, by definition, more just.
If one is to avoid the risk of dogmatism – whereby criticality will have
been illegitimately foreclosed for the sake of the political claim – one must
confront exactly the questions with which we began. Which struggles, which
crises, which experiences, or which particular political perspectives have to be
encompassed before the description can be said to be “true”? When will we have
adequately described them all? In the absence of a critical standard that is
separable from the Critique, there is no way to answer this question. Conversely,
the presence of a criterion for judgement is problematic too. For, insofar as the
“critique” of Critique reveals the impossibility of grounding an ethical-political
standard of judgement on apodictic foundations, it undermines the authority of
any so-called “critical theory” that calls itself legitimate. On one hand, if the
Critical inquiry is taken all the way down, it emerges that the principles, origins, or
roots are not there to be found. The grounds for ethical-political decision will have
been rendered undecidable. On the other hand, if a standard of ethical-political
critique is established, the claim to Criticality is foregone. In order to see what
limits and possibilities “criticality” may be said to entail, one therefore would have to
recast the relationship between theory and practice significantly. By way of conclusion, I
venture some initial remarks.
63
Davis, “The Phenomenological Method,” 9n2.
42
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
Concluding reflections on critique
I have been arguing that a theory does not become “critical” when it is added
to, intermixed with, or supplemented by a particular political issue or selection of issues,
such as feminism, racism, environmentalism, or colonialism, for example. Instead, on
my view, a theory can be said to be “critical” when it takes itself, recursively, as its
own object of critique. From a classical perspective, in other words, critique involves
the radical interrogation of philosophical grounds or conditions – that is, an
interrogation of the claim to “science” in the philosophical sense – and, as we have
seen, such an interrogation opens the theory to its own (its auto-) deconstruction. This
is because the recursive, critical turn exposes a theory’s conditions of impossibility;
the theory’s imbrication in social and political conditions, and thus the impossibility of
its scientificity, is thereby revealed. A theory becomes (hyperbolically) “critical,”
paradoxically, only when it deconstructs (itself).
The first and most obvious consequence of this claim is that a theory
cannot be said to be “critical” by virtue of being able to contribute to political struggles
on the basis of an ethical-political standard, because the legitimacy of the standard
cannot be established non-dogmatically. Insofar as the relation between Critique
and critique is undecidable, the subject has to be ideologically given. This is the
“dogmatism” to which deconstruction relentlessly attends: insofar as the trace of
C/critique that this involves has to be covered over, certain political interests will
always be in play. To be sure, one must always hold to a particular standard or
political position in order to intervene. My point is merely that the position cannot
be authorized in the way that critical theories attempt, which means that theory
cannot intervene in political struggles on that basis. The occlusion of this problem
is what was inadequately “critical” about Habermas’s social-theoretical framework
all along: the theory of communicative action could not have established a political
good unless it was driven by a particular normative stance in the first place.64
The second corollary of the analysis is that the normativity of the
philosophical demand to provide grounds and so to reveal the political stakes –
that is the demand for “philosophical responsibility” – is no longer authorized either.
This is because, just as in Kant, the investigation into grounds is impelled by a
demand (for reason) that cannot ultimately be met (by reason). Again, in other
words, because the relation between Critique and critique is tautological, philosophical
responsibility cannot be directly explained. Nonetheless, it remains that one cannot
expose the imbrication of philosophy and politics at the deepest level of the
philosophy’s conditions of possibility unless one adheres even more strictly to the
64
For an extended discussion of the limitations of Habermas’s theory, see my “Pluralizing Universal
‘Man’: The Legacy of Transcendentalism and Teleology in Habermas’s Discourse Ethics,” The Review
of Politics 60(4), 1998, 685-718.
43
STELLA GAON
demand for grounds than does the philosophical attempt to establish them in the
first place. In this respect, deconstruction is not “a critique, in a general or in a Kantian
sense,”65 but it might nonetheless be characterized as a radical or hyperbolic, and
paradoxical, form of (quasi) criticality. This is why deconstruction might be said to
qualify as a certain form of critique: it both is and is not critical, as is a phenomenology
that puts its own methodological conditions into question.
This suggests, in the third place, that a hyperbolic, critical move actually
opens the political field, rather than closes it. In other words, to the extent that
deconstruction in particular, or hyper-criticality more generally, reveals the imbrication
of philosophical conceptuality in language, in politics, and in social and cultural
life, there is clearly something critical and something political about this mode of
critique. Perhaps the political force of critical phenomenology, no less than that of
critical theory more generally, can be correspondingly revised. One possible approach
is Guenther’s suggestion that critical phenomenology can contribute to the remaking
or reshaping of the world through a “collective practice of critical interrogation
and social change.”66 Guenther’s invocation of Audre Lorde’s insight, which concerns
the political importance of poetry as both “illumination and transformation,” is
compelling in this context, but it does not quite get at the point.
For Guenther, as she reads Lorde, poetry is illuminating because it allows
one to cast new light on one’s experiences, thereby giving voice to what had
hitherto been felt but not known, and simultaneously creating and changing its
meanings. I want to suggest instead, however, that if “poetry is not a luxury,” it is
not so much because it reveals the “truth” of previously mute experience, but because
new descriptions can puncture the given, just as radical, deconstructive critiques
can break into, and break open, the always-contestable, différantial interpretations
that structure the world. Such a form of disruptive critique is what one can call
“politics” from an entirely different perspective. On this view, as João Pedro Capocho
explains (drawing on Rancière), “politics is not primarily the exercise of power or
the deciding of common affairs,” but,
an interruption, a precarious disruption of the “police order,” which is construed
as a well-ordered “distribution of the sensible” [partage du sensible] – that
is to say, a system of coordinates that defines modes of being, doing,
communicating and thinking, and so establishes borders between visible
and invisible, audible and inaudible, thinkable and unthinkable.67
65
66
67
Derrida, “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” 3.
Guenther, “Critical Phenomenology,” 15.
João Pedro Capocho, “Disagreeing before Acting: The Paradoxes of Critique and Politics from Adorno
to Rancière,” Theoria and Praxis 1(1), 2013, 67. The internal quotation is from Jacques Rancière,
“Introducing Disagreement,” transl. Steven Corcoran, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities,
9(3), 2004, 6.
44
PHENOMENOLOGY, DECONSTRUCTION, AND CRITIQUE: A DERRIDEAN PERSPECTIVE
So conceived, Capocho continues, the “radicality” of politics is close to “the
‘radicality’ of critique, when it conceives of reason as susceptible of being criticized,”
which is exactly how I have described “critique” here.68 The quasi-critical intervention,
as I understand it, disrupts what constitutes what is thinkable, sayable, or visible,
thereby opening the field of politics to contestation or transformation. Deconstruction,
or radical critique more generally, is thus “political” insofar as it is the breaking
into, and the breaking up of, the philosophical-empirical order. Note, however, that
critique so understood is not directly transformative; it intervenes by opening the
political field at the heart of the given, and by showing that there is space for
contestation. Perhaps phenomenology, like deconstruction in its radical, quasi-critical
mode, can be “critical” in this political sense too. Not by revealing what is true, but
on the contrary, by challenging the givenness of experience relentlessly, without
telos, without closure, and without respite.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Capocho, João Pedro, “Disagreeing before Acting: The Paradoxes of Critique and Politics
from Adorno to Rancière,” Theoria and Praxis 1(1), 2013, 64-77.
Davis, Duane, “The Phenomenological Method,” in Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy, and Gayle
Salamon (eds.), 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 2020, 3-9.
Derrida, Jacques, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,’” in Drucilla Cornell,
Michel Rosenfeld and David Gray Carlson (eds.), Deconstruction and the Possibility
of Justice, New York and London: Routledge, 1992, 3–67.
Derrida, Jacques, “Ja, or the Faux-Bond II,” in Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994, transl. Peggy
Kamuf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, 30-77.
Derrida, Jacques, “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi
(eds.), Derrida and Différance, Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 1988, 1-5.
Derrida, Jacques, “Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time,” in Margins
of Philosophy, transl. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, 29-67.
Derrida, Jacques, “The Politics of Friendship,” transl. Gabriel Motzkin, The Journal of Philosophy
85(11), 1988, 632–644.
Derrida, Jacques, “The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils,” transl. Catherine
Porter and Edward P. Morris, diacritics 13(3), 1983, 3-21.
Derrida, Jacques, “Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,”
in Writing and Difference, transl. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1978.
68
Capocho, “Disagreeing before Acting,” 67-68.
45
STELLA GAON
Derrida, Jacques, Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s
Phenomenology, transl. Leonard Lawlor, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011.
Ferrari, Martina, et al., “Editors’ Introduction: Reflections on the First Issue,” Puncta: Journal
of Critical Phenomenology, 1(1), 2018, 1-7.
Fraser, Nancy, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender,”
New German Critique, 35, 1985, 97-131.
Gaon, Stella, “Pluralizing Universal ‘Man’: The Legacy of Transcendentalism and Teleology
in Habermas’s Discourse Ethics,” The Review of Politics 60(4), 1998, 685-718.
Gaon, Stella, The Lucid Vigil: Deconstruction, Desire and the Politics of Critique, New York
and London: Routledge, 2019.
Guenther, Lisa, “Critical Phenomenology,” in Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy, and Gayle Salamon (eds.),
50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,
2020, 11-16.
Guenther, Lisa, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives, Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason, third edition, transl. Lewis White Beck, New York:
MacMillan Publishing Company, 1993.
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, transl. Norman Kemp Smith, London: MacMillan,
1929.
Marder, Michael, Phenomena–Critique–Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology, London
and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
McMahon, Laura, “Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology as a Critical Practice: Lessons
from the Algerian War of Independence,” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology,
3(1), 2020, 1-26.
Oksala, Johanna, “Reply to Beata Stawarska,” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2(1),
2019, 42-45.
Nagel, Ernest, and Newman, James R., Gödel’s Proof, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959.
Salamon, Gayle, “What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?” Puncta: Journal of Critical
Phenomenology, 1(1), 2018, 8-17.
Stawarska, Beata, “Book Review Article, Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological
Investigations by Johanna Oksala,” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2(1),
2019, 33-41.
46
STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 47-66
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.03
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ∗
ABSTRACT. Naiveté as Critique. The present paper addresses the similarities between
the concept of “critique” used in phenomenology and the one put forth by critical
theory in analyzing their corresponding understanding of “naiveté”. While Husserl
develops a broad concept of naiveté in his reflections regarding the phenomenological
reduction, where he characterizes the natural attitude as such as “transcendentally
naive”, this concept becomes more nuanced when considering the unavoidable
naivetés of phenomenology itself, on the one hand, and the complications brought to
the mutual relationship between naiveté and critique with his turn towards the lifeworld. This turn, the paper shows, can be seen as a metacritical reinvestment of naiveté
that can also be traced in the works of Adorno.
Keywords: Husserl, Adorno, life-world, metacritique, physiognomics.
1. Kritische Phänomenologie
Der Begriff der „kritischen Phänomenologie” erfährt in den letzten Jahren
besonders Konjunktur. Damit wird durchgehend ein Versuch gemeint, das Verfahren
der phänomenologischen Deskription im Dienste einer Form von Gesellschaftskritik
zu stellen. Kritik wird dabei – so die Darstellung der offiziellen Zeitschrift dieser
neuen Tendenz: Puncta. Journal for Critical Phenomenology – weit gefasst als „ein Prozess
der Enthüllung und Hinterfragung der konkreten Bedingungen, Institutionen und
Voraussetzungen, die unsere Lebenserfahrung strukturieren.“1 Wohl hat es auch
früher nicht an Versuchen gefehlt, Phänomenologie mit politischem Engagement
in Zusammenhang zu bringen, so etwa noch unlängst im Zeichen von Marx. 2
∗
1
2
Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy / National University for Theatre and Film, Bucharest.
E-mail: christian.ferencz@phenomenology.ro
https://journals.oregondigital.org/index.php/pjcp. Siehe dazu auch Gayle Salamon, “What’s Critical
About Critical Phenomenology?“ Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, vol. 1, 2018, 8-17; und Lisa
Guenther, “Unmaking and Making the World in Long-Term Solitary Confinement“ Puncta: Journal
of Critical Phenomenology, vol. 1, 2018, 74-89.
Siehe etwa Bernhard Waldenfels, u.a., Phänomenologie und Marxismus, Bd. 1-3, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977.
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
Demgegenüber ist nun aber der Erfolg der gegenwärtigen Initiative vermutlich
dadurch zu erklären, dass diese sich zugleich als eine neue Wende der Phänomenologie
präsentiert gleich darin anderen „neuphänomenologischen“ Initiativen, dabei aber
mit ihrem zentralen Begriff der „Kritik“ auch das Erbe der klassischen Phänomenologie,
und zwar nicht bloß jenes Merleau-Ponty sondern sogar Husserls antritt. Daher
geht es der Kritischen Phänomenologie nicht mehr bloß darum, der Phänomenologie
eine ihr zunächst mangelnden kritische Funktion aufzupfropfen, sondern sie will
vielmehr zeigen, dass der Phänomenologie eigentlich schon seit jeher ein kritisches
Potential im Sinne der gegenwärtigen Kritischen Theorie innewohnt.
Dies geschieht genauer dadurch, dass der phänomenologische Gebrauch
des Kritikbegriffs zum einen mit Kants Kritizismus und zum anderen mit der
Tradition der Kritischen Theorie in Verbindung gebracht wird. Diesem Versuch wäre
freilich leicht entgegenzuhalten, dass „Kritik“ in beiden Fällen keineswegs auf das
Gleiche hinausläuft. So ließe sich etwa behaupten, dass es bei Kant auf einen rein
erkenntnistheoretischen Kritikbegriff ankommt, während die Frankfurter Schule
Kritik als einen gesellschaftstheoretischen Begriff auffasst. Dieser Einspruch wäre
indessen voreilig, was sich schon aus einer oberflächlichen Betrachtung des
entsprechenden Gegenbegriffs der Kritik beiderseits erhellt. So setzt Kant bekanntlich
seine kritische Philosophie einem philosophischen Dogmatismus entgegen, dem
zunächst freilich vorgeworfen wird, dass er die Begriffe der Vernunft jenseits ihrer
legitimen Grenzen objektiv als Bestimmungsbegriffe, statt bloß als Reflexionsbegriffe
einsetzt. In Kants Terminologie klingt aber desungeachtet auch noch das aufklärerische
Ziel eines Ausgangs des Menschen aus seiner „selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit“
nach. Demnach wird der philosophische Dogmatismus nicht bloß dessen beschuldigt,
dass er ein wissenschaftliches Irrtum begeht, sondern auch dessen, dass er jenem
Emanzipationsideal den Weg verstellt. Aus dieser Sicht schrumpft nun aber der
Unterschied zum Begriff der Ideologie, mit der sich die Kritik im Falle der Frankfurter
Schule konfrontiert und die Adorno prägnant als „gesellschaftlich notwendigen
Schein“ definiert, bis auf ein Kleines zusammen.
Aus Sicht solcher Überlegungen setzt sich der vorliegende Aufsatz das Ziel,
die Kompatibilität zwischen dem Kritikbegriff der Phänomenologie und jenem der
Kritischen Theorie weiter zu unterbauen. Dies soll mittels einer Erörterung der
entscheidenden Rolle geschehen, die beiderseits dem Konzept der Naivität zukommt.
Anhand einer eingehenden Auslegung dieses Terminus soll so gezeigt werden, dass
die dialektischen Komplikationen, die dieser sowohl bei Husserl, wie auch bei Adorno
erfährt, in der Tat auf eine Parallelität im entsprechenden Begriff der Kritik hindeuten.
48
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
2. Kritik des Dahinlebens
Freilich lässt sich der Begriff „Naivität” mit Fink als ein operativer Begriff
Husserls bestimmen. Sein Gebrauch wird keinesfalls durch eine eingehende
Thematisierung seiner Bedeutung geregelt. Während der Terminus so in vielfältigen
Kontexten oft auch rein umgangssprachlich und unterminologisch benutzt wird,
kann seine prägnanteste Bedeutungsrichtung dennoch leicht isoliert werden. Sie ist
im Zusammenhang der Überlegungen zur phänomenologischen Reduktion verortet.
Hier findet sich wohl auch die artikulierteste Form seiner Gegenüberstellung zum
phänomenologischen Begriff der Kritik.
In diesem Zusammenhang ist nun Naivität bekanntlich ein Wesensmerkmal
der „natürlichen Einstellung“, auf deren Hintergrund Husserl die phänomenologische
Grundhaltung errichtet. In der natürlichen Einstellung ist das Subjekt unmittelbar
anschaulich auf eine vorfindliche Welt von Dingen, aber auch Lebewesen und
anderen Subjekten gerichtet. Diese Welt ist freilich, so Husserl, nicht bloß eine Welt
rein feststellbarer, vorhandener Tatsachen, sondern darauf gehen von Anbeginn in
gleicher Unmittelbarkeit auch Akte des Fühlens und Wollens samt den dazugehörigen
praktischen Gegenständlichkeiten. Allen diesen Akten eignet indessen laut Husserl
grundsätzlich die Vollzugsweise des bloßen „Dahinlebens“. Darin liegt etliches
mitbeschlossen. Erstens freilich der schlichte Seinsglaube der sogenannten
„Generalthesis“ als ursprüngliches Bewusstsein der Gegebenheit von Welt, die sich
allen möglichen einzelnen Modalisierungen gegenüber durchhält. Die Welt als
unmittelbar seiende erhält sich so für uns bei aller möglichen Erfahrung von Zweifel
oder Enttäuschung als ihr unbezweifelbarer Boden. Zweitens weist aber das
„Dahinleben“ auch auf eine unreflektierte Unmittelbarkeit hin, d.h. ein Vollzugsmodus
der schlicht auf dessen gegebene Gegenstände sich richtet ohne das intentional
leistende Leben, das sich an ihrer Konstitution beteiligt, mit zu beachten. Weltliche
Erfahrungsgegenstände sind so schlichtweg hingenommen, wie sie sich geben,
ohne bezüglich ihrer Subjektrelativität hinterfragt zu werden. Drittens liegt aber
darin zugleich auch noch eine gewisse Passivität im Aktvollzug, d.h. die Zwangsläufigkeit
dessen, dem sich sein Erfahrungsfluss gleichsam von selbst, ohne freies Zutun und
ohne Selbstverantwortung abspielt. Alle drei Bedeutungsrichtungen spielen in
Husserls Deskription der natürlichen Einstellung und in ihrer Bezeichnung als „naive“
Erfahrung ineinander über. Naivität bedeutet demnach in diesem Zusammenhang
soviel wie unreflektierte und verantwortungslose Erfahrung in schlichter und
„dogmatischer“ Seinsgeltung. Eben dem setzt sich nun das Verfahren der
phänomenologischen Reduktion dezidiert entgegen, indem es Unmittelbarkeit mit
Reflexion, Seinsglauben mit Neutralität, und bloßes Dahinleben mit einem Leben in
reiner Selbstverantwortung ersetzt.
49
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
Freilich geschieht dieser Umschlag nun aber nicht mit einem Mal, sondern
zwischen dem Zerrbild schlichter Naivität, das Husserl etwa noch in den Ideen I als
Grundmerkmal der natürlichen Einstellung entwirft und dem Wunschbild der
transzendentalen Einstellung, das er ihr entgegensetzt, schaltet sich von Anbeginn
eine Vielfalt von Zwischenstufen ein. So dämmert es Husserl beispielsweise schon
in den zwanziger Jahren, dass das Menschsein eigentlich vom Haus aus ein Leben
in der Reflexion ist, das sich als solches von der „tierischen Naivität“3 abhebt. Dies
kommt in der phänomenologischen Behandlung der Wissenschaft umso deutlicher
zum Ausdruck. Denn wissenschaftliche Aufklärung ist zum einen freilich ein Stück
Reflexion und somit ein Schritt zur Bewältigung und Überwindung des bloß natürlichen
Dahinlebens. Indessen liegt die gesamte Pointe der Husserlschen Abhebung der
Phänomenologie von der Wissenschaft im üblichen Wortsinn gerade darin, dass die
Wissenschaften noch weiterhin verkappt an der Naivität des bloßen Weltlebens
teilhaben. Als Erfahrungswissenschaften sind alle positiven Wissenschaften in
Husserls Sicht grundsätzlich „Wissenschaften der transzendentalen Naivität“.4
Allerdings ist dies nicht die einzige Spielform, in der Naivität hier in Frage
kommt. So spricht Husserl etwa schon in den Logischen Untersuchungen von den
„in einem guten Sinne“ 5 naiven Wissenschaften, die in ihrem Forschungsvollzug
erkenntnistheoretische Bedenken auf sich beruhen lassen und einfach ihrem
Erkenntnisprojekt nachgehen ohne zunächst noch die Möglichkeit einer solchen
Erkenntnis nachdrücklich bewiesen zu haben. Darüber hinaus lässt sich bei Husserl
in der Tat eine gewisse Stufenfolge in der wissenschaftlichen Überwindung der Naivität
nachweisen. So wird bisweilen von der herrschenden Naivität der naturalistischen
Interpretation der Geisteswissenschaften gesprochen6, die schon mit ihrer bewusst
geisteswissenschaftlichen Auslegung verwunden ist. Indem sich so die Wissenschaft
von den Selbstverständlichkeiten des unmittelbaren Dahinlebens in gestufter Reflexion
und Kritik absetzt, enthebt sie sich zugleich auch der entsprechenden Naivität.
Nur bleibt, laut Husserl, sowohl in den Geisteswissenschaften, wie auch in
den Naturwissenschaften, soweit diese weiterhin im Rahmen der natürliche Einstellung
bleiben und den Seinsglauben der Generalthesis in Geltung belassen, dennoch ein
grundsätzlicher Restbestand an Naivität bestehen. So vermag es in seiner Sicht erst die
Phänomenologie mit ihrer transzendentalen Reduktion das gesamte Erfahrungsleben
3
4
5
6
Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge. 1922-1937, Den Haag: Kluwer (zitiert als Hua XXVII), 1988, 34.
Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester. 1925. Den Haag:
Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua IX), 1968, 250.
Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie
und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Bd.1, Den Haag: Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua XIX/1), 1984, 28.
Hua IX, 3 f.
50
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
als ein „patentes“ Flächenleben aufzudecken, dem sich nun sein „latentes“ Tiefenleben
der transzendentalen Konstitution aufschließt.7 Diese Stufenfolge der Zwischenstellungen
zwischen der reinen Phänomenologie einerseits und dem grundsätzlich naiven
Dahinleben andererseits gilt freilich nicht bloß in theoretischer Hinsicht. Ihr entspricht
auch in praktischer Hinsicht eine ähnliche Stufenfolge, die von der vollständigen
Naivität durch Kritik zur Selbstreflexion führt, wie Husserl dies etwa in seinen KaizoAufsätzen eingehend ausführt. So setzt er hier, am Leitfaden einer überlieferten
Klassifizierung der Bewusstseinsakte, der bloß doxischen Reflexion eine axiologische
und willentliche Reflexion entgegen, die er auch als Selbstbewertung und
Selbstbestimmung bezeichnet. Ähnlich wie im Falle der doxischen Reflexion errichten
Letztere sich ebenfalls aufgrund von Kritik im Gegensatz zur unreflektierten
„Selbstvergessenheit” der Naivität. Wenn das Subjekt so mittels der doxischen
Reflexion seines konstitutiven Bewusstseinslebens innewird, so wird er aufgrund der
Selbstbewertung zu Stellungnahmen gegenüber seinen Akten bewegt und kommt
schließlich zur willentlichen Selbstbestimmung. 8 Wenn nun aber für Husserl
eindeutig feststeht, dass diese Modi der Reflexivität sowohl im Hinblick auf
Einzelfälle, wie auch in reiner Allgemeinheit vollziehbar sind, indem ich etwa nicht
nur auf meine momentane Einzelsituation, sondern auch auf mein gesamtes
weiteres Leben Bezug nehmen kann 9 , so führt dies sogleich zu einer weiteren
Differenzierung im gegenseitigen Verhältnis von Naivität und Kritik, indem etwa ein
individueller Akt der Kritik dennoch in allgemeiner Hinsicht selbstvergessen und
naiv bleibt.
Die Konsequenz, die Husserl bekanntlich daraus zieht, ist ein gewiss anfechtbarer
ethischer „Panmethodismus”, der auf eine rational-reflektierte Lebensgestaltung
hinzielt: ein Leben in reiner Selbstverantwortung.10 Doch darüber hinaus lassen sich
in Husserls Aufzeichnungen gewiss auch andere Perspektiven für einen praktisch
relevanten und nicht nur theoretisch gerichteten Gebrauch der Kritik festmachen.
7
8
9
10
Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie.
Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, Den Haag: Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua VI), 1976,
120 f.
Siehe z.B. Hua XXVII, 24: „[Der Mensch] hat die Fähigkeit, sein passives Tun (bewußt getrieben werden)
und die es passiv motivierenden Voraussetzungen (Neigungen, Meinungen) in ihrer Auswirkung zu
‘hemmen’, sie in Frage zu stellen, entsprechende Erwägungen zu vollziehen und erst auf Grund der
resultierenden Erkenntnis der bestehenden Sachlage, der in ihr überhaupt realisierbaren Möglichkeiten
und ihrer relativen Werte eine Willensentscheidung zu treffen.”
Siehe Hua XXVII, 24 f.: „Die kritischen Erwägungen können singulare und allgemeine sein. Denn zum
Wesen des Menschen gehört es, daß er nicht ein singuläres Vorstellen, Denken, Werten und Wollen
üben, sondern die solchen Akte auch in den Formen des Überhaupt vollziehen kann, in denen der
‚partikulären’ oder ‚universalen’ Allgemeinheit.”
Hua XXVII, 38 f.
51
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
So sieht Husserl etwa in einer Überlegung aus 1933 die Bedeutung eines kritischen
Unterfangens letztlich darin, dass dieses eben mit seiner Intention auf Universalität
der Erkenntnis, vom Haus aus die „Normalitäten” des natürlichen Dahinlebens in
ihrer Relativität in Frage stellt, was gewiss auch einer sozialkritischen Anwendung
des Normalitätsbegriffs wenigstens das Tor öffnet.11 Wie dem aber auch sei, Tatsache
bleibt, dass in all ihren vorhin angeführten Spielformen die Polarität von Naivität
und Kritik eine entscheidende Rolle spielt.
3. Naive Phänomenologie
Wenn sich so aber im Rahmen des natürliches Weltlebens laut Husserl
zwischen Naivität und Kritik letztendlich bloß relative Unterschiede aufstellen
lassen, so bringt die phänomenologische Reduktion ihrerseits kaum einen radikalen
Bruch zwischen den beiden ins Spiel. Zwar läßt sich aus Sicht der transzendentalen
Einstellung in der Tat das gesamte Erfahrungsleben der natürlichen Einstellung
samt ihren entsprechenden Wissenschaften ingesamt als Naivität bezeichnen,
indem Husserl so der „natürlichen Naivität” als Gegenbegriff der Reflexionsformen
des natürlichen Lebens nun den Begriff der „transzendentalen Naivität” als Charakteristik
der natürlichen Einstellung überhaupt einführt. Doch die Phänomenologie kann
sich ihrerseits nicht gänzlich von der Naivität erlöst halten.
Dies ist schon deshalb nicht der Fall, weil sich die phänomenologische
Einstellung überhaupt nur als eine berufsmäßige Sondereinstellung zeitweilig von
der natürlichen Einstellung absondern kann. In seinen Aufzeichnungen kommt
Husserl oft darauf zurück, dass die transzendentale Einstellung nach Abschluß der
philosophischen Arbeitszeit stets wieder notwendig der natürlichen Einstellung und
ihrer Naivität anheimfällt. So heißt es etwa 1926: „Bin ich Transzendentalphilosoph
von Beruf, so ist all mein natürliches Leben eo ipso berufsmäßig nach seiner
transzendentalen Reinheit und der darin vollzogenen Leistung mit zu meinem
Thema gehörig. Außer der Berufsarbeit brauche ich daran nicht zu denken, kann
ganz ‚naiv’ dahinleben“.12 Allerdings fügt Husserl dem gleich hinzu, dass sich das
natürliche Leben seinerseits doch nicht ganz von der transzendentalen Einsicht
11
12
Siehe z.B. Edmund Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (19261935), Den Haag: Kluwer (zitiert als Hua XXXIV), 2002, 424: „Im natürlichen Dahinleben stehen wir
praktisch auf dem Boden unserer Normalwelt. Wir leben in der Normalität, als personale Subjekte
unseren Normalinteressen nachgehend. So sind wir Menschen in der natürlichen Historizität. Sowie
wir auf universale Welterkenntnis ausgehen, schon inne geworden der Relativität aller Normalität,
stehen wir in der Unendlichkeit, der zunächst durchaus subjektiven Unendlichkeit unserer wirklichen
und offenmöglichen Welterfahrung und Welterkenntnis als einer Unendlichkeit von Relativitäten.“
Hua XXXIV, 16.
52
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
abkoppeln kann, indem sie einfach zu ihrer ursprünglichen Naivität zurückkehrt, da
Letztere „im Verborgenen“13 noch im natürlichen Leben nachwirkt – in der Krisis
wird zur Bezeichnung dessen der Begriff des „Einströmens“ eingeführt. Desungeachtet
steht dennoch fest, dass die Naivität des natürlichen Lebensvollzugs auch noch der
transzendentalen Erfahrung grundsätzlich ihren Rahmen setzt. Jedenfalls ist klar,
indem die phänomenologische Reflexion ungleich des naiven Dahinlebens niemals
zur absoluten Vollzeitbeschäftigung werden kann.
Dazu kommt aber noch ein Weiteres. Denn sobald die Phänomenologie
damit beginnt, die mittels der Reduktion erschlossene Sphäre des transzendentalen
Bewusstseins analytisch zu durchmessen, fällt sie in diesem Unternehmen ihren
eigenen Formen der Naivität anheim. Einige dieser Naivitäten verschulden sich einfach
der Tatsache, dass die Phänomenologie trotz Reduktion sich doch genötigt sieht,
Habitualitäten des natürlichen Erfahrungslebens in ihrer Arbeit zu übernehmen. Dies
ist, wie Husserl des Öfteren zugibt, ein unvermeidlicher Mangel, der sich schon dadurch
einstellt, dass die Phänomenologie ihre transzendental gereinigten Wesensbestände
in sprachlichen Formulierungen festhalten muss, die eigentlich der empirischen Welt
gelten. Diese Bedenken hat Eugen Fink in seiner Sechsten Cartesianischen Meditation
ausführlich erörtert und auf die Spitze gebracht, indem er die naive Übernahme
seitens des Phänomenologen nicht bloß der empirischen Sprache, deren weltlicher
Ursprung offen zutage liegt, sondern auch der Modi des Theoretisierens überhaupt,
die sich zunächst der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung der Welt verdanken, beklagt.14
So sind, seiner Ansicht nach, sowohl die Forschungspraxen des Phänomenologen,
wie auch ihre theoretischen Instrumente eigentlich durchgehend latent von Sedimenten
des natürlichen Erfahrungslebens geprägt – und in dieser Hinsicht bleiben sie eben
im strengen Wortsinn „naiv“ – wobei es einer stets erneuten und immer weiter
geführten Kritik und Reflexion bedarf, um sie von diesen Restbeständen der Naivität
zu befreien. Dem sollte Finks Projekt einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre dienen,
die er als eine Phänomenologie des Phänomenologisierens darstellt. Laut Fink laufen
diese Überlegungen allerdings letzten Endes darauf hinaus, sogar die Vorstellung
der eidetischen Wissenschaftlichkeit als einen bloß weltlichen Überrest in Frage zu
stellen, indem sich die Phänomenologie damit ebenfalls graduell auch von ihrer
eigenen naiven Ursprungsform – der „naiven Phänomenologie“15 wie Husserl sie
ausdrücklich bezeichnet – lossagt.
13
14
15
Hua XXXIV, 16.
Eugen Fink, Cartesianische Meditation, Teil I: Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodelehre, Den
Haag: Kluwer (zitiert als Hua Dok II/1), 1988, 74 f.
Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/4), Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte, Den Haag:
Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua VII), 1956, 472.
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CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
Dieses Problem ist freilich an ein Strukturmerkmal der phänomenologischen
Reflexion gebunden und daher an sich nie ganz zu überwinden. Denn indem die
Reflexion einen Bewusstseinsakt als solchen zum Bewusstsein erhebt, indem sie
sich ihm explizite zuwendet, wird der Reflexionsakt selbst nur unmittelbar und
unreflektiert vollzogen. Damit kommt aber offensichtlich eine Naivität zweiter Stufe
ins Spiel, die als Naivität des Phänomenologisierens selbst angesprochen werden
sollte und die sich stets nur auf einer weiteren Stufe mittels erneuter Reflexion ad
infinitum abschieben lässt. Zwar lässt sie sich dann auf jeder weiteren Stufe im
Prinzip durch fortgehende Reflexion nachholen, doch Tatsache bleibt, dass sich die
Phänomenologie deshalb eben niemals der Naivität ganz entziehen kann, sondern
diese sozusagen als Schattenseite der Reflexion stets mit sich führt. Dazu kommt auch
noch die weitere Feststellung, dass jede theoretische Leistung der Phänomenologie
ihrerseits dem Gesetz der Habitualisierung untersteht, indem alle ihre ursprünglichen
Aktivitäten stets nachträglich in den Status sekundärer Passivität zurücksinken.16
Die Reflexion selbst wird durch Wiederholung gewohnheitsmäßig modifiziert und
erhält so allmählich den Charakter eines selbstvergessenen, quasi-automatischen
Vollzugs. Kritik wird so ihrerseits zur Naivität zweiten Grades, zur Routine – eine
Entwicklung, die übrigens schon im Begriff der phänomenologischen Tätigkeit als
„Berufseinstellung“ mitimpliziert ist. Husserl selbst spricht so bisweilen von einer
„habituellen Intention auf Kritik“17, ohne explizite noch darauf hinzuweisen, dass
damit Kritik als berufsmäßige Programmtätigkeit tendenziell zur Selbstverständlichkeit
regrediert, während sie sich nun eben auch in dieser Hinsicht stets aktuell hinterfragen
müsste um nicht wiederum der Naivität anheimzufallen.
4. Rehabilitierung der Doxa
Ernsthaftere Bedenken kommen indessen mit der Frage der Lebenswelt ins
Spiel. Allerdings ist dies, wie schon Gadamer gegenüber der frühen Rezeption des
Themas geltend gemacht hat18, nicht so zu verstehen, als ob die Inangriffnahme der
Lebenswelt einen radikalen Bruch in Husserls späten Phänomenologie mit sich
bringe, die nun ihre transzendentalen Fundierungsansprüche aufgibt und in Richtung
einer „mundanen“ Phänomenologie umschwenkt. Im Gegenteil hält Husserl offensichtlich
noch weiterhin an die phänomenologische Reduktion fest, die nun sogar als unverzichtbare
Bedingung auch für die theoretische Ergründung der Lebenswelt angesehen wird.
16
17
18
Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, Hamburg: Meiner (zitiert als EU), 1999, 336.
Hua XXVII, S. 272.
Hans Georg Gadamer, Zur Aktualität der Husserlschen Phänomenologie, in Neuere Philosophie I.
Hegel – Husserl – Heidegger. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987, 160-171.
54
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
Darüber hinaus pflichten seine Überlegungen seit der Krisis zur Lebenswelt in der
Tat weitgehend seinen früheren Ausführungen zur Welt der natürlichen Einstellung,
so wie diese schon seit den Ideen I vorgelegt wurden, insofern bei, als der späte
Husserl seinerseits die Phänomenologie im Gegensatz sowohl zum natürlichen
Alltagsleben, wie auch zu den üblichen Wissenschaften (seien diese Tatsachenoder Wesenswissenschaften) versteht. Was sich dabei aber allerdings sichtbar
ändert, ist das Verhältnis dieser beiden Bereiche zu einander und, damit der Stellenwert
der „natürlichen Naivität“.
Schuld daran ist zunächst eine tiefer greifende Auslegung der Wissenschaft
überhaupt, die sich nicht mehr damit begnügt, diese einfach als eine höhere
Reflexionsstufe gegenüber dem bloß alltäglichen Dahinleben zu interpretieren. In
letzterer Auslegung mochte es bisweilen so scheinen, als ob die Wissenschaften der
natürlichen Einstellung letzten Endes nur unvollständig wären und ihr Niveau an
Kritik und Reflexion einfach von der radikaleren Leistung der phänomenologischen
Reduktion zu überbieten sind. Demgegenüber zeigen die tieferen historischen
Überlegungen der Krisis eindeutig, dass die Wissenschaften der natürlichen Einstellung
eigentlich nicht nur einen Mangel an Reflexion beheben, sondern darüber hinaus
eben auch den Blick auf die Lebenswelt gänzlich verstellen, indem sie dennoch an
Letztere als an ihrem verborgenen Sinnesfundament gebunden bleiben. So kommt
ein Paradoxon zustande: Die objektive Wissenschaft bedarf der Lebenswelt als
Voraussetzung und bezieht von ihr fortwährend selbstverständliche Geltungszuflüsse,
während sie zum anderen den gesamten Bereich lebensweltlicher Erfahrung der
Anonymität anheimgibt und sich von Anbeginn die Aufgabe stellt, ihn als subjektivrelativen hinter sich zu lassen. Einerseits bezieht sich die Wissenschaft also auf das
„wahre Sein“ und schaltet so die Welt der vorwissenschaftlichen, subjektiv-relativen
Erfahrung aus oder überdeckt sie einfach mit der Vorstellung einer an sich wirklichen
Natur, indem sie diese Abstraktion für die Erfahrungswelt schlechthin verkennt;
andererseits führt sie aber die Bewährung ihrer eigenen Evidenzen stets auch auf
die Lebenswelt zurück, der sie die Konstitution aller ihrer Aussagen und Evidenzen
letztlich mitverdankt: „Das Wissen von der objektiv-wissenschaftlichen ‚gründet’ in
der Evidenz der Lebenswelt.“19 Eben deshalb kann aber die objektive Wissenschaft
als solche ihrem eigenen Ideal letztbegründeter Wahrheit niemals voll genügen.
Dies schließt aber unter anderem auch einen radikalen Bruch mit den
überlieferten Vorstellungen von Naivität und Kritik ein, den Husserl bekanntlich unter
den Titeln „Doxa“ und „Episteme“ in der Krisis bespricht. Diese Begriffe bezeichnen
ursprünglich, wie bekannt, den Gegensatz zwischen dem Ideal einer vernunftbegründeten,
philosophischen oder wissenschaftlichen Wahrheit, die auf ein objektives Sein geht,
19
Hua VI, 133.
55
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
zum einen, und dem alltäglichen Meinen, das bloß auf Selbstverständlichkeit beruht,
zum anderen. Im Anschluss daran zeigen nun aber die historischen Überlegungen
der Krisis nachdrücklich, dass der Doxa ihrerseits eigentlich die unverzichtbare Rolle
eines Fundaments für die Episteme zukommt, indem die Phänomenologie der
Lebenswelt sich nun ausdrücklich als eine „Wissenschaft von der Doxa“20 entwirft.
Damit hängt offensichtlich eine prinzipielle Aufwertung der Erkenntnisleistungen
des naiven Alltagslebens zusammen. Zu diesen gehören etwa die „alltäglich-praktischen
Situationswahrheiten“21 und die entsprechenden Formen der „okkasionellen Aussage“22,
die uns freilich an den objektiven Aussagen der Wissenschaften oder an ihren
Wahrheitsansprüchen gemessen als mangelhaft erscheinen, dabei aber nicht nur
den Vorhaben des vorwissenschaftlichen Lebens gerade hiermit voll genügen,
sondern darüber hinaus auch in den Bewährungsprozessen der Wissenschaften
noch eine notwendige Rolle spielen, indem sich etwa Naturwissenschaftler niemals
rein in wissenschaftlichen Aussagen verständigen könnten um so ihre wissenschaftlich
stringenten Wahrheiten zu errichten. Demnach lässt sich aber die Naivität des
Alltaglebens nicht länger einfach in Richtung Objektivität überwinden.
Andererseits will Husserl allerdings den phänomenologischen Ansatz zur
Lebenswelt auch nicht ohne weiteres dem alltäglichen Umgang mit ihr angleichen, da
er die Wahrheiten der Phänomenologie offensichtlich nicht als bloße Situationswahrheiten
hinstellen möchte. Übrigens ist das naive Alltagleben ohnehin selbstgenügsam und
benötigt keine zusätzliche philosophische oder wissenschaftliche Klärung. Zwischen
diesen beiden divergenten Ansprüchen gilt es für die phänomenologische Erörterung
der Lebenswelt sich zurechtzufinden. Diese Aufgabe will Husserl in der Krisis
bekanntlich dadurch lösen, dass er eine Unterscheidung einführt. In seiner Sicht
kann nämlich die Lebenswelt auf zweierlei Art thematisch gemacht werden: zum
einen in der „naiv-natürlichen Geradehineinstellung“ und zum anderen in einer
„konsequent reflexiven Einstellung“, die sich auf das „Wie der subjektiven
Gegebenheitsweise der Lebenswelt“23 richtet.
Erstere eignet in Husserls Sicht sowohl der vor- und außerwissenschaftlichen
Lebenserfahrung, d.h. dem früher sogenannten „Dahinleben“, wie auch ihrer
reflexiven, theoretischen Wendung in den empirischen Geisteswissenschaften,
etwa in der Historie, die sich zwar in der „vorwissenschaftlich anschaulichen Welt“24
bewegt und auch ihre subjektiven Relativitäten beachtet, dabei aber die Bodengeltung
20
21
22
23
24
Hua VI, 158. Siehe dazu auch Bernhard Waldenfels, „The Despised Doxa Husserl and the Continuing
Crisis of Western Reason“, Research in Phenomenology, vol. 12, 1982, 21-38.
Hua VI, 135.
Hua VI, 125.
Hua VI, 146.
Hua VI, 150.
56
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
der Lebenswelt einfach naiv hinnimmt und nicht mit zum Thema macht. Davon
setzt sich die phänomenologische Behandlung der Lebenswelt eben dadurch ab,
dass sie mittels der transzendentalen Reduktion eine „totale Änderung der natürlichen
Lebenseinstellung“ 25 einleitet, die es erlaubt die Vorgegebenheit der Welt in ihrer
Bodengeltung zu erschließen.
So hat sich scheinbar nichts an den Ausführungen der Ideen verändert,
indem die Phänomenologie weiterhin einen radikalen Unterschied zwischen sich
und sowohl der naiven Alltagserfahrung, wie auch der objektiven Wissenschaft (zu
der letztlich auch noch die Historie gehört) setzt. Doch dieser Schein trügt aus
wenigstens zwei Gründen.
Zum einen liegt dies daran, dass der Rückgang auf die Lebenswelt nun
ausdrücklich als eine Vorbedingung der transzendentalen Reduktion gesehen wird.
Letztere erfolgt laut der Krisis grundsätzlich in zwei Schritten, deren erster in der
Ausschaltung der objektiven Wissenschaften und ihrer Erwerbe besteht. Erst
dadurch wird die Lebenswelt als Erfahrungsboden der natürlichen Einstellung
thematisch, ohne von den Unterstellungen der objektiven Wissenschaft und den
von sie geprägten Denkgewohnheiten verstellt zu werden. „Offenbar ist allem voran
erfordert die Epoché hinsichtlich aller objektiven Wissenschaften“ 26 , so Husserl
ausdrücklich in der Krisis. Dies Letztere war aber in den Ideen I noch keineswegs der
Fall, indem hier die Abgrenzung der Phänomenologie von den Wissenschaften der
natürlichen Einstellung erst als eine sekundäre Konsequenz der „cartesianischen“
Reduktion dargestellt wurde. Im Gegensatz dazu kann nun, laut der Krisis, die Reduktion
erst dadurch zu ihrer vollen Tragweite gelangen, dass zunächst die Lebenswelt als
konkreter und universaler Geltungshorizont erschlossen wird, was offensichtlich
auch bedeutet, dass die Phänomenologie sich letztlich der vorwissenschaftlichen
Naivität des natürlichen Lebens wenigstens um einen wesentlichen Schritt näher
sieht als den angeblich schon weniger naiven nicht-phänomenologischen Wissenschaften.
Nun will Husserl allerdings die transzendentale Einstellung mittels der
Reduktion durch einen tieferen Abgrund von der naiven Alltagswelt getrennt sehen
als die objektive Wissenschaft, die den Boden der Letzteren noch teilt. Aber desungeachtet
kommt es zweitens in Husserls Ausführungen doch oft dazu, dass die Phänomenologie
sich eben ausdrücklich auf die Seite des vorwissenschaftlichen gesunden Menschenverstands
entgegen ihrer wissenschaftlichen Berichtigung stellt. Bedeutendster Beleg hierfür
wäre wohl Husserls bekanntes Manuskript von 1934, das sich aus phänomenologischer
25
26
Hua VI, 151.
Hua VI, 138.
57
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
Sicht mit dem kopernikanischen Weltbild auseinandersetzt.27 Bekanntlich geht es
Husserl hier darum zu zeigen, dass die ursprüngliche Erfahrung der Erde (die er
auch als Ur-Erde bezeichnet) nicht zulässt festzustellen, ob diese sich bewegt oder
nicht, indem sie vielmehr als absoluter Bezugspunkt für die Einschätzung von
Bewegung und Ruhe gilt. Damit stellt sich aber Husserl offensichtlich auf der Seite
der naiven Alltagserfahrung entgegen dem wissenschaftlichen Weltbild, indem er
Ersterem implizite phänomenologische Ursprünglichkeit und eine Form von Apriorizität
attestiert. Dies ließe sich leicht als eine generelle Tendenz der Phänomenologie
sehen, wie man etwa am Beispiel Heideggers zeigen könnte.
So wird an etlichen Stellen von Sein und Zeit ausdrücklich behauptet, dass
sich wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis erst aufgrund einer vorgängigen Alltagserkenntnis
errichten kann, indem sie gewissermaßen bloß deren ausdrückliche „Auslegung“
leistet.28 Dies impliziert eine offensichtliche Aufwertung der vorwissenschaftlichen,
subjektiven Erfahrung gegenüber der wissenschaftlichen Objektivität, die etwa
auch in der Erörterung der Räumlichkeit bei Heidegger offen zutage tritt, indem er
hier die triviale Alltagserfahrung der subjektiven Einschätzung von Entfernungen,
die bekanntlich kürzer oder länger vorkommen mögen, als sie sind, der objektiven
Messung entgegensetzt. Erstere wird dabei ausdrücklich der „ursprünglichen
Räumlichkeit des In-Seins“ 29 zugeschrieben, die auch der objektiven Messung erst
ihr Phänomen beistellt.
Bei all dem wäre es indessen verkehrt zu schließen, dass die Phänomenologie
hier ohne weiteres die Position des gesunden Menschenverstandes entgegen der
strengen Wissenschaftlichkeit vertritt. Im Gegenteil will die Phänomenologie damit
alles weniger als der kritischen Überwindung von Naivität mittels wissenschaftlicher
Aufklärung Widerstand leisten. Ihr geht es somit nicht um einen bloßen Regress,
eine Rückkehr zur Naivität, die vorwissenschaftliche Erfahrung einfach als Gegensatz
zur objektiven Wissenschaft ausspielt, sondern sie nimmt vielmehr Naivität vom
Haus aus in der reflexiven Absicht in Anspruch, mit ihr ein verborgenes Sinnesfundament
bloßzustellen. Es geht mit anderen Worten hier grundsätzlich um eine Geste der
Kritik, und eben in dieser komplexen Handhabung der Naivität nicht um willen der
Naivität selbst sondern gerade um willen der Kritik, d.h. als kritisches Korrektiv
einer falschen oder unvollziehbaren Überwindung der Naivität, liegt auch der
bedeutendste Annäherungspunkt zur Kritischen Theorie Adornos.
27
28
29
Edmund Husserl, „Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum Phänomenologischen Ursprung der Räumlichkeit
der Natur“, in Farber, M. (Hg.), Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1940, 305–326.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer (zitiert als SuZ), 2006, 393.
SuZ, 106.
58
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
5. Reflexion der Reflexion
Dass die Kritische Theorie und besonders Adorno ihrerseits, gleich der
Phänomenologie, dem Vortheoretischen einen hohen Stellenwert zuweisen, habe
ich an anderer Stelle eingehend gezeigt.30 Dies erhellt sich schon aus Horkheimers
programmatischer Abgrenzung des Begriffs der Kritischen Theorie von der „traditionellen
Theorie”, insofern bloß Erstere die lebensweltliche Funktion der Erkenntnis mit zur
Kenntnis nimmt und davon Rechenschaft gibt, „was Theorie in der menschlichen
Existenz bedeutet.”31 Dies bezieht sich bei Adorno stets sowohl auf die gesellschaftlichen
Faktoren, die den wissenschaftlichen Betrieb heteronom bedingen, wie auch auf
die Möglichkeit, vorwissenschaftliche Alltagserfahrung als fruchtbare Quelle für die
Sozialwissenschaften zu verwerten. Mit Letzterem geht es Adorno prinzipiell um
eine Erweiterung der Erfahrungsbegriffs – im Sinne des bekannten Begriffs der
„unreglementierter Erfahrung” – die er selbst im Zusammenhang mit der Phänomenologie,
etwa jener Alfred Schütz’ setzt32 und in deren Zentrum sich das methodologische
Instrument der “physiognomischen Analyse”33 befindet.
Die Physiognomik sieht Adorno in etlichen seiner Schriften als ein
unverzichtbares Verfahren für die kritische Gesellschaftstheorie, die darin besteht,
Alltagserfahrungen und -beobachtungen – “Umgangsgespräche, Haltungen, Gesten
und Physiognomien bis ins verschwindend Geringfügigste hinein” 34 – auf ihren
latenten sozialen Wahrheitsgehalt hin zu befragen und zu entziffern. Dem spricht
Adorno eine große methodologische Bedeutung für die Kritische Theorie zu, indem
er schlichtweg behauptet: „[g]esellschaftliche Erkenntnis, die nicht mit dem
physiognomischen Blick anhebt, verarmt unerträglich” 35 . Das Prozedere hat
allerdings seine Eigenart, was sich in wenigstens drei Hinsichten im Kontrast zur
klassischen Phänomenologie deutlich zeigen kann. Erstens will Adornos Physiognomik
Einzelphänomene der Alltagserfahrung deuten, indem sie so auf die Verallgemeinerung
ihrer Beobachtungen mittels induktiver Anhäufung empirischer Einzelfälle oder
30
31
32
33
34
35
Christian Ferencz-Flatz, „Zur Funktion des Vortheoretischen bei Adorno. Der Erfahrungsbegriff der
Kritischen Theorie und die Phänomenologie“, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Band 67, Heft 6,
2019, 930-951.
Max Horkheimer, „Traditionelle und kritische Theorie“, in Gesammelte Schriften, Band 4: Schriften
1936-1941, Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer, 2009, 162-225, 171
Vgl. Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Einleitung in die Soziologie (1968), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
2017, 91 f.
Siehe dazu auch Christian Ferencz-Flatz, „Eidetic intuition as physiognomics: rethinking Adorno’s
phenomenological heritage“, Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 52, 2019, 361–380.
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Soziologische Schriften, Bd. 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (zitiert
als GS 8), 2003, 194.
GS 8, 315.
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CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
auch der „Ideation“36 verzichtet. Im Gegensatz dazu soll vielmehr gezeigt werden,
dass der Einzelfall schon auf Allgemeinheit verweist, indem an ihm Aspekte der
gesellschaftlichen Totalität aufleuchten. Zweitens weigert sich die Physiognomik
Adornos die Befunde der vortheoretischen Erfahrung zu apriorisieren und gerade
darin, dass sie ihre geschichtliche Relativität aufzeigt, besteht auch ihre eigentümliche
kritische Funktion.37 Drittens steht die Physiognomik auch jeder Form des subjektiven
Sinnverstehens quer gegenüber, indem sie sich vielmehr eben vornimmt, über den
Handlungssinn der Akteure und ihren psychologischen Triebfedern hinauszugehen
um die darin verkappten gesellschaftlichen Motive zu entdecken.
Ungeachtet solcher offensichtlicher Unterschiede zur Phänomenologie
aber und trotz der Tatsache, dass Adorno etwa in seiner Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie
Husserls Gebrauch des Naivitätsbegriffs vor allem in den Logischen Untersuchungen
ausdrücklich verpönt, indem er dort eingehend zeigt, wie die Phänomenologie sich
letztlich durch ihren „transzendentalen Idealismus“ derselben Naivität schuldig
macht, die Husserl selbst am „naiven Realismus“ bezichtigt38, lässt sich dennoch zeigen,
dass Adorno seinerseits gegenüber der Naivität eine ähnlich komplexe Position
bezieht. Er bringt sie genauer, wie Husserl, ebenfalls als eine kritische Instanz ins Spiel.
Dies erhellt schon ohne weiteres aus einer Stelle seiner Vorlesung zur Philosophischen
Terminologie, die mit einer Bezugnahme auf Husserl und Heidegger anhebt und
sich dann folgenderweise der philosophischen Dignität der vorwissenschaftlichen
Erfahrung widmet:
Ich halte in einem gewissen Sinn diesen Begriff der ursprünglichen Erfahrung
fest; ich glaube, daß angesichts des ungeheuren Übergewichts der
verdinglichten Welt das Mittel, durch das wir uns dem Schein entziehen,
den diese verhärtete, präfabrizierte Welt uns antut, tatsächlich darin besteht,
daß wir zu solchen Erfahrungen überhaupt fähig sind, ich möchte fast sagen,
daß wir uns einen Moment der Naivität erhalten. So ist denn überhaupt
paradoxerweise die Philosophie, die zunächst doch die Forderung der
Unnaivität gegenüber der Erscheinung ist, auf der anderen Seite auch die
Forderung der Naivität in dem Sinn, daß man sich nicht dumm machen läßt, daß
man nicht der Welt einfach das abkauft, was sie sagt, sondern daß man, ich
möchte beinahe sagen, wie ein Kind auf dem beharrt, bei dem stehenbleibt,
was man nun einmal gesehen hat.39
36
37
38
39
Vgl. dazu Dieter Lohmar, „Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau und ihre Präzisierung
als eidetische Variation”, Phänomenologische Forschungen, 2005, 65-91.
Adorno, Einleitung in die Soziologie (1968), 245.
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
(zitiert als GS 5), 2003, 148 f.
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie, Bd. 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1973, 85 f.
60
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
Freilich eignet sich eine solche Bekenntnis vortrefflich dazu, die Position der
Kritischen Theorie aus Sicht seriöser Wissenschaftlichkeit unvertretbar, wenn nicht
gerade lächerlich zu machen. Diesen Vorwurf macht sich in der Tat beispielsweise
der Soziologe Hans Albert während des „Positivismusstreits” – der bekannten
Auseinandersetzung zwischen den Vertretern der Frankfurter Schule und jenen des
soziologischen Positivismus, die die deutsche Soziologie der sechziger Jahre geprägt
hat – zu eigen. So wirft Albert sowohl Adorno wie auch Habermas mit sichtbarer
Genugtuung vor, dass ihre Befürwortung der vorwissenschaftlichen Erfahrung im
Gegensatz zur operationalisierten Wissenschaft, mit ihren bestimmten Prozeduren
der Verifikation und Beweisführung, letztlich darauf hinausgeht, dem „gemeinen
Menschenverstand” und das heisst den herrschenden Klischees und Vorurteilen
das Wort zu führen. Damit stünde die Kritische Theorie aber bezeichnenderweise
in Alberts Sicht eben nicht auf Seiten einer wirklich kritischen Erkenntnis, sondern
unmittelbar auf jener der „natürlichen Naivität”.40
Dieser Vorwurf trifft aber nicht sein Ziel. Zum einen macht sich nämlich Adorno
keineswegs einer Hypostasierung der alltäglichen Naivität schuldig. Im Gegenteil
werden in seinen Schriften die physiognomischen Beobachtungen fortwährend als
bloßes Moment eingestuft, was unter anderem auch dadurch zum Ausdruck kommt,
dass diese, anders als in der Phänomenologie, schon durch ihre Auswahl dem Standard
wissenschaftlicher Plausibilität widerstreben. Adornos Alltagsbemerkungen zeichnen
sich vor allem durch ihre Skurrilität aus. Dies ist schon in seinen frühen amerikanischen
Schriften zum Radio ersichtlich, wo er bisweilen die Einstellung eines naiven Zuhörers
einnimmt und auf Erfahrungen zurückgreift, wie der Glaube, man wäre vom Radio
wie von einem belebten und mit einer Eigenstimme ausgestatteten Gegenstand
angesprochen oder die Analogie eines laufenden Radio zur Wasserleitung.41 Einige
dieser Beispiele werden offen als Illusionen angesprochen, wobei es Adorno eben
nicht darauf ankommt solchen naiven Eindrücken volle Geltung zuzusprechen, sondern
vielmehr sie auf ihren Wahrheitsgehalt zu deuten, der ihnen trotz ihrer Skurrilität
eignet und die der „gesunde Menschenverstand” selbst schon zu informiert ist zu
vertreten.
Darin sind solche Erfahrungen offensichtlich jenen des Kindes ähnlich, die
Adorno ebenfalls oft in seinen Überlegungen anführt. So vergleicht er etwa an einer
bekannten Stelle der Negativen Dialektik die phänomenologie Frage nach dem Sein
40
41
Hans Albert, Der Mythos der totalen Vernunft. Dialektische Ansprüche im Lichte undialektischer
Kritik, in Th.W. Adorno u.a. (Hrsg), Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, München:
dtv, 1993, 193-234, 204 f.
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Current of Music. Elements of a Radio Theory, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2008, 132 u.a.
61
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
mit dem kindlichen Fragen. Dies ist keineswegs abwertend gemeint, sondern dient
bloß der Erläuterung dessen, dass schon hier der Anschein der Unmittelbarkeit
eigentlich an sich gesellschaftlich vermittelt ist. Indem nämlich das „Warum?” des
Kindes naiv Worte mit ihrem Wahrheitsgehalt identifizieren, sind diese Fragen von
Anbeginn an einem gegebenen Sprachgebrauch orientiert. Das Beispiel bezeugt
somit sowohl den Wert eigensinniger Alltagserfahrungen, wie auch die Notwendigkeit
ihrer weiteren theoretischen Verarbeitung und Hinterfragung.42 Kindliche Erfahrungen
unterscheiden sich aber darüber hinaus vom gesunden Menschenverstand auch
durch zwei weitere Merkmale. Zum einen bringen sie ein weit tieferes Verhältnis
der Einzelerfahrung zum Allgemeinen ins Spiel. So zeigt Adorno etwa im Ausgang
von Proust, wie gewisse Erfahrungen der Kindheit erst dadurch, dass sie schlichtweg
Einmaligkeit und Individuiertheit beanspruchen, zugleich Aussicht auf eine konkretere
Allgemeinheit eröffnen, als jene der bloßen Generalisierung, eine Allgemeinheit die
jene der Sache selbst wäre. 43 Dies ist offensichtlich bei den Gehalten des gesunden
Menschenverstands nicht der Fall, der bloß auf ein durchschnittliches Verständnis,
gesellschaftlichen Klischees und abstrakten Rationalisierungen beruhen. Zum
anderen bringt die kindliche Erfahrung aber darüber hinaus auch Einsichten einer
ganz anderen Art als das sozial unproblematische und kulturell sanktionierte common
sense ins Spiel. Dies erörtert Adorno in der Negativen Dialektik eindringlich am
Beispiel der kindlichen Faszination für das Abscheuliche:
Unbewußtes Wissen flüstert den Kindern zu, was davon der zivilisatorischen
Erziehung verdrängt wird, darum ginge es: die armselige physische Existenz
zündet ins oberste Interesse, das kaum weniger verdrängt wird, ins Was ist
das und Wohin geht es. Wem gelänge, auf das sich zu besinnen, was ihn
einmal aus den Worten Luderbach und Schweinstiege ansprang, wäre wohl
näher am absoluten Wissen als das Hegelsche Kapitel, das es dem Leser
verspricht, um es ihm überlegen zu versagen.44
Indem sich so die Kritische Theorie auf das Vorwissenschaftliche gleich wie
auf die kindliche Erfahrung beruft will sie nicht einfach entgegen der Kultur auf eine
infantile Position regredieren. Vielmehr sollen damit kritisch ihre Grundlagen im
Vorkulturellen bloßgestellt werden. Demnach geht es für Adorno nicht darum,
einfach Naivität der wissenschaftlichen Kritik und Reflexion vorzuziehen, sondern
darum, in der Bezugnahme auf Naivität selbst jene Reflexion erneut zu reflektieren
42
43
44
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Negative Dialektik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (zitiert als GS 6),
2003, 114f.
GS 6, 364.
GS 6, 357.
62
NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
und die Kritik mittels einer Metakritik zu überbieten. Dies spricht Adorno selbst
deutlich aus, indem er sein physiognomisches Verfahren auch als eine „Reflexion
der Reflexion“45, bzw. als einen „rationalen Revisionsprozess gegen den Rationalismus“46
bezeichnet.
6. Epische Naivität
Solche Überlegungen klingen an etlichen Stellen in Adornos Werk an, am
deutlichsten vermutlich in einem kurzen literarischen Essay, der 1943 im Zusammenhang
der Dialektik der Aufklärung verfasst wurde und der Frage der „epischen Naivität“
nachhängt. Damit meint Adorno, im Ausgang von einem überdetaillierten Gleichnis
aus Homers Odyssee eine Eigenart der epischen Erzählweise bezeichnen zu können.
Diese hat in seiner Sicht ihren Ursprung zunächst darin, dass die epische Erzählung
ihren Stoff dem Mythos entnimmt, den er so zwangsläufig nachahmt, dabei aber
dieses Material eben auf den Stand des aufgeklärten Bewusstseins bringt. Darin
liegt eine Ambivalenz, der sich der anachronische Anschein der Epik, ja eine gewisse
Dummheit und Naivität der epischen Darstellung verschuldet. Diese findet ihren
Ausdruck letztlich an einem gewissen Hang zum „Gegenständlichen“, d.h. zu einer
inständigen Betrachtung des Einzelgegenstandes, die sich spröde macht gegenüber
seiner begrifflichen, allgemeinen Durchleuchtung. Dieses charakteristische
Spannungsverhältnis tritt in den Werken der Epik, so Adorno, an all jenen Stellen
besonders deutlich hervor, an denen etwa ein Bild oder Gleichnis weit über ihren
Sinn für die Darstellung der Handlung an Gewicht gewinnt bis dahin, dass sie
letzteres fast gänzlich vergessen macht; ähnlich aber auch dort wo mittels
bestimmter Verbindungspartikeln („oder“, „nämlich“ usw.) eine logische Form des
Zusammenhangs vorgetäuscht wird, die eigentlich gar nicht besteht und sogleich in
sich zusammenfällt. An solchen Stellen verselbständigt sich laut Adorno die Sprache
der epischen Erzählung von der reflektierenden Vernunft, der sie eigentlich dient,
um gleichsam „das Wirkliche rein, unverstellt von der Gewalt der Ordnungen hervortreten
zu lassen.“47
In Adornos Sicht bezeichnet dies indessen nicht bloß eine literarische Eigenart,
deren Spur er bei Homer, wie bei Goethe, Stifter oder Keller findet, sondern damit
zugleich auch einen Zusammenhang von Begriff, Rationalität und Sache überhaupt,
45
46
47
GS 6, 114.
Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie, 87.
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, „Über epische Naivität“, Noten zur Literatur, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp (zitiert als GS 11), 2003, 34-40, 37.
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CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
der gleichfalls auch für die Theorie von Belang ist. So sieht Adorno noch im gleichen
Aufsatz die undialektische Hypostasierung einer solchen naiven Erzählweise als
artgleich mit der Pseudo-Konkretion der „philosophischen Anthropologie von
heutzutage“48, sprich Heidegger, die ihrerseits seiner Ansicht nach ähnlich Naivität
schlichtweg gegen das kritische Bewusstsein ausspielt. Wenn nun aber die epische
Naivität nicht bloß in ihr Falsches, als Lüge, um „die allgemeine Besinnung von der
blinden Anschauung des Besonderen fernzuhalten“ 49 , anzusehen ist, sondern
darüber hinaus mit all ihrer Beschränktheit doch auch als ein legitimer Einspruch
gedeutet werden kann, gegen die „Beschränktheit, die jeden Gedanken ereilt,
indem er den einen Gegenstand kraft dessen begrifflicher Operation vergisst, ihn
überspinnt, anstatt ihn eigentlich zu erkennen“ 50 , dann entspricht ihr eigentlich
auch im Bereich der Theorie zugleich eine andere Verfahrensweise.
Es ist dies, so Adorno im selben Aufsatz, eine Theorie, „die noch den Verlust
von Erfahrung aus der Erfahrung der Gesellschaft bestimmt“51, und deren „Utopie
der Erkenntnis“ es wäre, „das Begriffslose mit Begriffen aufzutun, ohne es ihnen
gleichzumachen“.52 Dass diese Theorie, die sich der Naivität unnaiv als „Korrektiv“
und „Kritik der bürgerlichen Vernunft“ bedient, eben seine eigene Kritische Theorie
bezeichnet, steht außer Zweifel. Dass diese Beschreibung aber zugleich auch
bedeutende Tendenzen der Phänomenologie trifft – die sich ihrerseits reflexiv auf
Naivität beruft und einen ähnlichen Begriff der Naivität als metakritisches
Instrument entwickelt – sollte der vorliegende Aufsatz skizzenhaft nahelegen.
LITERATURVERZEICHNIS
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Philosophische Terminologie, Bd. 1. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1973.
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Negative Dialektik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (zitiert
als GS 6), 2003.
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Soziologische Schriften, Bd. 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp
(zitiert als GS 8), 2003.
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, „Über epische Naivität“, Noten zur Literatur, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp (zitiert als GS 11), 2003, 34-40.
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp (zitiert als GS 5), 2003.
48
49
50
51
52
GS 11, 35.
GS 11, 36.
GS 11, 36.
GS 11, 37.
GS 6, 19.
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NAIVITÄT ALS KRITIK
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Current of Music. Elements of a Radio Theory, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2008.
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, Einleitung in die Soziologie (1968), Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2017.
Albert, Hans, „Der Mythos der totalen Vernunft. Dialektische Ansprüche im Lichte undialektischer
Kritik“, in Th. W. Adorno u.a. (Hrsg), Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie,
München: dtv, 1993, 193-234.
Ferencz-Flatz, Christian, „Zur Funktion des Vortheoretischen bei Adorno. Der Erfahrungsbegriff
der Kritischen Theorie und die Phänomenologie“, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie,
Band 67, Heft 6, 2019, 930-951.
Ferencz-Flatz, Christian, „Eidetic intuition as physiognomics: rethinking Adorno’s phenomenological
heritage“, Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 52, 2019, 361–380.
Fink, Eugen, Cartesianische Meditation, Teil I: Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodelehre,
Den Haag: Kluwer (zitiert als Hua Dok II/1), 1988.
Gadamer, Hans Georg, „Zur Aktualität der Husserlschen Phänomenologie“, in Neuere Philosophie
I. Hegel – Husserl – Heidegger. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987, 160-171.
Guenther, Lisa, „Unmaking and Making the World in Long-Term Solitary Confinement“,
Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, vol. 1, 2018, 74-89.
Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer (zitiert als SuZ), 2006.
Horkheimer, Max, „Traditionelle und kritische Theorie“, in Gesammelte Schriften, Band 4:
Schriften 1936-1941, Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer, 2009, 162-225.
Husserl, Edmund, „Grundlegende Untersuchungen zum Phänomenologischen Ursprung der
Räumlichkeit der Natur“, in Farber, M. (Hg.), Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund
Husserl, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940, 305–326.
Husserl, Edmund, Erste Philosophie (1923/4), Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte, Den Haag:
Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua VII), 1956.
Husserl, Edmund, Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester. 1925.
Den Haag: Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua IX), 1968.
Husserl, Edmund, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale
Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, Den Haag:
Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua VI), 1976.
Husserl, Edmund, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie
und Theorie der Erkenntnis, Bd.1, Den Haag: Nijhoff (zitiert als Hua XIX/1), 1984.
Husserl, Edmund, Aufsätze und Vorträge. 1922-1937, Den Haag: Kluwer (zitiert als Hua XXVII),
1988.
Husserl, Edmund, Erfahrung und Urteil, Hamburg: Meiner (zitiert als EU), 1999.
Husserl, Edmund, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926-1935),
Den Haag: Kluwer (zitiert als Hua XXXIV), 2002.
Lohmar, Dieter, „Die phänomenologische Methode der Wesensschau und ihre Präzisierung
als eidetische Variation”, Phänomenologische Forschungen, 2005, 65-91.
Salamon, Gayle, „What’s Critical about Critical Phenomenology?“ Puncta: Journal of Critical
Phenomenology, vol. 1, 2018, 8-17.
65
CHRISTIAN FERENCZ-FLATZ
Waldenfels, Bernhard, „The Despised Doxa Husserl and the Continuing Crisis of Western
Reason“, Research in Phenomenology, vol. 12, 1982, 21-38.
Waldenfels, Bernhard u.a., Phänomenologie und Marxismus, Bd. 1-3, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977.
66
STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 67-98
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.04
PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL
TRANSFORMATION: MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY
AND ABU-LUGHOD’S ETHNOGRAPHY IN DIALOGUE
LAURA McMAHON∗
ABSTRACT. This paper develops phenomenological resources for understanding
the nature of intercultural understanding, drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty
in dialogue with feminist anthropologist Abu-Lughod. Part One criticizes Western
framings of non-Western violence against women that render the experience of
non-Western Others inaccessible. Part Two discusses how certain strains in
Western feminism reinforce some of these problematic framings. Part Three offers
a phenomenological account of our experience of other persons, and Part Four
argues that intercultural understanding takes the form of a “variation” between
one’s own and the other’s experience. Part Five explores the implications of this
phenomenology of cross-cultural understanding for interpreting dynamic cultural
transformations, and the politics of violence against women, in an interconnected
and unequal world.
Keywords: Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Lila Abu-Lughod; critical phenomenology; feminist
anthropology; multiculturalism
This paper develops phenomenological resources for thinking about the
nature and demands of intercultural understanding in a world shaped by the legacy
of Western colonialism and imperialism, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
lectures and essays on phenomenology and the social sciences from 1960 and 1961
in dialogue with Lila Abu-Lughod’s ethnographic study of a particular Bedouin
community in Egypt in the late 1970s. The motivation for this paper is twofold. First,
it aims to criticize framings in Western popular consciousness, and also in certain
academic discourses in the West, of what are seen as abhorrent “non-Western”
∗
History and Philosophy; Women's and Gender Studies Department, Eastern Michigan University,
USA. Email: lmcmaho1@emich.edu.
LAURA McMAHON
(and often “Islamic”) practices, particular with regard to the treatment of women.
Second, it aims to phenomenologically describe the lived experience of cross-cultural
understanding in an increasingly interconnected world deeply shaped, in Alia AlSaji’s words, by “colonial durations,” and in so doing to begin to transform our
possibilities for seeing and encountering one another in more honest and just
ways.1
I begin, in Part One, with an account of a so-called ‘honor’ killing that took
place in Berlin in 2005, and explore the manner in which ‘honor killings’ have
become potent symbols in the Western cultural imagination and in human rights
discourses of Islam’s violent oppression of women, despite having no basis or
justification in Islamic religion. Part Two engages with Merleau-Ponty alongside
postcolonial feminist scholars in order to critically assess how political and
academic debates between “universalism” and “cultural relativism” have shaped
understanding of the oppression of women in non-Western cultures in both
epistemologically and politically problematic ways. I argue that phenomenology
offers us a better route into making sense of the lived experience of intercultural
understanding that does justice to the genuine insights of both universalism and
cultural relativism while avoiding the “pitfalls” of each. In Part Three, I offer a
phenomenological account of our experience of other persons, drawing on examples
from Abu-Lughod’s ethnography of a Bedouin “honor” society in the Western desert
of Egypt.
Part Four—the principal focus of the paper—argues that intercultural
understanding takes the form of a phenomenological “variation” of the other’s
experience in light of one’s own and one’s own experience in light of the other—a
practice that simultaneously enables the other to appear in her complex humanity
rather than as an exotified stereotype, and the self to transform its conception of its own
self and cultural world. In Part Five, I explore the implications of this phenomenology of
cross-cultural understanding for interpreting the nature of dynamic cultural transformation
in a deeply interconnected and unequal contemporary world—dynamic cultural
1
Alia Al-Saji, “SPEP Co-Director’s Address: Hesitation as Philosophical Method—Travel Bans, Colonial
Durations, and the Affective Weight of the Past,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 32, no. 3, 2018,
331-59. For arguments concerning the transformative nature of phenomenological description, see
Gayle Salamon, “What’s Critical About Critical Phenomenology?” Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology,
1, 2018, 8-17; Laura McMahon, “Phenomenology as First-Order Perception: Speech, Vision, and
Reflection in Merleau-Ponty,” in Kirsten Jacobson and John Russon (eds.), Perception and Its
Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017),
308-37; and John Russon, “Phenomenological Description and Artistic Expression,” in Peter Costello
and Licia Carlson (eds.), Phenomenology and the Arts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 3-24.
68
PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION:
MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND ABU-LUGHOD’S ETHNOGRAPHY IN DIALOGUE
transformation at the heart of recent “honor” crimes. I conclude with some
suggestions regarding not only the contributions that phenomenology can offer
intercultural understanding in the contemporary world, but also the imperative for
phenomenological research to engage with social scientific research into the
diversity of human experience in a multicultural world.
1. An “honor” killing in Berlin
On February 7, 2005, 23-year-old Hatun “Aynur” Sürücü was shot by her
18-year-old brother Ayhan Sürücü at a bus stop near the Berlin apartment where
she lived with her six-year-old son, Can. The nine Sürücü siblings were born and
raised in Berlin to ethnically-Kurdish parents from Turkey. At the age of sixteen,
Aynur was married to a cousin in Turkey (a not uncommon practice among the
Turkish community in Germany), before fleeing the latter’s abuse and returning,
pregnant, to her parental home.2 When living with her infant son in the Sürücü’s
crowded apartment became untenable—in large part due to the verbal abuse
suffered by three of her brothers, and the likely sexual abuse suffered by one of
them—Aynur availed herself of German social services to move into a home for
young mothers and eventually into her own apartment, and to enroll in college to
become an electrician. During these years, Aynur participated in modern German
youth culture, making close friends, dating young men and developing a significant
romantic relationship with one of them, and going to dance clubs and parties. She
also stopped wearing the hijab customary for girls and women in her Turkish
Muslim community. Despite her three brothers’ ongoing abuse and threats, she
worked to maintain a relationship with her family of origin, who doted upon her
son Can. After an argument one evening about her new lifestyle between Aynur
and her brother Ayhun, Ayhun shot and killed his older sister in an attack that was
evidently pre-meditated.
Thanks in large part to the murder being labeled an “honor” killing, this
story became a national sensation in Germany in the following weeks after Ayhun
was arrested for the murder, along with brothers Alparslan and Mutlu as
accomplices (Ayhun, a minor who confessed to the murder, was imprisoned for ten
years; the older brothers were acquitted due to lack of evidence first in Berlin and
2
For a discussion of the historical and socio-economic situation of Turkish immigrants to Germany
in general, and of the practice of arranged marriages between daughters and relatives back in
Turkey in particular, see Katherine Pratt Ewing, Stolen Honor: Stigmatizing Muslim Men in Berlin
(Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008), 15-19 and passim.
69
LAURA McMAHON
later in Istanbul).3 “Honor” killing names the phenomenon of a member of a
woman’s family of origin—in many cases a brother—murdering the woman for
bringing dishonor upon the family through real or perceived sexual impropriety
according to strict norms of marriage and patriliny. Though they have historically
occurred among communities from non-Muslim regions of the world, “honor”
killings are most often associated in popular reporting and human rights discourses
with Muslim communities originating in the Middle East, Northern Africa, and
Central and Southeast Asia.4
It has often been observed that the veil worn by many Muslim women has
come in the popular Western imagination to symbolize both the “backwardness”
of the Islamic world and its perceived oppression of Muslim women.5 Something
similar can be said of “honor” killings. Though “honor” killings in fact have nothing
to do with the religion of Islam but rather arise (and rarely) from certain mores
within Arabian patrilineal communities that predate Islam, the “honor” killing has
become in the popular Western imagination a potent symbol for the barbarity of
Islamic “cultural traditions,” a barbarity that is seen as particularly detrimental to
Muslim women.6 Indeed, German-American anthropologist Katherine Ewing notes
the manner in which headlines in German newspapers interchangeably attributed
the motive for Aynur Sürücü murder to her removal of her headscarf and to her
supposedly sexually licentious lifestyle, rhetorically reinforcing stereotypical links
between violence against Muslim women—seen in its extreme in the “honor”
crime—and Islamic religious traditions, symbolically encapsulated in the veiling of
women.7 Such stereotypical links between the oppression of women and Islamic
religious traditions are not merely confined to tabloid media representations and
3
4
5
6
7
Patrick Kingsley, “Turkey Acquits 2 Men in Berlin ‘Honor Killing’ of Their Sister,” The New York Times,
May 30, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/world/europe/turkey-germany-honorkilling.html. Accessed January 17, 2021. See also Ewing, Stolen Honor, 189.
For example, “honor” killings have taken place in Hindu regions of rural India. See Diane E. King,
Kurdistan on the Global Stage: Kinship, Land, and Community in Iraq (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
UP, 2014), 134 and Ewing, Stolen Honor, 166.
See, for example, Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard: Harvard UP, 2013),
35-46 and Alia Al-Saji, “The Racialization of Muslim Veils: A Philosophical Analysis,” Philosophy and
Social Criticism, 36.8, 2010, 875-902. See also Frantz Fanon, “Algeria Unveiled,” A Dying Colonialism,
transl. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 35-68. I have explored this issue in the
context of how Algerian women revolutionaries deployed “traditional” and modern clothing in
their resistance to French occupation in “Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology as a
Critical Practice: Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence,” Puncta, 3.1, 2020, 1-26.
Diane King, “The Personal is Patrilineal: Namus as Sovereignty,” in Diane King (ed.), Middle Eastern
Belongings (London: Routledge, 2010).
Ewing, 156.
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PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION:
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the Western popular imagination. They also inform reports by human rights
organizations. For example, Amnesty International’s 2012 “Culture of Discrimination:
A Fact Sheet on ‘Honor’ Killings,” though it does not explicitly call honor killing an
Islamic phenomenon, uses exclusively examples from Islamic contexts while
claiming that “[s]o-called honor killings are based on the deeply rooted belief that
women are objects and commodities, not human beings entitled to dignity and
rights equal to those of men. Women are considered the property of male relatives
and are seen to embody the honor of the men to whom they ‘belong.’”8
Framing the murder of Aynur Sürücü as a barbaric “Islamic” crime is
problematic in two, complementary manners. First, and most importantly, it
renders the singular, complex reality of a young woman invisible, burying this lived
experience under exotified stereotypes.9 Ambiguously entitled A Regular Woman,
even a recent cinematic treatment of Sürücü’s story that seeks to humanize the
young woman in her concrete experiences, interests, and relationships, casts the
murder and the events surrounding it as a violent clash between a recalcitrant,
traditional religious culture stuck in a barbaric past, and a flexible, modern world
on a path of equality and progress.10 “Good” Muslims in the film are ones who have
assimilated to majority Western culture in their dress, speech, gender relations,
and employment, a choice presented as open to all and happily embraced by
Sürücü, but refused by the “bad” Muslims exemplified by Sürücü’s family of origin
and the fundamentalist Imam presented as guiding her brothers violently sexist
views and actions. As one online review (uncritically) puts it, A Regular Woman
“doesn’t leave much doubt that Islam and Muslim cultures, in particular, have some
serious civilizing to do if they want to wholly join the 21st century.”11 Despite the
film’s humanizing ambitions, then, the cultural personal and complexity of Sürücü’s
own lived experience as a women of Turkish heritage living in Germany at the turn
of the 21st century is, once again, obscured by stereotypes—stereotypes that, as
we shall see further shortly, have deep roots in the history of colonialism. The
second, complementary problem with the framing of Sürücü’s murder as a barbaric
8
9
10
11
“Culture of Discrimination: A Fact Sheet on ‘Honor’ Killings,” Amnesty International, 2012. Retrieved
17 January, 2021. See also Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, 116.
On the manner in which cultural imperialism simultaneously stereotypes and renders invisible, see
Iris Marion Young, “The Five Faces of Oppression,” in Justice and the Politics of Difference
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995), 39-65, 58-61. See also Al-Saji, “The Racialization of Muslim Veils,”
881-82.
A Regular Woman, dir. Sherry Hormann (Vincent TV, 2019).
Roger Moore, “‘A Regular Woman’ Narrates the Horrors of her ‘Honor Killing,’” Movie Nation, June
22, 2020. https://rogersmovienation.com/2020/06/22/movie-review-a-regular-woman-narratesthe-horrors-of-her-honor-killing/.
71
LAURA McMAHON
“Islamic” crime is that, in dehumanizing the “Other,” the “Westerner” is enabled to
remain complacent and self-satisfied in her own modern, secular “normality,” such
that she can fail to critically interrogate both abiding problems at play in modern
“Western” cultures like Germany and the United States, and the deep historical
connections between European colonialism and American imperialism, on the one
side, and “breakdowns” in traditional cultures thanks to modern colonialism and its
legacies, on the other side. In what follows, we shall see a prominent manner in
which these dual problems are at play in some contemporary discourses of Western
feminism, and introduce Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological method as a route out
of some of these difficulties.
2. Universalism, cultural relativism, and the promise of phenomenology
Framed as results of “a culture of discrimination,” in the words of Amnesty
International, or as a “clash of civilizations,” in Samuel Huntington’s infamous words,
the status of phenomena such as “honor” killings is often debated in Western contexts
along the competing lines of “universalism” and “cultural relativism.”12 Broadly
speaking, universalism is the view that, as feminist philosopher Shannon Hoff
critically characterizes it, “there are universal or transcultural values that are
indifferent to the particularities of context and can simply be transferred to other
sociocultural worlds.”13 For example, “universal human rights” are understood to
belong to all human individuals, regardless of historical or cultural circumstance.
Epistemologically, universalism is an example of what Merleau-Ponty calls
“logicism” in his lecture “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man” (1961): it takes
scientific and moral thinking to take place in a “special sphere, the place of thought
in the strict sense of the term, where the philosopher may get in touch with an
intrinsic truth.”14 In feminist philosophy, we find prominent examples of
universalism in Susan Moller Okin’s “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” (1999)
and Martha Nussbaum’s “Women and Cultural Universals” (1999), which argue for
12
13
14
See Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993)
(https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1993-06-01/clash-civilizations), and Edward
Said’s critical response, “The Clash of Ignorance,” The Nation, October 4, 2001.
(https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/clash-ignorance/).
Shannon Hoff, “Hegel and the Possibility of Intercultural Criticism,” in Susan Dodd and Neil G.
Robertson (eds.), Hegel and Canada: Unity of Opposites? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2017), 342-67, 342.
“Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man,” transl. John Wild, in James M. Edie (ed.), The Primacy of
Perception and Other Essays (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1964), 43-95, 48. Hereafter cited as PSM. See
also Merleau-Ponty’s sustained criticism of rationalism or “intellectualism” throughout Phenomenology
of Perception, transl. Donald A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2012). Hereafter cited as PP.
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PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION:
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universal standards—Kantian rights and Aristotelian capabilities, respectively—
according to which we can morally criticize the oppressive practices of any given
culture.15 From a universalist perspective, oppressive “cultural practices” such as
honor killings must be unequivocally condemned—and certainly never politically
protected under claims to cultural “group rights”—on pains of being guilty of
ethnocentrism; as Okin argues, “[w]hen a woman from a more patriarchal culture
comes to the United States (or some other Western, basically liberal state), why
should she be less protected from male violence than other women are?”16
Cultural relativism, by contrast, is the view that so-called “universal” values
in fact arise in specific historical and cultural contexts. Universal human rights can
(at least in their formulation in Western contexts and international bodies in a
Western-centric world) be traced back to principles articulated in the European
Enlightenment, which holds tacitly individualistic and rationalistic premises concerning
the nature and dignity of the human being.17 Epistemologically, cultural relativism
is an example of what Merleau-Ponty calls “sociologism” (and interchangeably
“psychologism” and “historicism”) in “Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man,”
which is the position that all human thought and values is “conditioned by physiological,
psychological, sociological, and historical causes,” and thus cannot proclaim any
access to universal truth.18 The political consequences of such a view are that
Western values masquerading as universal standards of judgment should not be
used to morally assess the practices of non-Western cultures; rather, cultural
practices must be assessed on their own internal terms. Now, cultural relativism
has a rich history in twentieth-century anthropology, which did an enormous
amount to challenge the Western-centrism at play in both the history of European
colonialism and the history of anthropology itself.19 But in its vicious form in
15
16
17
18
19
Susan Moller Okin, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” in Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha
Nussbaum (eds.), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999), 7-26;
Martha Nussbaum, “Women and Cultural Universals,” Sex and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford UP,
1999), 29-54. For a helpful criticism of the position of universalism in feminist philosophy, see Alison
M. Jaggar, “‘Saving Amina’: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue,” Ethics and International
Affairs, 19.3, 2005, 55-75, 57-59.
“Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?,” 20.
On the Western and Christian roots of “universal human rights,” see John Russon, Sites of Exposure:
Art, Politics, and the Nature of Experience (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2017), 81-86, 88-89, 91-92.
For a criticism of the individualistic nature of modern rights, see Shannon Hoff, “Rights and Worlds:
On the Political Significance of Belonging,” Philosophical Forum, 45.4, 2014, 355-73.
PSM 48. Compare to Merleau-Ponty’s sustained criticism of empiricism throughout PP.
For a defense of cultural relativism against common misunderstandings and criticisms, see Clifford
Geertz, “Anti Anti-Relativism,” American Anthropologist, 86.2, 1984, 263-78. For an appreciation of
the contributions of cultural relativism that also considers some of the inherent contradictions of its
own universal claims, see Elvin Hatch, “The Good Side of Relativism,” Journal of Anthropological
Research, 53, 1997, 371-81.
73
LAURA McMAHON
political and academic debates concerning how to respond to the oppression of
women in non-Western cultures, it can take the form of a moral relativism that
holds that understanding and criticism across cultural lines is impossible—a position
that seems simply to abandon women to their terrible fates.20
Exemplars of both universalists and cultural relativists have demonstrated
deeply impoverished visions of culture in their arguments. When a universalist like
Okin accuses non-Western cultures of being “bad for women”—elaborating on
often sensationalist examples to illustrate her point—she displays an attitude of
what feminist philosopher Uma Narayan calls “death by culture”: she assumes that
“culture” can be named as a sufficient explanation for the oppression and violent
deaths of women in non-Western contexts.21 Ascribing to (non-Western) “culture”
such explanatory power offers a vision of (non-Western) cultures as monolithic and
ahistorical, while at the same time tacitly presuming that the Western cultures of
the universalist authors are in fact a-cultural, dynamic, and historically emancipated
(at least in comparison to their non-Western counterparts).22 Such impoverished
visions of non-Western cultures coupled with a “West is best” attitude has deep
roots in the history of colonialism, and has been more recently used to justify recent
American military interventions in the Middle East, such as the invasion of Afghanistan
following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.23
Despite its roots in a rich appreciation for the complexities of non-Western
cultures on the part of anthropologists, vicious forms of cultural relativism can also
hold visions of non-Western cultures as simple, homogeneous, and static. As
Nussbaum argues, in their calls to preserve certain non-Western cultural “traditions”
from Western judgment and influence, (vicious) cultural relativists often oversimplify
the culture in question (speaking, for example, about “Indian culture”), ignoring the
vast diversity within cultures as well as competing internal interpretations of its
20
21
22
23
See Nussbaum, “Women and Cultural Universals,” 35-36.
Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminisms (New York:
Routledge, 1997), Chapter Three. For related arguments, see Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need
Saving?, 30-34, 41, 127; Abu-Lughod, “Writing Against Culture,” Recapturing Anthropology: Working
in the Present (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1986), 137-62; and Leti Volpp, “Blaming
Culture for Bad Behavior,” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, 12.1, 2000, 89-116. Nussbaum,
the other feminist philosopher offered as an example of a universalist above, cannot be said to be
guilty of this charge; see “Women and Cultural Universals,” 36-37 and “A Plea for Difficulty,” in Joshua
Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha Nussbaum (eds.), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999), 105-14.
Narayan, 50.
Such justifications were used both by Republican politicians and mainstream American feminists.
See Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, Chapter One and Janine Rich, “‘Saving’ Muslim
Women: Feminism, U.S. Policy and the War on Terror,” International Affairs Review, Fall 2014.
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PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION:
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“traditions” across individuals and social groups and throughout history.24 Furthermore,
as Abu-Lughod argues, while “[c]ultural relativism is certainly an improvement on
ethnocentrism and the racism, cultural imperialism, and imperiousness that underlie
it; the problem is that it is too late not to interfere.”25
I would like to suggest that the philosophical method of phenomenology
offers a third route that is more epistemologically- and politically-sound than are
either the extremes of universalism or cultural relativism when it comes to accounting
for our lived experience of critically understanding others across cultural lines, and
for attending to the richness and complexity of cultural existence. By inquiring into
what our lived experience of understanding across cultural lines is actually like,
phenomenological description articulates both the manners in which we are deeply
shaped by our cultural and historical circumstances (as the relativist would have it),
and the ways in which such shaping is lived not as a prison but as the source of our
insight and agency (as the universalist would have it).26 It is precisely through rather
than apart from the resources afforded us by our cultural and historical
circumstances—our languages, educations, religions, and so forth—that we are able
to develop perspectives that can go beyond these cultural and historical circumstances.27
Merleau-Ponty writes in “The Philosopher and Sociology”:
Since we are all hemmed in by history, it is up to us to understand that
whatever truth we may have is to be gotten not in spite of but through our
historical inherence. Superficially considered, our inherence destroys all
truth; considered radically, it founds a new idea of truth.28
Accessing truth “through our historical inherence” requires that, in a lived
phenomenological epochē, we be capable of suspending our ordinary naïve
absorption in the world of our concerns so as to let unfamiliar kinds of truths show
themselves. But to so suspend our ordinary absorption is, in Merleau-Ponty’s words
again, not “to deny the link which binds us to the physical, social, and cultural
world…[but] on the contrary to see this link, to become conscious of it.”29 In what
follows, I will argue that it is precisely through our encounter with others from the
24
25
26
27
28
29
“Women and Cultural Universals,” 35-37.
Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, 40.
See PP 93 on how my situated perspective is “a necessity I can use, but also one that does not
imprison me.”
I have explored in detail the ways in which agency is always shaped by cultural circumstances in
McMahon, “Religion, Multiculturalism, and Phenomenology as a Critical Practice.”
Merleau-Ponty, “The Philosopher and Sociology,” Signs, transl. Richard C. McLeary (Evanston:
Northwestern UP, 1964), 98-113, 109. Hereafter cited as PS. See also PSM 82.
PSM 49.
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place of their lived experience that we are able to effect this kind of epochē.30
Encounters with others—others who, as we shall see further, are at once deeply kin to
us and insurmountably different from us—expand our understanding of human beingin-the-world beyond what we can learn from our own first-personal or familiar cultural
experiences, in a manner that changes how we are able to understand ourselves. As
Thomas Busch argues, “[s]elf-understanding and self-criticism depend upon an
encounter with alterity.”31 At stake in this stance of self-criticism in dialogue with
alterity is a de-centering and de-normalizing of one’s own perspective; for the
“Westerner,” it is the holding open of space a kind of “philosophical hesitation,” as AlSaji says, or “ethnographic reserve,” as Abu-Lughod says—a hesitation or reserve
that might interrupt dominant discourses and make room for other, non-Westerncentric historical experiences to show themselves, other voices to be heard.32
3. Phenomenology of intersubjectivity: The revelation of the other and
the opacity of the self
What is the nature of our experience of other people? Moderns deeply
influenced by the legacy of René Descartes are plagued with the specter of
solipsism, in which the self is associated with the interior, thinking mind, and in
which other selves in their interiority are rendered only dubiously accessible to me
in mine. In Phenomenology of Perception, and especially in the chapters “The Body
as Expression, and Speech” and “Others and the Human World,” Merleau-Ponty
systematically challenges Cartesian solipsism by describing the manner in which
others reveal themselves both in their embodied behaviors and speech, and in the
objects of the shared cultural landscape itself. Let us see how this embodied
revelation of others takes place in concrete experience.
In his Second Meditation, Descartes analyses what he takes to be going on
in the commonplace experience of looking out of his window and observing other
human beings walking in the square below. He writes:
[W]ere I perchance to look out my window and observe men crossing the
square, I would ordinarily say I see the men themselves…But what do I see
aside from hats and clothes, which could conceal automata? Yet I judge
30
31
32
Yuichi Sato makes a similar claim in “The Way of the Reduction via Anthropology: Husserl and LévyBruhl, Merleau-Ponty and Lévi-Strauss,” Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, X 1, 2014, 1-18.
Thomas W. Busch, “Merleau-Ponty and the Circulation of Being,” Symposium, 8.2, 2004, 313-24, 316.
Al-Saji, “SPEP Co-Director’s Address,” especially 346-48; Abu-Lughod, “Ethnography’s Values: An
Afterward,” Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Oakland: University of California
Press, 2016), 294.
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them to be men. Thus what I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually
grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind.33
This interpretation bears little resemblance to what our perceptual
experience of others is typically like in lived experience. Merleau-Ponty argues that
to look at others in such an alienated way requires that we “establish an inhuman
gaze,” observing the actions of the other human being like the “actions of an
insect.”34 To argue that the other’s body in fact appears to perception no differently
than an automaton is to describe a mode of looking we can adopt, but a mode of
looking that is very strange indeed—Merleau-Ponty calls it “surreal.”35 Typically,
our lived experience of other persons is a perceptual encounter with beings who
are themselves meaningfully alive to the world in intelligible ways. The other’s body
is not given as a mere object but rather as a power of perception and movement, her
consciousness not simply a private interiority but incarnated in her bodily activity
itself. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of behavior captures the manner in which the body
is “a third genre of being between the pure subject and the object.”36 Our
experience of others persons is the experience of meaningful behaviors—
meaningful ways of being oriented towards the world that incarnate and reveal the
subjectivity of the other in her movements, gestures, and speech.37 There is,
however, a central ambiguity at play in our experience of other persons: in MerleauPonty’s words, we experience others as simultaneously “communications” and
“solitudes.”38 On the one hand, the other’s behaviors appear in our world as
“miraculous extensions” of our own intentions: others’ behaviors are legible to us
as incarnating bodily possibilities of our own, and often call forth our own
embodied participation, as when we follow with our eyes the other’s extended
finger as she points out something interesting in the landscape.39 On the other
hand, the embodied behavior of others presents a certain opacity that cannot be
transcended: the other’s experience gives itself as first-personal, and thus as an
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, transl. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 68.
PP 378.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, transl. Alden Fisher (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1963),
167. Hereafter cited as SB.
PP 366.
I have explored the bodily and gestural basis of language and thought in more detail in McMahon,
“Phenomenology as First-Order Perception.”
PP 376. I have explored this ambiguity in greater detail in “‘Thinking According to Others’: Expression,
Intimacy, and the Passage of Time in Merleau-Ponty and Woolf,” in Peter Costello and Licia Carlson
(eds.), Phenomenology and the Arts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 193-218.
PP 370. For an illuminating phenomenological study of pointing, see Eva-Maria Simms, “Egocentric
Language and the Upheaval of Speech: A Merleau-Ponty Inspired Study of Language Acquisition,” Chiasmi
International, 12 2010, 287-309, 296-99. For a study of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of “intercorporeality,”
see Scott L. Marratto, The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity (Albany: SUNY, 2012).
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experience that I definitively cannot live for myself, and that I can interpret
incorrectly, incompletely, or in a decontextualized manner.40
Consider the following description from Abu-Lughod’s ethnography Veiled
Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (1986). Here, Abu-Lughod describes
the behavior of Mabrūka, a middle-aged woman of the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin tribe
estranged from her husband, who had recently married a second wife. First, Mabrūka
displayed attitudes of anger toward her husband and those associated with his second
marriage in a number of ways. Abu-Lughod writes:
Mabrūka’s immediate response was to blame her brother-in-law for the
decision, suspecting him of having encouraged his brother to take a second
wife so the lineage could have more children. Although she had been close
to his wife for fifteen years, she stopped visiting her household… When
presented with the customary wedding gifts due the first wife, she threw
them on the ground and refused to accept them until her sister-in-law
begged her to do so… She justified her anger by the blame she placed on
her brother-in-law, some material injustices, and violations of conventions
in handling the second marriage. For example, she refused to accept the
wedding gifts because they were not identical to those given the bride… She
refused to attend the wedding because the new bride was not going to be
brought into her household but would be set up in a house with her
husband’s brother—not customary procedure, as she pointed out to
everyone. When I asked how she felt about the wedding, she remarked on
these injustices and claimed that she was only angry because things were
not being done correctly.41
Mabrūka’s sentiments were not locked in the privacy of her own mind, but
were expressed—were quite literally brought to life for all to see—in her gestures
and words; as Merleau-Ponty writes, “I do not perceive the anger…as a psychological
fact hidden behind the gesture, I read the anger in the gesture. The gesture does
not make me think of anger, it is the anger itself.”42 As intended, Mabrūka’s vocal
criticisms of improper protocols regarding the wedding and living arrangements of
the second wife, as well as her conspicuous absence at the wedding, brought her
righteous indignation to life as a palpable presence in the community.
However, Mabrūka’s indignant behaviors alone did not tell the whole story
of her experience vis-à-vis her husband and his second marriage. The ongoing presence
of contemporary and past others is anonymously embodied in the things of the
40
41
42
See PP 374 on “a lived truth of solipsism that cannot be transcended.”
Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, 190-91.
PP 190.
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cultural world itself: the customary wedding gifts signifying due status; the tents
housing patrilineal lines according to deep-seated convention; the number of nights
men customarily spend with their new brides before returning to the beds of their
first wives.43 Like the behaviors and gestures of others, the familiar things of the
world—the sedimentation of the behaviors of innumerable past others into a
shared habitus—call forth our behaviors in familiar and obvious ways, affording us
routes for our activities that are meaningful for both ourselves and those with
whom we share our world.44 Contexts of meaning that are given as simply obvious
to the insider can be unapparent to the outsider, rendering the latter’s understanding
of the meaning of a certain behavior fragmentary or off-base. One area of Awlad
‘Ali cultural life that proved to be of central importance to the interpretation of
Mabrūka’s lived experience proved to be the institution of traditional poetry, and
in particular the ghinnāwas or “little songs,” which Abu-Lughod describes as “like
Japanese haiku in form but more like the American blues in content and emotional
tone.”45 Though at the beginning of her fieldwork Abu-Lughod did not single these
poems out as a special object for ethnographic research—“[a]t first I ignored them,
since I had no interest in poetry”—her participation in the Awlad ‘Ali women’s
world itself gradually came to reveal their significance.46
Ghinnāwas recited by Mabrūka among close female relatives and friends
revealed other dimensions of Mabrūka’s emotional situation than anger and than
an indignant insistence on her rights as first wife. Abu-Lughod quotes a sample of
these poems:
Held fast by despair and rage
the vastness of my soul is cramped…
I took upon myself your love
kindly make me a place to rest…
They left me to suffer,
wise ones, they had but withheld the cure…47
43
44
45
46
47
PP 363; Abu-Lughod, 190-91, 230. On the significance of anonymity in cultural and interpersonal
experience, see Whitney Howell, “Necessary but Insufficient: Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Anonymity
in Interpersonal Life,” Symposium, 24.2, 2020, 168-90.
On the cultural world as habitus, see PP 139. I explore Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of habit and habitus
in dialogue with the work of Pierre Bourdieu in “‘The Great Phantom’: Habitus, Freedom, and Political
Transformation in Merleau-Ponty,” in Jérôme Melançon (ed.), Politics and Merleau-Ponty: Thinking
Beyond the State (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming).
Veiled Sentiments, 27.
Veiled Sentiments, 25.
Veiled Sentiments, 192-93.
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These poems, as Abu-Lughod observes, “expressed not so much the anger
and blame…as misery and vulnerability.”48 Furthermore, Mabrūka recited ghinnāwas
that commented precisely on the discrepancy between the pain she felt in her heart
and the anger she expressed publicly, as in the following:
Better they had calmed me
but since they opposed me I opposed them…49
As revealed in its different aspects in differing contexts, Mabrūka’s emotional
experience is not simply transparent in each of her behaviors; indeed, the layered
complexity of it might well remain obscure to the hasty outside observer. But it can
be “read” by the compassionate interlocutor attentive to different spheres of cultural
life, as they reveal themselves in individuals’ embodied behaviors, for the ways in
which its seemingly discrepant expressions in fact work together within the context
of a single personal existence struggling to come to terms with complex and
contradictory emotions.
If the experience of the other is not simply transparent to the outside
observer but rather demands to be interpreted across its different incarnations in
different contexts of meaning, likewise is it the case that, contra Descartes, our own
experience is in crucial respects constitutively opaque to itself.50 Our own cultural
links to the world are ordinarily taken for granted rather than made visible,
structuring what seems obvious to us in ways of which we are typically unaware.
And our personal experience is not simply spread out in front of our gaze as so many
mental “contents,” but is the very “form” in which things in the world appear to us
in meaningful ways: when we are angry, things in the world themselves appear
hateful; when we are in despair “the vastness of [our] soul is cramped” (in Mabrūka’s
poetic expression).51 We do not always—indeed we frequently do not—understand
the contributions our own moods, habits, personal and collective histories, and
cultural belonging make to the disclosure of reality in our experience. Our own
constitutive ignorance of ourselves in conjunction with the constitutive obscurity
of the full sense of how others’ experience is lived by them, makes it the case that
48
49
50
51
Veiled Sentiments, 193.
Veiled Sentiments, 193.
Cf. PP 368: “Others can be evident because I am not transparent to myself, and because my
subjectivity draws my body along behind itself.
See Heidegger’s discussion of the “mooded” character of intentional existence in Being and Time,
transl. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 172-182. See also
John Russon, Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everday Life (Albany: SUNY
Press, 2003), 43-46.
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we are not simply the arbiters of the meanings of our own behaviors in interpersonal
space.
The following anecdote from Abu-Lughod illustrates this point. During a
2015 visit to her Awlad ‘Ali “family,” Abu-Lughod brought along a copy of the Arab
translation of Veiled Sentiments at the request of one of her “sisters.” On a Skype
call following the visit with a woman of the family who had read the book, AbuLughod was concerned to learn that members of the family had taken offence to
some of her portrayals of them. As well as being concerned to learn that the family
was recognizable to others despite standard practices of name changing (“Everyone
knows this is our family,” the young woman said), Abu-Lughod sought to address
another concern that had plagued her in her reflections on the nature and value of
ethnography in the decades following her first study of the Awlad ‘Ali as a graduate
student: “I had always felt uncomfortable about the stories about marital disputes
or the recordings of folktales that I had used to analyze gender relations. I quickly
tried to defend myself, lamely pointing out that I had shown in the book how much
they valued honor and how beautiful their poetry was.”52 Abu-Lughod’s concerns
drastically missed the mark; it turns out the young woman “was referring only to
my complaints about the physical discomfort of living with them”:
She was worried about how the younger generation, who live much more
comfortable lives now, in apartments or villas with washing machines,
televisions, and carpeting, and who work as teachers, engineers, and
pharmacists…would react to what I had described from the 70s. I had
embarrassed her family, a family with a reputation.53
What to Abu-Lughod were relatively peripheral descriptions of her living
conditions during fieldwork, meant only to “bring to life this distant world” for
Western readers, was for her Awlad ‘Ali “relatives” brought into a different context
of family honor, deeply tied to wealth and prestige in the community. What was
background for Abu-Lughod as a Palestinian-American anthropologist who had grown
up in the United States was a matter of foregrounded significance for the Awlad ‘Ali
in Egypt; in Abu-Lughod’s own analysis, her descriptions of the conditions of fieldwork
were “now being taken out of context…[o]r rather, put back into context—the
context of this particular family.”54 These divergent meanings were not mutually
obvious, but took trust, respect, and careful communication to discover.
52
53
54
“Ethnography’s Values,” 296-97.
“Ethnography’s Values,” 297.
“Ethnography’s Values,” 297. On the relationship between foreground and background in
perceptual experience, see PP passim, but especially 4, 103, 113-14, 192 and Sara Ahmed, Queer
Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), Chapter 1,
especially 38.
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Learning about others’ lived experience as it is meaningful to them is not a
matter of “reading their minds” or living their first-personal experience for ourselves,
the impossibility at the heart of Cartesian solipsism and the anxiety of “the problem
of other minds.” But this impossibility need not trouble us, for neither is firstpersonal transparency the manner in which we are able to know ourselves. Rather,
this impossibility should inspire in us the commitment of patience, effort, and care
in the projects both of understanding the other and of better understanding
ourselves—projects that can never be completed once and for all. Furthermore, as
we shall discuss in Part Four, these projects of understanding the other and
understanding oneself cannot in truth be separated: we learn to understand others
in their own context, different from our own, by drawing on our own experiential
behavioral resources, and we come to better understand ourselves—in manners
that do not leave our categories of understanding and by extension our own
identities intact—in light of the experiences of others.
4. Phenomenological variation and intercultural understanding
As we have begun to see, discovering the meaning of others’ (and our own)
behavior is always a matter of interpreting the behavior in question within the larger
context(s) in which it is meaningful. Each of an individual’s behaviors—sometimes
harmonious with one another, other times discordant—demands to be interpreted
in terms of its place in her larger unfolding life; in turn, the unfolding of his life takes
place nowhere but in the multitude of his behaviors in relation to others within the
context of a larger cultural world. As Merleau-Ponty writes in “The Philosopher and
Sociology,” “we are in a sort of circuit with the socio-historical world.”55
Mabrūka’s seemingly discordant behavioral and poetic expressions in response
to her husband’s second marriage were simultaneously unique to her singular situation
and typical of Awlad ‘Ali society. Abu-Lughod’s interpretation of these and related
behaviors on the part of many other Awlad ‘Ali women and men paint a much more
human picture of family ties and honor, and a much richer picture of the complex
experiences of women, than those at play in stereotypes about Muslim cultures
criticized in the Introduction. These more sensitive and full understandings—made
possible by careful ethnography rather than polemic, in Abu-Lughod’s words—do
not preserve the Westerner’s superior sense of self but, rather, require its critical
transformation.56
55
56
PS 123.
Abu-Lughod, “The Active Social Life of ‘Muslim Women’s Rights’: A Plea for Ethnography, Not Polemic,
With Cases from Egypt and Palestine,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 6.1, 2010, 1-45.
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In her ethnography of the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin society, Abu-Lughod draws
on extensive observations of and conversations with members of the family and
larger community with whom she lived from fall 1978 until spring 1980, in order to
discern the central place of honor [sharaf] in the community’s norms for the proper
behavior [agl] of both men and women. Bedouins have long regarded themselves—
and long been regarded—as a fiercely tough, proud, and self-reliant people, with
many of its leading members still in the early 1980s committed to political selfdetermination in the face of the modern Egyptian state.57 For men of the Awlad ‘Ali,
honor is understood in terms of the virtues of self-control and courage, as well as
those of “generosity, honesty, sincerity, loyalty to friends, and keeping one’s word.”58
Self-reliant efficacy in the world as well as stoic toughness in the face of physical
and emotional pain—such as death of beloved relatives or heartache in love—
qualify a man for responsibility and social standing [gīma] within the community,
as do his material wealth and the respect shown him by his dependents (women,
children, and clients).59
While women are considered inferior to men with regard to their capacities
to embody the Bedouin ideals of self-reliant individuality, their honor and proper
behavior are seen to reside in approximating these ideals as much as possible within
the “natural” and social limits of their situation; in insisting on their rights and resisting
abuses of those upon whom they depend; and in behaving with modesty, shame,
or propriety [hasham] in the face of the more powerful or the unknown (generally
their fathers, husbands, older men in the community, and guests and strangers). It
is worth pausing on the point about resistance to abuse: wives can return to their
families of origin in anger if their husbands are abusive; divorce is common and
divorced women are frequently remarried. Women are by no means seen as the
mere property of fathers and husbands—as stated in the Amnesty Fact sheet cited
in Part One—but have means to resist arranged marriages that they do not desire
and to be protected against abuse and disrespect by their patrilineal line. They are
57
58
59
Veiled Sentiments, Chapter 3. For a classical statement on the independence and toughness of the
nomadic Bedouins, see Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, transl. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton
UP, 1967), 33-44. For a more nuanced discussion of the attitudes of the Awlad ‘Ali towards the Egyptian
state in the late 1970s and the early 1980s—one that provides another example of potential
misunderstanding and unintentional offense given on the part of the ethnographer, and that also
provides an example of the internal dissensions at play in any culture discussed below—see AbuLughod’s discussion of a relative of her Awlad ‘Ali’s family who worked as a civil servant and took
objection to her portrayal in “Writing Against Culture,” 159-60.
Veiled Sentiments, 87. Though it goes unnoted, the resonances between Abu-Lughod’s account of the
values of character of the Awlad ‘Ali and Aristotle’s account of the virtues in Nicomachean Ethics is
striking.
Veiled Sentiments, 90-92, 99.
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not isolated in the privacy of nuclear families, but have resources and supports
within the larger tribe that cares for their rights and wellbeing.
An important aspect of hasham is sexual modesty: women (like men) are
expected not to display any evidence of sexuality in general or romantic attachment
to specific individuals, including, while in the presence of others, their own husbands.60
Mabrūka’s public gestures of emotional indifference towards her husband must be
interpreted in light of these complex social expectations for women’s correct
behavior or agl: she was careful to display no sense of romantic attachment or loss
but only anger at the violation of her rights as a dependent.
Crucially, the modesty qua honor and the proper behavior of Awlad ‘Ali
women is not merely the passive docility of dependents who are owed no
interpersonal or social respect. On the contrary: Abu-Lughod observes that “[a]s with
other dependents—for instance, young men—women’s submission is personally
demeaning and worthless to their superiors unless perceived as freely given.”61 From
the women’s own perspectives, their honor was deeply personally meaningful—
intertwined as it was with their deep attachments to family, community, and social
reputation—and definitively a site for personal agency. A sign of independence
within dependence and initiative within a deeply circumscribed situation—though,
it is worth noting, one in important respects as circumscribed for men as it was for
women, albeit in different ways—a woman’s gesture of hasham was, in Abu-Lughod’s
words, “not compliance, but a form of self-control.”62 Requiring understanding,
interpretation, and, at times, creativity, sharaf by way of hasham was a way for a
women to distinguish themselves within the shared norms of the community.
It is on the point of self-control that Abu-Lughod finds a central aspect of
the significance of the Awlad ‘Ali’s ritualistic use of poetry on the part of both
women and men. Ghinnāwas use socially-known and accepted poetic symbols and
tropes to express deep emotional vulnerability and romantic attachments—contrary
qualities to the norms of honor and propriety publicly valued by Bedouin society—
and are often very moving to the friends or lovers who hear them.63 In AbuLughod’s analysis, the recitation of these poems in appropriate contexts not only
provides an outlet for the expression of feelings that do not have a place in adult
public life—feelings of dependency, exposure, and weakness rather than independence,
stoical self-reliance, and strength—but also a more complex expression of the
reciter’s ultimate self-control: she or he is able to manage when and how she or he
60
61
62
63
Veiled Sentiments, 152-58.
Veiled Sentiments, 105.
Veiled Sentiments, 117.
Veiled Sentiments, 174, 177, 242.
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shares these experiences, and—much as in Mabrūka’s poem commenting on the
discrepancy between her private despair and her public anger—she or he reveals
honorable behavior in public as an exercise in self-conscious honor that does not
simply come automatically but has been earned through effort and habituation
over time. As Abu-Lughod writes, agl is a phenomenon of maturity.64 Awlad ‘Ali
norms of honor and rituals of poetry reveal themselves to be neither isolated nor
contradictory affairs, but resonant tensions within the larger structure of the
Bedouin society.
“Structure” names the total, but complex and open-ended, organization of
all of the interconnected systems at play in a given society. Merleau-Ponty uses the
figure of a melody to illustrate the concept of structure: there is no melody without
the notes that make it up, but, at the same time, each of the notes are what they
are by virtue of belonging to the greater unfolding whole—the “same” note would,
quite literally, sound differently in the context of a different melody.65 The concept
of structure in anthropology is, in Merleau-Ponty’s account, the idea that
[s]ociety itself is a structure of structures: how could there be absolutely no
relationship between the linguistic system, the economic system, and the
kinship system it employs? But this relationship is subtle and variable.
Sometimes it is homology. At other times (as in the case of myth and ritual)
one structure is the counterpart and antagonist of the other. Society as a
structure remains a many-faceted reality amenable to more than one
interpretation.66
Anthropological interpretation does not work by subsuming particular
behaviors or systems under an overarching “essence”—for example, subsuming the
culture’s linguistic system under some universal form of language accessible to
thought in isolation from the facts, or its kinship structure under some universal
table of kinship relationships “comparable to Mendeleev’s periodic table of
elements.”67 As Merleau-Ponty writes, “[a]s a matter of principle, structure is no
Platonic idea.”68 Rather, anthropological interpretation of a culture works by
“installing ourselves” within the institution in question, seeking to understand the
“style” of the linguistic or kinship system as it is meaningfully lived by the cultural
64
65
66
67
68
Veiled Sentiments, 91.
SB 137 and PP 107, 255, 437, and 469. See also Russon, Human Experience, 12.
Merleau-Ponty, “From Mauss to Lévi-Strauss,” Signs, transl. Richard C. McLeary (Evanston: Northwestern
UP, 1964), 114-25, 118. Hereafter cited as FMLS.
PMS 79; FMLS 118.
FMLS 117.
85
LAURA McMAHON
subjects in question.69 As Busch writes, “[c]ategories earn their ‘rationality’ by their
power to explicate, to make sense of, experience.”70 Much like the psychotherapeutic
interpretation of an individual, this kind of understanding is not a straightforward
perception that occurs in a moment, but rather takes the form of a Gestalt shift in
which seemingly disparate behaviors are seen to belong to the same largely
“unconscious” individual or cultural structure.71 Merleau-Ponty writes of the kind
of knowledge possible through ethnographic research: “the underlying dynamics of
the social whole is certainly not given within our narrow experience of living among
others, yet it is only by throwing this experience in and out of focus that we succeed
in representing it to ourselves.”72
What is this practice of “throwing this experience in and out of focus” like
for the ethnographer? Merleau-Ponty argues that this practice is an existential
embodiment of Edmund Husserl’s method of “eidetic variation,” in which the
phenomenologist, within the epochē, “imaginatively varies” with the manner in which
a given phenomenon appears so as to discover what is essential to the phenomenon
in question.73 The phenomenologist achieves an eidetic intuition [Wesensschau]
when, through her imaginative variations, she hits upon alterations to the phenomenon
that cannot be made without the phenomenon ceasing to be the phenomenon that
it is. For example, we can imaginatively vary the color red until it ceases to be red—
thus getting into clearer view the “redness” of the red—or we can vary with the
phenomenon of color itself, changing red into green into yellow, but finding that
color ceases to be color when we attempt to change it into sound.74 Merleau-Ponty
argues that towards the end of his career, Husserl came to realize the limits of the
method of a purely imaginative variation, thanks to the latter’s encounter with the
anthropological work of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl.75
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
PS 100. “Style” in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy can be understood as a dynamization of essence,
which can only be encountered in the flesh and through a kind of mimicry or participation; for more
on this see PP 342-45 and Linda Singer, “Merleau-Ponty on the Concept of Style,” in Galen A. Johnson
and Michael B. Smith (eds.), The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting (Evanston:
Northwestern UP. 1993), 233-44.
Busch, 316.
FMLS 118.
PS 100.
PSM 53-54, 69-72, 90 and PS 108. Cf. Husserl, Experience and Judgment, transl. James S. Churchill
and Karl Ameriks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), §§86-93; and Phenomenological
Psychology, transl. John Scanlon (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 57-65. See also Douglas Low,
“Merleau-Ponty on Race, Gender, and Anti-Semitism,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 59.3, 2019,
257-75, 261 on Merleau-Ponty’s “existentializing” of Husserl’s more rationalist eidetic method.
Husserl, Experience and Judgment, 115-16, 351.
PSM 90; PS 107-08. Lévy-Bruhl’s “masterpiece of armchair ethnography,” in Abu-Lughod’s words
(“Ethnography’s Values,” 287), has been criticized as racist in a manner that contaminates later
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There are variations to human experience that the imaginative work of
first-personal experience cannot conjure up on its own. As phenomenologist Shaun
Gallagher has more recently argued, empirical encounters with work in psychology
enables the phenomenologist to engage in not merely imaginative but also “factual
variation”; for example, the experience of synaesthesia reveals to the phenomenologist
that in some cases color can, indeed, turn into sound, causing us to expand our
understanding of the nature of sensory experience.76 Merleau-Ponty argues that
this kind of factual variation on the part of phenomenologists in engagement with
empirical sciences is what is already going on in scientific and social scientific work,
even if it is not explicitly thematized as such.77 The ethnographer achieves her
insights through a “reading of the essential structures of a multiplicity of cases,”
finding meaningful resonances between aspects of her own experience and those
observable in the other culture in a manner that enables a genuine understanding
of the other while altering her sense of herself and her own culture, perhaps
profoundly.78 Abu-Lughod’s description of her experience with Awlad ‘Ali mourning
customs illustrates the anthropological process of “factual variation.” As AbuLughod describes these customs, “[a]t the news of a death, Awlad ‘Ali women begin
a stylized, high-pitched, wordless wailing (‘ayāt). Then they ‘cry.’ ‘Crying’ involves
much more than weeping; it is a chanted lament in which the bereaved women and
those who have come to console them express their grief.”79 While this stylized
cultural expression of grief might at first seem alien to the outsider, it can be
understood when we view it not as the meaningless “actions of an insect,” as in the
Cartesian problem of other minds, but as a meaningful behavior that resonates with
our own experience of loss and grief. Abu-Lughod undergoes such an experience
when she accompanies the women of her adoptive Bedouin family to the funeral
of one of their relatives. She writes:
I found the whole scene very moving, with the wailing and “crying.” When I
squatted before the old woman to embrace her and give her my
sympathies, I found myself crying…With each new arrival the ritualized
76
77
78
79
phenomenological engagements with it; see Robert Bernasconi, “Lévy-Bruhl among the Phenomenologists:
Exoticism and the Logic of ‘the Primitive,’” Social Identities, 11.3, 2005, 229-45. I prefer to find in these
phenomenological engagements, along with Merleau-Ponty, their potential for anti-racist engagements
with others and for self-criticism—potential I believe we see in fact embodied in the ethnographic
work of anthropologists like Abu-Lughod.
Shaun Gallagher, “Taking Stock of Phenomenology Futures,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy,
50.2, 2012, 304-18, 308.
Cf. PSM 68-73; FMLS 120.
PSM 70.
Veiled Sentiments, 198.
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LAURA McMAHON
mourning laments would begin again, and I could not hold back my tears.
This funeral had awakened my own grief over the death of my grandmother
and a cousin, neither of whom I had mourned properly.80
In this participatory experience, Abu-Lughod is able to connect with the
grief of her Bedouin “family” through drawing on her own reservoirs of grief, so as
to see the former as “variations” on the latter; as Merleau-Ponty writes, “[o]ur
situation is for us the source of our curiosity, our investigations, and our interest
in…other situations as variants of our own.”81 This empathetic experience is not one
of reducing the “other” to the “same,” but of discovering an identity—a certain kind
of “essence”—across difference. Indeed, Abu-Lughod learns that this kind of
empathizing is self-consciously what goes on between individuals and families within the
Awlad ‘Ali community itself: “Women speak of going to ‘cry with’ somebody,
suggesting that they perceive it as sharing an experience. What they share is grief,
not just by sympathizing, but also by actually reexperiencing, in the company of the
person currently grieving, their own grief over the death of a loved one.”82
As well as seeing other situations as variations of her own, Merleau-Ponty
argues that the anthropologist in turn comes to see her own life “as a variant
of…the lives of others,” such that, in a sense, “[w]e also become the ethnologists of
our own society if we set ourselves at a distance from it.”83 In Abu-Lughod’s recognition
that she had never “mourned properly” the deaths of her own grandmother and
cousin, she calls into question not only her first-personal experience of grieving (or
lack thereof) but Western customs of mourning more generally—many of which,
we can well imagine, would from a Bedouin perspective appear stiff, cold, and
individualistic. Rather than funeral practices in the Western and largely Christian
world appearing as the norm against which non-Western funeral practices appear
exotic, Western practices are “thrown out of focus” and newly seen as cultural
practices, and as cultural practices that might warrant criticism and transformation.
As Merleau-Ponty writes, ethnography “consists in learning to see what is ours as
alien and what was alien as our own.”84
Such “factual variations” between our own and the other’s cultural experiences
allow us to discover certain kinds of “essences”—certain human experiences of
80
81
82
83
84
Veiled Sentiments, 21.
PS 110. See also Abu-Lughod’s argument (against Bourdieu’s claim regarding the imperious perspective
of the ethnographer) for the significant personal vulnerability of the invested ethnographer, as well
as the “devotion to others that fieldwork entails” (“Ethnography’s Values,” 275-77).
Veiled Sentiments, 69.
PS 110; FMLS 120.
FMLS 120.
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honor, of grief, of family—manifesting themselves across difference. These are not
the hierarchical universals of the logicist or universalist, which seek to categorize
everything they might encounter in advance. Neither is cultural experience simply
closed in upon itself, as with sociologism or cultural relativism. Rather, what emerges
through this kind of anthropological work is what Merleau-Ponty calls “lateral
universals,” discoverable in ethnological experience “through an incessant testing
of the self through the other person and the other person through the self.”85 As
Douglas Low explains, this mutual variation between our own and others’ cultural
experiences enables us to “see both as a variation of the human being’s being-inthe-world.”86 What we discover through such research is what Husserl calls
“morphological essences”—essential realities of experience that can in principle
never be precisely fixed in the manner of arithmetic or geometry.87 Rather—in
Low’s words again—“there are patterns and regularities in human behavior, but
they are not fixed essences, for they are lived through not conceived, and as lived
through they open upon a field of imprecise relations that are open to change.”88
We have seen that cultures are “structures,” not in the sense that all of
their systems and behaviors can be subsumed under a static framework, but rather
in the sense that, as in a melody, their different “notes” are related to one another
in some meaningful way or another (be it a relationship of harmony or discord). To
understand the experience of individuals in other cultures we must attend to the
meaning of their behaviors within their larger, complex cultural context. We must
also transpose our own experience into theirs and theirs into our own, in a manner
that leaves the meaning of neither unchanged. In the remainder of this paper, we
shall see further the manner in which it is the very nature of cultural experience to
change with history and in interaction with others, and explore the demands of
cross-cultural understanding in the context of an increasingly globalizing world.
5. Intercultural transformation in a globalizing world
If what is “essential” to human experience—if its unique style across
innumerable dramatic and subtle variations—is in principle imprecise and open to
change, then cultures too are in principle not discrete, bounded, homogeneous
“essences but ‘structural’ sites of interconnection, fluidity, and heterogeneous
85
86
87
88
FMLS 120.
Douglas Low, “Merleau-Ponty and the Foundations of Multiculturalism,” Journal of Philosophical Research,
21, 1996, 377-90, 380.
Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, transl.
F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983), §74; PSM 67.
Low, “Merleau-Ponty on Race, Gender, and Anti-Semitism,” 267.
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LAURA McMAHON
contestation. This has been the case throughout human history. Thanks to their
interactions with others through war, economic migration, religious crusades, and
colonization, cultures are, in phenomenologist John Russon’s words, never “pure” but
“always palimpsests, always texts written on top of earlier writing.”89 However, as
modern economic, technological, and political developments in an increasingly
interconnected world inevitably alter the intimate and social lives of individuals
everywhere, it is more and more impossible to adequately conceive of cultures as
bounded essences.
Abu-Lughod gives as an example of the inextricable influence of contemporary
globalization on non-Western cultures an anecdote from her Awlad ‘Ali “family” in
the mid-1980s, about a young man who had been beaten by his father on account
of having been accused of drinking alcohol at a wedding, forbidden to Muslims. The
young man
sells his cassette player to a neighbor to raise cash and then disappears. His
grandmother cries over him, his aunts discuss it. His father says nothing. It
is days before a distant in-law comes to reassure his grandmother that the
young man is fine and to indicate that they know his whereabouts (he is
working at a construction site 100 kilometers away). No one knows what
the consequences of this event will be. Will he return? What will his father
do? Family honor is at stake, reputations for piety, paternal authority. When
the young man returns several weeks later, accompanied by a maternal
uncle from 50 kilometers west who intervenes to forestall any future
punishments, his grandmother weeps in relief. It could easily have turned
out differently.90
Phenomenologically varying with this story, one can surely find in it generally
human experiences that resonate with experiences of one’s own—youthful rebellion,
the worry of grandmothers, the need or desire for material self-sufficiency, the
stoical standoffs of fathers and sons, the complex politics of familial alliances and
interventions in problems. At the same time, one should not simply assimilate these
experiences to one’s own, but be attentive to the specific manners in which these
events are meaningful within the context of Bedouin society: “family honor is at
stake, reputations for piety, paternal authority.” What we see when we do this is
not a homogeneous culture, but individuals shirking or insisting upon its norms,
relatives who wish to soften the blows of retribution for indiscretions, young people
89
90
John Russon, Sites of Exposure: Art, Politics, and the Nature of Experience (Bloomington: Indiana UP,
2017), 72-73.
Abu-Lughod, “Writing Against Culture,” 156.
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wanting to make their own way and having to navigate their relationship between
home and the larger world in contexts different than those of their parents’ youth.
Modernization is in each detail of this story, from “growing opportunities for wage
labor, the commercialization of Bedouin weddings, and the influx of goods from the
cities,” in Abu-Lughod’s words.91 What we are witnessing is not simply the autochthonous
development of a culture, but complex and uncertain changes in contact with the
(post-)colonial victory of the “West.”
Interactions between “Western” and “non-Western” cultures have not been
simply benign lateral interactions across difference, but hierarchical interactions
between the economically- and politically-dominant nations of Western Europe and
the United States and non-Western societies in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle
East, the latter of which have to greater or lesser degrees been torn apart by
colonialism, imperialism, and wars waged by or between superpowers.92 It is in light
of this contemporary reality that we should seek to understand what is at play in
crimes such as Ayhan Sürücü’s murder of his sister Aynur in Berlin in 2005. In her
ethnography of the construction of Muslim masculinities in contemporary Germany,
Ewing analyzes the heterogeneous effects of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim
sentiment on the population of Turkish “guest workers”, predominantly from rural
Anatolia rather than cosmopolitan cities—that began to arrive in Germany in the
1960s during the country’s post-war economic boom, supposedly on a temporary
basis, but then were allowed to stay and bring their families during the economic
downturn in the 1970s.93 By 2005, a whole generation of young people had grown
up in Muslim Turkish families in Berlin, facing dual pressures to assimilate (from the
German side) and to maintain their Muslim religion and traditions (from the Turkish
side). The tension was exacerbated by widespread Islamophobia that vilified the
very population marginalized by racist discrimination, casting Muslim men as
“backwards” brutes who sought honor through domination and violence. Ewing
describes a growth among some Turkish-German youth—especially among the
poorer and more socially marginalized—of gang-membership that draws on
symbols of Turkish culture and Islam, as well as on inspirations of machismo from
Hollywood Mafia movies and boxing, to assert a positive self-identity in the face of
anti-Islamic German racism and the United States’s “War on Terror”—a war which
many Muslims interpreted as a war on Islam.94 Ironically and tragically, it is these
youth gangs that are likely to glorify violence against their Muslim sisters—sisters
91
92
93
94
“Writing Against Culture,” 156.
See Jaggar, “‘Saving Amina,’” 62-75 and Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, 31-32.
Ewing, 15.
Ewing, 167, 172-73.
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LAURA McMAHON
grappling with similar tensions to the gang members themselves—as symbols of
Islam and masculinity, and not the elders whom one might imagine to be the
representatives of “tradition.”95 Furthermore, many of the larger structures of
support and recourse for abused women that have historically been in place in many
rural Islamic communities were absent in the nuclear family organizations of cities
like Berlin, isolating many girls and women in their fate where they would
“traditionally” have had significant social protections.96
To call such violent acts as the murder of Aynur Sürücü “traditional” or
“Islamic” is very much to miss the point and obscure the lived reality of the situation.
For one thing, calling such murders “traditional” or “Islamic” ignores the fact that
such acts are in fact quite rare.97 Despite media claims to an increase in honor killings
in Berlin in 2005, Sürücü’s murder was the only one that in fact fit the “classic” bill:
the others were murders of wives by husbands—hardly, a uniquely Islamic or nonWestern phenomenon. For another thing, framing such events as “traditional” or
“Islamic” elects for a simplistic, exotifying vision of “death by culture” that defies
human comprehension or empathy, rather than for a difficult grappling with the
complex, but ultimately mundane and comprehensible impact of postcolonial global
politics on individuals’ and families’ lived experiences of their cultural identities.
Once again, it makes unrecognizable Sürücü’s experience as first-personal, human
experience, with all of the subtleties and conflicts of the latter. One powerful route
into such complex political grappling is precisely the kind of ethnographic research
we have been discussing from a phenomenological perspective, with an eye turned
explicitly to the challenges of multiculturalism in a deeply unequal modernizing
world. Abu-Lughod does this with a particular Bedouin community in Egypt, in a
manner that allows us to see how
others live as we perceive ourselves as living, not as robots programmed
with “cultural” rules, but as people going through life agonizing over decisions,
making mistakes, trying to make themselves look good, enduring tragedies
and personal losses, enjoying others, and finding moments of happiness.98
95
96
97
98
Ewing, 172.
Marnia Lazreg discusses this phenomenon of the disintegration of extended kindship structures in
the context of modernization and colonial property laws in Algeria, and women’s increased vulnerability
to abuse (rather than liberation) in The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question (New
York: Routledge, 1994), 99-101
On the rarity of honor killings, and also on the difficulties of obtaining reliable statistics on honor
killings thanks to how murders are classified by police and media, see Ewing, Stolen Honor, 152-53
and Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?, 128-30.
Writing Against Culture,” 158.
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Ewing carries out such ethnographic work not only through her study of
Turkish immigrant communities in Germany, but of German majority culture’s own
complex historical and cultural Othering of their Turkish neighbors. In MerleauPonty’s words, Ewing is an “ethnologist of [her] own society,” opening space, through
her “variations” with aspects of the lived experience of the Turkish immigrant community,
for critical assessment of “Western” practices as themselves cultural and unequal
rather than neutral and emancipated, and as themselves deeply implicated in the
oppression of, and crimes committed by, immigrants burdened by a long history of
colonialism, loss of rich and dynamic cultural traditions, and compulsory modernization
on a “Western” timeline.
Such ethnographies of particular Western and non-Western cultures furthermore
enable us to see more clearly the manners in which feminist resistance to oppression
and creative approaches to emancipatory change in fact arise in lived experience.
Against the standards of universalism that are meant to apply to all women in all
historical and cultural circumstances, and against a vicious cultural relativism that
regards non-Western cultures as frozen in tradition and history, such an ethnographic
eye attends to how feminist change in fact occurs in the lived experience of real
women and their communities, in manners that often cannot be predicted in advance
and that come about through women’s (and men’s) creative improvisation within
a confluence of material, social, and political intercultural forces. Indeed, dominant.
For example, Narayan describes her own feminist awakening in India happening at
the conjunction of: the kitchen table, where her mother complained to her friends
about the constraints of her traditional marriage and relationship to her mother-inlaw; the changing marriage customs that allowed girls of her generation to marry
later than their mothers (who had already married later than their grandmothers);
and the educational opportunities newly afforded girls of her class and generation
that had not been available to her mother and aunts.99 As another example, AbuLughod describes arguments to which she was privy between some of the young
women of her Awlad ‘Ali “family” and their father about wanting to attend university
in Cairo—arguments that were, not without some irony, buttressed by the young
women’s prideful claims regarding their own honor and trustworthiness as
traditional Bedouins and pious Muslims.100 Feminist transformation does not
always follow Western models, and does not come about through external
imposition: it arises within the heterogeneous, discordant, and changing cultural
situations of non-Western women themselves.
99
Narayan, 7, 23.
“Ethnography’s Values,” 265.
100 Abu-Lughod,
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LAURA McMAHON
Ayhan Sürücü’s murder of his sister Aynur was represented in the news media
and popular films as a clash of “Western” and “non-Western” values, of modernity
and tradition, of feminist liberation and patriarchal oppression, and of secularism
and religion. Ethnographic research into both the German culture in which this tragic
event took place, and into the place of honor in particular societies in the Middle
East and Northern Africa, make such dichotomous interpretations impossible. The
phenomenological variations at their methodological heart lead us, on the contrary,
to recognize the richness, value, and always dynamic and interpretive nature of
cultural practices—including practices of “honor”—for the women and men who
live them in different ways in a diversity of human contexts. Such recognition, in
turn, leads us not to confuse, as Abu-Lughod urges, the ‘pathological breakdowns’
of some of these rich cultural realities in the face of immigration, the pressures of
modernization, postcolonial inequality, racism, and violence for the cultural system
itself—a point tragically lost in much of the discourse about Islam and the
oppression of Muslim women in the past twenty years.101
Conclusion: Phenomenological anthropology and anthropological
phenomenology
In this paper, I have put Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of
anthropology into critical dialogue with Abu-Lughod’s ethnographic study of a
particular Bedouin community in Egypt, with the hopes of demonstrating that, in
distinction from political and academic debates between universalism and relativism,
a phenomenologically-grounded ethnography provides a rich route into grasping
how human experience is always locally- and culturally-shaped, but also capable of
creative self-interpretation and improvisation in dialogue with others. I have argued
that such intercultural engagements offer a critical antidote to Western stereotypes of
non-Western and especially Muslim cultures, and also offer concrete insights into the
particular challenges of such cultures in the face of modernization in an increasingly
interconnected, and deeply unequal, world. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize
the other direction of this relationship, for phenomenologists in particular. I hope
to have shown, at least implicitly, that it is not only phenomenology that has
interpretive tools to offer our understanding of other cultures the work of feminist
anthropologists like Abu-Lughod has much to offer phenomenologists in return.
Far from being merely the rigorous description of first-personal experience,
as common misconceptions often have it, phenomenology can only be accountable
to the essential features of human experience if it commits itself to attending to the
rich expressions of the latter’s variability in dialogue with a diversity of sources. As
101
94
“Ethnography’s Values,” 281.
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Russon writes, the responsible phenomenologist “does not simply rely on the
stream of her or his own personal experience but also turns to the vast array of
biographical, psychological, and historical research to learn what the terms are in
which people in general ‘live’ their experience.”102 Engaging with the efforts of
feminist anthropologists to understand other cultures on their own terms and in all
of their ‘structural’ complexity, with a keen eye to the global power dynamics that
make such work challenging, helps to hold phenomenologists accountable to their
own claims about the essential nature of human being-in-the-world. Especially for
those in the relatively privilege of Western academia, it is crucial to hold in reserve
confidence in the centrality and normality of one’s own experience. Decentering
one’s own experience by reading, citing, and learning from that of others, with their
own perspectives and alternative histories, enables marginalized voices to come to
the fore and challenges Western prejudices concerning the ‘normal’ and
‘enlightened’ parameters of human experience. I hope to have made some progress
in demonstrating here the importance of such multicultural engagements for the
culturally- and politically-critical phenomenological researcher.
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STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 99-115
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.05
THE RHYTHM OF REORGANIZING THE WORLD.
MALDINEY AND THE THEORY OF CRISIS
YASUHIKO MURAKAMI∗
ABSTRACT. This article examines the work of French phenomenologist Henri Maldiney
(1912-2013), a philosopher who shed light on the phenomenon of interrogation by
a world that has lost its pre-existing coordinates. While Maldiney himself referred
to paintings and mental illness, we try to read his theory as an analysis of social
situation and action. His theory helps us understand end-of-life situations in which
caregivers encounter scenes where it is difficult to break out of a stalemate. It is a
theory of practice based on an innovative understanding of the concept of rhythm.
Keywords: transpassibility, rhythm, form, chaos, psychopathology
Introduction
If a phenomenologist conducts research in the medical field, particularly in
end-of-life situations, she or he will encounter scenes in which it is difficult to break
out of a stalemate; or if she or he is lucky enough, where such a stalemate begins
to change rapidly in the presence of the nurses1. Such situations are accompanied
by some kind of crisis in practice2. At the same time, phenomenology begins to
enter into the theory of social practice while analyzing the structure of these scenes.
Phenomenology is a methodology of describing the movement of an individual
event from within. If it can present a social critique, it would take the form of an
analysis of micro-events in society rather than as a critique from a macro perspective.
In this respect, we are influenced by both Rita Charon’s narrative medicine and the
∗
1
2
Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Japan. Email: murakami@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp
Since 2003, the author has conducted a phenomenological qualitative study in medical practice. Since
2010, he has been working on analyzing caregivers’ interviews (cf. Yasuhiko Murakami, “Phenomenological
analysis of a Japanese professional caregiver specialized in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,”
Neuroethics, 13 (181), 2020, 181-191.
The Japanese version of this article was published in Yasuhiko Murakami, Rhythms that do not intersect.
- The Phenomenology of Encounters and Discommunication (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2021).
YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
ethnomethodology influenced by Alfred Schutz. Nevertheless, we would like to
attempt a more theoretical argument in this article. The following analysis aims to
analyze the transformation of situations in practice from a micro perspective. Henri
Maldiney’s (1912-2013) phenomenology guides our argument.
When something unpredictable comes to me, the world has a double
manifestation. On the one hand, it is cognitively segmented and I know exactly
what is in front of me. There are streets, cars on the road, people walking on the
pavement, and so on. On the other hand, there are times when I think I know, but
I do not seem to know what to do. The unknowable aspect forces me to ask
questions, to respond, when I know the things I know, but do not know how to act.
How do I stand in a world that has lost its coordinates, or what kind of experience
is it to receive the world without cultural coordinates?
I refer to the work of French phenomenologist Henri Maldiney, as a
philosopher who shed light on the phenomenon of interrogation by a world that
has lost its pre-existing coordinates. Whereas Maldiney referred to paintings and
mental illness, I try to read his theory as an analysis of social situation and action.
His theory helps understand the production of social actions within a critical situation.
I consider Maldiney a phenomenologist describing a scene of crisis where existing
social norms have been invalidated.
The phase in which the world and action now stand anew is what Maldiney
mysteriously called “rhythm.” In the first place, it becomes clear that rhythm is the
experience of man’s rise against the world as his encounter with the world. The
human being encounters the world as a rhythm and soars in the present. In the
medical field where I am currently engaged in research, this theory can be applied
to describe the practice of confronting situations involving great difficulty.
Maldiney was an aesthete and collector of contemporary art and a
psychopathologist who studied psychiatric hospitals. He taught for a long time at
the University of Lyon and is best known by Deleuze's reference to him, and has
been read by Marc Richir’s group and Jean Oury's group at La Borde Hospital. Painting
is a means of expressing the eventfulness of an event, and psychosis is a failure to
encounter the event. I refer to two aspects of Maldiney’s argument here: the
function of giving birth to Form in the encounter with a Formless where the world
has lost its coordinates, and the function of transpassibility, which makes the encounter
with the unpredictable possible.
While this reflection is not directly concerned with social justice, it does
consider how the clinical practice is structured when it tries to change a situation
of crisis. In other words, this is an elucidation of the social relations at the microlevel.
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1. Descending into chaos
#Starting from Chaos: Vertigo as a starting point for action
Getting “lost”3 is the starting point of human experience. Lost in the streets
is a state in which, even though one can perceive the houses and the road in front
of one’s eyes, one does not know where one is or which way to go. The world loses
its coordinates and one feels dizzy. This uninhabitable world is what Maldiney called
chaos.
When lost in the desert, there is only a horizon that stretches forever
around “here” (“We do not move through it [the landscape], but we walk in it from
here to here, enveloped by the horizon which, as the “here,” continuously transforms
in itself.”4). When “there” is lost, “here” is also lost. This is chaos. This state of affairs
is the starting point of the relationship between man and the world, as Maldiney
put it.
This is the human activity of creating self and Form (the order of the world)
out of a state of being caught up in chaos and losing both coordinates and self.5
Such chaos is a crisis of loss of self, yet true creativity can only be produced from
the trials of such chaos. There is no creativity in the routine work that we can see
ourselves doing in a world that is already in a fixed order.
Form and Rhythm oppose chaos. Form is produced to make chaos habitable.6
According to Maldiney, the time structure of different Forms is rhythm. An artist
creates a relationship between the world and the body in a way other than the
externally given coordinates, thus creating order in the world and the body from
within.
Between this muddled beam of aberrant lines where the gaze is without
hold, through which Paul Klee illustrates chaos and the radiance of space from
an origin established in a leap, there is nothing but Rhythm. It is through it
that the transition from chaos to order takes place.7
In other words, for Maldiney, rhythm is the movement by which a habitable
world is generated in the first place or the movement that determines the “here”
3
4
5
6
7
Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace (Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1973), 149. All quotes from Maldiney
are my translation.
Ibid.
Ibid., 150.
Ibid., 148.
Ibid., 151.
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YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
in which I inhabit the world and the “there” from which events arise. He proposed
a very radical point of view as rhythm is usually taken as something that flows with
a melody in an already existing world. However, he did not see rhythm as a horizontal
movement within the timeline of the melody, but rather as a vertical movement
generated as an emergence of the world in the first place.
If it were not possible to produce a Form (i.e., the order of the world) and
live in an ordered space, the expanse of space would become a bottomless abyss
where one would have to stand in vertigo.8 If all the order of space is absent, it is
an uninhabitable world, it is uninhabitable chaos. This is, at the same time, inability
to distance oneself from the situation.9
# Winnicott’s Formlessness and Maldiney’s Form
I graft the argument of English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Winnicott to
Maldiney’s theory of Form. The Formless state is the starting point of creativity, as
Winnicott described. When caregivers can create a holding that supports the child
and allows them to accept existence as “Formlessness” or “unintegration,” the child
can play, free of anxiety, and the adult patient with strong inhibitions, can talk.
Winnicott discovered that creativity is based on holding.10 Conversely, when
Formlessness is not supported by holding, it breaks down, and the invasive chaos
where a sense of self is not established is experienced as disintegration.11 This is a
destructive and unspeakable trauma. In nightmares, panic, and severe depression,
such scenes are expressed empirically. There needs to be a holding in the background
to produce the Form as the global order of the world. This is a point that Maldiney
does not make: we need a holding in the background to produce a “here” and a
“there” in the world through rhythm. We distinguish between Formlessness as
protected and destructive chaos without holding. Maldiney did not explain why one
may fall into the breakdown and ignored the intersubjective basis behind the
emergence of the Form and the Rhythm.
# “Here” and “there” as the first order of the world
In the chaos, my “here” is lost and dissolved, and my “there” crumbles and
is cut away from under my feet.12 This movement from chaos to a space that creates
8
9
10
11
12
Cf. Ibid., 150-151.
Cf. Ibid., 150.
D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Routledge, 1971), 34-35.
D. W. Winnicott, Psycho-analytic Explorations (London: Karnac, 1989), chs. 18 and 21.
Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 150.
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an order in the world is “rhythm.”13 Rhythm is the movement of the primordial self
or “here,” and the primordial rhythm is the birth of the primordial “I am.” Some
situations we cannot understand leave us at a loss, and it is in these situations that
creative practice beyond the routine use of technology begins. To take it a step
further, in Maldiney's view, rhythm is the essential way in which humans emerge
in the world. It is how we begin to relate to the world: “Rhythm is the truth of this
first communication with the world [...].”14 One can call this “primordial rhythm.”
In Maldiney's example, in Northern Flemish painter Jan van Goyen's “Polder
Landscape,” the disparate rhythms of water, horizon, and sky meet on the tidal flats
of Polder, and the world emerges as a unifying rhythm, and the viewer stands there.
Maldiney called this movement, in which phenomena that should not be incompatible
with each other are reconciled in a (primordial) rhythm.
What is the primordial rhythm as our essential relationship to the world?
Or what is the primordial rhythm as our first appearance in the world? Or what is
primordial rhythm as first appearing in the world? It is the opening up of the world
through which the body can live and move in the world through rhythm. Rhythm is
the way in which the world is revealed as a habitable openness. The sphere of the
rhythm is a place where we can dance, it is the openness of the space in which we
can play creatively. This is our relationship with the world at its core.
In serious cases that appear during my interviews with nurses, they are
often at a loss for words and are not confident about the outcome of their practice.
However, it is the loss of practice in such situations that creates actions that go
beyond the manual. A tiny clue in such a situation can help us grasp and reassess
our relationship with the situation and create order in the world for the first time.
2. “Form” making
# Making a “Form” out of chaos
Maldiney called the creation of the relationship between the body and the
world from within the production of Form. For Maldiney, Form was not an image
(or figure) of an individual object. The production of Form is the disclosure of the
whole world and the emergence of the world’s entire order. In the production of
Form (= the production of the entire world order), each object image is an element,
a part of the production of Form in the world as a whole. In other words, while an
13
14
Ibid., 151.
Ibid., 153.
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YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
abstract painting may not use an image of an object, as “Form” is the structuring of
the entire surface (the world), the “Form” arises in the same way in both abstract
and figurative paintings (and requires a perspective that views a figurative painting
as if it were an abstract one). For Maldiney, Form was more important than image.
Art is an attempt to initiate and transForm Form, that is, the composition of the
entire world. Whereas the image of the object is enclosed and closed with contour
lines, the creation of the world order of Form is an expanding movement of spacetime and openness.15 The lines that create Form open up a path in the world. The
individual image takes on meaning by having a place in the “Form” as the transformation
of the whole world.
If we put it in the context of our research on caregivers, it means that the
breaking out of a situation that is difficult to accept and judge happens as a reorganization
of the whole situation. In other words, practice is about the reorganization of Form
(= world order). Change takes place by involving the entire situation. The practice
is the transformation of a situation, a movement that transforms the situation as a
whole (rather than the manipulation or treatment of individual tools or objects –
these are equivalents of images in the paintings). Even if the individual events in
the field (instruments, disease sites, staff movements, etc.) are clear, there will be
many situations where it is not obvious what to do about them. The nurse transForms
the situation into something habitable and communicative.
In one of my interviews with visiting nurses, the situation changed at the
point when a young mother with cancer died. Her daughters had not been able to
communicate with her, as they had not accepted her approaching death.
Ms. E.: In the end, when she died, I got a phone call from her father saying
“Ms. E., I think she is not breathing,” and by the time I got there, she was already
dead. The junior high school kids were in another room, and I told them, “Your
mother’s body will get cold very quickly, so let her touch you.” When she died,
I said, “Mum’s body is going to be cold,” and put their hands on her belly like
this, I said, “Mum is still warm.” As they touched them, I could see the two sisters
crying, and I thought to myself, “Oh, maybe they were finally able to cry, maybe
they were able to get their emotions out and it would have been easier for
them.”
A mother, who was in the final stages of cancer and her daughters could
not communicate with each other. In the last weeks of her life, the patient and her
daughters did not speak to each other. In other words, from the perspective of
communication, the situation was a stalemate with a loss of articulation. Immediately
15
Cf. Henri Maldiney, L’art, l’éclair de l’être (Paris: Cerf, [1993] 2012), 154.
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THE RHYTHM OF REORGANIZING THE WORLD. MALDINEY AND THE THEORY OF CRISIS
after her death, at that point when the daughters’ hands were placed on the body
of their mother, the entire situation became organized. There was no change in any
object in the room, but when the children began to cry, the entire situation changed.
The relationship between the children and the dead mother was generated
from the point of contact between the hands and the body. In practical terms, the
nurse could not encourage reconciliation between the mother and the children
when she was alive. In the above quotation, the movement of the nurse became a
medium for the work of mourning. The generation of an entire world Form out of
chaos is what Maldiney called “rhythm.”
Here, the difference between Maldiney's and our own perspectives also
becomes clear. The transformation of the world is at stake, but for us, the elements
of the world's transformation are not sensory objects (as in the case of the painting)
but actions. For Maldiney, the world is an order (or disorder) of sensibility, but for
us, it is a situation constituted from our daily experience, death, or social relations.
We see Form as being in the foreground of the cultural and social order. I now shift
Maldiney’s argument a bit in this area of social practice. The social situation produces
destructive chaos (i.e., social problems such as difficulties in life, discrimination, and
violence), and it is the possibility of reconstituting the whole social situation that is
questioned in action. In practice, this is exclusively the question. In other words,
while undertaking Maldiney's argument on the creativity of Form, our argument
puts the dimensions of social situation and action into perspective. It asks to
reconfigure the entire situation through action.
# Rhythm as the temporality of “Form”
The platform that underpins the transformation from chaos to Form is what
Maldiney called “rhythm.” Maldiney began with Benveniste’s search for etymology
and confirmed that rhythm is not a flow, but an indication of Form. It is not a static
schema, but rather a Form as a trace of dynamic movement, such as, for example,
a rippling pattern. The rhythm is a “pattern of a fluid element.”16 In Benveniste’s
words, it is “a form born of improvisation, instantaneous and modifiable.”17
These are convenient terms for us to use as we aim to capture the “Form”
of something in motion when we describe the practices of care. What our research
tries to grasp is the transformation of the entire situation through practice in a
situation in flux, which is difficult to put into words and has no fixed Form. Internal
16
17
Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 157.
Émile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I. (Paris : Gallimard, [1966] 2014), 333.
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YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
consistency is an important element in the practice of medicine and welfare. If we
can talk about “style” concerning practice, it is because the movement to reconcile
the diverse social contexts and forces is coherent.
Practices in a given situation have their own and often multi-layered rhythms.
They are not only polyphonic18 but also polyrhythmic. Maldiney believed that rhythms
are harmonic movements that unite opposing forces. In the medical field, action
emerges as a response to various contradictory and conflicting social forces, but also
as a response to reconcile them. The different rhythms of the different movements
conflict with each other. Behind the holistic, primordial rhythm that pervades the
entire situation in medical and welfare settings, there are various rhythms of individual
layers that constitute polyrhythms.
Rhythm is invisible to the eye. Fortunately, this rhythm of action is expressed
in interviews through various mimetic and syntactic rhythms (Japanese makes
heavy use of mimetic words). The actions and narratives with their rhythms (temporal
structures) are distinct, but two sides of the same coin and the structure of the
actions are reflected in the grammatical structures of the narrative. For example,
in the following quote from a nurse, the experience of a cancer patient is described:
[Showing the interviewer a plastic bottle in her hand] A patient was starting
to feel this weight. The weight of his legs is also there, but this weight of the
bottle is the first thing that wins. Then he gradually [dandan] became unable
to go out and buy it himself. The person who starts talking to you about this
is the person you want to talk to about death. Yes, that's right. If you listen
carefully and carefully [jikkuri jikkuri]. I mean, as you experience that you can't
do those things, and every day you become a little bit gradually [dandan] unable
to do them, you are getting closer and closer [dondon] to death, you know, to
yourself...That's why you are afraid of it. There is the fear of not being able to
do what you can't do yourself, but at the same time, there is the fear of death
coming closer and closer [dondon], and people talk about death while talking
about how everything they can do is being taken away from them, being
taken away from them....
In this scene, the patient feels the decline of his body “gradually [dandan]”
and that death is approaching “closer and closer [dondon].” This decline and the
approach of death are captured in the listener's attitude of “carefully and carefully
[jikkuri jikkuri].” With “dandan,” we hear the slow but unpredictable rhythm of
decay, which is felt from within the body, and the rapid rhythm of death comes in
18
Jaakko Seikkula & Tom Arnkil, Open dialogues and anticipations: Respecting otherness in the present
moment (Helsinki: National Institute for Health and Welfare, 2014).
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THE RHYTHM OF REORGANIZING THE WORLD. MALDINEY AND THE THEORY OF CRISIS
from somewhere outside (but where does death come from?). In this scene, the
rhythms of the patient’s decline and the nurse's “carefulness” are simultaneously
folded together. That is, even this small scene is made of several different rhythms
– polyrhythms – that are folded together.
The two rhythms oppose each other and the rhythm of the practice of
“listening carefully and attentively” is established. These three disparate partial
rhythms, “gradually [dandan],” “more and more [dondon],” and “slow and deliberate
[jikkuri jikkuri],” are intertwined to create a scene, namely a primordial rhythm of
practice.19 There is an appropriate speed and timing for the action to take place.
3. “There” as a starting point for the production of Form
# Maldiney as an implicit reader of Kant
For reasons unknown, Maldiney rarely mentioned Kant, despite making
frequent references to Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling. It is an odd silence, given that his
main focus was on aesthetics. Perhaps it was a nod to his teacher, Pierre Lachièze-Rey
(1885-1957):20 “Form” in Maldiney is, as he described it, a dynamic movement in
which Form is created. Maldiney, for example, stressed on Klee’s dynamic implication
of Gestaltung. Thus, the concept of Form has an affinity with Kant’s concept of
imagination (Einbildungskraft translates to mean “power to create Form”) because
both of them constitute the power to find a pre-linguistic order of the world. In light
of this, Maldiney’s aesthetics serve as an interesting re-reading of Kant’s Critique
of Judgment.
Maldiney's discussion on the transformation of chaos into Form set up a
genetic theory starting from the mathematical sublime21 to aesthetic judgment
(Kant had no such idea). Besides, Kant set up a level of lethal chaos in front of the
mathematical sublime, from which we can read the emergence of the dynamic
sublime from chaos (the level of lethal chaos has a faint trace in Kant as a break in
the imagination, but it is masked by reason's immediate overcoming of it as the
sublime).
19
20
21
Maldiney presumably did not recognize partial rhythms, but Benveniste defined rhythm as “the
arrangement of parts in a whole.” Émile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I. (Paris :
Gallimard, [1966] 2014), 330.
Cf. Henri Maldiney, Philosophie, art et existence (Paris : éditions du Cerf, 2007), 182.
Mathematical sublime is the experience of discovering the power of reason (i.e., mathematical real
infinity) to exceed it in the experience of immensity beyond the power of conception (cf. Immanuel
Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, [1790] 1990), 84-84.
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YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
Maldiney's description is convoluted. However, bearing Kant in mind, another
important stage between chaos and Form becomes clearer. He spoke of the transition
from chaos to Form, referring to Cézanne, as follows:
This perdition was the first moment of art, no one said it better than Cézanne:
“At that moment I became one with my painting. (= not the painting painted,
but the world to be painted.) We are an iridescent chaos. I come before my
motif, I get lost in it... We [Cézanne and the world] germinate. It seems to me,
when the night comes down, that I will paint and that I have never painted”22
There is no distance between the world and man, between this cosmic rain
where Cézanne “breathes the virginity of the world” and “this dawn of
ourselves above nothingness” that the “wandering hands of nature” cannot
gather. But in a second phase, Cézanne finds himself, thanks to drawing, in
the “stubborn geometry,” the “measure of the earth.”
“Slowly the geological foundations appear to me... everything falls into
place... I begin to separate myself from the landscape, to see it”23,24
First, there is a state of being buried in aesthetic chaos (“[in the sublime]
the forces of life are for once momentarily blocked.”25 Then a distance is created
between chaos and the painter, and chaos is experienced as the sublime (the “safe
place” is the condition for the experience of the dynamic sublime26). In the quote
presented above, this distance from chaos (i.e., the foundations of the world) is
expressed in terms of “compulsive geometry” and “the measure of the earth.”
Cézanne could produce Forms (works of art) from the safe zone of “geometry” and
“scale.” The dozens of slightly different paintings on Mont Sainte-Victoire were not
only a repetition of the free play of imagination and concept (aesthetic judgment)
but also a sublime way of raising the world out of chaos each time.
# From the mathematical to the dynamic sublime
I make use of Maldiney’s argument as a theory of action. I treat his ontogeny
of aesthetic experience as the genesis of the mathematical sublime and transfer his
theory to the dynamic sublime. It is this distinction that concerns the faint difference
22
23
24
25
26
Joachim Gasquet, Cézanne (Paris : Éd. Encre marine, 2012), 245-246
Ibid., 246
Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 150.
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 75.
Dynamic sublime is the experience of discovering the power of practical reason beyond that of
conception in the violence that exceeds the power of conception (the amount of containment =
the excess of intensity).
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THE RHYTHM OF REORGANIZING THE WORLD. MALDINEY AND THE THEORY OF CRISIS
between aesthetics and psychopathology that Maldiney himself did not clearly
distinguish. I would like to move away from psychopathology and open up further to
the practice of care.
In the mathematical sublime, the mental basis for the acceptance of the
sense of a huge object was the quantitative infinite (the maximum of the external
extension) as a mathematical idea. If we replace this with a theory of action, it
becomes the dynamic sublime. In such cases, the foundation for overcoming nature’s
powerful force that overwhelms a person is, in Kant’s case, the moral law and the
Infinite (God) as the Ideal that supports the law (this idea of God makes it possible
for a person to be in a “safe place”). In the modern context, the terms “moral law”
and “God” are difficult to use. We live in an age in which no single foundation such
as God can function. The foundations on which events can be received and actions
(world transformation) produced must be rediscovered in our social context. I
would like to think of Maldiney’s phenomenology as a theory of phenomenological
description of situations that critique and recombine existing social structures.
# The gaze that captures the Form
Maldiney quoted Cézanne’s phrase, that is “be separated from the
landscape [= chaos].”27 Alternatively, the movement of Form was described as “The
moment of appearance [of the Form] does not depend on the object but the
gaze.”28 A gaze that places some distance between us and the world is necessary
for the creation of Form.29 In capturing an image, the perception of an object and
its perception is automatic. However, to acquire the overall Form of the world, a
singular perspective is necessary. The gaze that captures Form is neither the
“sense” nor the “perception” treated in Husserl and/or in cognitive science. It is a
special kind of gaze that transcends the individual things and acquires the articulation
of the whole situation. Maldiney's gaze can be compared to Kant's Einbildungskraft,
which is the power of grasping the image, whereas it is the gaze that grasps the
Form (= the composition of the entire situation). Similarly, what he called “sensation”
is not the five senses, but the “opening” of the field of Form.30 The senses are
therefore associated with Aristotle's fantasy.31
In nursing practice, we can see the perspective of viewing the situation from
a distance. For example, there are cases such as Ms. G in the pediatric oncology ward
27
28
29
30
31
Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 150.
Ibid., 155.
Ibid., Footnote.
Ibid., 152.
Cf. Henri Maldiney, Aîtres de la langue et de la pensée, 225.
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YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
where she is aware of the fact that she is “dry” (she used herself the word “dry” in
English) and has a bird’s-eye view of a child dying, and there are cases such as Ms.
E’s earlier comment, “What am I going to do?” I have also encountered a nurse who
expressed reflection by using the personal pronoun “I” when she was involved in a
situation and used “myself” while looking at it from a distance. With this distanced
gaze, the nurse always assesses the situation by synthesizing observations of the
whole, and at the same time, observes minute details. It is not simply a matter of
looking at things in detail, but of looking at the power lines of the various contexts
to draw the overall “shape” of the complex situation. To capture the “shape” of the
world as a whole, one needs a gaze that does not perceive individual objects but
looks around from a distance.
Just as Kant considered the aesthetic experience “disinterested”, apart
from interests, Maldiney applied the term “witness”32 because he believed that the
painter is no longer caught up in the chaos at the time of creation. However, while
considering the rhythm in medical practice, the status changes because people
continue to be caught up in the distance while it is happening. While the practitioner
is unavoidably involved in the situation, another perspective simultaneously employs
distance in the situation and produces action. The duality of this perspective of
distance amid involvement is another difference between our theory of action as a
critical philosophy and Maldiney’s aesthetics. The creation of art becomes possible
as a play in a space protected from society, and is constructed differently in this
respect from action in society.
# “There” as the base point of the world
The perspective is paired with finding a distanced reference point of
“there” in the world. In his later work, Maldiney tried to rethink the movement of
producing Form out of chaos and of transforming an incomprehensible world into
an intelligible one, with the new concepts of “transpassibility” and “transpossibility.”
When one takes on the whole of existence, if one is unable to determine
the coordinates and create order, it becomes chaos and is swallowed up. This is the
same argument as that in the past. Maldiney invented a new concept of “transpassibility”
as a moment of the genesis of this world transformation. Transpassibility emphasizes
the unpredictability of the world suffering an unexpected transformation. It is the
arrival of the unforeseen transformation that is the transpossibility beyond the
possible. In other words, the production of Form and transpossibility are at the same
level.
32
Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 155.
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Even later, Maldiney repeatedly used the scene of a lost man calling out to
the void to describe the transpassibility.
The most extreme of the appeal, that of the lost being, is what illuminates
it best. A lost person who appeals to the empty space calls for a presence from
which, there, a new space opens up and gives him a site. He/she calls for the
transformation of the world into another where his/her lost being and with
him/her his/her “here.”33
At this time, one calls for the transformation of the world not from here,
but from there as a starting point for the arrival of that which does not yet exist. By
piercing the desert with a call to that “there” which does not yet exist, the whole
world may be transformed into something meaningful and habitable from that
“there” as a starting point. The call is a call to the “coming chasm” that transforms
chaos into significance (or the primal articulation of the world). It is the starting
point of the first opening of the world or the transformation of the whole world.
True screaming never fills the space between us. As we all know, when the
scream catches me, the scream creates a void all around me. Because the
scream which calls for the Absolute is lost in the world. How can it call out to
the distance? The scream is first and foremost a call to the possibility of
nearness and remoteness. The voice calls to the “there” where someone can
be. [...] The voice calls towards the void and calls for the void to arrange the
place-site [...].”34
The “there” is not just a scene of the expanding perceptual world that the
painter faces. Let me present an example. One year, during a very hot summer, I
accompanied two visiting psychiatric nurses to see a woman with severe schizophrenia.
In a room with a malfunctioning air conditioner, she sat with cardboard piled up to
form a wall around her. She suffered from the persecution delusion and auditory
hallucination. The two nurses asked her, “Ms. X, how are you feeling? Isn’t it too
hot?” They quietly called out the patient’s name and approached her. They were,
of course, calling out to the patient in front of them, but it was not clear whether
she heard what they said. The patient continued to hurl at the delusional figure.
The nurses, however, were speaking to the (supposedly “sane”) patient somewhere.
Calling the patient’s name tries to open the “there,” the window through which the
33
34
Henri Maldiney, Penser l’homme et la folie (Grenoble : Jérome Millon, 1991), 405; Cf. Henri Maldiney,
L’art, l’éclair de l’être, 98, 282.
Henri Maldiney, L’art, l’éclair de l’être, 70.
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YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
world can become another world where they can communicate with each other.
What is glimpsed as the world to come is a world where the patient can contact the
people around him or her and open up a space for encounters. Maldiney called this
kind of meeting place “transpassibility.” In such situations, “the place from which
the other comes” and “the horizon of the world that you and I share” become radicalized
as questions.
Maldiney defined schizophrenia as a loss of transpassibility. However, the
question of how to create transpassibility with people with schizophrenia becomes
important. In our perspective, psychopathology, which is dedicated to objectifying
and labeling the sick by diagnosis, needs to be transformed into a theory of helping
techniques that transforms the entire social relationship, which is integral to the
helping person.
Maldiney often featured scenes where the sudden appearance of a deer on
an Alpine peak changes the landscape:
One day on a mountain path, a farmer from the Vallouise, an old chamois
hunter, was trying to tell [...] the striking moment when the animal appears
on the ridge. And these were the words: “I didn't see it coming, all of a sudden
it's there, like a breath, like nothing, like a dream.” The emotion felt exceeds
the expectation and the sense of the quest. The appearance of the chamois
is not part of a preliminary configuration which, on the contrary, it cancels. It
is the bursting point of a field of incidence and reception, the point of origin
of space-time, or rather of the moment-place where the sky and the earth
and the interval appear in the open, of which it is the there.35
The challenge is to transform the relationship between the patient and the
whole world in which they live by calling them “out there” where they are likely to
be heard. Therefore, contrary to what the old textbooks of psychiatry forbid,
frontline caregivers (nurses and social workers) are willing to enter the world of
schizophrenic delusion. This may be self-evident now where the Open Dialogue is
commonplace, but nursing and social work practitioners have been working with
severely mentally ill patients this way for a long time.
The gaze that distances itself from chaos is paired with the “there” that is
the reference point of the world, but “here” and “there” are not opposed to each
other. One sees from a perspective of “there.”36 That is where the painter's perspective
is located. That is, the birth of a point of view “here” and the birth of a point “there”
35
36
Henri Maldiney Penser l’homme et la folie, 406.
Henri Maldiney, L’art, l’éclair de l’être, 285.
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THE RHYTHM OF REORGANIZING THE WORLD. MALDINEY AND THE THEORY OF CRISIS
are the same thing. The emergence of the “there” is the possibility of making the position
possible, which is before the emergence of three-dimensional space. Opening that
“there” and seeing from there opens up a new world.
It is from this “there” where the perspective is placed that the call is
established and the world is transformed. Or, perhaps more precisely, the world (I
dwell there) becomes possible when such a “there” becomes possible. That is the
phenomenological origin of the world.37 “But in the openness [l’Ouvert], something
appears in a way that I am the “there” of it. For there to be meaninglessness and
meaning, being and non-being, there has to be a 'there' (the 'y' in 'il y a' is this
'there').”38 (Maldiney 1985, 210) Returning to the topic of nursing, the situation the
nurse faces is not that of the painter. It involves life and death, social relations, and
action. If we consider the example of Mrs. E, in the scene where the daughter puts
her hand on the corpse of her mother, the world is transformed from the point of
contact between the corpse and the hand.
The “there” that is opened up by touching the corpse is the starting point
of the transformation of the world. It is through “there” that an encounter with the
dead mother becomes possible. It is there, where the child’s hands touch the corpse
of her mother, that the World is opened up. There is the timing of the meeting of the
rhythms. This meeting and the singularity of space-time called “there” constitute
the arena where the entire situation is reassembled.
Conclusion
When multiple rhythms meet change, the situation recombines. From the
perspective of the timing of the encounter, the rhythm is the rise and reorganization
of the relationship with the world. The world (a social situation, interpersonal
relationships) is (re)organized through rhythm.
37
38
From the temporal perspective, it is the “present” (Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 161)
and the “moment of crisis” (Henri Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 167). This is the making of the
present as a reference point. Maldiney explained the temporal aspect of rhythm from French linguist
Gustave Guillaume’s divisions of contained time (le temps impliqué) and outward spreading time
(le temps expliqué). When the reference point of the present arises in the direct method (Henri
Maldiney, Regard, parole, espace, 161), the verb is segmented in terms of internalized (phase or state)
and outwardly extending (past, present, and future) time. In the interviews, various grammatical
elements separate the internal and external time of the narrator and the characters, but the
reference point of the present is so self-evident that it may be difficult to see. However, this reference
point is rendered visible at a critical point in time when the entire world is being transformed. The
moment of the generation of Forms or actions that unite the contradictory forces hovering in chaos
into one tense Form is this critical moment, and this is the localization of the present.
Henri Maldiney, Art et existence (Paris: Klincksieck, 1985), 210.
113
YASUHIKO MURAKAMI
This paper may not be a social critique because it does not discuss social
institutions. What is important in practice, however, is to be free from institutions
and norms and to respond to the needs of patients (or people in need). If the goal
of medical or social support is to achieve survival and livability for people in difficulty,
then this paper, which discusses the reorganization of the situation through rhythm
theory, is one of the attempts to depict the micro core of social intervention.
Everyone, not just the mentally ill, stumbles into different rhythms from those
around them, or the various layers of their experience interfere with those of each
other in confusing ways. We always have blind spots that we cannot solve, both about
others’ and our own situations.
In the course of my research in the field of healthcare and welfare, I have
come to understand that many of the situations called “care” comprise the work of
adjusting such polyrhythms. Even if the margins and blind spots never disappear,
care implies holding back from being swallowed up by them and securing a world
where encounters with people are possible (of course, this is only a small aspect of
care practice). Family care is often a process of regulating polyrhythms among family
members, and nurses provide support through end-of-life care to rectify the
disruptions and stoppages in polyrhythms that individuals may have. A supporter
as a catalyst for change is a witness to the recombination of polyrhythms.
Such a recombination involves the discovery of “there,” which is a window
that opens a “world with a new polyrhythm,” and the occurrence of a singularity in
time and space, the “timing” at which such change occurs. The “there” that opens
up at a certain “timing” is the starting point from where interpersonal relationships
and relationships with one's past can be re-organized.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benveniste, Émile, Problèmes de linguistique générale, I. Paris: Gallimard [1966] 2014.
Gasquet, Joachim, Cézanne, Paris:Éd. Encre marine,
Guillaume, Gustave, Language and language science, Paris: Nizet, QC: Laval University Press
[1960] 1994.
Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990.
Maldiney, Henri, Regard, parole, espace, Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1973.
Maldiney, Henri, Aîtres de la langue et demeures de la pensée, Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 1973.
Maldiney, Henri, Art et existence, Paris: Klincksieck, 1985.
Maldiney, Heri, Penser l’homme et la folie, Grenoble : Jérôme Millon, 1991
Maldiney, Henri, L’art, l’éclair de l’être, Paris: Cerf, [1993] 2012.
Maldiney, Henri, Philosophie, art et existence, Paris: éditions du Cerf, 2007
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Murakami, Yasuhiko, “Phenomenological analysis of a Japanese professional caregiver specialized
in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis”, Neuroethics 13, 2020, 181-191.
Murakami, Yasuhiko, Polyrhythm, Tokyo: Seidosha, 2021.
Seikkula, J. & Arnkil, T., Open dialogues and anticipations: Respecting otherness in the present
moment, Helsinki: National Institute for Health and Welfare, 2014.
Winnicott, D.W., Playing and reality, London: Routledge, 1971.
Winnicott, D.W., Psycho-analytic explorations, London: Karnac, 1989.
115
STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 117-138
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.06
THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF
AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY
STERLING HALL∗
ABSTRACT. Experientially, we often have a sense of self which is relatively constant
across moments in one’s personal timeline. There are instances where this sense
of self fractures, though, and self-identity becomes difficult to sustain. This essay
argues that such fracturing is the result of an interruption in a process of selfnarrativization—an interruption which can be mended, at least partially, through
creative and communal practices which allow for the possibility of recreating narratives
at the site of their failure—and explores the meaning of this fracturing and mending
process in terms of colonial violence as an example of a fracturing situation.
Keywords: critical phenomenology, the self, Levinas, anticolonialism, politics.
1. Introduction
We often take ourselves for granted. Or rather, we take the fact that we
can form a ‘self’ for granted. The fact that I am currently myself, that I am the same
self that I was ten minutes ago, or last week, or even a decade ago seems to be an
uncomplicated affair. If I look at a photo of myself from the past, I can recognize
myself, even if I may not want to—from embarrassment over poor fashion choices,
for example. Further, that I am a self seems uncontroversial: caught in a pre-critical
or pre-phenomenological orientation, my existence is a given and what matters is
what happens to my self, not its ontological status.
In this essay, I hope to trouble these ideas. First, I will argue that one’s self
is not something passively given but is instead something that is produced. Work
and labor go into creating and sustaining a self, even if this labor is sometimes so
light and subterranean that it is barely noticeable. Second, and similarly, I will argue
that the continuity of selfhood over time is a complicated affair. Reproducing one’s
∗
Department of Philosophy, Villanova University. Email: shall17@villanova.edu.
STERLING HALL
self—making it so that one can actually recognize one’s image in a photo across
vast gaps in time—is a similarly laborious process. Such continuity is not guaranteed:
one can fail to sustain one’s self.1 There can be gaps in experience where one looks
at an image of the past and fails to fully recognize themselves in the image: instead,
there is a sense of loss, of disjunction, of anxiety in not being able to dwell within
one’s self. Similarly, one can avoid producing themselves: they can stay in bed all
day, can freeze up from various troubles, and can dissolve themselves in the ether
of continuous experience.2 That is, one can fail to separate themselves from the
world, which amounts to the erasure of a self, however temporary that erasure
may be. In arguing that the self is an unstable entity across time, my intention is to
provide a more accurate picture of what is involved in selfhood. It is a picture which
may strain simple binary accounts of selfhood, but which is hopefully closer to the
actual experience of being (and failing to be) a self. Thus, this essay aims to be more
descriptive than prescriptive: the goal is to show how to make sense of a produced
selfhood, not to say how one should go about producing a self or what that self
1
2
This isn’t to say that one is a failure if one fails to produce and reproduce a self. It only means that
a certain end wasn’t achieved. That it wasn’t achieved is neither a judgement on the incomplete
action nor a prohibition on trying again. This is an ontological claim about a certain mode of
existence that a self can occupy, not a normative judgement about what a self should be. This is
worth clarifying now since in later sections of this essay I will discuss such ‘failures’ in terms of
colonial existence. By calling these ‘failures,’ I only mean that something which may seem uncontroversial
and wholly given over to experience (the presence and persistence of a self) may become troubled
and complicated through various experiences: the process of creating/sustaining a self may not
succeed. The loop of self (re-)production may short-circuit. The reason for this lack of success is
often beyond the scope of one’s control and agency. Thus, this is the failure of a process—a process
that is beyond the agency of any single individual and thus this failure can’t be attributed to any
single person, let alone the ‘self’ which fails.
These more quotidian forms of resisting the production of a self don’t dissolve the intelligibility of
my self as a continuous self, though. Spending a lazy Sunday morning in bed is a form of rejecting
self-production in the moment but it doesn’t constitute a loss of one’s self in terms of the ability to
form narrative continuity across moments in time (a kind of continuity this paper will explore in
more depth in Section 3), though repeated ‘lazy mornings’ that stem from a prolonged state of
depression form such a loss. That such narrative continuity can be fractured or ruptured is important
to keep in mind, especially in relation to the specificity of colonial fracture discussed below. This is
what helps specify the difference between Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ipseity through dwelling
and An Yountae’s theory of selfhood achieved through the work of passing through what he calls
‘the abyss’: the latter is a means of working through a failure in the production of a self in the
specific context of colonial violence and where any process of forming one’s self through separation
(as is the case in Levinas’ theory) is mediated by one’s situatedness in relation to colonization. Other
‘failures’ are possible that don’t necessitate a similar theory of the abyss, but all of which rely on
some kind of problem occurring that interrupts the labor of self-production. In this essay we only
explore how this can occur in the context of colonization, though.
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THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY
should look like. This is crucial to keep in mind for later parts of the essay in relation
to a discussion of the production of a self through experiences of colonial violence.
The self that is produced out of this situation may be a reactionary one that embraces
the colonial situation as necessary and even desirable. Such outcomes don’t contest
the argument presented here that a self is produced; such reactionary forms of selfproduction would need to be analyzed and critiqued separately.
It’s important to note that this process of self-production is actually a
process—that is, it’s a continual act of both production and reproduction, one that
is mediated both by the social forms of existence that are put at arm’s length in the
creation of a self and the plenitude of the world that is similarly held in suspension
in creating and re-creating a self. Thus Levinas is correct to highlight how selfhood
is generated through acts of turning inwards, of creating a split in the world that
allows for a self/other distinction—a process that is realized through ‘dwelling’, as
we will explore in more depth shortly. Thus, for Levinas, this ‘dwelling’ is always
mediated by the presence of others, even if it’s a process of recoiling from otherness
in its entirety. Selfhood is produced though acts such as cooking and eating, giving
oneself over to the comforts of sleep, and washing/mending clothes so that one is
able to go back into the world the next day—actions that are performed or made
possible through the various forms of domestic labor that disproportionately fall on
the shoulders of women. This relationship, where a self is made possible through
domestic labor that makes dwelling possible, is recognized by Levinas but only in a
sexist inversion which essentializes the ‘feminine’ side of this gendered division of
labor.3
In highlighting the re/productive aspects of self-production mediated through
the presence and labor of various others, Levinas’ account of the production of a
self—and by extension, the account provided in this essay—links up with various
theoretical fields outside of phenomenology which are similarly concerned with the
self as a produced entity. Though this essay is largely silent about these connections
beyond this paragraph, I hope that it exists as a participant in this ongoing dialogue
that is able to show what phenomenology (especially a ‘critical phenomenology’) is
able to contribute. Thus, I see the account of selfhood presented here as a preliminary
attempt to create theoretical structures that would allow for connections to be
forged between genetic phenomenological accounts of a produced self and nonphenomenological (though not anti-phenomenological) critical theories of self that
are currently being developed—for example, the wealth of work that has been done
3
See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, transl. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1969), 157, where he says that the hospitality of a home is created
through the work of “the welcoming one par excellence, welcome in itself—the feminine being.”
119
STERLING HALL
recently on ‘gestational labor’4 or recent work in Social Reproduction Theory which
emphasizes how contemporary self-production is structured by imperialist forms
of extraction5 and capitalist models of reproduction that produce “the chaotic,
multiethnic, multigendered, differently abled subject that is the global working
class.”6 Here these various connections are only latent, though they form the backdrop
and impetus behind attempting to think through this account of self-production and
the mending of a fractured self
To help flesh out an account of selfhood which emphasizes the productive
element of selfhood—a production process which is always (though not often) subject
to failure—this essay will proceed in the following way. Section 2 will examine the
ways that a self is produced across time and will trouble the idea that a self is simply
a given within experience by examining Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of the self as a
‘hypostasis.’ The goal of that section is not to show that one’s sense of self is an
‘illusion’ or that the produced self is a rarity: a self is something structured but also
something real and persisting because of this construction. Against a prevailing
tendency that sees any presence of discontinuity in selfhood as indicating the illusory
nature of a self, this account is one that attempts to capture the seeming stability
of one’s experience of selfhood as a stable self across time while emphasizing how
this stability is something achieved through various self-constituting actions—just
as a building is stable partially because of all the labor put into keeping it stable (by
putting in better insulation, for example), one’s self is also made stable through
various actions.7 Section 3 will begin to look at the difficulties that come into play
4
5
6
7
See Sophie Lewis’ wonderful, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (New York: Verso, 2019),
along with her “Cyborg uterine geography: Complicating ‘Care’ and Social Reproduction,” Dialogues
in Human Geography 8(3), 2018, 300–316, and “A Comradely Politics of Gestational Work,” Dialogues
in Human Geography 8(3), 2018, 333–339. Along the same lines, both Myra J Hird, “The Corporeal
Generosity of Maternity,” Body & Society, 13(1), 2007, 1–20, and Susan Elizabeth Kelly, “The MaternalFoetal Interface and Gestational Chimerism: The Emerging Importance of Chimeric Bodies,” Science
as Culture, 21(2), 2012, 37–41, have highlighted how gestational labor is a creative process that
features significant interchange between a gestator and a developing fetus—an interchange marked,
at least on the purely physical level, not just by an exchange of nutrients, but even by an exchange
of genetic material.
See Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (New York:
Autonomedia, 2014).
Tithi Bhattacharya, “How Not to Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class,”
in Tithi Bhattacharya (ed.), Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression
(London: Pluto Press, 2017), 74.
This account of selfhood shares a lot in common with and is sympathetic to the account provided
by Mariana Ortega in In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self, SUNY Press,
2016. See especially 63-84 where her account of a ‘multiplicitous self’ is developed. Building off of
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THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY
when trying to sustain one’s self, difficulties which are most apparent when the means
of self-production have been stolen. Accordingly, it will examine the consequences
of failing to sustain a self over time in the context of the existential experience of
colonialism. The point at which one loses a concrete sense of continuity is a point
of crisis. In fracturing, a self is unable to make sense of its cohesion over time, and
gaps emerge: a self becomes multiple. After briefly discussing how a self can sustain
itself across time through narrative practices (by appealing to Dan Zahavi’s idea of
a ‘narrative self’), this section will focus on experiences of colonialism in An Yountae’s
work in order to draw out such consequences.
In working through all this, my goal is to produce the beginnings of a theory
of the self which recognizes that a self isn’t simply a given aspect of experience
(instead, its existence is a necessary condition for experience), which is attentive to
the troubles that can come about in attempting to produce and reproduce a self,
and which takes seriously the fact that we can feel a disunity with our past
self/selves by focusing on a situation where this disunity flares up in an intensified
form. In some sense, we persist as the same ‘object’ through time, but phenomenologically
we can feel a fracturing or rupture with our previous mode(s) of existence when
the process of producing a self is interrupted. In putting these various thinkers and
orientations together, this essay can serve as a fecund source for further reflections
about the emergence of selfhood, its maintenance and persistence, and the possibility
of recomposing a sense of self and identity even in situations of extraordinary
violence and trauma—a necessary though by no means sufficient condition for
working towards the abolition of such situations.
2. The Phenomenological Production of the Self
One of the most interesting and innovative aspects of Levinas’ philosophy
is his conviction that selfhood and subjectivity are events. The self isn’t simply given
but is achieved. Labor is needed for selfhood to emerge in a world. Although the
overwhelming majority of commentary on Levinas has focused on the transcendental
Lugones’ work on selfhood, Ortega argues that she goes too far in saying that one is an entirely different
self when one “world-travels”: there’s something poetically useful in talking about existing as a
different self when moving between worlds, but Ortega shows that this account is hard to sustain
in a literal manner. Ortega’s theory of selfhood would be a useful complement to the theory of self
presented in this essay, especially given its connections to decolonial theory, but it is not explored
simply for considerations of space—doing justice to the subtlety of her account in relation to Lugones,
Anzaldúa, and Heidegger would take us far afield.
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and ethical dimensions of his theory, much can be gained by turning that focus
towards neglected aspects of his work such as his theory of the self and his ontology
grounded in the il y a (or what he later refers to as ‘the elemental’).8 Whereas
Levinas’ ethical theory has a number of difficult, if not intractable problems (such
as the fact that the ‘face’ which holds us hostage has no positive characteristics and
that Levinas considers ethics to be ‘first philosophy’),9 his rich ontological theory
holds the potential for developing a phenomenology which resists the sometimes
conservative and idealistic character of the field—something which should be
important for any attempt to try and create a ‘critical phenomenology.’ Towards
this end, in this section I will develop Levinas’ account of selfhood (as a ‘hypostasis’)
and show how hypostasis is achieved through a process of division within and
recoiling from existence that creates the space necessary for a self to emerge.
2.1 Hypostasis: The Cleaving of Anonymous Being
Levinas’ ontology begins in the il y a, the “anonymous rustling of existence.”10
It is anonymous because it lacks unity: to give a proper name to the field of dispersion
and multiplicity which objects organize themselves out of is to run the danger of
reifying that which precedes reification.11 For Levinas, before there is something,
8
9
10
11
Levinas first uses ‘il y a’ as a technical term on page 20 of Existence and Existents (interestingly, he
associates it with a feeling of ‘horror’ at the excessive presence of being). The term is taken up in
Totality and Infinity, specifically in his chapter on enjoyment as the medium through which objects
are encountered. See Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, transl. Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne
University Press, 2001 and Totality and Infinity, 122–142. Further, this turn towards the ontological
aspects of Levinas’ work has come out in some recent scholarship, such as Tom Sparrow, Levinas
Unhinged (Zer0 Books, 2013), though his focus on ‘aesthetics as first philosophy’ in Levinas’ work
is very different from my own focus.
The former problem is normally bypassed—at least in attempts to productively use Levinas’ work—
in order to speak about specific groups towards which we have an ethical obligation (such as ‘the
victimized’ or ‘the oppressed’). As an example of this, see Enrique Dussel, “‘Sensibility’ and ‘Otherness’
in Emmanuel Levinas,” Philosophy Today 43(2), 1999, 126–134. For the second problem, this is the
source of the critique that critical theory makes about phenomenology generally: it grounds itself
in a specific element of reality without attending to the mediation of that element. For a contemporary
critique along these lines that specifically looks at how Levinas’ focus on “ethics as first philosophy”
potentially fails to allow for authentic ethical action (in contrast with my sympathetic reading of
Levinas in this essay), see Elizabeth Portella, “Mediation and Its Shadow,” Philosophy Today 63(2),
2019, 427–445.
Levinas, Existence and Existents, 65.
There is thus a difficulty in using il y a as a technical term, since it performs this very move: indiscriminate
multiplicity is made into a thing. This is difficult to avoid—Levinas’ use of ‘elemental’ in his later work
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there is simply some. This formlessness is uncomfortable and escapes our attention
in many everyday moods which have direct (or even indirect) concern for individual
objects.12 The il y a only ever appears—but in an appearance that avoids appearing
as something—in those forms of experience (in moods or affective dispositions) in
which we are disjoint with the world: indolence,13 fatigue,14 and insomnia.15
The latter affective disposition is especially important for Levinas, since it is
a way of being in the world prior to ‘worldhood’ that stands between total immersion
in the formlessness of the il y a and the radical separation marked by ‘hypostasis.’
Within insomnia there is ‘vigilance,’ which is a minimum form of awareness that
doesn’t collect the ‘night’ of being into discernible objects (in fact, it is subject to
and terrorized by this night): things are hazy in the darkness, especially when we
are overcome with an exhaustion that won’t yield to rest, to sleep. Objects lack
their discrete boundaries. Thus, vigilance is “devoid of objects.” It is “an experience
of nothingness…as anonymous as the night itself.”16 Put even more startlingly,
[T]he vigilance of insomnia which keeps our eyes open has no subject. It is
the very return of presence into the void left by absence—not the return of
12
13
14
15
16
falls into this problem even more directly. Speakers of English could potentially say there is (as
Lingis’ translation does), which both has the advantage that it doesn’t artificially inflate the importance
of the term (as using a foreign word can sometimes do) and the advantage that, through the italics,
it is able to avoid potentially awkward grammatical constructions which crop up from using ‘there
is’ separately from an object. This very italicizing produces the problem at hand though: it makes
the il y a seem like a singular thing rather than a name marking the excess of existence of existents.
For a longer meditation on how to get out of a very similar situation (if not the exact same), see
Badiou’s remarks about the difficulty of designating a ‘proper name of being’ in Alain Badiou, Being
and Event, transl. Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005), 52–59.
That is, the il y a exists prior to and makes possible the whole interplay of Vorhandenheit and
Zuhandenheit which makes up the core of Heidegger’s theory of worldhood and experience in a
world. See §§15–18 of Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, transl. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 95–123.
Levinas, Existence and Existents, 28. Levinas describes indolence as what “makes one prostrate,”
and “afflicts us with boredom.” But he also describes it as the “impossibility of beginning,” an important
description given his theory of time (which is to say that indolence resists hypostasis, the curling
inward that creates subjectivity and thus marks the “pure beginning” of the present (79)). Interestingly,
on this same page indolence is also described as “the pleasure of spending the morning in bed,” a
description which is in tension with Levinas’ characterization of enjoyment as the foundation of
ipseity in Totality and Infinity. See pages 147–151 on “Enjoyment as Separation.” Though important,
Levinas’ account of time is not explored in-depth in this essay.
Ibid., 29–36.
Ibid., 65–67.
Ibid., 65.
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some thing, but of a presence; it is the reawakening of the there is in the
heart of negation. It is an indefectibility of being, where the work of being
never lets up; it is its insomnia.17
During insomnia our eyes are open, but don’t see any thing: it gestures towards a
genetic zone which precedes and conditions intentional consciousness. But even
saying ‘our’ eyes is saying too much: there is no ‘I’ in insomnia, just the oppressive
weight that creeps up on us when we are unable to tear ourselves away from
multiplicity. In our sleepless state, frayed from our fatigue, there is only an
experience of existence as a continuous process void of contents. In the absence of
existents, existence asserts itself fully. Hence why, at the peak of our inability to
sleep, existence itself “reawakens,” but reawakens in the formless folds of darkness,
far away from the light of intentional consciousness, of Enlightenment, and of the
sovereign subject who masters and dominates all objects. Being is always present,
even if it fades from our awareness. Insomnia reminds us of this: thus, in vigilance
we are reminded of the ‘indefectibility’ of consciousness, since we can’t fully ‘defect’
from being (or existence): we can’t fully depart from being or form a place for
ourselves outside of being. In the midst of insomnia, we have no means of separating
ourselves. There is no peace (that is, nothing pacific18) in insomnia—we are simply
immersed in endless oceans of multiplicity.
If we can’t depart from being, though, we can pause within it. We can show
hesitance or reticence before existence.19 If the il y a “lacks rhythm”20 (and thus is
void of logos), by introducing a beat, a separation between sound and silence, a voice
which can speak and name (and thus categorize, organize, separate, incorporate,
etc.), i.e. a self can be produced. The self comes about through a cleaving of
indiscriminate being: it makes a distinction within the formless. This is the process
that Levinas calls ‘hypostasis.’ This process, which is the “advent of a subject”21 (but
also, as a consequence, objects), is like the biological process of invagination, where an
embryonic blastula (here standing in as a metaphor for some kind of germ or seed
which holds the potential of forming the formless il y a) folds inwards and creates
the stomach and esophagus, the very organs which stand at the boundary of inside
and outside and which take in nutrients in experiences of enjoyment and dwelling.
17
18
19
20
21
Ibid.
See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 171, where Levinas describes the relationship with the other (that
is, the moment in which subjectivity is transcended and shattered) as “fundamentally pacific.”
Levinas, Existence and Existents, 67.
Ibid., 66.
Ibid., 67.
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We live from “good soup,” as Levinas says,22 and through the enjoyment of eating
we literally make food into ourselves: our flesh, our blood, our bones, and all the
other elements which form the physical ground of the production of a self are
generated through resisting the formlessness of the il y a, by giving order to chaos
by discriminating between various existents within unbounded existence, and
reducing differences to the logic of the same.
In this process of folding inwards, in contraction, the space for selfhood is
created. A self, especially a self as a thinking being, is riveted to the place of its
emergence. Solitary thought is thoroughly localized and spatialized. Levinas says that
“Thought has a point of departure.”23 This point is formed by resisting the encroachment
of the night, by “curling up in a corner to sleep” and therefore “abandoning ourselves
to a place.”24 If the il y a is a name for that horrifying aspect of existence in which
we are thoroughly lost without any place in order to understand ourselves, then
“Sleep [as the activity which produces hypostasis by overcoming insomnia through
positioning oneself] is like entering into contact with the protective forces of a
place; to seek after sleep is to gropingly seek after that contact. When one wakes
up one finds oneself shut up in one’s immobility like an egg in its shell.”25 Sleep
comes through submitting to fatigue, though. It comes about by forming a pocket
of separation from the torrent of the il y a and allowing one’s body to take refuge
and heal. Place, as the grounding of hypostasis, “is what makes the body the very
advent of consciousness…It [the body] is not posited; it is a position. It is not
situated in a space given beforehand; it is the irruption in anonymous being of
localization itself.”26 Accordingly, right after that quote, Levinas describes the body
which is given over to location, to place, as an ‘event’—that is, as a rupture within
the indiscriminate flow of time which characterizes the il y a as a boundless field of
existence without existents.
22
23
24
25
26
Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 110. Levinas says here that “We live from ‘good soup,’ air, light, spectacles,
work, ideas, sleep [!], etc. … These are not objects of representations. We live from them…. [W]hereas
the recourse to the instrument implies finality and indicates a dependence with regard to the other,
living from…delineates independence itself, the independence of enjoyment and of its happiness,
which is the original pattern of all independence.” (The first and last ellipses in this quote are Levinas’
own.) This idea that independence is created out of ‘living from…’ and thus that independence and
selfhood are always-already relational should be kept in mind when discussing the fracturing of a
self and decolonial theory in Section 3.
Levinas, Existence and Existents, 68.
Ibid., 70.
Ibid.
Ibid., 71.
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This process of cleaving the indiscriminate il y a, of forming a thinking being
thoroughly attached to its body (and thus thoroughly localized), in which we seek
refuge and curl inwards in order to protect (and even create) a self, is what Levinas
terms hypostasis. He says that this term, ‘hypostasis,’ has been “taken up” in order
to designate the “apparition of the substantive.”27 This term “signifies the suspension
of the anonymous there is, the apparition of a private domain, of a noun. On the
ground of the there is a being arises.”28 Here, selfhood isn’t a phenomenon to be
simply described or some kind of special object to be dissected and studied but is
the result of a creative action. Levinas’ theory of selfhood neither claims the death
of the concept of the self, nor does it pretend that the self is always-already given:
a self is something concretely produced. One can fail in the process of becoming a
self—things can go wrong. Thus, producing a self is an achievement even if only a
partial achievement, since the folding inwards which makes selfhood possible is
predicated on the existence of an other and even if this is an end which is usually
reached without a problem. A self is a fragile assemblage, a precarious gathering of
dispersion in-itself, but because of the seeming immediacy of its production, it is
also resilient, like Pele’s tears. It is a wager, the result of an act of hope and of faith,
and its persistence is therefore possible only through endurance, perseverance,
and resilience. But such persistence is also only possible because of acts of care: of
letting ourselves heal, sleep, and otherwise nourish ourselves. A self founds itself,
but only within a world to which it is completely given over. Selves are mediated by
the surplus of the il y a which forms the material basis of self-production. A self is
not the basis for ‘first philosophy,’ nor is it lacking in positive characteristics: a self
is a process of fleeing, of evading, of seeking refuge—but refuge in this place, with
this body, and incorporated into a certain sequence of time and history, into a
political and social situation.
3. The Interruption of a Produced Self
If the self is something produced, it must have an origin, a moment in time
which is indexed to its genesis. Thus, there must exist spans of time which are prior
to its advent. And as something continuously remade, there is always the possibility
that one’s self may dissolve and fail to continue. Thus, Heidegger was correct to
situate the existence of the self between its ‘thrownness’ (it’s emergence out of a
27
28
Ibid., 82.
Ibid., 82–83.
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time that precedes it) and its projective capacities, its irreducible futurity.29 But as
an event, the production of a self occurs within a present moment which is not
reducible to either the past or the future and which exists as an irruption within the
flow of time—this is one of the crucial things we gain from Levinas’ account of the
self.30 Given the instantaneous character of the present, the continuity of the self
is contingently given. If the previous section was concerned with the evental production
of a self, this section will investigate what follows from the interruption of this
production process. It will examine how a self can become fractured, perhaps even
beyond the point of recognition. Various situated experiences can split a self into
multiple temporal parts, especially those experiences marked by trauma. This possibility
of fracturing makes a self a curious kind of existent: it can persist across time without
being identical to itself, but also can marked by temporal discontinuity despite
apparent identity (that is, I may be the same ‘thing’ at different points in time, but
may not feel that I am the same self, while still recognizing those previous selves as
my selves). In this section, I attempt to bring out the strangeness of the existence
of a fractured self and how such a self can nevertheless persist across temporal
disjunctions. Working out the full logic of such an existence is beyond the scope of
this paper. Here I only aim to lay a foundation for future attempts to think through
fracturing and self-reconstruction. A fuller account would demand an analysis of
fracturing in more diverse situations and a genetic account of the production of
fracturing—both of which would be useful in attempting to create a general logic
of fracturing but which cannot be pursued here.
3.1 The Fracturing of the Self: Abyss Walking and Narrative Reconstruction
Earlier, I described the failure of self-production as a ‘short-circuiting.’31 This
description makes sense when describing a self at the level of its production—where
the self curls away from the il y a in an act of hypostasis—since the dissolution of a
self here tends to be momentary. The gap fails to be closed or completed, one is
29
30
31
In Being and Time, the former is discussed in §38 (pages 219–224) and the latter is discussed in §53
(pages 304–311).
Although I have attempted to highlight the evental character of the self—that is, both its quality of
marking a surplus within the flow of time and its existence as a division between the past and the
future which is irreducible to either—in my presentation of Levinas’ theory of hypostasis, I haven’t
been able to dive directly into his account of the temporality of a self. For more on Levinas’ account
of the temporality, see Existence and Existents, 85–96 and Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other,
transl. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987).
See note 1.
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confronted with indeterminate existence in bouts of insomnia, and the subject/object
distinction plays no phenomenological role. This can be a horrible experience, of
course, but it is very different than the kind of experience that comes from the
failure of sustaining a self across time: this kind of failure is not characterized by a
momentary blurring of ontological boundaries, but by the inability to make sense
of oneself experientially. That is, this failure is the result of an inability to make
narrative sense out of one’s self-continuity across time. More than a short-circuit,
this narrative inability would be better described as a fracturing of a self.
There are at least two alternatives to this term ‘fracturing,’ both of which I
find inadequate. The first is the language of a ‘split’ subject, which has a long history
within theory and philosophy (from the theme of recognition that plays out in
Hegel’s famous chapter on ‘Lordship and Bondage,’ to the Lacanian emphasis on
the barred subject created through its fantasy, and to the Maoist focus on dialectical
reason as the tracing of a "one becoming two"). Although this term is very close to
fracture, I prefer the latter since it gets closer to the phenomenological experience
of the narrative failure I’m interested in, since a fracture can be either minor or severe.
A ‘hairline’ fracture may cause serious problems in the future, but can go unnoticed
in the present (for example, a narrative gap in experience may exist on the margins
of one’s awareness, but can be avoided for long periods of time—I can overwork,
busy myself with small tasks, suddenly move to a new town, engage in various
forms of risky but exciting behavior, etc. all to avoid being confronted with the need
to coherently narrate oneself).
This brings us close to the second term: ‘shattering.’ While this term emphasizes
the violence that may go into the failure of self-narration, to say that a self is
‘shattered’ indicates that it might not be possible to repair or reconstruct such a
self or even create a new self. This leads to a kind of fatalism which I find neither
useful nor accurate: even if it were true in some sense, it doesn’t seem useful to
attempt to live with the recognition of that truth. But it also doesn’t seem true.
People can tend to themselves in a manner that allows for the narrative process to
overcome the violence of discontinuity. Although one could argue that this new
narrative process is ‘fictional’ in a pejorative sense (that is, the ‘narration’ is just
covering over the real fact of discontinuity), I think this argument would miss the
lived content of this experience, where people do feel like they’ve recovered from
(or at least learned to live with) prior events of violence and trauma. This nihilism
about creating a self in the face of extreme violence and the erasure of memory is
a kind of resignation when resilience is most needed. Speaking of a ‘fracture,’ on
the other hand, indicates the potential for healing and repair (like the mending of
a fractured, rather than shattered, bone) even if what is produced in the process of
healing is different than what existed before the fracture.
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To exist across time, a self needs to be able to sustain and reproduce itself.
One needs to be able to present a coherent picture of themselves to help make
sense of how they are the same self despite so many apparent differences. I can
potentially make sense of myself as being the same self in the present as I was when
I was a child by showing how there is a meaningful, expressible continuity between
those two parts of myself.32 Even if there are seemingly major changes to the status
of one’s self, as long as those changes can be made to cohere through common
practices and forms of narration the self can successfully endure or successfully hold
the immense void of the il y a at bay for long enough that these various temporal
slices can be said to exist for the same self. Thus, even if there actually are gaps in
my existence as a self (as may be the case if we take Levinas’ account far enough,
where every time one falls prey to bouts of insomnia and then curls inside themselves
enough to finally fall asleep a new self is produced), phenomenologically these
ruptures in continuity aren’t enough for there to be a rupture in the experience of
being a single self.33 This ‘smoothing’ of experiential/temporal gaps could be likened
to the way that visual representation similarly smooths over gaps in the perceptual
field in order to present something coherent.34
The idea that a produced self can persist through the work of memory and
self-narration is inspired by Dan Zahavi’s account of continuity. He claims that for
an account of the self as existing across time to be successful, it needs to be able to
show how “successive phases of consciousness must somehow be united experientially”
with the “decisive challenge” of “account[ing] for this temporal binding without giving
32
33
34
A good essay that links up this narrative element that is constitutive for the persistence of a self
across time and Levinas’ reflections on the ethical dimensions of ‘the face’ is John E. Drabinski, “Incarnate
Historiography and the Politics of Our Faces,” in S. West Gurley and Geoff Pfeifer (eds.), Phenomenology
and the Political (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 101–116.
This may be part of the reason that Josh Parsons, “A Phenomenological Argument for Stage Theory,”
Analysis 75(2), April 2015, 237–242, argues that ‘stage theory’ (a theory of temporal continuity
prevalent in analytic theories of time) somewhat naturally helps make sense of one’s experience
of existing across time. Though this argument isn’t really phenomenological in the sense spoken of
throughout this essay (it takes ‘phenomenology’ to be roughly equivalent to ‘experiential’) and is rather
surface level (it relies on arguments premised on how some experience feels at some given present
moment—thus, it’s more about intuition than anything else), the article does give some basis for
beginning to think through what a robust phenomenological account of the self and its temporal parts
may be.
Lots of research has emerged on the way that our visual and cognitive faculties ‘omit’ pieces of experiential
data that prevent one from being able to picture the world in a coherent way. This biological process
of omission is what helps explain many optical illusions. For one article explaining some of the relevant
details of this phenomenon, see Chou P. Hung, Benjamin M. Ramsden, and Anna Wang Roe, “A Functional
Circuitry for Edge-Induced Brightness Perception,” Nature Neuroscience, 10, September 2007, 1185–1190.
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rise to an infinite regress, that is, without having to posit yet another temporally
extended consciousness whose task is to unify the first-order consciousness, and
so forth ad infinitum.”35 To avoid such a regress, an account of the continuity of a
self across time needs to be able to think about how this continuity is generated
out of a self immanently, rather than being established and guaranteed by something
existing outside of a self. Zahavi proposes that such a unity comes about through a
common experience of time, in which unity is ‘woven’ rather than being pre-given.36
Zahavi’s theory of selfhood as an ‘experiential self’ is grounded in a conception of
a self as “the very subjectivity of experience.”37 The self is that which is able to have
a standpoint, that which is the condition of possibility for experience, but also that
which ties together various experiences across assembled slices of time.
Zahavi’s self, similarly to Levinas’, isn’t simply a container for experiences:
a self is produced by actively weaving together various experiences, by creating a
narrative for one’s self which can help tie together these disparate threads. The self
produces itself by recoiling from the il y a; the self sustains itself by making this
continued recoiling (which makes experience possible) intelligible and meaningful.38
A self is produced through the labor of separation; a self is reproduced for that self
through the labor of narrativization, of finding ways to chain together various temporal
chunks in a way that is meaningful to the self which they partially compose. Often
this is an uncomplicated affair and occurs in the background of conscious thought:
since there is nothing disturbing the narrative, it’s easy in an everyday setting to
chain together myself-in-the-morning and myself-at-night, for example. But sometimes
this labor of reproducing a self is difficult; it can be a struggle and the process often
involves invention and creativity in laboring to chain together experiences that seem
wholly disparate. When this process of chaining together experiences is unsuccessful,
35
36
37
38
Dan Zahavi, “The Experiential Self: Objections and Clarifications,” in Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson,
and Dan Zahavi (eds.), Self, No Self?: Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian
Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 72. The reason that Zahavi relies on the ‘unity
of experience,’ I believe, is that the opposite thesis quickly runs into problems. If there could be “successive
phases of consciousness” without there being some form of unity which is experiencing those phases,
it’s difficult to see how these phases could be of consciousness. That is, without the unity, how could
these be phases be successive—what transcendental rule would bind and ensure their progression?
Ibid.
Ibid., 60
Here it’s useful to recall that this distinction between the production of a self as a founding moment
of autonomous existence and the self’s reproduction across time is a somewhat artificial distinction.
A self is likely never fully generated in this kind of sovereign manner: this production is always-already
a reproduction. I have kept this language because attending carefully to the roles of production and
reproduction in the generation/maintenance of the self would take me outside the scope of this essay.
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especially unsuccessful in a way that is meaningful to the self which is interrupted
in its persistence—there is a fracturing of the self. In such a circumstance, a self
becomes discontinuous and discrete, even if these ‘jumps’ in continuity still belong
to the same person: the self-identity of a (singular) person becomes multiple.
This attempt to trace the consequences of a self’s fracturing (both the
conditions that make the fracture possible and the actions that can be taken to
attempt to mend the damage that’s been done, without the fantasy of erasure) is
undertaken in An Yountae’s The Decolonial Abyss. Specifically, he is interested in
tracing the ‘abyssal’ elements that exist in the space created by the failure of produce
a self, especially when this failure is the product of colonial forms of violence. This
‘abyss’ isn’t a zone of non-existence (a void) but is instead a name for the process
that one undergoes in working through the diverse moments of self-fracturing. The
abyss is a movement “from loss to possibility, from finitude to infinity.”39 Thus, the
abyss is the name for the well of potential that exists for overcoming the gap produced
in the failure of self-production: the abyss is the name for the labor involved in healing
a fractured self. And by focusing on the abyss as a particular kind of fracturing
indexed to colonial violence, An presents his project as one which hopes to “explore
the possibility of reconstructing the fragmented sense of the self after traumatic
ruins.”40
The abyss is a common figure in decolonial literature: as a symbol of painful
passage, it highlights both the work that goes into creating a self in the face of the
denial of one’s humanity and the literal ‘middle passage’ of the Atlantic slave trade
which produced and continues to produce the contemporary world. The mutual
recognition of having a shared history in being forced through the middle passage—
or having one’s ancestors forced through—despite the incredible violence involved,
creates the possibility of generating selves out of collective trauma, the trauma of
the denial and erasure of both the collective history and the community ties that
would allow one to get enough traction to create a self through narration. As Édouard
Glissant (a constant source of inspiration for An) put it,
Experience of the abyss lies inside and outside the abyss. The torment of
those who never escaped it: straight from the belly of the slave ship into the
violet belly of the ocean depths they went. But their ordeal did not die; it
quickened into this continuous/discontinuous thing: the panic of the new
39
40
An Yountae, The Decolonial Abyss: Mysticism and Cosmopolitics from the Ruins (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2016), 10–11.
Ibid., 13.
131
STERLING HALL
land, the haunting of the former land, finally the alliance with the imposed
land, suffered and redeemed. The unconscious memory of the abyss served
as the alluvium for these metamorphoses. The populations that then formed,
despite having forgotten the chasm, despite being unable to imagine the
passion of those who foundered there, nonetheless wove this sail (a veil).41
An sees his own work as a response to this notion of the middle passage. In response
to this excerpt from Glissant, he asks “how is selfhood possible for a colonized subject
whose very horizon of existence is breached by the ongoing effects of ‘coloniality’?
What happens when the abyss is not merely a metaphysical figure but a social,
historical, and political one that emerges from the terrain marked by coloniality?”42 The
colonial self is possible precisely because the abyss is something materially
produced: as the name for a kind of activity, the decolonial abyss is the process by
which a colonial subject—whose selfhood has been intentionally obliterated by acts
of violence, suffered both by individuals and communities, at the level of physical
pain and historical trauma—is able to produce a self through creative actions which
make self-narration possible— even through the rupture of trauma and across the
gulfs of experience that such trauma can produce.
This task is impossible within the parameters of the life-world of the colonized
since it involves creation ex nihilo, a creation out of the nothingness of a social
location which isn’t afforded dignity or ontological weight and out of the emptiness
emerging from obliterated collective memories. This is why the abyss is generative
and fecund: a “womb abyss.”43 The abyss, in spite of the violence of its production,
is a creative zone which allows for the generation of existents—or rather, a reconfiguration
of the givenness of existents, a reshaping of the sedimentation which characterizes
how they appear in their seeming immediacy—that is seemingly impossible within
the boundaries of the contemporary world.44 Thus, creative labor that begins from
the position of living in the abyss, and which makes such a life possible, draws from
the surplus of existence over any instance of the world (as the presented totality of
41
42
43
44
Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, transl. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan
Press, 1997), 7.
An, The Decolonial Abyss, 13.
Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 8.
I believe that An’s notion of ‘world’ is intentionally underdetermined here. When I say that the abyss
marks a zone that allows for the impossible to emerge in a world, I mean that both at the ‘local’
and ‘global’ levels. That is, this could be an impossibility within the world of contemporary capitalist
and imperialist relations (the ‘impossibility’ of creating an end to such systems at the level of the global)
or the impossibility of rebuilding a self after traumatic fracturing (which is something seemingly impossible
within the boundaries of a world realized at a local level).
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THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY
existents) and forges new worlds. The existents given through a specific organization
of this void are reformed in the context of colonial self-reconstruction by passing
through an abyssal state—a reformation made possible because any given world is
only one among many (the current world is always a contingent actuality)—in order
to create new possibilities for existing and relating. This is an act of hypostasis, but
one that involves an inward-folding conditioned by the impossibility of simply ‘dwelling’
since the wounds of colonial self-fracturing mediate any produced ipseity.
This curious mix of fatality and possibility characterizes the experience of
passing through the abyss. It’s a form of existential ambiguity that moves between
symbolic and historico-material zones, “Loss haunts the horizon of life just as…the
ocean is marked with balls and chains (now gone green) that weighed down the
slaves thrown into the water.”45 An sees the abyss as more than just a kind of
personal passage through an individualized fracturing: it is also the historical and
political site which can make such fracturing a feature of a group-identity. The abyss
isn’t necessarily attached to a single life-history but exists “as a symptom of the loss
of historical and politico-economic ground within the (colonial) context of oppression.”46
As such, this form of fracturing can’t be resolved through individual action. To mend
a collective fracturing, collective actions are needed, from the large-scale redistribution
of land, resources, and political power back to the colonized, to the acts of care needed
to support and rebuild senses of communal narrative continuity. This act of passing
through the abyss is not a solitary endeavor according to An: it is a colonial abyss,
rather than a personal abyss. The narrative work involved is thus one of creating
collective images which can help create logical continuity for the colonized and can
help create space for asserting their existence and persistence in a global situation
which continually denies or obscures such an existence. (Thus, beyond the creation
of concepts, the demolition of various modes of thinking is necessary to make sure
45
46
An, The Decolonial Abyss, 89. I’m somewhat wary of An and Glissant’s use of images of slaves being
thrown overboard and drowned—wary, because it comes across as a metaphor or ‘mere’ literary image
that detracts from the real material violence that occurred and continues to occur. It’s difficult to talk
about such issues without doing symbolic violence to those that are being spoken about though,
since the slaves in question have been either erased from history in their particularity or such presence
is given over to what can be said in the account books of slaveholders. The very interiority of such
slaves is lost and invoking such interiority in a literary style can also be a form of violence. On this
difficulty, see Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12(2), June 2008, 1–14.
An, The Decolonial Abyss, 92. This form of collective ‘fracturing,’ which exists partially because of outright
violence, partially because of the erasure of a shared history, and partially because of the non-existence
of epistemic resources that could help make sense of the specificity of the situation of colonialism is
likely an instance of ‘hermeneutical injustice’. See Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics
of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
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STERLING HALL
that such concepts aren’t usurped and distorted by current colonial and imperial
powers. This work needs to be pursued alongside and within land-back movements,
rather than in opposition to them as is sometimes argued.47) An, in this vein, points
towards the importance of the image of the shoreline in Caribbean attempts to
make narrative sense out of the situation of coloniality. The shoreline is a point of
passage, a liminal zone between the sea and the land, although the shore signifies
(and thus its presence doesn’t allow for forgetting) the violence of the middle
passage since “new history is to be born at the very point where [the ocean’s] thin
line of demarcation meets the land, the rugged soil of history, just as the end of the
ocean marks the beginning of land.”48 Such metaphorical descriptions are essential
for mending the kind of collective fracturing that results from colonialism since they
create shared discursive norms that make such fracturing intelligible and help make
the self that emerges out of this fracturing into a source of meaning-making: these
metaphors make the unspeakable into something speakable and thus something
communicable intersubjectively.
Learning to narrativize events that rupture one’s self understanding is crucial
for mending such fractures. As Susan Brison puts it, “Piecing together a dismembered
self seems to require a process of remembering in which speech and affect
converge…[since] saying something about a traumatic memory does something to
it.”49 Nomination is a crucial step of mending a fractured self—the act of naming brings
into the open that which previously existed under the horizon of intentionality. It
makes present-to-hand what was previously only ready-to-hand and thus makes a
traumatic event into something which can be affected rather than something which
only affects. An hints towards this same phenomenon when he says, speaking
metaphorically about the process of repairing a broken vase, “the gathering of the
broken pieces is a work of love that, at the same time, reveals the pain of its
47
48
49
This focus on epistemic reconstruction both instead of and in opposition to land-back initiatives is
present in much of Walter Mignolo’s work on ‘decoloniality’. He says that “The goal [for decoloniality
given the state of the world post-9/11] was no longer to ‘take hold of the state’ but to engage in
epistemic and subjective reconstitution”. It’s important to note that Mignolo says ‘no longer…’ rather
than ‘no longer just…’ See Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts,
Analytics, Praxis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 120.
An, The Decolonial Abyss, 94. For another attempt to think through the liminality of the shoreline (or
more specifically the ‘swash zone’) in relation to practices of whaling, commodity food production,
gender relations, and human/non-human animal relations, see Russell Fielding, “The Liminal Coastline
in the Life of a Whale: Transition, Identity, and Food-Production in the Eastern Caribbean,” Geoforum,
54, 2014, 10–16.
Susan J. Brison, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2002), 56.
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THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY
scars.”50 This is what gives the abyss, as the space one passes through in attempting
to mend a fragmented self “after traumatic ruins,” a dialectical character, in the classical
sense of a ‘negation of the negation.’ As An says, “Negation is the movement of crossing
or passing through the abyss. Negation means first negating the self. Then it also
signifies negating [the act of]51 negation, which points to the act of renunciation, an
acceptance of loss that would, paradoxically, defy loss and defeat as the perpetual
condition of existence”52 A self is able to ‘close the circuit’ of its continuing production
after its interruption through acts of violence, by negating such forms of violence
and dialectically recognizing the reality of colonial trauma while creating epistemological
tools that allow for the possibility of moving on from, and thus transforming, such trauma.
How exactly these epistemological tools are created is beyond the scope of
this essay—nor is such a process something which could be given in advance anyway.
There is no blueprint for overcoming the negativity which prevents a self from continuing.
In this essay, I have gestured to how this works in cases of colonial trauma but it is
50
51
52
An, The Decolonial Abyss, 14. This is a reference to and commentary on Derek Walcott’s essay “The
Antilles: Fragments [!] of Epic Memory” where he states “Break a vase, and the love that reassembles
the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.
The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our
African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirloom whose restoration shows its white scars. This
gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles, and if the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting,
they contain more pain than their original sculpture, those icons and sacred vessels taken for granted
in their ancestral places. Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary,
our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent.” A beautiful
example of the kind of practices of mending that both An and Glissant are gesturing towards. See Derek
Walcott, “The Antilles, Fragments of Epic Memory: The 1992 Nobel Lecture,” World Literature Today
67(2), 1993, 261–267.
This insertion is made to help clarify the dialectical structure at work in this process of ‘double negation.’
Although it’s a common summary of dialectical logic, “negating negation” means nothing. At most,
it would indicate a pure positivity void of any trace of the movement of negativity, which is directly
opposed to dialectical forms of thinking. Negation isn’t negated in a dialectical process, but the act
or structure which produces the negation is what is negated: this is why what is negated is the whole
of the structure of capital in the dialectic of history and why, in An’s example, the traumatic encounter
or situation which negates the self (which fractures or dissolves the self, which stops the self’s
process of production) is what is negated. The reason that it’s said that this negation is ‘sublated’
is because the thing which is negated in a dialectical process isn’t erased (as one pretends while
acting in bad faith) but is transformed by being put into a different relation to the relevant totality
which grounds it. Hence, the impact of colonial trauma, which makes it impossible within a given
situation to harness the narrative tools necessary to allow for a self to persist, is transformed into
something intelligible through creative acts of nomination and collective acts of mourning which
allow for the possibility of living—fully living—through the practical recognition of a traumatic event
or series of events.
An, The Decolonial Abyss, 81.
135
STERLING HALL
true for other forms of trauma too. Even the means of mending colonial forms of
fracture is multiple: what works for Venezuelans will not necessarily work for Cubans,
nor will it necessarily work for the indigenous populations of the U.S. or Israel as
sites of settler-colonialism. Selves are produced differently in different situations:
the work of curling away from the il y a takes many different forms and the ontological
excess of the il y a allows for it to be presented (and thus rejected) in numerous
ways. This is part of why the work of sustaining a self can be so difficult. Even such
‘normal’ cases as resting at home in order to feel whole again are propped up by
whole systems of gendered and racialized (re)productive labor, along with whole
networks of service providers that help to fill the instantaneous gaps of selfproduction (or at least make their failures less noticeable). Dwelling is also multiple.
But here I have at least shown that the self is something produced and that its
persistence is not guaranteed. When there is a failure in the process of selfproduction, one way of rectifying this failure is through creative acts which allow
for acts of narration to continue. These acts of narration allow for a self to begin
making sense of itself across instances of disunity: to make sense out of seemingly
contradictory statements such as “I can no longer recognize myself as the self that
once experienced/believed/felt 𝑋, but I still recognize that I am that person.”
Through the kind of logic presented here, there is at least the beginnings of a general
theory of how a self can come into being, fracture or dissolve, and re-emerge as a
being able to recognize itself in crossing an ontological gap—in fact, the act of
crossing that gap (and building the structures needed in order for such) is precisely
what makes such recognition possible.
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THE MENDING OF A FRACTURED SELF. ON THE SELF AS A PRODUCED AND SUSTAINED ENTITY
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Press, 1997.
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Sparrow, Tom, Levinas Unhinged, Zer0 Books, 2013.
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138
STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 139-162
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.07
HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS
SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN
SEINES DENKWEGS (I)∗
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR∗∗
ABSTRACT. Hermeneutical Considerations on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and on
the Revisiting of his Path of Thinking I. Starting with preliminary philological-hermeneutical considerations concerning the way Heidegger’s Black Notebooks can
and should be dealt with, as well as concerning the question what tasks may be
derived from them for future research, the paper attempts to discuss the Black
Notebooks applying a variety of methods and multiple approaches. Themes that
are discussed at more or less length include: Time factor and the formulation of
our task; explanation and understanding or the way a philosophical path should be
approached and dealt with methodically (hermeneutically); the theme related to
“Heidegger and anti-Semitism” and the question concerning individuality; prejudices from a hermeneutical perspective and the way to deal with them; relapses
and their philosophical explanation; missing and increased sensibility; Heidegger
and Hegel; equivocality and the dark side of the “formal indication”; Lukács, Scheler
and the devil; Heidegger’s great being-historical treatises and their greatness; suggestions for a reconsideration of Heidegger’s way of thinking. -- One important hermeneutical claim brought to bear on the various discussions is this: just as it would
be inappropriate in our dealing with Heidegger’s texts to disregard Heidegger’s
own self-interpretations, it would be no less inappropriate to consider those selfinterpretations--which themselves call for interpretation--as telling us the sole and
ultimate truth.
Keywords: hermeneutics, being, history, interpretation, individuality
∗
∗∗
Die hier in zwei Teilen erscheinende Studie stellt die vollständige Fassung meines Aufsatzes dar, der
um ein Drittel gekürzt im Band 12 des Heidegger-Jahrbuchs veröffentlicht worden ist. Der zweite
Teil dieses Beitrags wird in der nächsten Nummer der Zeitschrift („Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai“,
Philosophia, 2/2021) erscheinen.
ELTE University; Andrássy German Speaking University, Budapest, Hungary. Email: feher@ella.hu.
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG. Ausgehend von philologisch-hermeneutischen Überlegungen zur Art und Weise, wie mit den Schwarzen Heften umgegangen werden kann
und soll und welche Aufgabenstellungen davon resultieren, sucht dieser Beitrag,
die Schwarzen Hefte in ihren vielfachen Schattierungen zu beleuchten und zur Diskussion zu stellen. Erörtert werden folgende Themen: Zeitfaktor und Aufgabenstellung; Erklären und Verstehen oder wie einem philosophischen Denk- und Lebensweg methodisch (hermeneutisch) nachgegangen werden soll; das Thema „Heidegger
und der Antisemitismus“ im Zusammenhang der Frage nach der Individualität; Vorurteile aus hermeneutischer Sicht und der Umgang mit ihnen; Rückfälle eines philosophischen Lebensweges; mangelnde und gesteigerte Sensibilität, Heidegger und
Hegel; Zweideutigkeit und Schattenseite der „formalen Anzeige“; Lukács, Scheler und
der Teufel; Größe der großen seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen Heideggers; zum
Neudenken seines Denkwegs. -- Eine im Zuge des Beitrags immer wieder geltend
gemachte Einsicht lautet: So wenig es angemessen wäre, bei unserem Umgang mit
seinen Texten Heideggers Selbstinterpretationen außer acht zu lassen, so wenig
erwiese es als ratsam, diese, ebenfalls der Interpretation bedürftigen Texte für die
alleinige Wahrheit zu halten.
Schlüsselwörter: Hermeneutik, Sein, Geschichte, Interpretation
INHALT:
Erster Teil
I. Zeitfaktor und Aufgabenstellung
II. Erklären und Verstehen oder wie einem philosophischen Denk- und Lebensweg
methodisch (hermeneutisch) nachgegangen werden soll
III. Zurück zum Thema Heidegger und der Antisemitismus – die Frage nach der Individualität
IV. Vorurteile und der Umgang mit ihnen aus hermeneutischer Sicht
V. Rückfälle und ihre philosophische Begründung
VI. „Einmal Minister…“
Zweiter Teil
VII. Mangelnde und gesteigerte Sensibilität – Heidegger und Hegel – Die Zweideutigkeit und die Schattenseiten der formalen Anzeige
VIII. Lukács, Scheler und – der Teufel
IX. Die Größe der großen seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen
X. Zum Neudenken des Denkwegs Heideggers
140
HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
***
Die oft auch als Denktagebücher bezeichneten und nach ihren Einbänden
so genannten Schwarzen Hefte Martin Heideggers haben gleich nach Ihrem Erscheinen, März 2014 – wenn nicht sogar vor ihrem Erscheinen –, großes Aufsehen erregt
und hören bis heute nicht auf, die Gemüter zu beschäftigen, ja zu beunruhigen und
teils auch zu erschüttern. Die sogleich leidenschaftlichen Diskussionen konzentrierten sich auf jene Textstellen, an denen die Bezeichnungen „Juden”, „Judentum”,
„Judenschaft”, „Weltjudentum”, „jüdisch“, u.ä. auftauchten.1 So hat es nicht lange
gedauert, bis die Frage entstand: War Heidegger Antisemit? Die so formulierte Fragestellung führt zu etwas, was man (wie zu zeigen sein wird) als hermeneutische
Sackgasse bezeichnen kann, denn sowohl die bejahende als auch die verneinende
Antwort verkennt gerade das, was hier im ausgezeichneten Sinne – sofern es sich
um Hermeneutik handelt – verstanden werden soll. Die Subsumption unter allgemeine Begriffe bzw. die Unterordnung eines Einzeldings, einer Einzelperson oder
eines Begriffs unter eine bestimmte Art oder unter einen umfassenderen Begriff
sieht nämlich von der Einmaligkeit oder Individualität des Gegenstandes ab und gibt
somit das den Geisteswissenschaften Eigene preis. Damit geht eine lange und wertvolle deutsche hermeneutisch-geisteswissenschaftliche Tradition verloren. Ehe darauf eingegangen wird, dürften einige ganz einfache hermeneutische (oder philologisch-hermeneutische) Überlegungen vom Nutzen sein.
I. Zeitfaktor und Aufgabenstellung
Angesichts des rasch einsetzenden und kaum übersehbaren Stroms von Äußerungen über die Schwarzen Hefte schien es, als habe man keine Schwierigkeiten
gehabt, die etwa 1250 Seiten der drei Bände Überlegungen (also die Bände 94, 95
und 96 der Gesamtausgabe [= GA]), zu denen kaum ein Jahr später, nämlich im
März 2015, noch ein vierter Band (GA 97) hinzukam,2 über Nacht durchzulesen und
gründlich durchzuarbeiten. Daß dies kaum der Fall gewesen sein dürfte, sollte freilich einleuchten. Aber damit ist die Quantität des zu Lesenden noch bei weitem
nicht erschöpft. Da eine einigermaßen fachkundige Kontextualisierung der Schwarzen Hefte gewisse Heidegger- bzw. Hintergrundkenntnisse im Allgemeinen voraussetzt, des Weiteren Kenntnis von zumindest zehn bis fünfzehn (oder mehr) Bänden
1
2
Die wichtigsten Textpassagen sind die folgenden: GA (= Gesamtausgabe) 95, 96f., 97, 161, 325, 326,
395f.; GA 96, 46, 56, 133, 218, 242f., 262.
Auch dieser Band enthält einige judenbezogene Textpassagen; siehe GA 97, 20, 159, 438, 463. Siehe
jetzt auch Marbach-Bericht über eine neue Sichtung des Heidegger-Nachlasses erstattet von Klaus Held,
Frankfurt/Main 2019, 30, 51ff., 55f, 58.
141
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
der Gesamtausgabe – hauptsächlich denjenigen, die die Vorlesungen der 1930er
Jahre sowie die zu dieser Zeit entstandenen seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen
enthalten – erfordert, fragt es sich, ob angesichts des bloßen Zeitfaktors die Bedingungen für eine sachgemäße bzw. sachlich fundierte und fruchtbare Diskussion bei
der Mehrzahl der mündlichen bzw. schriftlichen Äußerungen überhaupt vorlagen
oder als gegeben angesehen werden können.
Was der Herausgeber des Bandes 65 der GA im Nachwort ausdrücklich betonte, leuchtet ein: daß nämlich das Studium der „Vorlesungen der dreißiger Jahre“
„Voraussetzung ist für den nötigen Nachvollzug der »Beiträge zur Philosophie«”
bzw. daß „Kenntnis und aneignendes Studium der Vorlesungstexte eine notwendige Voraussetzung seien für das Verständnis der unveröffentlichten Schriften”.3 In
den Beiträgen gibt es jedoch zahlreiche Hinweise auch auf die Schwarzen Hefte
bzw. die Überlegungen (vorwiegend auf Überlegungen IV), so daß es abwegig wäre,
nur Vorlesungs- und Abhandlungstexte aufeinander zu beziehen. Vielmehr ist es so,
daß als Drittes die Texte der Schwarzen Hefte hinzukommen. Diese begleiten nicht
bloß die Texte der seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen und treten keineswegs so in
ihrer Relevanz hinter sie zurück, sondern sind öfters von gleichem Rang.4 In den
Beiträgen finden sich etwa eineinhalb Dutzend Verweise auf die Überlegungen, umgekehrt ist die Zahl der Hinweise auf die Beiträge in GA 94--97 geringer.5 Daraus
könnte sogar die Konsequenz gezogen werden, für ein tieferes Verständnis der Beiträge sei die Kenntnis der Schwarzen Hefte wesentlich, vielleicht auch unumgänglich, während umgekehrt die Kenntnis der Beiträge für das Verständnis der Schwarzen Hefte weniger relevant sei.
Als vorübergehendes Fazit läßt sich sagen, daß vielfache Zusammenhänge
zwischen den Vorlesungen, den seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen und den
Schwarzen Heften bestehen, wobei auch wohl keine festen Grenzlinien zwischen
ihnen zu ziehen sind. Finden wir doch in den Schwarzen Heften auch umfangreichere Textstücke, die als kleine Abhandlungen verstanden werden können (vor allem in Überlegungen VII = GA 95) Texte, die wohl auch in den Beiträgen oder in der
Vorlesung des WS 1937/38 (GA 45) hätten untergebracht werden können. Einige
3
4
5
GA 65, 513.
Ähnlich Rainer Thurnher in einem kürzlich erschienenen Beitrag: „Es ist zu vermuten, daß […] man bei
der Auslegung der Vorlesungen und der seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen künftig an dem Aufschluß, den
die Schwarzen Hefte bieten, nicht wird vorbeigehen können” Rainer Thurnher, „Heideggers seinsgeschichtliches
Denken in manichäisch-adventistischer Zuspitzung”, in: Auslegungen. Von Parmenides bis zu den Schwarzen
Heften, hrsg. Harald Seubert und Klaus Neugebauer (Schriftenreihe der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft,
Bd. 11, Freiburg / München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2017, 272--303, hier 274).
Verweise auf die „Überlegungen” in den Beiträgen: GA 65, 43, 57, 83, 103, 112, 118, 147, 204, 255, 294,
398, 421, 422, 456, 473, 491; Verweise auf die Beiträge in den Schwarze Hefte-Bänden: GA 94, 236, 275,
468; GA 95, 48, 155; GA 97, 177, 191f, 285, 315, 395.
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HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
Eintragungen können angesichts der seinsgeschichtlichen Abhandlungen „Ergänzungscharakter”6 haben.
Die bisher publizierten Texte der Schwarzen Hefte können jedenfalls andere Texte beleuchten, und umgekehrt können sie ihrerseits durch diese anderen
Texte beleuchtet werden. Eine gründlichere Aufarbeitung der hier entstehenden
Zusammenhänge dürfte sich als zeitaufwendig erweisen. Wenn z.B. in Überlegungen VII zu lesen ist: „Jeder Anklang des Seyns ist ihm [dem Sinnlichen] geraubt“,
oder wenn es heißt, das Licht sei „ein Anklang des Seyns“,7 so haben wir die Möglichkeit, diese Textstellen mit dem zweiten Teil der Beiträge, der den Titel „Anklang“
trägt, zu vergleichen.8
Nach der Veröffentlichung der Schwarze Hefte wurden nicht nur zahlreiche
Zeitungs- und Zeitschriftenartikel publiziert, sondern man veranstaltete auch in
raschem Tempo Tagungen und veröffentlichte daraus resultierende Sammelbände
in Deutschland, Europa und Amerika. Heidegger hatte Anfang der 20er Jahre in einer
seiner scharf kulturkritischen Bemerkungen die Meinung geäußert, „bei dem großen
Betrieb der Philosophie“ sei „alles nur darauf abgestellt […], bei der […] jetzt beginnenden »Auferstehung der Metaphysik« ja nicht zu spät zu kommen […]“.9 Ähnlich
schien es nun, als komme alles darauf an, mit eigenen Meinungsäußerungen zu den
Schwarzen Heften „nicht zu spät zu kommen”. Angesichts dieser Sachlage dürfte es
nicht unnütz sein, einen „Schritt zurück“ zu machen (um mich eines Heideggerschen Konzepts in einem etwas abweichenden Sinne zu bedienen) und mögliche
sowie hermeneutisch fruchtbare bzw. sinnvolle Aufgabenstellungen zu skizzieren.
Bei diesen geht es allerdings oft um mehrjährige Projekte. Außer Relektüre von vielen Texten Heideggers, sollten Forschungen angestellt werden, die eine nähere Datierung der einzelnen Einträge möglich machen, oder z.B. dem US-amerikanischen
Projekt der „reeducation” (Umerziehung) in den Nachkriegsjahren nachgehen –
6
7
8
9
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, „Notwendige Erläuterungen zu den Schwarzen Heften. Über die naive
Instrumentalisierung hinaus, die aufgrund der Mutmaßungen bequemer Einsichten inszeniert wurde”,
in: Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann / Francesco Alfieri, Martin Heidegger. Die Wahrheit über die Schwarzen
Hefte, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2017, 26-48, hier 48. Siehe noch die Bemerkung, daß die „Notizbücher
auch sehr vieles enthalten, […] was zum reinen, seinsgeschichtlichen Denken gehört […]” (ebd., 27).
GA 95, 47, 62; vgl. noch ebd. 98, 207, 298.
GA 65, 107–166.
GA 63, 20. Im Kontext: „Wir sind heute so mark- und knochenlos geworden, daß wir eine Frage
schon gar nicht mehr aushalten; wenn der eine philosophische Medizinmann nicht antworten kann,
läuft man zum nächsten. Diese Nachfrage steigert das Angebot. Im Volksmund heißt das: gesteigertes Interesse für die Philosophie. Die Hermeneutik ist selbst nicht Philosophie; sie möchte den
heutigen Philosophen lediglich einen bislang in Vergessenheit geratenen Gegenstand zur »geneigten Beachtung« vorlegen. Daß solche Nebensachen heute verloren gehen, darf bei dem großen
Betrieb der Philosophie nicht wundernehmen, wo alles nur darauf abgestellt ist, bei der – wie man
hört – jetzt beginnenden »Auferstehung der Metaphysik« ja nicht zu spät zu kommen […]”.
143
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
was es genau zum Ziel hatte und was davon verwirklicht wurde. (Dies um Heideggers leidenschaftliche Absage an ihr zu verstehen.) Nicht zuletzt müßte in diesem
Zusammenhang die Frage nach dem Unterschied zwischen „Umerziehung” in dem von
Heidegger kritisierten negativen Sinne und dem von ihm in den Jahren 1933/34 im
positiv aufgegriffenen Sinne gestellt und ausgearbeitet werden.10
Die nun veröffentlichten Texte umfassen eine Zeitspanne von fast zwei
Jahrzehnten (vom 1931 bis 1948). Aus dieser Zeit stammen die Bände 33–55 der
zweiten Abteilung der Gesamtausgabe, etwa zehn Bände der dritten Abteilung und
einige Bände der vierten Abteilung (vorwiegend die Seminar-Bände). Bei genauerem Hinsehen dürften insgesamt wohl dreißig bis vierzig Bände der Gesamtausgabe
daraufhin geprüft werden müssen, ob sie mögliche Parallelen, Konvergenzen oder
Divergenzen zu den nun veröffentlichten vier Bände enthalten. Grundsätzlich aber
können in sämtlichen Bänden der Gesamtausgabe mögliche Paralleltexte und -stellen befinden bzw. auftauchen. Eine strikte Abgrenzung ist kaum möglich. So kann
z. B. Heideggers knappe Husserl-Kritik in den Überlegungen XII (GA 96, 46f.), die viel
Aufsehen erregt hat und auf die näher einzugehen hier aus Platzgünden nicht möglich ist, nur richtig verstanden und eingeschätzt werden, wenn wir sie mit den detaillierten Erörterungen vergleichen, die Heidegger im Sommersemester 1925 in
seiner Vorlesung (Bd. 20 der GA) gegeben hat. Ende der 1930er Jahre wirft er
Husserl genauso wie bereits Mitte der 20er Jahre ein „Versäumnis“ bzw. das „Versäumnis der Seinsfrage“ vor,11 und bemerkenswerterweise sind Heideggers Formulierungen bis in den Wortlaut hinein identisch, nur fehlen in dem späteren Text die
diese Behauptung begründenden Diskussionen. Um Heideggers äußerst kurze Hinweise in den Schwarzen Heften (GA 96) zu verstehen, ist somit eine Kenntnis und
ein Verständnis der großen Husserl-Kritik vonnöten. Heideggers Kontextualisierung
mag dabei sehr wohl befremdlich wirken (Machtsteigerung des Judentums). Man
braucht ihr aber auch nicht zuzustimmen bzw. man kann sie ohnehin ablehnen und
sich auf sachliche Prüfung der Husserl-Kritik beschränken -- was zugleich einen produktiveren Umgang mit dieser Textstelle darstellen könnte.
Aber auch zur Interpretation von Sekundärtexten oder anderen Quellen können die nun zugänglich gewordenen Schwarze Hefte beitragen. Es sei als Beispiel
auf einen einzigen Satz aus Karl Jaspers‘ Autobiographie hingewiesen. Dort berichtet Jaspers, Heidegger habe im lebendigen Gespräch gesagt: „Es gibt doch eine gefährliche internationale Verbindung der Juden“.12 Heidegger gegenüber wohlwollend eingestellte Interpreten – inklusive des Verf. vorliegenden Aufsatzes – haben
10
11
12
Siehe z.B. Heidegger, „Die deutsche Universität”, GA 16, 302: „die innere Umerziehung des ganzen
Volkes zu dem Ziel, seine eigene Einigkeit und Einheit zu wollen” (Hervorh. I.M.F.). Siehe noch ebd.,
282, 304, 312, 766. Für den pejorativen Gebrauch von „Umerziehung” siehe GA 97, 390.
GA 96, 47; GA 20, 147, 155, 157ff., 178ff.
Karl Jaspers, Philosophische Autobiographie, erweiterte Neuausgabe, München: Piper, 1977, 101.
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HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
gezögert, diesem Satz Glauben zu schenken, und zwar aus dem Grunde daß Heidegger so etwas nicht gesagt haben könne, weil er sonst doch nie etwas Ähnliches geäußert habe. Nun, nach der Veröffentlichung der Schwarze Hefte, in denen mehrmals
in sehr scharfem Ton die Rede von dem „Judentum“ oder dem „Weltjudentum“ ist,
ist der Kontext hergestellt, in dessen Rahmen der von Jaspers zitierte HeideggerSatz getätigt worden sein mag. Die Berufung darauf, es sei apriori auszuschließen,
daß Heidegger so etwas gesagt haben könne, ist kaum mehr haltbar. Was Heidegger Jaspers mündlich gesagt hat, wissen wir freilich nach wie vor nicht und werden
es wahrscheinlich nie wissen. Aber die Chance, daß das von Jaspers angeführte Zitat
doch etwas zutreffendes wiedergibt, ist erheblich erhöht.13
Aufgrund der nun veröffentlichten Texte kann übrigens auch ein zweiter Satz
aus Jaspers’ Erinnerungen an Glaubwürdigkeit gewinnen, den man bisher für ebenso
unglaubwürdig oder unglaublich gehalten hat und der zumindest aber bizarr klingt.
Auf seine Frage, »Wie soll ein so ungebildeter Mensch wie Hitler Deutschland regieren?«, habe Heidegger laut Jaspers’ Erinnerung geantwortet: »Bildung ist ganz gleichgültig, sehen Sie nur seine wunderbaren Hände an!« Angesichts der Korrespondenz
mit seinem Bruder Fritz -- insbesondere der begeisterten Worte über Hitler --, hat die
Glaubwürdigkeit auch dieser Bemerkung zugenommen.14
Um auf konkrete Aufgabenstellungen zurückzukommen, scheint so viel
festgestellt werden zu können, daß es ein Desidarat für die durch den Zugang zu
den Schwarzen Heften ermöglichte Forschung sein könnte, Heideggers Denkweg in
den dreißiger Jahren differenzierter als bisher darzustellen. Die bisher übliche Zweiteilung (Rektoratsjahr 1933/34, und dann Rücktritt und Rückzug in die denkerische
Einsamkeit einschließlich der Entwicklung eines passiven geistigen Widerstands ) ist
kaum mehr befriedigend. Möglicherweise gibt es zwischen 1934 und 1945 mehrere
Phasen, die voneinander unterschieden werden können, oder das gleichzeitige Bestehen von gegensätzlichen Tendenzen, z.B. von Kritik und Unterstützung des Nationalsozialismus. Wenn im Nachwort des Herausgebers GA 94 zu lesen ist, „dass Heidegger
13
14
Siehe hierzu auch Holger Zaborowski, „Eine Frage von Irre und Schuld?“ Martin Heidegger und der
Nationalsozialismus. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2010, 620.
Es ist wohl keine allzu große Übertreibung zu sagen, Heidegger habe „seine Begeisterung mit nahezu
erotischen Worten” beschrieben (Jean Grondin, „Warum ich Heidegger in schwieriger Zeit treu bleibe”,
in Heidegger und der Antisemitismus. Positionen im Widerstreit. Mit Briefen von Martin und Fritz
Heidegger, hrsg. Walter Homolka, Arnulf Heidegger, Freiburg – Basel – Wien: Herder, 2016, 232–241,
hier 235). Wie jeder bedeutende Denker verdient auch Heidegger eine Hermeneutik des Wohlwollens; diese ist aber nicht notwendig gleichbedeutend mit „Treue”. Wenn irgendetwas, so müßte man
der Wahrheit treu bleiben. Philosophie ist, möchte man hoffen, doch etwas anderes bzw. etwas mehr
als eine Sache des „Treu-bleibens” oder „das Schiff-nicht-Verlassens” (ebd., 234).
145
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
spätestens im Sommer 1936 den Abstand zum real existierenden Nationalsozialismus findet […]”,15 so klingt das allzu entschieden. Es könnte sein, daß Heidegger bei
aller Kritik am realen Nationalsozialismus einen endgültigen Abstand zu ihm nicht
gefunden hat. Bei einem wirklichen Abstand – nicht nur zum ideellen, sondern „zum
real existierenden Nationalsozialismus” – hätte Heidegger das Kriegsende positiver
eingeschätzt, nämlich als Befreiung gefeiert, damit die Sache Deutschlands und die
Sache Hitlers (bzw. die des real existierenden Nationalsozialismus) voneinander klar
trennen müssen – was er eben nicht getan hat.
Was die auf Juden bezogenen Textstellen betrifft, so könnte es als Aufgabe
angesehen werden, sie näheren Analysen zu unterwerfen, denn es gibt zwar zahlreiche, z.T. sehr leidenschaftliche Hinweise auf diese Stellen, aber kaum sachliche
Diskussionen über sie. Von einer Heidegger gegenüber freundlich eingestellten
Seite versucht man, sie so oder so zu verharmlosen oder tabuisieren, von einer ihm
kritisch zugewandten Seite bleibt man meistens bei der moralischen Be- und Verurteilung stehen. Es erschiene auch wünschenswert, mit Termini wie „Antisemitismus“,
„antisemitisch“, usw. möglichst sparsam umzugehen und klar zu differenzieren zwischen
diesen und Bezeichnungen wie „antijudaistisch“, „judenkritisch“, usw. Die dem Judentum vorgeworfene Geschichtslosigkeit dürfte z.B. wohl auf einen religiösen,
christlich geprägten Antijudaismus und nicht auf einen rassischen Antisemitismus
zurückgehen.16 Auf jeden Fall sollten plausible Erklärungen versucht werden angesichts des allzu offensichtlichen Widerspruchs zwischen antisemitischen und antiantisemitischen Textstellen, wie z. B. jener immer wieder angeführten Textstelle aus
den Beiträgen: „Der reine Blödsinn zu sagen, das experimentelle Forschen sei nordisch-germanisch und das rationale dagegen fremdartig! Wir müssen uns dann schon
entschließen, Newton und Leibniz zu den »Juden« zu zählen”).17 (Nebenbei bemerkt:
So harmlos und anti-antisemitisch ist diese Bemerkung nicht. Bei genauerem Hinsehen wird hier nämlich ein latenter Zusammenhang etabliert zwischen „fremdartig”
und „»Juden«”, so daß sich folgende Lesart ergibt: „Wir müssen uns entschließen,
Newton und Leibniz zu den – fremdartigen, d.h. den – »Juden« zu zählen”. Denn auf
die Frage, warum auf „fremdartig” als Explizierung oder Konkretisierung „Juden” folgt,
15
16
17
GA 94, 533.
Vgl. für einen solchen Versuch István M. Fehér, „Heideggers theologische Herkunft – Fragen der
Interpretation (mit einem Anhang über Geschichte und Geschichtslosigkeit)”, in: Auslegungen. Von
Parmenides bis zu den Schwarzen Heften, hrsg. Harald Seubert, Klaus Neugebauer (Schriftenreihe
der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft, Bd. 10), Freiburg/Br. – München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2017, 51–90,
hier 70–90. Die relevanten Textpassagen bei Heidegger in: Martin Heidegger, Überlegungen VII-XI
(Schwarze Hefte 1938/39) (GA 95), 96f.; Überlegungen XII-XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939-1941) (GA 96),
133. An die Kritik der Geschichtslosigkeit schließt sich dann die Kritik an der „Prophetie” an; siehe
Anmerkungen I-V (Schwarze Hefte 1942–1948) (GA 97), 159, bzw. den zitierten Anhang.
GA 65, 163.
146
HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
kann kaum eine andere Antwort gegeben werden als die, die zwischen diesen beiden,
„fremdartig“ und „Juden“ einen inneren Zusammenhang feststellt. Und daß Juden
fremdartig sind, ist ein gut etablierter topos des Antisemitismus.) Es wäre auch geboten, den für Heideggers Denkweg in den dreißigen Jahren bestimmenden, viel
zitierten und unterschiedlich interpretierten „Rückblick auf den Weg“18 genauer zu
kontextualisieren, nicht zuletzt, weil er wichtige Hinweise zur Interpretation der
Schwarzen Hefte bzw. der Überlegungen selbst enthäl. Wie ist der Status dieses Textes
philosophisch-biographisch einzuschätzen? Ist er in der Tat, wie Otto Pöggeler meinte,
so etwas wie ein Testament? Und wenn ja, hat er mit Heideggers verändertem Verhältnis zum Nationalsozialismus bzw. zu den zeitgenössischen politisch-geschichtlichen
Ereignissen etwas zu tun?
Ich schließe diesen Teil meines Beitrags mit einer allgemeinen hermeneutischen (Lehr-) Satz: So wenig es angemessen wäre, bei unserem Umgang mit seinen
Texten Heideggers Selbstinterpretationen außer acht zu lassen, so wenig erwiese
es sich als ratsam, diese Texte – die selbst auch der Interpretation bedürftig sind –
für die alleinige Wahrheit zu halten.
II. Erklären und Verstehen oder wie einem philosophischen Denk- und
Lebensweg methodisch (hermeneutisch) nachgegangen werden soll
Ich kehre zurück zu der Fragestellung: War Heidegger Antisemit?, Meine
These lautet: Die so gestellte Frage führt – sei es, daß man sie bejahend, sei es, daß
man sie verneinend beantwortet – in eine hermeneutische Sackgasse, denn sie sieht
als reine Subsumptionsfrage von der Einmaligkeit oder Individualität des Gegenstandes
ab und gibt somit das den Geisteswissenschaften innerlich Eigene preis, womit auch
eine lange und wertvolle deutsche hermeneutisch-geisteswissenschaftliche Tradition verlorengeht. Dies soll im folgenden kurz dargestellt werden.19
Die wissenschaftstheoretische Tradition, die hier zu berücksichtigen ist, entstand
zu Zeiten der Aufklärung und der Romantik und kreiste von Anfang an um die Möglichkeit dessen, was man mit einer späteren Terminologie „unity of science“ oder „unified
science“ genannt hat. Zur Debatte steht, ob es eine Einheit der Wissenschaften schlechthin gibt, oder ob sie von Grund auf verschieden sind. Den zentralen Bezugspunkt
bildet wohl der erkenntnis- oder wissenschaftstheoretische Unterschied zwischen
Erklären und Verstehen. Dieser wiederum gewinnt sein Profil durch den Widerstand,
den die deutsche philosophische Tradition dem im Zeichen einer “unified science“
18
19
GA 66, 411–428.
Vgl. zum Folgenden detaillierter István M. Fehér, "Verstehen bei Heidegger und Gadamer". "Dimensionen des Hermeneutischen". Heidegger und Gadamer, hrsg. G. Figal und H.-H. Gander (Schriftenreihe der Martin-Heidegger-Gesellschaft, Bd. 7), Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2005, 89–115.
147
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
oder “unity of science“20 positivistisch akzentuierten einheitswissenschaftlichen Ideal
französisch-angelsächsischer Prägung im Laufe der Neuzeit geleistet hat. Da „der
moderne Wissenschaftsbegriff“ „von der Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaft des
17. Jahrhunderts geprägt worden“21 ist, treten einheitswissenschaftliche Bestrebungen mit der ausdrücklichen oder auch stillschweigenden Forderung an die Geisteswissenschaften heran, sich am Vorbild der Naturwissenschaft zu orientieren und
der naturwissenschaftlichen Methode zu folgen.
Wird ein derartiger Anspruch anerkannt, so hat dies zur Folge, daß das Einzelne, das Einmalige und vor allem das Geschichtliche, mit denen ja die Geisteswissenschaften seit jeher zu tun haben, vernachlässigt und in den Hintergrund gestellt werden
zugunsten eines nomologischen Wissens, das von vornherein auf Allgemeines und Gesetzmäßiges ausgerichtet ist. Das durch die moderne Naturwissenschaft nahegelegte
Gesetzesdenken kann hier umso mehr zur Herrschaft gelangen und zum Paradigma
jedweder Wissenschaft werden, weil es sich mit einer alten und ehrenwürdigen Tradition der Philosophie oder zumindest mit einer ihrer ältesten Selbstauffassungen zusammenschließen kann. Dieser Auffassung zufolge ist die Philosophie Erkenntnis der
ersten Prinzipien, des Allgemeinen und deswegen auch Abstrakten, wobei seit jeher
gilt: De singularibus non est scientia.22 Obwohl die Naturwissenschaft nicht weniger
als die Geisteswissenschaften von einzelnen Phänomenen oder Erfahrungstatsachen
ausgeht – deswegen heißen ja beide auch Erfahrungswissenschaften –, wird in der
naturwissenschaftlichen Methode das Einzelne auf allgemeine Gesetze zurückgeführt, oder aus ihnen abgeleitet; und in eben diesem Verfahren besteht das Erklären.
Damit wird man aber der spezifischen Eigenart der Gegenstände der Geisteswissenschaften nicht gerecht, vielmehr werden diese Gegenstände in ihrer Gegenständlichkeit oder Besonderheit von vornherein oder a priori zerstört. Dem Verfahren des Verstehens, das eine längere Vorgeschichte in der frühneuzeitlichen Hermeneutik hat,
fällt in diesem Zusammenhang die Aufgabe zu, diese Einseitigkeit, diesen Mangel
zu beseitigen. Das Erkenntnisziel des Verstehens besteht ja darin, das Einzelne als Einzelnes, das Einmalige als Einmaliges darzustellen.
Die den Naturwissenschaften eigene Erkenntnisform ist demgemäß das Erklären, wobei das Singulare durch Anwendung allgemeiner Gesetze erkannt wird, während das Singuläre als Singuläres gleichgültig bleibt. Das Erkenntnisinteresse richtet
sich auf das Allgemeine. In einem naturwisseschaftlichen Experiment sind die Komponenten in ihrer Einzelheit und Einmaligkeit ganz gleichgültig. Erst im Blick auf die Gesetzmäßigkeiten, die man aus den Beobachtungen folgern kann, gewinnt z. B. das
Verhalten eines Moleküls Relevanz. Der Versuch einer umfassenden Beschreibung
20
21
22
Zum Terminus “unity of science“ bei Gadamer siehe Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 2, 109.
H.-G. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 2, 37.
Vgl. hierzu auch Manfred Riedel, Verstehen oder Erklären? Zur Theorie und Geschichte des hermeneutischen Wissenschaften, Stuttgart, 1978, 11.
148
HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
wäre hier ganz unangemessen. Ganz anders in den Geisteswissenschaften, wo der Gegenstand eben in seiner Einmaligkeit und Unersetzbarkeit interessiert. Das für die Geisteswissenschaften grundlegende methodische Verfahren soll vor diesem Hintergrund
Beschreibung bzw. Verstehen heißen. Dieses richtet sich auf das Singuläre als Singuläres, und die allgemeinen Gesetze spielen bestenfalls die Rolle eines Hilfsmittels, wobei
auch oft zugestanden wird: Individuum est ineffabile; das Singuläre als Singuläres läßt
sich nicht aussprechen.23
Diese Diskussion, die man auch als Methodenstreit zwischen Wissenschaften
bezeichnen kann, deren Gegenstände je unterschiedliche Erkenntnisweisen voraussetzen oder – hermeneutisch formuliert –, wo das Vorverständnis bzw. die vorwissenschaftliche Erfahrung ihrer Gegenstände jeweils verschiedene Weisen ihrer wissenschaftlichen Bearbeitung verlangt, stellt den Kontext dar, in dem die hermeneutische Wende in der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhundert ansetzte. Diese hat jene Diskussion zwar weit hinter sich gelassen, aber immerhin sind deren Spuren auch noch
bei Gadamer zu finden. Auch Gadamer tritt einer von seinen Vorläufern für falsch
bzw. unangemessen gehaltenen und somit schlicht abgelehnten Interpretation der
Geisteswissenschaften kritisch entgegen, nämlich der Auffassung, daß die Geisteswissenschaften, um sich selbst ihre eigene Wissenschaftlichkeit zu sichern bzw. um
sich selbst zur Wissenschaft zu erheben, dem naturwissenschaftlichen Vorbild folgen und darauf abzielen sollten, “Gleichförmigkeiten, Regelhaftigkeiten, Gesetzmäßigkeiten zu erkennen, die die einzelnen Erscheinungen und Abläufe voraussagbar
[machen]“.24 Gadamer geht hingegen davon aus – wobei er die wohlbekannten Argumente
der ganzen deutschen geisteswissenschafltichen Tradition wieder einmal geltend macht,
“daß man das Wesen der Geisteswissenschaften nicht richtig erfaßt hat, wenn
man sie an dem Maßstab fortschreitender Erkenntnis von Gesetzmäßigkeiten
mißt. [...] historische Erkenntis erstrebt dennoch nicht, die konkrete Erscheinung
als Fall einer allgemeinen Regel zu erfassen. Das Einzelne dient nicht einfach zur
Bestätigung einer Gesetzmäßigkeit [...]. Ihr Ideal ist vielmehr, die Erscheinung selber in ihrer einmaligen und geschichtlichen Konkretion zu verstehen.“25
23
24
25
Vgl. H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleitung in die
historischen Wissenschaften. 2. Auflage, Tübingen 1913, I. Kap. VI., 101ff., ferner 223, 304; W. Windelband:
“Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft“, in: ders., Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Einführung in die Philosophie,
4. Auflage. Tübingen 1911, Bd. 2, 145ff.; W. Dilthey, “Die Entstehung der Hermeneutik“, in: Gesammelte Schriften,
Bd. V, 330 (vgl. noch Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. VII, 212); H.-G. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 2, 330.
Zum Unterscheiden von Erklären und Verstehen bei Droysen vgl. Historik. Textausgabe von P. Leyh,
Stuttgart – Bad Cannstatt 1977, 29, 161ff.
H.-G. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 1, 9.
H.-G. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 1, 10. Obwohl Gadamer den Neukantianern kritisch gegenübersteht, hier scheint er, vielleicht auch unbewußt, in der Wirkungsgeschichte des Badener Neukantianismus
zu stehen. “[...] in der Naturwissenschaft ist das Allgemeine Zweck“, hieß es z.B. bei Rickert, die “Geschichte
149
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
Aller heftigen Kritik des Neukantianismus zum Trotz, der wir nicht nur bei
Gadamer, sondern auch bei Heidegger gemäß der von ihnen vollzogenen ontologischen
Wende der Hermeneutik in Bezug auf den bloß methodologisch akzentuierten Verstehensbegriff begegnen, stellt dieses Zitat eine ziemlich genaue Zusammenfassung der
betreffenden Perspektive Windelbands und Rickerts dar. Die Autonomie und Andersartigkeit der Geisteswissenschaften gegenüber den Naturwissenschaften is besonders pointiert dargestellt in Windelbands Straßburger Rektoratsrede „Geschichte und
Naturwissenschaft“ aus dem Jahr 1894. In diesem Zusammenhang dürfte es nicht unnütz sein, einige Überlegungen daraus in Erinnerung zu rufen.
Einer der Grundgedanken von Windelbands Rede ist, daß „die Mehrzahl
derjenigen empirischen Disziplinen, die man wohl sonst als Geisteswissenschaften
bezeichnet, entschieden darauf gerichtet [ist], ein einzelnes, mehr oder minder ausgedehntes Geschehen von einmaliger, in der Zeit begrenzter Wirklichkeit zu voller
und erschöpfender Darstellung zu bringen.“ Daraus ergeben sich weit reichende
Konsequenzen auf der Ebene der Wissenschaftstheorie, die folgendermaßen zusammengefaßt werden können: „Hier haben wir nun eine rein methodologische,
auf sichere logische Begriffe zu gründende Einteilung der Erfahrungswissenschaften
vor uns. Das Einteilungsprinzip ist der formale Charakter ihrer Erkenntnissziele. Die
einen suchen allgemeine Gesetze, die anderen besondere geschichtliche Tatsachen
[…]“26 Und weiter: „So dürfen wir sagen: die Erfahrungswissenschaften suchen in
der Erkenntniss des Wirklichen entweder das Allgemeine in der Form des Naturgesetzes oder das Einzelne in der geschichtlich bestimmten Gestalt; sie betrachten zu
einem Teil die immer sich gleichbleibende Form, zum anderen Teil den einmaligen,
in sich bestimmten Inhalt des wirklichen Geschehens. Die einen sind Gesetzeswissenschaften, die anderen Ereigniswissenschaften […] Das wissenschaftliche Denken ist […]
in dem einen Falle nomothetisch, in dem andern idiographisch.“27 Dieser Unterschied ist grundlegend bzw. bestimmend auch für das jeweilige Verhältnis zum untersuchten Gegenstand. „Für den Naturforscher hat das einzelne gegebene Objekt
seiner Beobachtung niemals als solches wissenschaftlichen Wert, es dient ihm nur
26
27
dagegen benutzt zwar ebenfalls das Allgemeine, um überhaupt [...] denken und urteilen zu können,
aber das Allgemeine ist für sie lediglich Mittel. Es ist Umweg, auf dem sie wieder zum Individuellen [...]
zurückzukommen sucht“ “Die Geschichte kann [...] die Wirklichkeit niemals mit Rücksicht auf das
Allgemeine, sondern immer nur mit Rücksicht auf das Besondere und Individuelle darzustellen versuchen“
(H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, 302, 217). Siehe auch W. Dilthey,
Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 1, 26: Das Ziel der Geisteswissenschaften
bildet die “Auffassung des Singularen, Individualen“ (hierzu noch Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen
Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 7, 87).
Wilhelm Windelband, „Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft. Straßburger Rektoratsrede”, in: Ders.,
Präludien: Aufsätze und Reden zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, 9. Aufl., Tübingen 1924, Bd. 2,
136–160, hier 144.
Wilhelm Windelband, „Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft”, 145.
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HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
soweit, als er sich für berechtigt halten darf, es als Typus, als Spezialfall eines Gattungsbegriffs zu betrachten und diesen daraus zu entwickeln; er reflektiert darin
nur auf diejenigen Merkmale, welche zur Einsicht in eine gesetzmässige Allgemeinheit geeignet sind. Für den Historiker besteht die Aufgabe, irgend ein Gebilde der
Vergangenheit in seiner ganzen individuellen Ausprägung zu ideeller Gegenwärtigkeit
neu zu beleben“.28
III. Zurück zum Thema Heidegger und der Antisemitismus – die Frage nach
der Individualität
Die um Heideggers Antisemitismus kreisende Debatte ist von da aus gesehen
eine rein naturwissenschaftliche: zur Frage steht, ob der Mensch Martin Heidegger
„als Typus, als Spezialfall eines Gattungsbegriffs“, nämlich des Gattungsbegriffs
„Antisemit“, zu verstehen sei. Dabei wird seine Einzigkeit und Einmaligkeit übersehen.
Aus geisteswissenschaftlicher Perspektive sollte diese jedoch bestimmend sein. Denn
Heidegger soll unsere Aufmerksamkeit nicht deswegen verdienen, weil er vielleicht
Antisemit ist, aber auch nicht deswegen, weil er vielleicht Nicht-Antisemit ist, sondern deswegen, weil er als Philosoph etwas Einzigartiges und Einmaliges geschaffen
hat. Das Erkenntnisziel und –interesse sollte diese Einmaligkeit vor Augen führen, ihr
nachgehen und sie darstellen, wobei sicherlich nach wie vor gelten kann: Individuum
est ineffabile. Nur aus dieser Perspektive, in deren Zentrum die Individualität, ihre
Einzigkeit und Einmaligkeit, steht, erhält die Frage nach einem möglichen AntisemitSein Relevanz und Bedeutung. Das besagt, daß diese Frage nicht völlig irrelevant ist;
sie sollte aber nicht für sich allein im Vordergrund des Interesses stehen.
Der Wert der Individualität war dem Deutschen Idealismus unbekannt. Hegel hatte den Standpunkt des Allgemeinen von früh an sozusagen auch sprachphilosophisch zu begründen versucht, und zwar unter Berufung darauf, daß das Einzelne „der Sprache, die dem Bewußtsein, dem an sich Allgemeinen, angehört, unerreichbar ist“.29 „Individuum est ineffabile“ ist freilich ein häufig auftauchender Topos, der Eingang auch in den auf Hegel folgenden Neukantianismus bzw. Historismus gefunden hat und auch bei Rickert und Dilthey auftaucht.30 Auch wenn man
weder Diltheys erkenntnistheoretische Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften -deren Ziel ja die „Auffassung des Singularen, Individualen bildet“31-- noch die Ver-
28
29
30
31
Wilhelm Windelband, „Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft”, 149f. (Hervorhebung I.M.F.)
G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Theorie Werkausgabe, hrsg. E. Moldenhauer, K.M. Michel,
Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970, Bd. 3, 91f.
Siehe Anm. 23 oben.
Siehe Anm. 25 oben.
151
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
suche Windelbands und Rickerts, der generalisierenden Methode der Naturwissenschaften eine individualisierende Begriffsbildung der historischen Kulturwissenschaften entgegenzusetzen, für in jeder Hinsicht gelungen und problemlos hält, kann man
sie doch als eine mögliche und plausible Alternative zu Hegels Ansatz ansehen.
Der Wert der Individualität erscheint wohl zuerst bei der Jahrhundertwende im
Werk Emil Lasks, der zwischen dem Neukantianismus und der Phänomenologie Husserls
zu vermitteln suchte. „Das Einzelne ist nicht als Exemplar einer Gattung untergeordnet”,32
heißt es bei ihm programmatisch. Charakteristisch für Lask ist die Individualität als
Wert bzw. – wie er sie bezeichnet hat – die „Wertindividualität”.33 Es dürfte nicht uninteressant sein, in diesem Zusammenhang darauf hinzuweisen, daß in Heideggers
Hauptwerk ein latenter Anschluß an diesen Lask’schen Gedanken aufzufinden ist, wo
es heißt: „Dasein ist […] nie ontologisch zu fassen als Fall und Exemplar einer Gattung
von Seiendem als Vorhandenem”.34
Dieser Gedanke wird fortgeführt und weiterentwickelt bei Autoren, die an
diesem Punkt an Heidegger angeknüpft haben, so vor allem bei Jean-Paul Sartre, der
ihn auch noch in seinem Spätdenken mit Nachdruck geltend gemacht und ihn seiner
Kritik des Marxismus als Leitfaden zugrundegelegt hat. „Es besteht kein Zweifel darüber”,
heißt es in seiner Vorarbeit Fragen der Methode zum zweiten Hauptwerk, Critique
de la raison dialectique, „daß Valéry ein kleinbürgerlicher Intellektueller ist. Aber
nicht jeder kleinbürgerliche Intellektuelle ist Valéry. Die heuristische Unzulänglichkeit des heutigen Marxismus ist in diesen beiden Sätzen enthalten.”35 Sollte es richtig
32
33
34
35
Emil Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, Ders.: Gesammelte Schriften, Erster Band, hrsg.
Eugen Herrigel, Mit einem Geleitwort von Heinrich Rickert, Tübingen 1923, 1-274, hier 18.
Emil Lask, Fichtes Idealismus und die Geschichte, 16ff., bes. 19f.
Vgl. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (= SZ), 15. Aufl., Tübingen 1979, 42 = GA 2, 57. Heidegger hat sich
über Lask mehrmals sehr positiv geäußert (siehe z.B, SZ 219 = GA 2, 289; GA 56/57, 180); für eine breitere
Darstellung siehe István M. Fehér, "Lask, Lukács, Heidegger: The Problem of Irrationality and the Theory
of Categories”, in Martin Heidegger. Critical Assessments, ed. C. Macann, London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1992, vol. II, 373–405. -- Heideggers in seiner Habilitationschrift geäußerte Hochschätzung von Duns
Scotus’ Begriff der haecceitas (welcher „dazu berufen [ist], eine Urbestimmtheit der realen Wirklichkeit
abzugeben”, wodurch Scotus „eine größere und feinere Nähe [...] zum realen Leben, seiner Mannigfaltigkeit und Spannungsmöglichkeit” [Frühe Schriften (GA 1), 253, 203] gefunden habe) zeigt unmißverständlich einen wachsenden Sinn für Individualität, der in den Nachkriegsjahren durch die Thematisierung des faktischen Lebens und des Phänomens „Selbstwelt” zu demjenigen Wesenscharakter des Daseins führt, der in Sein und Zeit als dessen „Jemeinigkeit” angesprochen wird. Kollektivsingularen, wie sie
in den Schwarzen Heften öfters vorkommen (Judentum, Deutschtum, Russentum. Katholizismus, Amerikanismus, Bolschewismus usw.) sind in sich selbst problematisch; sicher aber ist, daß sie mit dem Begriff
„das je eigene Dasein“ schlechthin unverträglich zu sein scheinen.
J.-P. Sartre, Fragen der Methode, neu hrsg. Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, deutsch von Vincent von Wroblewsky,
Hamburg: Rowohlt, Neuausgabe 1999, 64. Siehe Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (précédé de
Questions de méthode), Tome I: Théorie des ensembles pratiques, Paris : Éditions Gallimard, 1960, 44 :
„Valéry est un intellectuel petit-bourgeois, cela ne fait pas de doute. Mais tout intellectuel petit-bourgeois n’est pas Valéry. L’insuffisance euristique du marxisme contemporain tient dans ces deux phrases.”
152
HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
sein, daß Heidegger Antisemit war, so wäre immer noch wahr, daß nicht jeder Antisemit Heidegger war. Eine solche Untersuchung wäre demnach hermeneutisch
gesehen unergiebig. Was Sartre als „heuristische Unzulänglichkeit” bezeichnet, kann
in unserem Zusammenhang hermeneutischer Mangel genannt werden.36
Zu der Frage „War Heidegger Antisemit?” soll in hermeneutischer Hinsicht
noch zweierlei bemerkt werden. („Hermeneutische Hinsicht” meint hier, daß nicht der
Anspruch erhoben wird, eine inhaltich bestimmte Antwort -- „Ja” oder eben „Nein” -zu geben, sondern vielmehr der Anspruch, den Sinn der Frage zu beleuchten). Zum
einen tun wir gut daran (es ist sozusagen eine Art hermeneutische Fairness), wenn
wir in unserem Versuch, diese Frage zu beantworten, das Verständnis des Menschen,
das die Betroffenen vorgelegt haben, mit berücksichtigen. Wenn wir so vorgehen,
dann sehen wir, daß für Heidegger (wie auch für Sartre) der Mensch nicht ein Seiendes ist, das feste Eigenschaften bzw. so etwas wie ein „Wesen” hat. In der Nachfolge Heideggers sieht Sartre den Menschen durch eine stetige Nicht-Koinzidenz mit sich
selbst, durch einen Mangel an Identität, charakterisiert.37
Dieser Sachverhalt wird immer wieder durch die Formulierung ausgedrückt,
nach der der Mensch ein Sein bzw. Seiendes ist, das das ist, was es nicht ist, und das
nicht das ist, was es ist.38 Dieser Gedanke wird bei Heidegger insofern antizipiert, als
der Mensch bzw. das menschliche Dasein als ein Seiendes herausgestellt wird, das nicht
mit denselben Kategorien zu fassen ist wie ein Vorhandenes.39 Bei ihm liegt daher die
36
37
38
39
Es verdient, erwähnt zu werden, daß es bei Sartre zahlreiche hermeneutische Einsichten aufzufinden
sind (siehe hierzu im einzelnen István M. Fehér, „Sartre and Hermeneutics", Man and World. An
International Philosophical Review XXVIII, 1995, 65–81), bemerkenswert ist jedoch, daß Termini wie
„Hermeneutik”, „hermeneutisch” von Sartre sehr selten gebraucht werden, und dann auch eher distanzierend oder kritisch. In seinem ersten Hauptwerk spricht er in Zusammenhang von Heidegger z.B.
über „l'insuffisance de ses descriptions herméneutiques”. (Jean-Paul Sartre : L’être et le néant. Essai
d’ontologie phénoménologique. Édition corrigée avec index par Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, Paris : Gallimard
(collection Tel), 1998, 471, vgl. noch ebd. 610 : „Il convient donc en chaque cas de dépasser les résultats
de l'herméneutique heideggérienne vers un projet plus fondamental encore”. Siehe Jean-Paul Sartre,
Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, hrsg. von Traugott König, Deutsch
von Hans Schöneberg und Traugott König (Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben, Philosophische Schriften, Band 3), Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1991, 748: „Wenn wir zum Beispiel Heidegger lesen, überrascht uns von diesem Gesichtspunkt die Unzulänglichkeit seiner hermeneutischen Beschreibungen”; 969:
„Man muß also in jedem Fall die Ergebnisse der Heideggerschen Hermeneutik auf einen noch grundlegenderen Entwurf hin überschreiten.”
Siehe Sartre, Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, 208: „Konkret ist
jedes Für-sich Mangel an einer bestimmten Koinzidenz mit sich.”
Siehe Sartre, Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, z. B. 138: „es geht
darum, die menschliche-Realität als ein Sein zu konstituieren, das das ist, was es nicht ist, und das nicht das
ist, was es ist. Vgl. noch ebd., 147, 155, 159, 173, 191, 207, 237, 483, 537, 635, 763, 821, 971, 1055, 1062.
Das „Vorhandensein” ist „eine Seinsart, die dem Seienden vom Charakter des Daseins wesensmäßig
nicht zukommt” (SZ 42 = GA 2, 56).
153
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
Möglichkeit höher als die Wirklichkeit.40 Der Mensch ist niemels „wirklich” oder „fertig”,
und er hat keine festen Eigenschaften und eben kein Wesen – deswegen auch keine
Wesensdefinition. Dies wird durch die berühmte, viel zitierte, etwas paradoxe und vielfach mißverstandene „Definition” ausgedrückt: „Das »Wesen« des Daseins liegt in seiner
Existenz”.41 Wobei die Anführungszeichen folgendermaßen expliziert werden könnten:
„Das »Wesen« des Daseins, sofern solche Redeweise in Bezug auf dieses Seiende überhaupt angemessen ist […].”
Von der soeben rekonstruierten Perspektive aus ist es keineswegs unproblematisch, über den Antisemitismus von jemandem zu sprechen -- ist dieser doch zunächst
stillschweigend als feste Eigenschaft oder fester bzw. markanter Charakter konzipiert.
Es dürfte geboten sein, das, was Sartre in diesem Zusammenhang über den Homosexuellen gesagt hat, in Erinnerung zu rufen: „Der Homosexuelle […] will sich nicht als ein
Ding betrachten lassen; er hat das dunkle, aber starke Verständnis, daß ein Homosexueller nicht homosexuell ist, wie dieser Tisch Tisch ist oder wie dieser Rothaarige rothaarig ist […] Erkennt er nicht durch sich selbst den einzigartigen und unreduzierbaren Charakter der menschlichen-Realität? Seine Haltung schließt also ein unleugbares Verständnis der Wahrheit ein. Deshalb spielt er mit dem Wort Sein. Er hätte ja recht, wenn
er den Satz: «Ich bin nicht Päderast» in dem Sinn von: «Ich bin nicht das, was ich bin»
verstände. Das heißt, wenn er erklärte: «In dem Maß, wie eine Reihe von Verhaltensweisen als päderastisch definiert sind und ich diese Verhaltensweisen angenommen habe,
bin ich ein Päderast. In dem Maß, wie sich die menschliche-Realität jeder Definition durch
die Verhaltensweisen entzieht, bin ich keiner.»”.42
Antisemitismus als feste Eigenschaft oder festes Wesen ist also auch von da aus
problematisch, sodaß sich etwas zugespitzt oder übertrieben sagen läßt: es ist recht
schwer, richtig Antisemit (und nur das) zu sein.
40
41
42
Vgl. SZ 42 = GA 2, 57: „Dasein ist je seine Möglichkeit und es »hat« sie nicht nur noch eigenschaftlich als
ein Vorhandenes”. Ferner SZ 38 = GA 2, 51f; SZ 143f. = GA 2, 191: „Dasein ist nicht ein Vorhandenes, das
als Zugabe noch besitzt, etwas zu können, sondern es ist primär Möglichsein. Dasein ist je das, was es sein
kann und wie es seine Möglichkeit ist. […] Das Möglichsein, das je das Dasein existenzial ist, unterscheidet
sich ebensosehr von der leeren, logischen Möglichkeit wie von der Kontingenz eines Vorhandenen,
sofern mit diesem das und jenes »passieren« kann. Als modale Kategorie der Vorhandenheit bedeutet
Möglichkeit das noch nicht Wirkliche und das nicht jemals Notwendige. Sie charakterisiert das nur
Mögliche. Sie ist ontologisch niedriger als Wirklichkeit und Notwendigkeit. Die Möglichkeit als Existenzial
dagegen ist die ursprünglichste und letzte positive ontologische Bestimmtheit des Daseins […]”.
SZ 42 = GA 2, 56.
Siehe Sartre, Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, 147f.Die Fortführung
der Überlegung, die in unserem Zusammenhang nicht mehr relevant ist, lautet: „Aber er gleitet heimlich
zu einer anderen Auffassung des Wortes «sein» hinüber. Er versteht «nicht sein» im Sinne von «nicht an
sich sein». Er erklärt, «nicht Päderast zu sein» in dem Sinn, wie dieser Tisch ein Tintenfaß nicht ist.”
154
HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
Die andere Überlegung besteht darin, daß es plausibel wäre, einen Unterschied zu treffen zwischen Antisemit-Sein und antisemitischen Bemerkungen. Obwohl sich der Antisemitismus von jemandem von Zeit zu Zeit in antisemitischen Bemerkungen offenbaren oder äußern kann, ist umgekehrt das Vorhandensein solcher Bemerkungen nicht notwendig schon ein Zeichen des Antisemitismus. Es kann
sinnvoll von Antisemitismus nur dort die Rede sein, wo solche Äußerungen – nicht
ohne bestimmte, ihm entsprechende Handlungen – dauerhaft und prägend präsent
sind und regelmäßig wiederkehren.43 Solange der Beweis des Gegenteils aussteht,
dürfte eine Hermeneutik des Wohlwollens im Falle Heideggers wohl eher von einem sozusagen „gelegentlichen” Antisemitismus sprechen.
Um zu Heidegger zurückzukehren: daß er Antisemit wäre, ist aufgund des
bisher Erörterten nicht naheliegend. Naheliegend ist jedoch, daß er einige Bemerkungen gemacht hat, die offensichtlich einen antisemitischen Charakter haben, der
kaum geleugnet werden kann.44 Den Grund von Heideggers „gelegentlichem Antisemitismus” anzugeben, sollte eigentlich nicht schwer sein: Heidegger ist in einem
geistigen Klima aufgewachsen und großgeworden, das durch Züge des Antisemitismus
durchdrungen war. „Heidegger war Antisemit, wie die meisten Deutschen von ähnlicher Herkunft und Sozialisation“, er war „aber kein scharfer Antisemit”, schreibt hierzu
Reinhard Mehring. „Das war eine verbreitete Mitgift seiner Sozialisation. Provinz
und Kleinstadt, bescheidene Herkunft, katholische Prägung, Abhängigkeit von klerikaler Förderung, Theologie- und Philosophiestudium disponierten schon dafür.“45
In diesem Zusammenhang ist dazu hinzuzufügen, daß einige Lektüre des
jungen Heidegger, wie wir sie heute kennen, dazu ausdrücklich prädisponiert haben
dürften. Eine seiner ersten Schriften hatte ja aus Anlaß der Enthüllung seines Denkmals
Leben und Werk des Wiener Augustiners, Abraham a Sankta Clara (1644–1709) zum
43
44
45
Siehe hierzu Jean-Paul Sartre, Betrachtungen zur Judenfrage, in: J.-P. Sartre, Drei Essays, Frankfurt-Berlin
1961 (Ullstein), 108-191, hier 123: „Wir beginnen zu verstehen, daß der Antisemitismus […] die ganze
Persönlichkeit des Antisemiten umfaßt.” (Hervorhebung I.M.F.)
Ein Teil der 13 oder 14 Textstellen in den Schwarzen Heften sind sicherlich von solchem Charakter.
Siehe hierzu z.B. Jean Grondin, „Warum ich Heidegger in schwieriger Zeit treu bleibe”, in Heidegger
und der Antisemitismus. Positionen im Widerstreit. Mit Briefen von Martin und Fritz Heidegger, hrsg.
Walter Homolka, Arnulf Heidegger, Freiburg – Basel – Wien: Herder, 2016, 232–241, hier 236: „Die
»Schwarzen Hefte« […] enthalten einige Texte, die man nur als antisemitisch einstufen kann […]”. Des
weiteren Klaus Held: „Heidegger und das »Politische«”, ebd., 257–268, hier 264.Die Sprache der „auf
das Judentum bezüglichen Stellen der Schwarzen Hefte […] ist so offenkundig von den Standard-Topoi
des modernen Antisemitismus durchsetzt, dass ich es, offen gesagt, völlig unverständlich finde, wie man
den Antisemitismus dieser Äußerungen in Abrede stellen kann.”
Reinhard Mehring, Heideggers „große Politik”.Die semantische Revolution der Gesamtasugabe, Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2016, 174, 187.
155
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
Thema.46 Zu dessen 300. Todestag wurde 2009 geschrieben: „Was er aber am meisten hasst, sind »die Weiber« und »die Juden«[…] Aber mehr noch als »die Weiber«,
[…] sind ihm die »geldgierigen« Juden ein ewiger Grund, sich zu ereifern. Wenn es
um die Juden geht, versagen bei ihm Humor und Satire, da mischt sich in seine Reden der rigorose Ton des Fanatikers. Seine Hetztiraden stehen jenen des »Saubeern
Luther« in nichts nach. Aus seinem katholisch fundierten Judenhass, nicht anders
als aus seinem Aber- und Wunderglauben, spricht das trübste Mittelalter.“47 „Abraham
a Sancta Clara’s approach to the problem of the inner enemy, the Jew”, schreibt der
Historiker Robert A. Kann, „was of a different nature. Here he proceeded in a spirit
of highly personal animosity, fomented by centuries-old prejudices”.48
In Heideggers Zeitungsartikel über Abraham waren allerdings die Juden nicht
erwähnt – wohl aber, neben dem „eigenartig anziehenden Charakter P. Abrahams”,
„der unvergeßliche Lueger”49 (1844-1910), Wiener Bürgermeister, wohlbekannt für
seinen wirtschaftlich motivierten Antisemitismus und seinen verbalen Ausfälle gegen die Juden. Daß dem jungen Heidegger die Stellung von Abraham a Sankta Clara
oder Karl Lueger zum Judentum nicht vertraut gewesen wäre, ist sehr implausibel
und kann als ausgeschlossen gelten. Wie sehr diese Einflüsse ihn genau geprägt haben und in welchem Maße Heidegger sie aufgenommen hat, wissen wir nicht; daß
er durch sie völlig unbetroffen geblieben wäre, ist wiederum sehr unwahrscheinlich
46
47
48
49
M. Heidegger, „Abraham a Sankta Clara Zur Enthüllung seines Denkmals in Kreenheinstetten am 15,
August 1910”, GA 13, 1-3.
Gerhard Staguhn: „Gestorben muß seyn“, DIE ZEIT 26. November 2009, Nr. 49, siehe http://www.zeit.de/
2009/49/A-Sancta-Clara/komplettansicht. Es verdient, das Zitat fortzuführen: „Abraham a Sancta Claras
antijüdischer Furor wird heutzutage gern versteckt, in modernen Auswahlbänden seines Werks sind diese
Hetzschriften ausgespart. Das war im 20. Jahrhundert anders. Die Nazis hatten ihre Freude daran. Der
spätere Gauleiter von Wien, Baldur von Schirach, ließ im Jahre 1938 denn auch gleich eine Gesamtausgabe vorbereiten; es kam aber nur zu einer dreibändigen Auswahl mit entsprechendem Inhalt.“ Heideggers Schrift „Abraham a Sankta Clara (1910)” siehe jetzt in GA 13, 1–5; sie „erschien ursprünglich am 27.
August 1910 in der Wochenschrift für Politik und Kultur »Allgemeine Rundschau«, VII. Jahrg., Nr. 55, S.
605, München. Der junge Theologie-student hatte am 15. August 1910 in Kreenheinstetten, einem Nachbardorf seiner Heimatstadt Meßkirch, an der Feier zur Enthüllung eines Denkmals für Abraham a Sankta Clara
teilgenommen und darüber seine Gedanken niedergeschrieben“ (GA 13, 245).
Robert A. Kann, A Study in Austrian Intellectual History: From Late Baroque to Romanticism, New York:
Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1960, 76f.
GA 13, 2. Der konservative kultur- und zeitkritische Ton der Schrift ist nicht weniger charakteristisch. „Daß
unsere Zeit der Außenkultur und Schnellebigkeit doch mehr rückwärtsblickend vorwärtsschaute! Die
grundstürzende Neuerungswut, das tolle Hinwegspringen über den tieferen seelischen Gehalt des Lebens
und der Kunst, der auf fortwährend sich ablösende Augenblicksreize gerichtete moderne Lebenssinn,
die zuweilen erstickend wirkende Schwüle, in der sich die heutige Kunst jeder Art bewegt, das sind
Momente, die auf eine Dekadenz hinzeigen […]” (GA 13, 3). Dieses Urteil sollte sich als dauerhaft erweisen;
„Unsere Stunde ist das Zeitalter des Untergangs”, heißt es ein Vierteljahrhundert später in den Beiträgen
(GA 65, 397). Heidegger sucht jedoch den Untergang zugleich als Anfang, ja als „erstester Anfang”
aufzufassen (ebd.).
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HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
und auch nicht zumutbar. Im jugendlichen Alter nimmt man solche Meinungen naturgemäß wie selbstverständlich auf. Unter diesen Umständen bzw. vor dem Hintergrund
des ihn umgebenden geistigen Klimas und seiner Erziehung ist also Heideggers Übernahme antisemitischer Vorurteile überhaupt nicht verwunderlich. Sie ist als Normalfall
anzusehen. Vielmehr wäre das Gegenteil überaus ungewöhnlich.
IV. Vorurteile und der Umgang mit ihnen aus hermeneutischer Sicht
Es wird nochmals nützlich sein, an diesem Punkt auf das Verständnis des
Menschen in der Endlichkeitshermeneutik Heidegger‘scher und Gadamerscher Prägung zurückzugreifen. Demgemäß ist der Mensch ein endlich-geschichtliches Wesen,
geworfen in eine (Um-) Welt und damit auch in eine (immer schon herrschende) Öffentlichkeit, öffentliche Ausgelegtheit -- Meinungen aller Art, deren Herkunft man gar
nicht kennt, und die man auf ihre Richtigkeit hin nur selten und nicht ohne Veranlassung zu überprüfen gewillt oder bereit ist. Eine tabula rasa, eine Suspendierung aller
(Vor-) Urteile ist daher utopisch. Einen übergeschichtlichen Standpunkt gibt es
nicht. Der Mensch ist nicht ein vorurteilsfreies Wesen, vermag aber seine – immer
schon wirkenden -- Vorurteile zu prüfen, um sie zu bestätigen oder gegebenenfalls zu
verwerfen. In Heideggers Nachfolge und im Anschluß an die von ihm ausgearbeitete
Vor-Struktur des Verstehens50 entwickelt Gadamer seine Rehabilitierung der Vorurteile,51 deren Pointe sich am besten und am kürzesten wohl durch eine provokativ klingende Kapitelüberschrift (Zweiter Teil II. b) seines Hauptwerks Wahrheit und
Methode zusammenfassen läßt: „Vorurteile als Bedingungen des Verstehens”.52
Wohlgemerkt: Bedingungen, nicht Hindernisse (wie insbesondere die Aufklärung
meinte). Denn weit davon entfernt, Hindernisse auf dem Wege des Verstehens darzustellen, bildet die Vor-struktur (und damit auch die Vorurteile) eben die Voraussetzungen dafür, daß Verstehen überhaupt möglich sein kann. Hätten wir keine
Vorurteile, so könnten wir nichts verstehen. Darin besteht die „Anerkennung der
wesenhaften Vorurteilshaftigkeit alles Verstehens“.53 Ein Vorurteil ist als vorheriges
Urteil nicht unbedingt unwahr; es kann sich ebenso auch als wahr erweisen. Ein hermeneutisch offenes Denken diskreditiert nichts – nicht einmal die Vorurteile. Die
Hermeneutik verhält sich also zu nichts mit Vorurteilen – nicht einmal zu diesen
50
51
52
53
Siehe SZ 150f. = GA 2, 199f.
Ausführlicher über die hermeneutische Theorie der Vorurteile siehe István M. Fehér, "Prejudice
and Pre-understanding," in: The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, eds. Niall Keane and Chris Lawn,
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016, 280–288; ders., „L’altro inizio – l’altro Heidegger. Saggio introduttivo”,
in: Rosa Maria Marafioti: Gli ’Schwarze Hefte’ di Heidegger. Un “passaggio” del pensiero dell’essere,
Genova: Il Nuovo Melangolo, 2016 (Università, vol. 136), 9–39, hier 34ff.
Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 1, 281ff.
Gadamer: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 1, 274.
157
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
selbst. Das besagt aber: „das Vorurteil gegen die Vorurteile überhaupt” erweist sich
selber als Vorurteil (diesmal im gewöhnlichen pejorativen Sinne) -- wohl das einzige
Vorurteil der Aufklärung.54
Gadamers Rehabilitierung der Vorurteile stützt sich stillschweigend auf
Heidegger‘sche Ansätze und Argumente und führt diese weiter. Seine erste Marburger
Vorlesung begann Heidegger mit einigen knappen Überlegungen über Status und
Charakter der Vorurteile (Überlegungen, die m.E. zum Besten gehören, die er je
geschrieben hat):
Nicht Vorurteilslosigkeit, die eine Utopie ist. Die Meinung, kein Vorurteil zu
haben, ist selbst das größte Vorurteil. Überlegenheit gegenüber jeder Möglichkeit, daß sich etwas als Vorurteil herausstellt. Nicht frei von Vorurteilen,
sondern frei für die Möglichkeit, im entscheidenden Moment aus der Auseinandersetzung mit der Sache heraus ein Vorurteil aufzugeben. Das ist die
Existenzform des wissenschaftlichen Menschen.55
Das Aufgeben aller Vorurteile, diese Forderung der Aufklärung erweist sich in
dieser Perspektive als illusorisch. Sie trägt der ontologischen Konstitution der wesenshaften Geschichtlichkeit des Menschen einfach nicht Rechnung. Wenn das Aufgeben
aller Vorurteile utopisch ist, so ist das Überprüfen einzelner (und jedweder) Vorurteile
aus begründeter Motivation – „aus der Auseinandersetzung mit der Sache heraus“ –
aber durchaus möglich. Nur muß hierfür die Bereitschaft vorliegen. Will man mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken, so kann man ihm aufgrund seines eigensten Arguments vorwerfen, er habe sich nicht veranlaßt (ja genötigt) gesehen, seine antisemitischen Vorurteile „aus der Auseinandersetzung mit der Sache heraus” (d.h. in und durch
regelmäßigen Umgang mit Husserl und seinen eigenen Studenten: Arendt, Jonas, Löwith) aufzugeben. Und im allgemeinen könnte man Heidegger gegenüber geltend machen, er habe durch die gedankenlose Annahme von antisemitischen Vorurteilen eben
das getan, was er in seinem Hauptwerk am stärksten kritisiert hatte, sich nämlich an
die Diktatur der Öffentlichkeit, des Man, ausgeliefert.56 Sofern die Philosophie bei den
Griechen mit der Überprüfung überlieferter und gängiger Meinungen, der kritischen
Thematisierung und Infragestellung des Selbstverständlichen, des allgemein Akzeptierten ihren Anfang genommen hat, ist dieser Gestus, sich klicheehaften Stereotypen des
54
55
56
Gadamer: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 1, 275. Über „das Vorurteil gegen die Vorurteile” siehe noch ebd.,
277, 280 („Die Überwindung aller Vorurteile, diese Pauschalforderung der Aufklärung, wird sich selber
als ein Vorurteil erweisen, dessen Revision erst den Weg für ein angemessenes Verständnis der Endlichkeit freimacht”).
GA 17, 2.
Siehe SZ 126 = GA 2, 169. Vgl. auch die dortigen Erörterungen über „Gerede” und „Zweideutigkeit”
(ebd., §§ 35, 37), insbesondere die folgende Behauptung: „Das Geredete als solches zieht weitere Kreise
und übernimmt autoritativen Charakter. Die Sache ist so, weil man es sagt” (SZ 168 = GA 2, 224).
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HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
Zeitalters anzuschließen, nicht einfach „unphänomenologisch” – wie Heidegger dieses
Adjektiv Husserl gegenüber kritisch verwenden zu können meinte57 --, sondern schlechthin unphilosophisch.58 Heideggers antisemitische Äußerungen in der zweiten Hälfte der
1930er Jahre, so könnte das Fazit lauten, stellen also angesichts der in Sein und Zeit
erreichten Positionen einen (schweren) Rückfall dar. Wenn Frithjof Rodi nach der Veröffentlichung der frühen Freiburger Vorlesungen Anfang der 1990er Jahre zu Recht
meinte, Heideggers in den Jahren nach dem ersten Weltkrieg vollzogene hermeneutische Neuorientierung sei „gerade auch als Absage an die eigene Vergangenheit in einer
politisierten Katholischen Provinz zu sehen”,59 so scheint, wie man heute hinzufügen
könnte, diese für überwunden gehaltene Vergangenheit in den 1930er Jahren bedauerlicherweise noch lebendig gewesen zu sein.
Dieser Vorwurf ist einwandfrei, die Sache ist aber komplizierter um des Fairness
willen müssen wir hierauf etwas eingehen Die genannten Rückfälle sind nämlich in
die Philosophie Heideggers sozusagen hineingebaut, deswegen -- in gewisser Hinsicht -- auch philosophisch „legitimiert”.
V. Rückfälle und ihre philosophische Begründung
Im obigen Zitat haben wir „ein Vorurteil aufzugeben” stillschweigend und sinnwie naturgemäß als „endgültig aufzugeben” (vor-) verstanden bzw. interpretiert. Das
kann man aber durch Heideggers Texte nicht belegen – Heideggers Sein und Zeit kennt
wie keine Ewigkeit so auch keine Endgültigkeit --, während das Gegenteil sich gut nachweisen läßt. Eine der wichtigsten einschlägigen Textstellen lautet wie folgt:
57
58
59
Siehe GA 20, 118, 159. Vgl. auch ebd., 405.
Das ist auch der Sinn meiner Behauptung, die ich Herrn Kollegen Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann
gemacht hatte, zufolge der die Juden-bezogenen Textstellen in den Schwarzen Heften „philosophisch
belanglos” seien – eine Behauptung, die er dann mehrmals zitiert hat (siehe Friedrich-Wilhelm von
Herrmann, „Notwendige Erläuterungen zu den Schwarzen Heften. Über die naive Instrumentalisierung hinaus, die aufgrund der Mutmaßungen bequemer Einsichten inszeniert wurde”, in: FriedrichWilhelm von Herrmann / Francesco Alfieri, Martin Heidegger. Die Wahrheit über die Schwarzen Hefte,
Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2017, 26-48, hier 39, bzw. ders.: „The Role of Martin Heidegger’s Notebooks within the Context of His Oeuvre”, in: Reading Heidegger’s Black Notebooks 1931–1941, edited
by Ingo Farin and Jeff Malpas, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016, 89-94, hier 93.). Den
nicht-philosophischen Charakter von Heideggers Aufzeichnungen in den Schwarzen Heften betont
auch Günter Figal; siehe ders.: „Radikalität”, in: Heideggers 'Schwarze Hefte' im Kontext: Geschichte,
Politik, Ideologie, hrsg. David Espinet, Günter Figal, Tobias Keiling, Nikola Mirković, Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2018, 25—35, hier 26ff.
Frithjof Rodi, „Wandlungen der hermeneutischen Situation im Blick auf Heideggers Frühwerk”, in
Wege und Irrwege des neueren Umganges mit Heideggers Werk. Ein deutsch–ungarisches Symposium, hrsg. István M. Fehér, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991, 129–139, hier 138.
159
ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
„Im Dasein hat sich je schon diese Ausgelegtheit des Geredes festgesetzt.
Vieles lernen wir zunächst in dieser Weise kennen, nicht weniges kommt
über ein solches durchschnittliches Verständnis nie hinaus. Dieser alltäglichen Ausgelegtheit, in die das Dasein zunächst hineinwächst, vermag es sich
nie zu entziehen. In ihr und aus ihr und gegen sie vollzieht sich alles echte
Verstehen, Auslegen und Mitteilen, Wiederentdecken und neu Zueignen. Es
ist nicht so, daß je ein Dasein unberührt und unverführt durch diese Ausgelegtheit vor das freie Land einer »Welt« an sich gestellt würde, um nur zu
schauen, was ihm begegnet.”60
Insbesondere der von mir kursivierte Satz kann als „theoretische” Begründung
von Heideggers Aufnahme antisemitischer Einflüsse oder -- sofern er sie in den 1920er
Jahren hinter sich gelassen hat -- von Heideggers „Rückfall” in sie in den 1930er Jahren
gelten. Soweit ich sehe, kann man angesichts dieser und ähnlicher Überlegungen
grundsätzlich zweierlei unternehmen. Zum einen kann man sie deshalb kritisieren und
verwerfen, weil sie eine wohl zweifelhafte persönliche Praxis und Entscheidung
theoretisch im Voraus begründen und sie dergestalt ermöglichen und vorwegnehmen.
Zum anderen kann man auf eine paradoxe Konsistenz verweisen mit Hinweis
darauf, daß die anerkannte Schwäche der Theorie (bezüglich des Rückfalls ins Man)
auf performative Weise mit der anerkannten Schwäche der Praxis (dem tatsächlich
vollzogenen Rückfall ins Man), konsistent sei, wobei die beiden Schwächen oder
Lücken zwei einander ergänzende Teile eines einheitlichen Ganzen bilden.61 An dieser
60
61
SZ 169 = GA 2, 225 (Hervorhebung I.M.F.) . Die Wichtigkeit dieser Textstelle für den Zweiten Abschnitt
des Werks wird betont von Joseph P. Fell, Heidegger and Sartre. An Essay on Being and Place, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1979, 50, aber Heideggers Charakterisierung ist darüber hinaus auch kennzeichnend für die ganze hermeneutische Situation beim Stellen der Seinsfrage. Vor diesem Hintergrund
darf man sagen, ein Rückfall ins Man ist immer wieder bzw. jederzeit möglich, ja vielleicht sogar auch
notwendig. Auf der anderen Seite ist es so, daß ein bedeutender Rückfall nur dort möglich ist, wo sich
der Denker zuvor in eine bestimmte Höhe erhoben hat. -- Siehe noch dem Sinne nach ähnliche Testpassagen in SZ 222 = GA 2, 293 („Herrschaft der öffentlichen Ausgelegtheit”); SZ 299 = GA 2, 396 („Ausgeliefertsein an die herrschende Ausgelegtheit des Man”); SZ 383 = GA 2, 507 („Das eigentliche existenzielle
Verstehen entzieht sich der überkommenen Ausgelegtheit so wenig […]”). Siehe auch in den Vorlesungen: GA 24, 243: „Eigentlichkeit ist nur eine Modifikation und keine totale Ausstreichung der Uneigentlichkeit.” Diese Überlegung kommt bereits im Hauptwerk zur Geltung: „Das eigentliche Selbstsein beruht
nicht auf einem vom Man abgelösten Ausnahmezustand des Subjekts, sondern ist eine existenzielle Modifikation des Man als eines wesenhaften Existenzials.” (SZ 130 = GA 2, 173; vgl. noch SZ 268, 317 = GA
2, 355, 420). Relevant aus unserer Sicht sind noch die Gedanken im Zusammenhang mit der These, „Das
In-der-Welt-sein ist an ihm selbst versucherisch” (SZ 177 = GA 2, 235). Auf eine detailliertere Kommentierung dieser Textstellen muß hier wegen Platzgründen verzichtet werden.
Es ist möglich und konsistent, zu lehren, daß man sich den überlieferten Meinungen nicht entziehen
kann, und sie dann tatsächlich (mehr oder minder gedankenlos) zu übernehmen. Umgekehrt ist es
nicht weniger möglich und konsistent, zu lehren, daß man sich den überlieferten Meinungen sehr
wohl entziehen kann und dann sie tatsächlich nicht zu übernehmen.
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HERMENEUTISCHE ÜBERLEGUNGEN ZU HEIDEGGERS SCHWARZEN HEFTEN UND ZUM NEUDENKEN SEINES DENKWEGS (I)
Stelle soll auf diese Interpretationsmöglichkeiten nur verwiesen werden. Auf weitere
Erörterungen muß aus Platzgründen verzichtet werden. Ob Heideggers „Rückfälle”
durch den zweiten Interpretationsansatz auch „legitimiert” sind, ist nicht unbedingt
ausgemacht,62 wenigstens mit dem Anspruch, sich um eine „Erklärung” oder einen
„Erklärungsversuch” (hermeneutisch ausgedrückt: um ein „Verstehen”) bemüht zu
haben, dürfte er aber wohl auftreten können.
VI. „Einmal Minister…“
Ein deutscher Kollege, der jahrelang Kultusminister eines deutchen Bundeslandes war, hat mir einmal bei einer negativen Erfahrung, die er als Minister a.D. in
Deutschland gemacht hatte, gesagt: „Sehen Sie, in Frankreich ist es so. Dort gilt:
Einmal Minister, immer Minister. Bei uns ist es anders […]” Ohne auf die Stichhaltigkeit
dieses Diktums einzugehen, können wir es auf unseren Fall anwenden und uns fragen, ob es sich denn mit den Antisemiten vielleicht so verhielte, wie es sich angeblich mit den Ministern in Frankreich verhält: „Einmal Antisemit, immer Antisemit.”
-- Es ist schwierig, auf diese Frage mit Sicherheit eine Antwort zu geben. Grundsätzlich müßte man, um einen unangenehmen Determinismus zu vermeiden, mit
„Nein” antworten können. Dem widerspricht aber die Erfahrung, die uns lehrt, daß
es sehr schwer ist, wenn nicht den ausdrücklichen Antisemitismus, so doch -- nachdem man ihn einmal durch die Erziehung als kleines Kind aufgenommen hat -- den
Hang oder die Neigung zu ihm völlig loszuwerden. Er kann – um etwas schellingisch zu
formulieren -- in den Grund zurückgedrängt werden, zum Status einer Inaktivität, völlig
verschwindet er jedoch kaum, so daß er sich unter bestimmten, dazu angemessenen
Umständen, aktivieren, erregen läßt.63 „Rückfälle”bleiben -- wie uns auch die oben
62
63
Es gibt einen weiteren „theoretischen” Grund für die Rückfälle, und er liegt in Heideggers Konzept
des Anfangs. Neben vielen anderen Textstellen scheint mir die folgende einer der charakteristischsten zu sein: „Der Anfang kann nicht und kann nie ebenso unmittelbar, wie er anfängt, dieses Anfangen auch so bewahren, wie es allein bewahrt werden kann, nämlich dadurch, daß es in seiner
Ursprünglichkeit ursprünglicher wieder-holt wird” (GA 40, 199f.). Siehe noch GA 24, 438: „Alles
Entspringen und alle Genesis im Felde des Ontologischen ist nicht Wachstum und Entfaltung, sondern Degeneration, sofern alles Entspringende entspringt, d. h. gewissermaßen entläuft, sich von
der Übermacht der Quelle entfernt.” Der „Ursprung [ist] notwendig reicher und trächtiger als alles,
was ihm entspringen mag” (ebd.)
Siehe hierzu bei Schelling Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit
und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände, in Schellings sämmtliche Werke, hrsg. K.F.A. Schelling, Stuttgart und Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856–61, Bd. VII, 359bzw. F. W. J. Schelling: Historisch─kritische
Ausgabe, Reihe I, Bd. 17, hrsg. Chr. Binkelmann, Th. Buchheim, Th. Frisch und V. Müller-Lüneschloss,
Stuttgart – Bad Cannstatt: Frommann–Holzboog, 2018, 131: „[…] aber immer liegt noch im Grunde das
Regellose, als könnte es einmal wieder durchbrechen, und nirgends scheint es, als wären Ordnung und
Form das Ursprüngliche […]”
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ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR
kurz diskutierten Analysen Heideggers zeigten, immer eine Möglichkeit, veranlaßt
oder provoziert durch Wandlungen der jeweiligen öffentlichen Ausgelegtheit.64
Ende der 1910er und Anfang der 1920er Jahre waren für Heidegger die Umstände
(Husserls Nähe und seine väterliche Unterstützung, die Präsenz der eigenen jüdischen Schüler) dafür (sozusagen) nicht förderlich, in den 1930er Jahren (nach dem
Tod Husserls und dem Abschied der Schüler) konnten diese zurückgedrängten Neigungen durch den Einfluß der verwandelten öffentlichen Ausgelegtheit aktiviert
werden. Nicht zuletzt ist zu berücksichtigen, daß bestimmte Spielarten des Antisemitismus einfach unwiderlegbar sind. Wo die Behauptung aufgestellt wird, „Das
Weltjudentum […] ist überall unfaßbar”,65 fragt es sich, ob nicht alle Gegenbeweise
und -argumente vergeblich und überflüssig sind, weil sie a priori ausgeschlossen
sind. Was kann hier als Gegenbeweis gelten?
64
65
Antisemitisch sind weniger Heideggers eigene Behauptungen. Antisemitisch sind vielmehr die Heideggers
eigenen philosophischen Bearbeitungen zugrunde liegenden clischehaften Vermutungen und Meinungen,
die meistens völlig unüberprüft, d.h. unkritisch übernommen und dann als Gegenstand (sozusagen
Rohstoff) weiterer philosophischer (wenn man will: seinsgesichtlicher oder metaphysischer) Bearbeitungen dienen. Nehmen wir als Beispiel den Gedankengang über die „zeitweilige Machtsteigerung des Judentums” (GA 96, 46f.). Heidegger geht es darum, für das besagte Phänomen, die Machtsteigerung, eine
ihm gemäße bzw. angemessene Erklärung zu finden. Daß die von ihm gegebene Erklärung nicht besonders
erhellend bzw. erläuternd, ja kaum nachvollziehbar ausfällt (was heißt es „Ansatzstelle bieten“?), ist weniger
wichtig. Vom Belang ist vielmehr ein anderes: Daß das Faktum der Machtsteigerung zu Recht besteht, wird
nämlich stillschweigend akzeptiert, es wird nicht eigens untersucht, in Frage gestellt oder hinterfragt. Wo
und wie hat Heidegger diese Machtsteigerung (persönlich) erfahren? Rund seiner Hütte oder an der
Universität Freiburg (wo jüdische Dozenten eben entlassen wurden)? Oder ist die Quelle bloßes Hörensagen oder Gelesenhaben, nicht persönliches Erfahren? Weswegen gilt es: „wir finden »empörend«, was
man empörend findet” (SZ 127 = GA 2, 169)? Phänomenologie, hieß es an einer wichtigen Stelle des
Hauptwerks, als „Wissenschaft »von« den Phänomenen besagt: eine solche Erfassung ihrer Gegenstände, daß alles, was über sie zur Erörterung steht, in direkter Aufweisung und direkter Ausweisung
abgehandelt werden muß. […] der Titel hat […] einen prohibitiven Sinn: Fernhaltung alles nichtausweisenden Bestimmens” (SZ 35 = GA 2, 46f.). Diesen „prohibitiven Sinn” der Phänomenologie scheint Heidegger bei der Mehrzahl seiner auf die Juden bezogenen Bemerkungen nicht beibehalten, das „nichtausweisende Bestimmen” nicht ferngehalten zu haben. – Noch zwei Bemerkungen: 1. Daß der biologische Rassismus abgelehnt wird, besagt wenig, solange er auf einer anderen – metaphysischen, seinsgeschichtlichen – Ebene bestätigt wird (siehe GA 96, 243: „Die Frage nach der Rolle des Weltjudentums ist
keine rassische, sondern die metaphysische Frage nach der Art von Menschentümlichkeit […]”; GA 97,
20: „Wenn erst das wesenhaft »Jüdische« im metaphysischen Sinne gegen das Jüdische kämpft […]”).
2. Ist im öffentlichen Leben die Rede über „Machtsteigerung” der Juden möglich, so beweist dies weniger
die Macht als vielmehr die Ohnmacht oder Machtlosigkeit der Juden. Bei einer wirklichen Machtsteigerung wäre eine öffentliche Rede von dieser Machtsteigerung selbst wohl kaum möglich.
GA 96, 262. Der Sinn des Satzes läuft darauf hinaus: „Es gibt das Weltjudentum, selbst wenn es überall
unfaßbar ist”. Mögliche Gegenbeweise können sich jedoch nur auf Faßbares beziehen.
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STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 163-177
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.08
LA PHILOSOPHIE POUR ENFANTS : UNE PISTE POUR
RÉCONCILIER ENSEIGNEMENT DISCIPLINAIRE ET VIE SCOLAIRE ?
CHRISTOPHE POINT∗
ABSTRACT. Philosophy for Children: a Way to Reconcile Disciplinary Teaching and
School Life? Drawing mainly on John Dewey's writings, this contribution aims to
extend the dualism of a traditional conception of education at the epistemological,
pedagogical and organizational levels. This conception was already criticised by this
author at the beginning of the 20th century and still remains widely present today
among the school community. Through this approach, we demonstrate that the dualist
approach is as many obstacles to be removed in the process both to improve and
rebuild a better education. The hypothesis defended here consists to demonstrate how
philosophy for children, strengthened by its pragmatist heritage, can challenge these
dualisms and thereby jeopardize the traditional conception of education.
Keywords: John Dewey, philosophy of education, co-curriculum, school life, philosophy
for children
RÉSUMÉ. S'appuyant principalement sur les écrits de John Dewey, cette contribution
rend compte des dualismes présents au sein d'une conception traditionnelle de
l'éducation aux niveaux épistémologique, pédagogique et organisationnel. Cette
conception a déjà été critiquée par cet auteur au début du XXe siècle mais reste
encore largement présente aujourd'hui au sein de la communauté scolaire. Par
cette approche, nous démontrons que l'approche dualiste est un obstacle à lever
dans le processus d'amélioration et de reconstruction d'une meilleure éducation.
Pour ce faire, nous interrogeons ici la capacité de la philosophie pour enfants, forte
de son héritage pragmatiste, à remettre en cause ces dualismes et mettre ainsi en
péril la conception traditionnelle de l'éducation.
Mots-clés : John Dewey, philosophie de l’éducation, co-curriculum, vie scolaire,
philosophie pour enfants
∗
Université Laval (IDEA); Université de Lorraine (LISEC), France. Email : chris_point@hotmail.fr.
CHRISTOPHE POINT
Introduction
Quiconque a déjà enseigné au sein d’un établissement scolaire reconnaitra
cet étrange paradoxe : ce que les élèves vivent à l’école semble pour eux bien plus
important que ce qu’ils apprennent. Et malgré ce fait, les enseignants ne sont
formés qu’en vue de ce qu’ils feront apprendre aux élèves, sans prendre en compte
ce que ces derniers vivront avec eux. Cette rupture entre l’enseignement
disciplinaire d’une part et ce que nous nommons provisoirement ici la « vie
scolaire » est paradoxalement l’une des réalités les plus frappantes au quotidien
dans le système scolaire français, mais est également l’un des soubassements les
moins questionnés de ce que nous nommons provisoirement ici la conception
traditionnelle de l’éducation1.
Pour mieux saisir un tel paradoxe, il convient de déplier au maximum le
problème théorique et pratique qu’il cache. Pour ce faire, nous sollicitons ici la
philosophie pragmatiste pour construire l’hypothèse que la conception traditionnelle
de l’éducation crée une triple rupture (épistémologique, pédagogique et organisationnelle)
qui valorise systématiquement la connaissance, le curriculum et l’enseignement
disciplinaire au détriment de l’expérience, du co-curriculum et de la vie scolaire. Or
les conséquences pratiques de cette triple rupture ne tardent pas à se faire sentir :
les routines scolaires (Lacourse 2011) prennent l’habitude d’exclure l’enseignant de
cette réalité (si importante pour les élèves) qu’est la vie scolaire. Celui-ci ne peut
alors se servir des ressources théoriques dont il use pour penser son enseignement
disciplinaire et se retrouve dans l’obligation de « bricoler » dans l’urgence ou de
déléguer cette réalité à d’autres acteurs du milieu scolaire. De là notre problème :
la philosophie pour enfants (P4C) peut-elle réconcilier ces éléments qui restent pour
l’heure séparés au sein de la tradition dualiste de l’éducation ?
A partir des ressources théoriques du pragmatisme, nous verrons dans un
premier temps ce qui précisément reste séparé traditionnellement en philosophie
de l’éducation : connaissance et expérience, curriculum et co-curriculum, enseignement
disciplinaire et vie scolaire. Puis, dans un second temps, nous proposerons un
argumentaire montrant en quoi la P4C peut prétendre réconcilier ce qui est disjoint
par la conception traditionnelle et dualiste de l’éducation.
1
Nous conserverons tout au long de notre réflexion cette dénomination, qui désigne à la fois un
concept pragmatiste structurel (Dewey 1916a, 77) - dont la pertinence est discutée par Sébastien
Akira-Alix (2017) - et à la fois un consensus idéologique « mou » mais dominant des acteurs du
milieu scolaire français sur les moyens et les fins de l’éducation. Aussi bien que ce propos mériterait
de nombreuses nuances pour rendre justice à la diversité des variations possibles de ce consensus,
nous les écartons cependant dans un souci de clarté.
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I. Les dualismes de la tradition scolaire et leurs conséquences pratiques
Pour mieux comprendre la triple rupture présentée précédemment, il
importe tout d’abord de préciser le cadre théorique qui nous permet de l’exposer
et de la critiquer et qui est désormais connu sous le nom de « pragmatisme » (Frega
2015, 17–18; Cometti 2013; Oliverio, Striano, and Waks 2016). En effet, au sein de
ce courant, John Dewey a ainsi développé une pensée de l’éducation qui nous semble
pertinente pour notre problème (et ce même en dépit de la distance historique qui
nous sépare de ses travaux) pour trois raisons.
Premièrement, ce qui frappe immédiatement le lecteur des écrits de ce
philosophe pragmatiste est le refus de tout dualisme. Selon John Dewey, un
dualisme est une distinction opérée au sein d’une même réalité que l’on absolutise
à tort en deux termes devenant antagonistes, et qui, peu à peu, empêchent de
penser la continuité entre ces deux termes, c’est-à-dire leur réalité commune et
évolutive. Le dualisme oppose et sépare, là où John Dewey veut apprécier l’interaction
dynamique des termes et penser la reconstruction de nouvelles possibilités que les
dualismes « figent » et freinent (Dewey 2016, 371). Deuxièmement, sa conception
de l’éducation comme processus complexe et commun à tout être vivant lui fait
adopter une perspective interdisciplinaire qui articule à la fois ontologie, biologie,
épistémologie, pédagogie, politique et éthique Ainsi, ses réflexions permettent de
révéler de nombreux dualismes ayant un impact sur notre façon de penser
l’éducation (Madelrieux 2016, 31–32; Dewey 1929c, 25). Enfin, troisièmement,
John Dewey propose une analyse des dualismes qui met l’accent sur la continuité
qu’ils entretiennent entre eux, d’un domaine de pensée à l’autre. Or si les
dualismes entretiennent entre eux des relations de continuité, des affinités,
relativement complexes, alors les étudier permet de mieux comprendre l’interactivité
des dualismes entre eux, c’est-à-dire la façon dont, au sein d’un débat sur
l’éducation, un dualisme vient en justifier ou en expliquer un second.
Ainsi, selon John Dewey, la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation est
historiquement contaminée par cette triple rupture dite de « continuité dualiste ».
Celle-ci peut se comprendre à partir de l’articulation des trois « niveaux » différents
de réflexion que sont l’épistémologie de l’éducation, le champ du design pédagogique
et l’ingénierie organisationnelle scolaire.
A un premier niveau, que nous qualifions ici d’épistémologique car il concerne
la conception même du savoir (epistemological theory), la conception traditionnelle
de l’éducation valide une rupture entre l’expérience et la connaissance. Cette
dernière a connu tout au long de l’histoire des idées de multiples variations et de
nombreux courants philosophiques ont creusé peu à peu une distance entre
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CHRISTOPHE POINT
l’expérience (devenant peu à peu douteuse, mensongère, illusoire, manipulable,
etc.) et la connaissance (qui, à l’inverse, s’est élevée pour devenir certaine, vraie,
nécessaire, objective, etc.) et qui a encore de profonds effets sur la conception
traditionnelle de l’éducation. En effet, dissocier l’expérience de la connaissance
signifie que l’instruction d’un enfant peut se passer de l’expérience grâce à un
effort, à un déploiement d’énergie purement intellectuel. L’absorption des connaissances
par l’élève se réalise « magiquement », par sympathie naturelle entre l’esprit de
l’élève et ce qui est de la même nature (intellectuelle) que lui. Or, le point commun
de ces approches est, pour John Dewey, de penser l’élève comme un « spectateur »
(Copleston 1994, 358; Dewey 1929b, 19–157) en commettant l’erreur de croire que
ce dernier pourra construire les relations entre les différentes choses qu’on lui
présente sans s’impliquer lui-même (Dewey 1920, 144). Ici, la signification des
choses apprises reste sans rapport avec l’intérêt de l’élève et donc ne peut être
évaluée, testée et jugée par ce dernier à la lumière de ses expériences. Les affluents
des fleuves de France peuvent restés des lignes bleues dessinées sur une carte,
leurs noms n’évoquant aucune expérience, souvenir, affect à l’élève, peu importe,
la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation validera la connaissance acquise s’il
parvient à les replacer correctement sur une carte.
Les variations de ce dualisme épistémologiques sont évidemment nombreuses
et nous ne pouvons que les énumérer ici. Cependant, la valorisation de l’intellect
sur le matériel, de l’esprit sur le corps, de la mémorisation sur la sensibilité, du
raisonnement sur la manipulation, de l’information sur l’action, de la lecture sur le
dialogue, etc. peut paraitre caricaturale aux yeux de nombreux enseignants. Toutefois,
force est de reconnaître que la première image que l’opinion commune se fait de
l’élève ou de l’étudiant est celle d’un être passif, assis sur une chaise, qui assiste au cours,
tel le spectateur d’une curieuse représentation, sans que d’autres expériences de
sa part ne lui soit demandées.
Deuxièmement, cette première rupture épistémologique entre expérience
et connaissance est donc lourde de conséquences sur le plan pédagogique. Ce qui
exprime le plus clairement cette relation dans la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation
est, au niveau pédagogique, le dualisme du curriculum et du co-curriculum (Arum
and Roksa 2011). En effet, au niveau de l’educational design (Goodin 1998) on peut
également constater une rupture entre ce qui fait partie d’un certain « contenu
éducatif » et ce qui en est exclu. Au cours de l’histoire des idées pédagogiques, qu’il
s’agisse d’informations, de techniques, de valeurs ou de compétences, ce
« contenu éducatif » est au cœur de ce que l’on nomme le « curriculum scolaire ».
Malgré les variations, les plans d’étude, les programmation des apprentissages, les
cursus ont tous pour point commun de chercher à définir les savoirs que l’on
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considère nécessaires à transmettre d’une génération à l’autre et d’en établir la
progression d’apprentissage (continuité qui se déclinera alors en cycles, programmes,
filières, etc.).
Ainsi, à partir de cette définition générique du curriculum, il est facile d’établir
la notion de co-curriculum de façon négative ; le co-curriculum est tout ce qui échappe
au curriculum (Stoller 2018, 455). On peut désigner par ce terme toutes les
expériences, activités ou moments où l’élève apprend quelque chose en dehors des
cours, c’est-à-dire lorsqu’il appréhende un savoir sans que ce processus ait été dirigé
par un acteur du milieu pédagogique de façon consciente et déterminée. Ici, l’opposition
entre le curriculum et le co-curriculum relève donc la qualité du premier, là où, à
l’inverse, c’est son absence qui permet de qualifier le second. Le curriculum devient
le continu visible du travail pédagogique et le co-curriculum devient son ombre,
discontinu discret, échappant au pédagogue et, in fine, dévalorisé (Schuh et al. 2011,
385–94). Cette séparation entre ces deux termes devient problématique au fur et
à mesure que la distance entre ces deux termes s’accroit. Pour le dire simplement,
plus le curriculum devient précis, détaillé et s’affranchi des autres continuités
éducatives, et plus le co-curriculum s’enrichit d’expériences, d’activités, d’interactions
qui échappent au pédagogue.
Troisièmement, cette triple rupture implique un dernier niveau de réflexion
que l’on peut identifier, en langue française, sous le terme d’organisation scolaire
(Obin 1993) - school organizational engineering (Cheng 1997). Dans ce domaine
sont débattues les questions des horaires, emplois du temps des acteurs scolaires,
agencement des espaces et du mobilier, mais également des règlements intérieurs
et des rapports sociaux entre les acteurs de ce milieu. Ici, c’est la séparation entre
l’organisation de l’enseignement disciplinaire d’une part et celui de la vie scolaire
d’autre part, qui prolonge les dualismes précédents en les radicalisant. En effet,
l’expression la plus marquante de ce dualisme est la facilité par laquelle la conception
traditionnelle de l’éducation définit un enseignement disciplinaire et se fait une
idée de l’organisation scolaire nécessaire à sa réalisation : un enseignement de
mathématiques au lycée nécessitera un certain nombre de professeurs, des heures
de cours et d’examen, des salles, un matériel particulier, etc. Alors qu’il semble
extrêmement plus difficile de définir le concept même de « vie scolaire » (Champy
2005, 1035–38) à cause de la variété de ses significations (Soussan 1988) suivant
les époques (Vitali 1997), les contextes (Bouvier 2007) et les acteurs de l’organisation
scolaire (Obin 2007).
Ainsi, là aussi, il serait facile, à cause de ce dualisme et de la valorisation
excessive qu’il entraine, de définir l’un par l’absence de l’autre : « les choses de la
vie scolaire c'est tout ce qui se passe dans le lycée ou le collège, à l'exception
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CHRISTOPHE POINT
toutefois de l'acte pédagogique lui-même » (Soussan 1988, 42). Faut-il alors comprendre
qu’il s’agit de toutes les interactions vécues par les enfants en dehors de celles
pensées au sein du curriculum ? Dans ce cas, la vie scolaire d’un élève comprendrait
l’ensemble des expériences vécues au sein de ce lieu comme manger, discuter avec
ses camarades, jouer, faire des activités, tomber amoureux, se disputer, stresser,
rire, etc. soit plus de 99% de ces expériences durant la scolarité et qu’il faudrait
exclure de l’enseignement disciplinaire. Ou bien, à l’inverse, la vie scolaire n’estelle que le temps passé par l’élève en dehors de ces cours et dont un CPE aurait la
charge administrative (Riondet 2017, 90–93) ? Dans ce cas, les moyens déployés
par l’administration scolaire pour « gérer » cette vie scolaire semblent alors bien
réduits face à la richesse et à la diversité de toutes les expériences mentionnées
précédemment.
Nous ne pouvons résoudre ici cette question de la définition du concept de
vie scolaire car son instabilité au sein de la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation
prouve d’elle-même le dualisme que nous avons exposé pour l’instant. Avec John
Dewey, notre argument a consisté à déplier les différents plis épistémologiques,
pédagogiques et organisationnels de ce dualisme traditionnel. Pour cette tradition,
le savoir mémorisé est plus important que l’expérience vécue, le respect du curriculum
est supérieur à celui du co-curriculum et l’enseignement disciplinaire prime sur la
vie scolaire. Face à ces ruptures, il s’agit désormais de se demander si la philosophie
pour les enfants (P4C) permet de réduire ou non ces écarts épistémologiques,
pédagogiques et organisationnels.
II. La promesse pragmatiste de la philosophie pour les enfants (P4C)
La littérature scientifique au sujet de la P4C connait depuis une vingtaine
d’année une forte expansion et diversification (Leleux 2008) dans l’espace francophone2.
Cette diversité théorique est désormais telle qu’une présentation exhaustive de ces
champs de recherche ne peut plus ignorer ni les différences théoriques et pratiques
entre les discussions à visée philosophique (Tozzi 2010), les ateliers de philosophie
(Auriac-Slusarczyk 2015) ou encore les communautés de recherche (Sharp 2018), ni
l’apport des sciences du langage, de la didactique, des approches intersectionnelles,
ou encore des sciences de l’éducation. Cependant un élément semble commun à
tous les témoignages des acteurs éducatifs qui s’essaient à penser ou à réaliser cette
2
La troisième réédition de l’ouvrage d’introduction de M. Sasseville en 2009 (Sasseville 2009) ou la
publication du numéro 24 de la revue Recherches en éducation en 2016 sur ce sujet en sont de bons
exemples.
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nouvelle pratique éducative : le sentiment d’appartenir à une communauté pédagogique
innovante et remettant en cause les évidences professionnelles du cadre scolaire
(sentiment qui les rend d’ailleurs inaudibles auprès d’autres praticiens ou chercheurs
partageant l’alignement théorique traditionnel).
En effet, à bien des égards les expérimentations de la P4C ne sont pas neutres,
et promettent, en tant qu’innovation pédagogique et par l’ampleur de sa transversalité
théorique (épistémologique, pédagogique et organisationnelle), une remise en
cause de la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation. Quel que soit les entrées du
praticien (l’animation d’un temps calme du périscolaire ou la didactique de la
philosophie en terminale), un alignement s’opèrerait progressivement avec les
autres niveaux théoriques décrits précédemment, conformément à un héritage
philosophique propre au pragmatisme (Lipman 2003; Sharp 2005). En effet, John
Dewey est le premier à encourager les chercheurs en sciences de l’éducation et les
pédagogues à penser profondément cette continuité théorique entre les champs
de l’épistémologie, du langage, de la pédagogie, de la politique ou encore de
l’esthétique (Dewey 1929c), et de chercher la plus grande cohérence possible entre
ces différents champs lors de leurs réflexions ou pratiques éducatives (Stoller 2018,
453; Dewey 1916b, 400–402). C’est donc cette promotion d’une continuité radicale
de l’éducation que nous voulons interroger ici. La P4C remplit-elle véritablement
les promesses du pragmatisme ? Détaillons cette question sur les trois « niveaux »
étudiés précédemment.
« Toute éducation est expérimentale » (Dewey 1931, 424). Sur le plan
épistémologique, l'expérience sera, pour John Dewey, le point de départ de tout
processus de pensée, et par conséquent, l’unique moyen de validation d’une
connaissance. De plus, si le but de tout processus d’action ou de réflexion sera pour
lui l’enrichissement de notre expérience, à l’inverse la qualité d’une expérience
dépend des connaissances qu’elle rend possible pour le sujet (Dewey 1938a, 14).
L’expérience est ici une transaction du sujet avec son environnement (Dewey 2016,
363) et le résultat de celle-ci, lorsqu’elle est réussie, est l’amélioration des connaissances
du sujet. C’est pourquoi l’épistémologie pragmatiste ne peut se comprendre sans
cette continuité indissoluble de l’expérience et de la connaissance (Dewey 1937,
238-241).
Cette épistémologie non-dualiste pose donc le problème suivant aux
praticiens : « Quelles sont les expériences que mon cours (activité, séquence pédagogique,
etc.) produit auprès des apprenants ? » L'enseignant doit chercher à créer une vital
experience (Dewey 1916a, 216). Et c’est ce que John Dewey cherche à produire au
chapitre 16 de Democracy and Education (p.297) en montrant comment un cours
d'histoire ou de géographie peut augmenter la signification du monde de l'étudiant
à partir du moment où le matériel pédagogique du cours permet à ce dernier
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CHRISTOPHE POINT
d'expérimenter « authentiquement » telle ou telle situation. Ainsi, Matthew Lipman
hérite et transmet cette continuité entre expérience et connaissance lorsqu’il construit
l’épistémologie de la P4C.
En ce qui concerne les enfants eux-mêmes, aucun plan éducatif ne sera digne
de ce nom à moins qu'il n'aboutisse à des expériences scolaires et extrascolaires
significatives. […] Par conséquent, l'un des objectifs d'un programme
d'aptitudes à la réflexion devrait être l'amélioration du jugement. Car le
jugement est le lien entre la pensée et l'action. […] Les significations dont les
enfants ont faim sont celles qui pourraient être pertinentes et éclairer leur
vie (Lipman 1980, 8–17).
Ainsi la P4C se présente comme un dispositif pédagogique recherchant : 1/
l’augmentation et intensification des capacité d’association du sujet. Ces dernières
sont effectivement nécessaires pour construire des connaissances valables3 soimême ou à plusieurs dont la validité est éprouvée à l’aune de la logique, du
dialogue et de la faillibilité scientifique (Cossin et al. 2008, 2e éd.:136). Ainsi, au
niveau épistémologique, il est clair ici que ni la connaissance, ni l’expérience ne sont
dévalorisées ou valorisées, pour la simple raison que leur continuité interdit toute
opposition ou indépendance excessive. La P4C illustre donc cette réconciliation
épistémologique (Tozzi 2010, 17–151), mais l’on peut noter tout d’abord que celleci est tout à fait envisageable en dehors de l’appellation « philosophique » et
pourrait s’élargir à l’ensemble des sciences humaines. De plus, comment évaluer
une « amélioration du jugement » chez l’élève si celui-ci porte avant tout sur les
connaissances en lien avec ses expériences personnelles et non sur des connaissances
générales identifiables (et ainsi évaluables) ?
La P4C peut-elle vraiment réconcilier, au niveau du design pédagogique, le
curriculum et le co-curriculum là où la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation les
tient séparées ? En 1893, John Dewey déclare que l’éducation n’est pas une
préparation à la vie, mais l’acte même de vivre (Dewey 1893, 50). Par cette déclaration
programmatique, le curriculum et le co-curriculum se trouvent joints comme des
deux moyens d’une même finalité éducative (faire émerger de nouvelles capacité
d’agir de façon autonome, critique et créative). Pour ce faire, John Dewey soutient
que la progression d’un curriculum ne devrait pas être « dans la succession des
études, mais dans le développement de nouvelles attitudes et de nouveaux intérêts
3
C’est-à-dire comme étant le produit d’une transaction réussie entre différentes informations
présentes dans l’environnement du sujet. Par exemple, les qualités d’écoute, les compétences de
reformulation, la capacité de suivre un sujet de discussion de façon assidue sont des éléments de
réussite pour la plupart des méthodologies de la P4C. Ces éléments expriment ainsi cet objectif de
croissance des capacités d’association (cognitive et sociale) de l’enfant.
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envers l'expérience » (Dewey 1929a, 305). C’est pourquoi, dans ce cas, les curriculums
doivent être envisagés comme « des écosystèmes dynamiques, hétérogènes et
chargés de valeurs des pratiques sociales humaines » (Stoller 2018, 455) prêt à être
modifiés au fur et à mesure de l’intérêt des élèves. Ces curriculums seront alors
évalués à partir de leur capacité à favoriser l’émergence d’expériences venant
redynamiser l’intérêt de l’enfant dans sa soif de toujours mieux connaitre son
environnement (Dewey 1931, 417). La rigueur du curriculum pré-existant à l’intérêt
de l’élève n’est alors plus de mise (Osberg and Biesta 2008, 314) et ne permet plus
de fonder la supériorité du curriculum sur le co-curriculum. Pour John Dewey, toutes
les activités dites « de loisir » sont des ressources encore inexploitées dont le pédagogue
doit s’emparer.
Or ces dernières sont précisément ce que la P4C, quel que soit sa
méthodologie, travaille et cherche à solliciter chez l’élève. Car elles sont portées par
un « élan » (Ibid.) qui permet le développement de compétences spécifiques
« d’organisation indépendante » (Ibid.). Qu’il s’agisse de l’intégrité critique (Slusarczyk
et al. 2015), du développement du raisonnement, de l’esprit critique (Lipman 2015,
18–19; Duclos 2014), ou bien de la « raisonnabilité » de Lipman (Leleux 2008, 11–24),
les compétences que la P4C cherche à développer chez l’élève sont non seulement,
dans l’extrême majorité des cas transdisciplinaires, mais dépassent largement le
cadre disciplinaire pour influencer le comportement de l’élève au sein de son cocurriculum en développant chez lui un sens du raisonnement, de la responsabilité
ou encore de la citoyenneté.
Ainsi l’importance du dialogue et de l’interconnexion de la pensée et du
langage que révèlent les travaux de Emmanuèle Auriac-Slusarczyk (Auriac-Slusarczyk
2015), Anda Fournel (Fournel 2018 ; Sasseville et al. 2018 ; Fournel and Simon 2018),
ou encore Jean-Pascal Simon (Simon and Tozzi 2019) sont un bon exemple de cette
attention aux compétences, qui vont permettre aux élèves de développer cet « élan »
d’auto-organisation collectif de la signification. C’est-à-dire (et les témoignages des
praticiens sont unanimes à ce sujet) qu’une des manifestations les plus évidentes de
la réussite et des bienfaits de la P4C est le déroulement d’une communauté de
recherche où le dialogue entre les élèves est fluide, où l’enseignant intervient peu,
et où par ce processus dialogique émerge une signification collective et complexe
du monde pour les élèves. Cependant, entre un dialogue de recherche fluide et
une « organisation indépendante » des élèves, il y a un pas, et la promesse du
pragmatisme s’obscurcit dans cet écart. Pour l’instant, et c’est ce qui nous pousse ici
à la prudence, aucune recherche n’a pas évalué celle-ci dans la mise en œuvre d’une
telle organisation à partir de la pratique de la P4C. Enfin, une dernière question,
peut-être la plus difficile, doit être formulée : la P4C, lorsque l’on s’intéresse à la
171
CHRISTOPHE POINT
manière dont elle se réalise au niveau de l’organisation scolaire quotidienne, estelle une remise en question de la séparation entre l’organisation des enseignements
disciplinaires et les activités de la vie scolaire ? Rétrospectivement, cette question
semble suivre une interrogation formulée par John Dewey dès les premières lignes
de Les Sources d’une science de l’éducation :
Quels sont les moyens grâce auxquels l'éducation dans toutes ses composantes
et ses phases – la sélection des éléments composant le programme scolaire,
les méthodes d’instruction et de discipline, l'organisation et l'administration
des écoles – peut mener à bien sa fonction tout en augmentant systématiquement
l’intelligence de notre compréhension et de nos actes ? (1929c, 24-25)
La P4C peut-elle être un de ces moyens que John Dewey a cherché à
construire ? Notons tout d’abord que cette question doit avoir selon lui pour préalable
une conception souple de l’organisation des enseignements disciplinaires (Dewey
1929a, 306–7) avant de penser à la réconciliation avec la vie scolaire elle-même.
Mais l’argument central de John Dewey ici est de rappeler que tous les enseignements
disciplinaires - même la poésie (Dewey 1916a, 247–52) - ont pour objectif commun
de favoriser chez l’élève le développement de l’enquête. Or la P4C de Matthew
Lipman semble se donner justement cet objectif à travers les communautés de
recherches4 :
John Dewey était convaincu que cette éducation avait échoué parce qu'elle
était coupable d'une erreur monumentale : elle confondait les produits finis
et raffinés de l'enquête avec le sujet initial et brut de l'enquête et essayait
d'amener les élèves à apprendre les solutions plutôt qu'à étudier les problèmes
et à faire des recherches par eux-mêmes (Lipman 2003, 20).
Cependant, la particularité de la P4C comme outil pédagogique pour développer
les aptitudes à l’enquête se réalise-t-elle dans son développement actuel au sein
des organisations scolaires ? Encore faiblement institutionnalisée (Auriac-Slusarczyk
et al. 2011, 4; Tozzi 2008, 63), cette pratique semble se diffuser au sein des
établissements à partir de deux dynamiques qui ne s’opposent pas mais, au contraire,
dont la complémentarité est pleine de promesses. Dans la première dynamique, la
P4C appartient au co-curriculum (comme une activité de la vie scolaire de
l’établissement) et elle est introduite au sein du curriculum par la manifestation
d’un certain nombre de questions nécessitant un développement de connaissances
propres à une discipline en particulier. Par exemple, des collégiens réalisant une
4
Dans la méthode de Lipman, l’une des premières étapes de la CRP est le choix d’une question
commune à partir des questions proposées par les participants.
172
LA PHILOSOPHIE POUR ENFANTS : UNE PISTE POUR RÉCONCILIER ENSEIGNEMENT DISCIPLINAIRE ET VIE SCOLAIRE ?
CRP durant le temps périscolaire sur le thème des différences entre les hommes et
les femmes, sollicitent ensuite leur professeur de biologie-géologie par des questions
ayant trait à l’anatomie humaine et ce dernier peut alors modifier son futur cours
de manière à répondre à ces questions.
Pour la seconde dynamique, la P4C est inscrite au sein du curriculum
scolaire et se déploie par la suite au sein du co-curriculum. Par exemple, au sein du
programme belge, une séance d’un cours de morale doté de la méthodologie de la
P4C peut aborder la question de l’écologie, puis que, dans un second temps, les
réflexions abordées au sein de cette séance donnent envie aux élèves de s’engager
pour cette valeur en sollicitant les ressources de la vie scolaire pour organiser une
semaine de l’environnement au sein de leur établissement pour lutter contre le
gaspillage. Bien que ces exemples soient fictifs et que des enquêtes de terrain
seraient nécessaires pour approfondir ce point, il semble clair que la P4C rend possible
un processus d’enquête permettant un dialogue et une recherche de valeurs
communes5, d’accroitre la confiance des élèves en leur pouvoir d’agir collectif et,
in fine, d’accroitre leur implication au sein de la vie scolaire ou de l’enseignement
disciplinaire.
Toutefois, l’animateur d’une CRP ne possède pour l’instant pas de place
institutionnelle et disciplinaire stable au sein de l’espace scolaire francophone (estil un enseignant de philosophie ? un animateur périscolaire ?). Or cela peut nuire à
cette prétention à la porosité entre enseignement disciplinaire car n’étant pas
identifié clairement par les autres acteurs scolaires, la coopération avec ses
derniers s’en trouve malaisée. Les travaux de Bettina Berton (Berton 2017; 2015)
montrent en effet que la difficulté de la P4C à s’inscrire dans une logique
disciplinaire nuit plutôt à la pérennisation des expériences de P4C amorcées au sein
de la vie scolaire.
Conclusion
Pour conclure, il n’est pas inutile de revenir sur la correspondance entre
John Dewey et Matthew Lipman pour mesurer les enjeux qui pèsent sur la P4C. A
l’époque de cet échange épistolaire, de 1949 à 1951, Matthew Lipman est encore
un jeune et prometteur chercheur mais il cerne déjà l’intérêt de s’emparer de
l’héritage pragmatiste pour sa propre pensée et loue l’approche de John Dewey
5
Il est intéressant de noter par ailleurs que pour Matthew Lipman cette capacité à interroger les
valeurs et à les critiquer que permet la P4C est peut-être la cause de son exclusion des
enseignements disciplinaires dans la conception traditionnelle de l’éducation (Lipman 2015, 267).
173
CHRISTOPHE POINT
(Lipman 1966). Cependant, ces louanges (que Matthew Lipman ne reniera jamais
(Dewey 1951)) lui vaudront de féroces attaques au sein du milieu universitaire
américain lors de la soutenance de son doctorat (Dewey 1950). En effet, une
conception de l’expérience et de l’éducation aussi continuiste ne peut que paraître
« répugnante » à la conception dualiste de la philosophie dominante de l’époque.
Or, ce dégout semble encore si présent au sein de la conception traditionnelle de
l’éducation qu’il nous a semblé légitime pour notre analyse de clarifier les
promesses de l’héritage pragmatiste de la P4C.
Ainsi, sur le plan théorique, la P4C questionne la conception traditionnelle
et dualiste de l’éducation sur au moins trois niveaux de réflexion. Sur le plan épistémologique,
elle s’oppose à une sorte de fondationnalisme du savoir qui dévalorise l’expérience
au profit d’un savoir neutre, a priori et impersonnel. A l’inverse, la P4C développe
une conception transactionnelle de l’expérience et de la connaissance où l’une ne
peut être valable sans l’autre. Sur le plan du design pédagogique, la P4C établit une
continuité entre le curriculum et le co-curriculum au lieu de les opposer de façon
scholastique. Ils ont la même finalité pédagogique et c’est en conséquence de ce
fait que les processus éducatifs doivent être imaginés. La P4C peut alors intégrer
les programmes d’études ou les activités périscolaires avec la même intégrité.
Enfin, sur le plan de l’organisation scolaire, la P4C peut être comprise comme une
prémisse d’une nouvelle ingénierie scolaire où l’enseignement disciplinaire ne
s’opposera plus à la vie scolaire, mais sera au contraire sans cesse à la recherche
d’interaction avec cette dernière pour s’enrichir mutuellement des recherches menées
par les élèves.
Cependant, cette remise en cause théorique des dualismes de la conception
traditionnelle de l’éducation est plus mitigée sur le terrain de la pratique. Pour
l’heure, la P4C, en tant qu’innovation pédagogique isolée, ne semble pas pouvoir
réaliser seule les promesses du pragmatisme. Il est donc possible de la considérer
soit comme une curiosité pédagogique sympathique mais inoffensive, soit comme
les premiers pas d’une reconstruction bien plus vaste de notre conception de
l’éducation. Et pour la philosophie pragmatiste, seul l’avenir est un juge compétent
pour trancher entre ces deux options.
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STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 179-188
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.09
THE NORMALITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE
NORMALITY OF THE BODY. HUSSERL’S VIEW ON NORMALITY*
IMOLA RESZEG∗∗
ABSTRACT. In the following paper, I’ll try to summarize Husserl’s view on normality.
I will claim that there is a contradiction between his early, transcendental conception,
which claims the absolute normality of the transcendental consciousness, and his
late genetic-generative analyzes that lead back the normality of experience to the
normality of the psychophysical body. I will argue that his contradiction can be
resolved from the perspective of the embodied consciousness which, according to
Anthony Steinbock is also present in the late writings of Husserl.
Keywords: normality,
phenomenology
abnormality,
transcendental
phenomenology,
genetic
The Problem of Normality
How may mental disorders arise within phenomenology, a non-reductionist
theory that insists on treating mental phenomena as pieces of conscious experience?
Does it make any sense to speak of normal vs. abnormal experience within the
context of phenomenology? And if so, what would be the appropriate concepts,
categories in terms of which we may articulate this difference?
Normality, as was pointed out by such thinkers as Michel Foucault, George
Canghuillem and others, is a normative, not a descriptive concept. Far from being
a natural determination or a given psychic feature, it is a regulative idea informed
by cultural values and rules shaping social consciousness of a particular era.
Phenomenology, however, makes it its methodological principle to get rid of any
form of normativity. The epoché introduced by Husserl aimed at suspending, if only
temporarily, all our cultural scientific beliefs. Accordingly, we should take experience
*
The author would like to thank Ádám Lovász for his help in the translation of the originally Hungarian text..
ELTE BTK Budapest, Hungary. Email: reszegimola@student.elte.hu
∗∗
IMOLA RESZEG
as it would reveal itself to an unprejudiced, unbiased gaze. The phenomenological
approach demands that we suspend all our judgements. If we do so then any distinction
to the effect of normality as opposed to abnormality will lose all their relevance.
We are supposed to contemplate our inner stream of experience revealing itself to
the unbiased observer as if we had no preconceived knowledge of what normal
perception, normal behaviour or a normal psyche should be like.
However, the question of the normal state of consciousness or normal
experience cannot be eliminated in the mental attitude of reduction. We have
experiences in which we feel, so to speak, from the inside, that something is wrong,
that our perception, thinking, emotional life is not taking place in the usual manner.
Experience seems to have an inherent normality, a self-regulating mechanism that
immediately indicates when things are not going in the right way.
The Transcendental Perspective
The question of normality is contained in the entire Husserlian ouevre, from
Ideen – which elaborates transcendental phenomenology – to the later texts dealing
with intersubjectivity. Because it deals primarily with the constitution of meaning
by the transcendental subject, the transcendental stage of Husserl’s work does not
really contain much about normality, but it becomes an indispensable operational
concept in explaining the phenomenological problems of intersubjective reality and
the constitution of objectivity. 1
Husserl’s comments regarding the topic in §55 of Cartesian Meditations are
especially pertinent in this regard:
“But abnormality must first be constituted as such; and the constituting of
abnormality is possible only on the basis of an intrinsically antecedent
normality (…) The objective world has existence by virtue of a harmonious
confirmation of the apperceptive constitution, once this has succeeded: a
confirmation thereof by the continuance of experiencing life with a consistent
harmoniousness, which always becomes re-established as extending through
any corrections that may be required to that end.”2
The meaning of the world, including its anomalous elements, can only be
articulated in comparison with a normality. The former – anomaly – must be considered
1
2
Drawing on Eugen Fink’s article (Les concepts operatoires dans la phénoménologie de Edmund Husserl)
Tamás Ullmann states that the concept of normality is one of the most important operative notions
is Husserl’s philosophy. (Tamás Ullmann, Az értelem dimenziói. L’Harmattan, Budapest, 2012. 152-153.)
Husserl, Edmund: Cartesian Medtitations. Springer Science, Nijhoff den Haague, 1960, 124-125.
180
THE NORMALITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NORMALITY OF THE BODY. HUSSERL’S VIEW ON NORMALITY
as a deformation of a prior normality. As Husserl declares in another text, “normality
is the form of constitution”3. A world can only come into being thanks to the normality
of the constitutive ego and this normality manifests itself in the harmonious nature
of the experience. In other words, the transcendental subject is absolutely normal,
for normality is the very foundation and condition of world-constitution. If we find
ourselves in a world, this is thanks to a normality which has already formed our world.
The experiencing-constituting subject proceeds from an absolute normality,
but viewed from the transcendental-solipsistic perspective, it seems that every other
human and non-human subject represents a lesser degree of normality. It is always
our ego which has the primary constitutive capacity. As Husserl explains,
“Among the problems of abnormality the problem of non-human animality
and that of the levels of "higher and lower" brutes are included. Relative to
the brute, man is, constitutionally speaking, the normal case just as I myself
am the primal norm constitutionally for all other men.”4
This logic of constitution extends not only to the animals, but children and
the insane also represent examples of anomaly, because in Husserl’s view they do
not reach the ideal type of normality, so to speak, the normality of the adult capable
of calculation, perception and movement. What matters here is who is capable of
constructing the world as a more complete, coherent and harmonic whole.
However paradoxical and even problematic it may appear, this process is
phenomenologically legitimate inasmuch as it furnishes us with a first-person
perspective and a direct experience relating to normality, attempting to illuminate
the inner laws of experience by introspection. Husserl expands his analysis to a
number of concrete examples. During the course of these investigations, three or,
according to other interpreters, four different criteria relating to normality can be
uncovered: concordance, optimality, typicality, and familiarity.
In a text dating from between 1915-1917 dedicated to giving an explanation
about the optimal givenness of experience, Husserl writes the following:
“...the optimal system has an advantage, namely that it reveals the most of
the real thing, it brings about the greatest riches concerning the differences
pertaining to the thing.”5
3
4
5
Hua XIV. 68.
Husserl, Edmund: Cartesian Meditations. Springer Science, Nijhoff den Haague, 1960, 125.
Hua XIII. 379. (My translation, I. R.)
181
IMOLA RESZEG
Under „optimality”, we must understand the ideal preconditions of perception.
In other words, the sum of circumstances which afford the richest, most complete
knowledge relating to the object of perception. In a 1921 text, the criteria of optimality
is articulated in relation to the topic of the body. On this view, „normal” corporeality
connects with a well-functioning or, alternately, hampered or limited system of
representation, and also with a system that “that in a certain manner represents the
truth”.6
Under corporeal normality Husserl understands the normal bio-physical
functioning of the body. The normal experience of the world depends upon a biophysical
optimum, as well as having a healthy body.7 Husserl also claims that biophysical
normality can be brought into adequation with a constitutive normality, while biophysical
anomaly also corresponds to the sum of abnormal „worldviews.”8
On the basis of our everyday experience, we can easily verify what Husserl
is speaking of, for the loss of sight or hearing, even for a transitory period of time,
leads to a weakening of the perception of the world, impairing the traversal of the
environment. But connecting representation to the normality of corporeal experience
(the latter being the normality of phenomenological experience in general), and
also collapsing these two levels into one another, all this strikes us as a problematic
approach. The apparent psychophysical reductionism here contradicts, after all, the
spirit of the transcendental method.9 Other everyday intuitions tell us that physical
or sensorial impairments need not necessarily lead to a deformation of the experience
of the world, just as the presence of bodily health does not automatically guarantee
a completely normal subjective experience of the world.
Biophysical optimality does not, in itself, guarantee the normality of experience,
for the preconditions of an optimal representational system in Husserl’s case are
inherently intersubjective. Differently put, we can only know that our perceptions
do actually result in optimal experience if we are somehow capable of comparing
these experiences with those of others, in the context of an intersubjectively constituted
world. Our individual experience must be in accordance with the individual and
collective experiences of others, and also connect with the objectivity of a common
6
7
8
9
Hua XIV. 121.
Hua XIV. 122-123.
Hua XIV. 123.
Husserl apparently takes a few times this paradoxical step, for example at HUA XIV, 85. On the
other hand, authors like Anthony Steinbock hold that on bio-physical body Husserl always means
the lived body, which constitutes it’s own norms while orienting itself in the surrounding world.
(Steinbock: Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl, Indiana University Press,
Illinois, 1995, 138-139.)
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THE NORMALITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NORMALITY OF THE BODY. HUSSERL’S VIEW ON NORMALITY
life world. The criterion of concordance must apply within the individual life world
as well, for new sensations and perceptions can only gain meaning inside an experiential
horizon. In this manner, we experience constant objectivities, and in connection with
these, we constitute a world.
“What else could normal experience be than the experience which seamlessly
and concordantly fits the context in question, and which maintains the identity
of the object throughout the experience.”
writes Husserl, emphasizing that concordance is an unavoidable criterion
of normality.10 Cases of anomalous perception, such as false perception, delusions,
hallucinations, are all characterized by the agent falling out of the common flow of
experience. The anomaly is the outlier, standing in contradiction with the rest of
the intersubjective world. However, these cases can also be viewed as immanent
modulations, deformations or diversions of normality.
To return briefly to the intersubjective dimension of concordance, it must
also be emphasized that for Husserl, the objectivity of any experience is basically
guaranteed by nothing more than this dimension. However, as Ullmann explains,
the intersubjectivity of experience should not be viewed so much as the sum of
individual experiences, but rather a network of mutual interpenetration in which
intersubjectively constructed meaning is embedded into our own experience,
informing it in turn. Not only do we construct meaning together with others, but
even our perception is formed by our community. This common world, which creates
the domain of normality, will be called the „life world” in Husserl’s later work. 11
In the life world, everything is at once subjective and relative, for it denotes
a cultural-historical community, a concrete world, which contrasts with the universes
of other cultural communities. In the broader context of interculturality, we find
the third and fourth criteria, namely typicality and familiarity. The analysis of these
specific properties of the life world will take us in the genetic and generative phase
of transcendental phenomenology. That is, we must deal with the issue of historicity in
the phenomenological analysis. Before proceeding, it must be stressed that at this
point, the normal is considered as that which is familiar in our own world.
Everything which diverges from this category, the unfamiliar, the alien, is, from the
Husserlain perspective, abnormal.
10
11
HUA XIII. 364.
Ullmann 158.
183
IMOLA RESZEG
The Genetic-Generative View of Normality
There are some interpreters who hold that Husserl’s views on normality are
not entirely articulated within a static-transcendental context. In other words, we
should not view the normal as the achievement of a solipsistic ego, but rather as
something intersubjectively constituted, from a genetic-generative perspective12
On this account, concordance, optimality, typicality and familiarity are not so much
different forms of normality, but instead various levels of the same phenomenon.
We can view them as modes of constitution, which allow experience to harmonize
and normalize itself. One of the most important characteristics of experience is selfnormalization and self-stabilization. Husserl’s ideas contain an implicit teleology,
namely the view that meaning can eventually be stabilized and harmonized.13
In the genetic view, the disharmonies, complexities, breaks and anomalies
in perception are held to be constitutive preconditions of new meanings. A certain chaos
is required for the emergence of order. The anomaly can be viewed as a precondition
for richer certainties, more complex truths, and new experiential norms.
Let us take an everyday case. In a familiar city, I am trying to get to a
destination, let’s say the university building. But it's night time, so the usual points
of reference are a little different in my plane of consciousness, showing different
aspects. The street is recognizable, but it also resists my gaze. Despite the fact that
it diverges from my expectations, I go in the direction I believe to be the correct
one. The building I am trying to find fails to present itself. I become uncertain, I stop
and look around. Then I realize I must have gone up the wrong metro overpass in
the opposite direction. At this moment, however, the right way becomes apparent
because overall, despite the surprises it holds in store, the city as a whole is
generally familiar to me. The mistake and the recognition of this mistake both
enriched my consciousness with an experience of the night, which can be usefully
recalled in later situations.
Here we have an example of the teleological and self-normalizing functioning
of experience. The levels of familiarity permeate and build upon one another. Ever
higher degrees of normality accumulate in our consciousness, leading to an ever
more concrete articulation of the body-environment and a richer constitution of the
world. On the most fundamental level, normality is grounded upon the spontaneous
concordance of subconscious perceptual contents. This level should be imagined as
a state in which there are not any concretized intellectual contents or objective
12
13
Anthony Steinbock: Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl, Indiana University
Press, Illinois, 1995, Marosán Bence: Kontextus és fenomén II, L’Harmattan, 2020.
Marosán Bence: Kontextus és fenomén II, L’Harmattan, 2020. 293.
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THE NORMALITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NORMALITY OF THE BODY. HUSSERL’S VIEW ON NORMALITY
meanings, but only loosely connected nascent elements of meaning. A critical element
of objective meaning is whether these patterns, which are partially sensual and partially
intellectual, can arrive at this meaning or fulfil an expectation14
Concordance manifests not only on the level of contents of consciousness,
but also in the sensual elements of the lived body (Leib Körper), and also pertains
to the relationship of the lived body with its environment. The synthetic unity of
the object of consciousness (or any other empirical fact) is unavoidably tied to the
circumstance that in every case the cooperation of the senses is required. Sight,
hearing, touch, smell, taste, all of these transmit sense data which together build a
representation of the world. Without the cooperation of the senses, we would have
an example of anomalous experience, the highest intensity of which is dissociative
chaos. Borrowing an example from Minkowski the famed psychiatrist, Steinbock
gives a phenomenological description of schizophrenia, in which a state of personality
dissociation may be observed:
"...and then sometimes everything is so fragmented, when it should be so
unified. A bird in the garden chirps, for example. I hear the bird and I know
that he chirps, but that it is a bird and that he chirps, these two things are
separated from each other. There is an abyss. Here I am afraid because I cannot
put them back together again."15
Referring to the consistency between body and environment, Steinbock,
referencing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, argues that already in Husserl’s case we find
many descriptions where the body is more than an optimal sensory system,
operating also as a mode of optimization which activates experience as a function.
When Husserl speaks of the biophysical body, he is referring to the lived body,
which itself selects the most optimal, coherent modes of experience in a selforganizing way.16 Describing the lived body, Husserl prefers to use the phrase
„anomalous” rather than „abnormal”, and in Steinbock’s view there is a very important
reason for this, namely that the anomalous is more than the mere negative polar
opposite of the „normal.” The anomalous or injured, disabled body is restricted in
exercising its capacities, but it is certainly not abnormal. Perceptual anomalies are
necessary components of perception in general, for it is thanks to such elements
that concordance can develop. To take another typical example, we can imagine
ourselves driving at night. The lights of the car illuminate a certain section of road,
but this circumstance is punctuated by the fact that cars coming from the other
14
15
16
Marosán 296.
Steinbock 143.
Steinbock 144-145.
185
IMOLA RESZEG
direction blind us momentarily. This momentary anomaly in visual perception breaks
our normal perception, while training our vision, keeping us alert. Despite the darkness,
we can succeed in steering our vehicle safely at night, without suffering a car accident.
Normality, understood in the sense of optimality, is not therefore the constant
functioning of sensual organs, but rather the cooperative normality of the senses.
If we think of all this in temporal terms, we must note that after a while the
optimal functioning of sense organs and their characteristics tend to habitualize
after a while, normalizing experience in the process. That which we call normal is
the product of an optimalization. This latter is an open category, making it possible
to find elements even more optimal than the natural functions, such as in the case
of artificial prostheses and other body enhancements. In such cases, the added
component can become a normalizing force in perception. New glasses, for instance,
and the optimized vision they make possible, can become a new norm in a matter
of days, making us view the previous experience of vision in a new light. Steinbock
mentions that the lived body is only normal to the extent that it proves capable of
transgressing its own norms.17 While creating new optimums and rules, the body
also transforms the criteria of its own normality. Corporeal functioning is nothing if
not the self-renewing process of optimalization and normalization. At the same time
though, we must also recognize that there is no completely concordant or harmonic
experience. Rather, these are only quasi-teleological tendencies instead of states.
The next level of perceptual normality is typicality. Our environment is full
of phenomena which we call normal, insofar as they fulfil our expectations regarding
typicality. A corporeality, an object, a situation or a behaviour that can be called typical
allows us to create expectations in advance. We expect the object of consciousness
to behave as it should. The typicality of experience in Steinbock’s interpretation is
created by the interpenetration of various optima, and composes the level where
our individual experience steps into the intersubjective dimension of the life world.18
From the genetic view, we proceed to the generative. Typicality necessitates
communication within and among various generations. A very important characteristic
of its manifestation is that it applies not only to objects of consciousness and the
relations between these objects, but also to the constitution of the world itself. As
Marosan shows, constitution undergoes a qualitative expansion at this point. Viewing
experience as a flow, we can see a series of various optimums and collections of
optimality, repeating, until a typicality of elements, territories and regions emerges,
aggregating into a complex network.19 Following Steinbock, we may call the forms
17
18
19
Steinbock 146.
Steinbock 160.
Marosán 301.
186
THE NORMALITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NORMALITY OF THE BODY. HUSSERL’S VIEW ON NORMALITY
of this typicalized world-experience the „territories.” A territory is not so much the
objective environment but rather the way in which we inhabit this ecology, making
it a home, a place of inhabitation. It is not an exaggeration to call it the system of
typicalized modes of perception and behaviour.
The next level of normality is the most complex, encompassing the
familiar/unfamiliar binary. Along with the previous levels we have described above,
the territory becomes the highest and most concrete level of normality once it is
recognized as a culturally coded life world. On this generative level, the cultural
aspect is more pronounced than in the case of typicality, where it remains abstract.
The life world’s familiar and unfamiliar aspects are eminently cultural phenomena.
The life world is full of familiar forms and systems: meanings, norms, gestures,
phrases, modes of behaviour, social roles, bodies, animals, and humans. All these
aspects are characterized by their familiarity, including inanimate objects. These
can be interpreted in turn as showing opportunities or affordances for action. At
this point, it should be stressed that in Husserl’s view, individual human bodies and
the sum of corporealities alike form a single cultural-corporeal community. The life
world’s concrete mode of givenness is a culturally and traditionally given world,
which stands opposed to the alien, the other. In this context that is normal which
is familiar inside of our own world, while the alien, the unknown, the strange is
endowed with the character of the abnormal. Steinbock emphasizes that the
familiar and the unfamiliar are constituted according to one another. We can only
articulate our own if there is an opposite we can compare this category with. 20
In summary, it can be said that from the Husserlian ouevre we can reconstruct
a genetic-generative concept of normality. The latter is a structural component of
experience, emerging through corporeal experience, becoming in its turn a controlling
and organizing force. This self-regulative movement of experience is not absolutely
stable, because traumatic or cataclysmic events can destabilize it. But even these,
if they do not result in a shattering of the body, can contribute to normalization. In
a crisis, the stable meanings and elements are disarticulated, dashing expectations.
That being said, the crisis is always already part of individual and social life. This fact
was not lost on Husserl:
“Cannot we, however, conceive of a such a shift of fate - writes Husserl at one
point - that shatters normality to the point that I find myself completely lost
and I can no longer envisage how life may continue, how it may once again
assume the form of a fruitful stable normal human life.” 21
20
21
Steinbock 221.
HUA XV. 213-214 (Translated to English by me I. R.)
187
IMOLA RESZEG
The traumatic event which Husserl references here, can completely untether
the web of normality, leading to a condition wherein the environment fails to remain
uncontroversial for me: everyday activities lose their meaning, while expectations
and hopes fail to be fulfilled. The trauma can so utterly destabilize our lives that “I
never again find my bearings”. The shattering of normality can result in the destruction
of the world, or at the very least, an alienation from the world, making the continuation
of our previous life impossible.
188
STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 189-211
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DOI:10.24193/subbphil.2021.1.10
ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI∗
ABSTRACT. The article focuses on the problem of egology in the thought of Roman
Ingarden, a conception that offers a creative and critical response to Husserl’s
egology and converges with the historical conception of the ego in Descartes. It
analyses the problem in two stages based on two important texts by Ingarden:
Controversy over the Existence of the World and Man and Time. Starting with
reflections on the status of pure consciousness, Ingarden recognises the pure ego
as something solely abstract compared with the worldly and irreducible real ego.
From there his reflections on the ego move on to the problem of its substantiality,
specific temporality as well as the role and experience of the body to finally produce
a philosophy of existence with ethical and personalistic overtones. In this way
Ingarden recreates the egological journey in Descartes, who, searching for the
foundation of knowledge, identified subjectivity as the union of body and soul and
saw its fulfilment in the ethical experience of generosity.
Keywords: egology, ego, Cartesianism, Ingarden, Husserl, substantiality, temporality,
human existence, realism.
I. Introduction
When considering the possible inspirations Ingarden might have drawn
from the philosophical tradition, people rarely mention Descartes.1 Indeed, Ingarden
himself refers to Descartes rather marginally. He was not a historian of philosophy
and it should perhaps come as no surprise that none of his texts makes direct
mention of Descartes’ philosophy. However, if one were to identify a meaningful
point of departure for the exploration of his attitude to Descartes’ thought it would
∗
1
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Warszawa, Poland. Email: wstarzyn@ifispan.edu.pl.
Research into Cartesian themes in Ingarden’s thought may be inspired to some extent by texts
about Descartes’ philosophy that were influenced by Ingarden and written from the perspective of
ontology (Tarnowski 2017) and epistemology (Gierulanka 1962). This text explores the egological
dimension absent in both these authors.
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
have to be in the context of his discussion with Husserl, and specifically its Cartesian
part related to consciousness and the ego. In his conception of consciousness,
Husserl did make rather frequent references to Descartes’ solutions, and they were
by no means unequivocally positive. Influenced by the neo-Kantian interpretation
of Descartes, he raised a number of objections against the thought of the “father of
modernity”2. One of the main such objections concerned the status of consciousness
which, according to Husserl, was not adequately separated (or cleansed) from the
real world or the real ego, which led Descartes to “absurd transcendental realism”3.
Interestingly, Ingarden does not share Husserl’s objections about this aspect of
Descartes’ philosophy. Instead, he approaches it rather positively, deems it worthy
of consideration and adopts it as a starting point for his own conception4. It might
therefore be said, preliminarily, that Ingarden turns Husserl’s objections around:
one should not so much think of cogito as totally independent of the world and,
ultimately, making the world meaningful as begin by describing the “natural attitude”
within which
I relate to the world or I can do it in many different ways: watching it enquiringly,
acknowledging certain states of affairs, encapsulating them in concepts,
comparing, differentiating, counting, reaching conclusions on the basis of
established facts etc. Similarly, I may like, dislike, enjoy, be saddened by, desire
or avoid certain objects as well as hope for, fear, influence or be influenced
by some events etc. All these various ways of relating to the world may be
encapsulated in the Cartesian term cogito; they are my lived experiences. As
long as I live currently, I am present to myself as someone who perceives,
imagines, thinks, feels, desires etc. It is as such that I find myself within and
in relation to the world which is always given to me in its real existence, even
when I suffer from delusions or exclude some objects from its scope.5
2
3
4
5
see Mehl 2020; Barbaras 2017, p. 14-19.
Husserl 1960, p. 24.
see Ingarden 2013, p. 39-40.
Ingarden 1919, p. 338. In Part 4 of his early text Dążenia fenomenologów [The Aims of Phenomenologists]
devoted to immanent cognition and the phenomenological cognitive attitude, Ingarden presents
Husserl’s main views on pure consciousness. He refers to Cartesian cogito as enworlded (following
Husserl), but does not repeat Husserl’s transcendental objections against this conception, clearly
abandoning characteristic Husserlian rhetoric in favour of transcendentalism. In the subsequent
edition of the text from the early 1960s, Ingarden is more vocal about the need to differentiate the
various forms of behaviour towards the world from cogito’s self-presence. However, the latter
never removes the irreducible feeling of the world’s reality: “all my behaviours towards things and
processes in this world involve in one way or another, more or less importantly, centrally or
peripherally, my conscious experiences that Descartes once referred to by the common term
190
ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
Following this lead, I will make the hypothesis that the problem of egology
in Ingarden, developed in discussion with Husserl, bears the hallmarks of a certain
Cartesian attitude or at least shares some of its aspects. However, it is worth pointing
out that the very status of a philosophical sub-discipline accorded to egology may
be problematic in the context of Ingarden’s thought, especially when it comes to
the role the discipline is supposed to play in relation to ontology. The reason is that
Ingarden is believed to have been primarily an ontologist which may mean that any
detailed research into his work needs to be carried out on the basis of previously
reached ontological conclusions. Yet, as it concerns the problem of consciousness,
and then the ego, Ingarden identifies a specific first-person mode as a crucial component
of the fundamental experience based on which one may talk about the special
status of the ego6. This raises the question of whether the problems of egology may
be reflected upon autonomously or even considered to represent a privileged
domain with a bearing on ontological problems formulated at a later stage.
The interrelation between egology and ontology becomes specifically important
in the context of the thesis about the substantiality of the ego, i.e. at the point where
the reflections upon the ego enter the area of ontology. As we know, in Descartes,
the problem of substance is introduced in the Meditations as the ego makes the
first-person declaration “I am a substance”7. It is only once this first and fundamental
statement is made that further theses on substances different from the ego may be
put forward as part of “first philosophy”. Is it then the case that Ingarden attributed
the concept of substance to the ego based on some general ontological knowledge
or can this problem be interpreted as primary and autonomous? Without claiming
to be able to settle this complex issue within the confines of this article, I only want
to highlight it, assuming that it is possible to read Ingarden’s egological texts somewhat
independently of his ontological work.
Ingarden’s conception of egology appears mainly in two of his texts: fragments
of Vol. 2 of Controversy about the Existence of the World8 and Man and Time9. I will
try to identify and explore the “egological” Cartesian themes that are present in
these texts, or even – to refer loosely to Husserl’s terminology – outline a “Cartesian
6
7
8
9
cogito. As long as I am alive, I constantly experience something, behaving in a certain way, and
when I experience, I relate not only to the objects of the world that surrounds me in one way or
another (e.g. with kindness or hostility), but I am continuously present to myself as someone who
thinks, feels, sees or hears, desires or is repulsed, loves or hates, is delighted or indignant etc. As
such I find myself in the world and always find the world real” (Ingarden 1963, p. 361).
see Ingarden 2016, p. 696-697.
Descartes 1984, II, 30, 31; AT VII, 44, 45.
Ingarden 2016, p. 645-735.
Ingarden 1983, p. 33-52.
191
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
way” insofar as these themes make up a discernible series of theses and arguments.
Given the fact that Ingarden undoubtedly adopted Husserl’s position as his main
point of reference, could it be possible that, as part of his discussion with Husserl,
or, more precisely, as part of the already mentioned neutralisation of Husserl’s
objections against Descartes, he would also model his thought on Descartes' solutions,
especially those related to the status of the ego that Husserl, motivated perhaps by
historical circumstances, was too quick to reject? I will understand the “Cartesian way”
as a continuation and expansion of the historical thought that often remained within
the domain of intuitions and premonitions but can now be clarified or modernised
thanks to the advancements in phenomenology so that it becomes a deep source
of inspiration.
II. The egological theme in the Controversy about the Existence of the World
Based on these assumptions, I will first read the key paragraphs from Vol. 2
of the Controversy about the Existence of the World. To begin reconstructing the
Cartesian way, let us assume that the phenomenon of thinking is a conscious,
individual and temporary experience (cogitatio) that creates, in its multitude, a
“stream of experiences”10 structured into a process.
Next, this undefined multitude is reduced (restricted) to “pure” lived experience,
i.e. experience correlated by a real being, or the world, which is also reduced in its
own way11. It seems that it is already at this point that Ingarden’s reflections may
be juxtaposed with Cartesian operations known from his Rules or Meditations
where one can talk both about cleansing or structuring the field of experience
(towards clear and distinct perception) as well as constituting the field of the subject.
Regardless of how Cartesian operations are assessed from the phenomenological
standpoint, pure consciousness could be correlated by, for example, the material world
accounted for through its chief attribute of extension and considered to be an extended
substance.
Third, Ingarden considers the pure ego to be the subject of pure experiences12.
Writing about lived experiences, or their stream, he concludes that they must have
a subjective foundation—the pure ego. Doing so, he confronts the classic thesis of
Husserl who, influenced by neo-Kantianism, departed from Descartes in that respect,
advocating for the need to make a sharp distinction between the pure ego and the
10
11
12
Ingarden 2016, p. 649.
Ingarden 2016, p. 675.
Ingarden 2016, p. 676.
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ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
real person (as belonging to the world). Ingarden finds this solution unsatisfactory
as it does not eliminate the problem of whether pure experiences are still lived
through by specific individuals and also whether the (transcendental) ego, thus
understood, remains a real person. As for Descartes, his famous cogito dictum from
the Meditations on First Philosophy may also be said to be fraught with ambiguity
and vagueness: on the one hand, it is undoubtedly a first-person statement made
by a specific individual, whilst on the other one assumes its universality. As regards
the instance introduced in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind which follows
specific methodological rules to constitute the objects of Mathesis as scientific
objects, it definitely does not have individuality, being a set of universal rules that
an anonymous subject must comply with.13
To the extent that Ingarden finds the status of pure ego problematic,14 and
in the context of the problems of idealism and realism that he raises, he then focuses
his reflections on the issue of the agency of consciousness as the distinguishing
feature of the idealistic position.15 It should be emphasised that, both for Ingarden
and Descartes, the ego is not a world-creating instance in spite of having specific
agency16. What this means for our reflections is that Descartes' position may be
considered convergent with Ingarden’s and, in that sense, realistic. As for the problem
of cogito’s individuality, Ingarden’s solution could be encapsulated in the thesis
13
14
15
16
The difference may explain why the Rules became obligatory reading for neo-Kantian interpreters
of Descartes who largely inspired Husserl (see Mehl 2020, Dufour 2006, Natorp 1882). Ingarden in turn
keeps his distance from the theory of the object presented in the Rules, calling it a class theory (see
Ingarden 2016, 30, fn. 68; 161, fn. 527).
In this context, see Ingarden’s later explanations made during his lectures in ethics: “Some might perhaps
want to introduce a radical difference here, e.g. Husserl would say that this object is a person, a
psycho-physical individual, whereas the act of justice or injustice is performed by a pure subject of pure
consciousness. I do not deny that this conception is possible, but I do not believe in the existence
of pure subjects that—within our experience—are not somehow related to persons, psycho-physical
individuals, and I do not believe in a person (i.e. I think that such a conception of a person is false) that
would be deprived of a centre of action, thinking, decision-making etc.” (Ingarden 1989, p. 273-274).
The notion of idealism in philosophy is highly ambiguous and becomes even more so when applied
to Husserl’s phenomenology (on that topic see W. Płotka 2019, p. 103-131). On the one hand, it seems
that Ingarden needed a rather authoritative (hence, perhaps, misleading) definition of Husserl’s
position as idealistic to develop his own thought described as ontological and realistic. On the other
hand, one cannot forget about the still insufficiently explored, yet very vehement, reaction against
the position Husserl expounded in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy that came not only from Ingarden but also from a larger group of phenomenologists
active in the Munich and Göttingen circles. In this text I try to follow the Cartesian egological strand
in Ingarden’s thought “outside realism and idealism,” as suggested by W. Płotka, although I do not
treat this phrase as equivalent to “abandoning the Cartesian theme in phenomenology” (ibid. 128129). On the contrary, I think it reopens and revives this theme.
see Descartes 1984, II, 28, 31; AT VII, 41, 45.
193
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
that, even though it results from an abstraction, pure consciousness is possible and
its bond with the real and individual ego is never broken. “Universal
consciousness—insofar as anything determinate can be understood by this—is
either some general idea of consciousness or an abstraction that in itself is non-selfsufficient, an abstract moment that can occur in concreto in the individual streams
of consciousness, or in the individual experiences, only as a general structure of
these”17.
In the following step of the egological argument in Vol. 2 of the Controversy
about the Existence of the World, Ingarden raises the problem of the temporality of
consciousness as a stream of lived experiences. He acknowledges that the nature
of lived experiences is that of a process, yet believes that the process is not linear
but characterised by internal tensions, contradictions, discontinuities and gaps (as
it is evidenced by the examples of lost consciousness or sleep). If the stream of
consciousness is discontinuous, the multitude of lived experiences should again be
grounded in the ego as their permanent foundation and organising principle thanks
to which the stream can preserve its unity. The negative proof of that are psychopathological cases or the phenomenon of lost consciousness. Ingarden also clearly
refers to the Cartesian hypothesis of the evil demon, which he interprets as a
different consciousness intentionally engaged in creating our lived experiences, a
hypothesis that clashes with and is overcome by the first-person truth-claim of the
lived experience itself included in the cogito18.
As regards the unity of the ego in temporary terms, it can be considered not
only in the context of the immediate present marked out by the currently performed
cogitatio, but also as intuitive and non-reflexive experience which surpasses the
ego, a feeling of oneself that Ingarden links not only to Brentano’s das innere
Bewusstein and Bergson’s intuition, but also to Cartesian ego cogito19. Writing
about the link between the lived experience and the subjective nature of the ego,
Ingarden states firmly: “R. Descartes already knew this, and said it expressly by
declaring: cogito, sum—except that the basis of this necessary connectivity was not
brought out into the open in Descartes. The concept of the ego is also not worked
out to satisfactory clarity in Descartes”20.
Ingarden thus identifies the ego as transcendental in relation to individual
and present lived experiences, which enables him to advance the thesis about the
ego’s ontic autonomy, a thesis that may be said to resonate with the Cartesian first-
17
18
19
20
Ingarden 2016, p. 647.
Ingarden 2016, p. 661-662.
see Ingarden 2016, p. 674, fn. 2292.
Ingarden 2016, p. 683, fn. 2306.
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ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
person phrase “I am a substance” from Meditation III21.
Coming back to the intuition of “living through” (Durchleben) as the experiential
foundation of the ego’s subjectivity, the question is whether this intuition has any
content. As opposed to, for example, Kant, it seems that Ingarden links this intuition
with special first-person knowledge that can be provisionally called existential and
that would make it possible to go beyond the theoretical, pure ego. On the other
hand, this raises the major problem of how to access the ego effectively and positively
expand the content of that knowledge. From that perspective, the ego becomes a
reality that is secret and profound. It is aware of that reality and experiences it in
the most elementary way, even though it still knows little about it. Acquiring certain
existential knowledge is possible, even if it remains an open question whether such
knowledge can be discussed within the confines of philosophy. It seems that, for
Ingarden, the most adequate way in which one can access or have insight into the
profound ego is through aesthetic or moral experiences22. What is important at this
stage of our reflections is that the ego is no longer an undefined and inaccessible
foundation of lived experiences, but becomes, in the words of Ingarden, a personal
centre and, eventually, a psychophysical individual object equipped with a body.
At this point, it is worth mentioning a theme that might be called performative
although not in a narrow, linguistic sense. What Ingarden’s ego performs is a selfconstitutive expansion and transformation of reality. It extends its influence and the
scope of its being, achieving this in a special way through its own body. This profound
and hardly knowable ego manifests itself directly in behaviour (it is characterised
by a specific form of behaviourism). In this context, Ingarden introduces the concept
of the force of being and declares, citing Bergson’s related concept of the tension
of duration, that the ego feels the presence or absence of the force, realising its
subjective potentiality and actuality.23 Lived through, the ego is undergoing a process
of continuous updating that cannot be reduced to Husserl’s dispositions or habitualities.
At the same time, the reality encompassed by the ego’s being is subject to changes
that cannot be viewed as purely cognitive. On the other hand, a characteristic
feature of the ego as it performs acts of the will and feels the force of being are selfaffective experiences (delight, surprise, joy, suffering). It is in these special moments
that one can talk of the very essence of the ego manifesting itself, always marked
by some generic qualities (e.g. general human features), but also specific, individual
21
22
23
Descartes 1984, II, 30, 31; AT VII, 44, 45.
see Ingarden 2016, p. 690.
While I doubt whether the concept of the force is metaphorical as Marek Piwowarczyk claims
(Piwowarczyk 2013, p. 292), I am inclined to follow Filip Kobiela’s suggestion that it was Ingarden’s
way to describe the specific causality of the ego, although I do not believe that it should have a purely
reactive and negative role as a “centre of resistance” (see Kobiela 2011, p. 136).
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WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
traits combined into a unique whole or haecceitas24.
To sum up the egological argument from the Controversy: Ingarden considers
pure consciousness as inseparable from the soul and a kind of abstraction. He links
pure consciousness with the ego through including it in the scope of the soul and
its “concrete fabric”,25 which leads to the problem of the dual phenomenological
status of the body: as one’s own body lived through in the first person and as a spatial,
physical body.
For Ingarden, lived experience of one’s own body takes place in two streams
of consciousness—or different modalities in this context—whilst the body as such
should be understood as a special field of action for the ego in its specific scope of
being. Thus, and finally, Ingarden treats man as a dynamic, organic whole comprised
of more or less closely related elements that are irreducible to one another. By the
same token, he rejects parallelism in favour or a specific form of interactionism where
separate domains of being overlap, exerting influence and “intruding” on one
another. Let us also bear in mind that Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy
concludes with the introduction of the problem of the substantial union between
body and soul where the two mutually irreducible and partially independent elements
make up a unified, stand-alone whole of a new type corresponding to the “third primitive
notion”26 and confirmed by the first-person process of living through and experiencing
24
25
26
Ingarden 2016, p. 692.
Ingarden 2016, p. 696. The expression used by Ingarden evokes interesting associations with the
conceptions of the living body (la chair) developed in the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty, Michel
Henry or Jean-Luc Marion (see Starzyński 2017, 2012).
Descartes 1991, III, 218; AT III, 665. It is beyond the limits of this article to reflect further on how these
authors understand the soul and its relationship to the body. It should be mentioned, however,
that even though Descartes rejected the tripartite division of the soul introduced by Aristotle, he did
retain the concept of the soul in his “first philosophy,” and even gave it an increasingly greater
weight, identifying its two, intertwined dimensions. In the quoted letter to princess Elizabeth of 21
March 1643, he mentions that “there are two facts about the human soul on which depend all the
knowledge we can have of its nature. The first is that it thinks, the second is that, being united to the
body, it can act and be acted upon along with it (...)” and, further on, “as regards the soul and the
body together, we have only the notion of their union, on which depends our notion of the soul’s
power to move the body, and the body’s power to act on the soul and cause its sensations and
passions” (Descartes III, 218; AT III, 665). In Ingarden’s account of the soul, the dimension of
theoretical (pure) thinking is expanded by adding practical actions and emphasising the role of the
soul’s “force” that can operate in “solidarity” with the body: “We also stumbled earlier onto the
remarkable phenomenon of the solidarity, or even unity, between the consciousness-ego, in
particular the ego of sensory perceiving, and “my” body” (Ingarden 2016, p. 703). It is not clear to
what extent Ingarden was familiar with the evolution of Descartes’ views on the “union between
body and soul” and how much he might have been inspired by it. In the Controversy, he first says
that “direct experience of ourselves as a concrete human being appears to be in conflict with
widespread conceptions of both a scientific and philosophical bent (especially since Descartes’
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ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
the ego as equipped with its own body (“the body which by some special right, I
called ‘mine’”)27. By exploring the union between body and soul, Descartes arrives
at the problem of the ethical subject whose magnanimity and generosity (générosité)
are experienced in first person as wonder and self-fulfilment28. Therefore, Descartes'
expanded conception of the ego as a substantial union between body and soul
definitely resonates with the conception advanced by Ingarden who sees the ego as
a primary being, a profound, but not inaccessible, reality without which reality as
such (the world of different types of “objects”) could not be accessed and analysed,
including through ontological analyses.
III. The egological theme in Man and Time
Let us now move on to other text by the Polish phenomenologist: Man and
Time. I will examine this text in order to verify the egological “way” from the
Controversy about the Existence of the World, outlined rather briefly so far, which,
although it comes later chronologically, undoubtedly articulates Ingarden’s
position. As for the text itself, it is worth remembering that, in spite of being written
with the general public in mind, it has been edited three times, and it is specifically
in the final version that one can find direct references to the solutions from the
Controversy (both texts were written in roughly the same period, if not simultaneously).
Moreover, a closer look at the timeline of events shows that, in 1937, Ingarden
participated in Congrès Descartes, an international philosophical congress in Paris
organised with the immediate purpose of marking the 300th anniversary of the
publication of Descartes’ Discourse on the Method. He took this opportunity to
deliver his paper Der Mensch und die Zeit [Man and Time]. That the text was much
more important than its commemorative nature might suggest is best proved by
the fact that, apart from the first version published in German in Vol. 8 of congress
proceedings entitled Analyse reflèxive et transcendance alongside such authors as
27
28
times). The customary juxtaposition of the two alien factors (body and soul) does not appear to be
borne out by original experience (...)” (Ingarden 2016, p. 702-703) to observe a few pages later:
“But even Descartes—despite his two-substance theory—expressly points out toward the end of
his “Meditations” the peculiar unity of the soul with the body in each and every one of us” (ibid.,
p. 707, fn. 2342). In this context, it is also necessary to highlight the potential problem of
differentiating between the seemingly synonymous concepts of soul, spirit and person in Ingarden (the
second and third concepts are absent in Descartes) who mentions the issue in his lecture on the
thought of Edith Stein, among others (see Ingarden 1994, p. 307-309).
Descartes 1984, II, 52, AT VII, 76.
see Descartes 1984, I, 384-388; Marion 2013, 244-249.
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Maurice Blondel, Leon Brunschvicg, Henry Corbin, Gabriel Marcel, Jean Wahl, and
Oskar Becker29, it also came out in two extended editions in Polish. The first was
published in 1938 in Przegląd Filozoficzny [Philosophical Review]30. The text was
revised into its final version during the war to be published in 194631, laying the
foundation for further anthropological research that I will not discuss in this article.
Ingarden’s reflections in Man and Time take as their point of reference a Latin
quotation from Descartes. He writes: „Descartes' words [from Meditations on First
Philosophy, which] are alive and valid even today”32: “Hoc pronuntiatum, ego sum,
ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur necessario esse verum /
Cette proposition : Je suis, j’existe, est nécessairement vraie, toutes les fois que je
la prononce, ou que je la conçois en mon esprit / this proposition (pronuntiatum) I
am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me, or conceived in my
mind”33. This first-person existential statement opens up Descartes’ and Ingarden’s
reflections on the essence of the ego which remains enigmatic and demands to be
explored: “But I do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what this ‘I’ is, that now
necessarily exists (nondum vero satis intelligo, quis nam sim ego ille, qui iam necessario
sum),” writes Descartes34. Ingarden says that “the problem of the essence of our ego
as a human being living in time needs to be posed anew on the basis of the different
experiences of time, and new solutions of it need to be sought”35 and at the end of
the text in its final version he refers to the Meditations again: “Who am I – Descartes'
question returns once more – who persist in time (...)”36.
This clearly Cartesian inspiration requires some additional comments. First,
Ingarden quotes a unique form of Descartes’ statement from the Meditations without
even mentioning the traditional or canonical formula cogito ergo sum from the Discourse
on the Method or Principles of Philosophy.37 It may be said that Ingarden refers to
what is usually called the Cartesian cogito, emphasising the existential moment that
defines and forces itself upon the ego, but that does not privilege the intellectualist
conception of the subject, of which Descartes is commonly accused. The first-person
assertion of existence points to a certain primary experience that, even though it must
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
Ingarden 1937.
Ingarden 1938.
Ingarden 1946.
Ingarden 1983, p. 42.
Descartes 1984, II, 17; AT VII, 25.
Ibid.
Ingarden 1983, p. 42.
Ingarden 1983, p. 51.
On the different forms of cogito in Descartes’ work and its special version from the Meditations,
see Marion 1996, 7-30.
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ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
be thought and realised, seems to encompass the reality of the ego much more widely
than the mere process of thinking in the form of the stream of consciousness (as it
was later put metaphorically). What is more, the first-person existential statement
appears to acknowledge the existence of a special and privileged being.
Second, what Descartes pinpoints in this key ontological experience is the
moment of profertur, i.e. a certain component act characterised by special performative
activity.38 In line with this interpretation, the essence of the ego would not consist
in mere duration or remaining in existence but would require a moment of specific
self-affirmation. Whatever the relation between the actual nature of asserted existence
and the activity of the ego perceiving itself as existing, the asserted existence does
allow one to identify a certain, still undefined, albeit specific, being. Bringing to the
fore the existential formula of the ego was not Ingarden’s original idea—among
others, it brings to mind Husserlian reconstructions of Descartes’ way based precisely
on Meditations II —but the use he made of it seems to foreshadow the direction of
many Cartesian studies in the second half of the 20th century, coinciding interestingly
with Cartesian inspirations present in French phenomenology39. As I have already
emphasised, according to Ingarden, the Cartesian ego must be brought up to date and
made phenomenologically concrete. The Polish philosopher wants to reach that goal
primarily through addressing „the problem of the essence of our ego as a human
being living in time”40.
Thus, inspired by Descartes and having asserted the existence of the ego,
which he considers to be a primary and fundamental experience, Ingarden asks about
the ego’s essence which is supposedly accessed in the domain of time that the ego
experiences. Notably, Descartes emphasises the fact that the proposition about the
ego not only applies to a certain point in the present, as it were, but being a repeated
experience (quoties, quamdiu), it refers eventually to something more durable, a temporal
continuity that goes beyond the recurring “now” moments. This definitely anticipates
and lays the ground for Descartes’ focus on the problem of the substantiality of the
ego, which Husserl criticised vehemently as a “fateful change (verhängnisvollen
38
39
40
On the performative actions of Descartes’ cogito see Marion 1981, 370-396 who, all the same,
interprets the fact of the ego performing the act of a “thought thinking itself” expressed in the
existential statement Ego sum, ego existo as “existence abstraite et universelle” “une énonciation
vide”: “L‘existence performée reste abstraite, sauf que la marque encore une détermination : sa
polarisation par l‘ego. La pensée vide ne s’énonce qu’autant qu’un ego l’énonce; l’existence
abstraite ne se performe ainsi qu’autant qu’un ego y trouve son mode d’existence” (ibid., 383). Based
on the above formulas, it is hard to ascertain whether the self-affirmation of the ego in an existential
statement goes anywhere towards defining it as a substance.
see Starzyński 2014.
Ingarden 1983, p. 42.
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Wendung)”41. One might even suppose that existo is the first expansion of the assertion
sum, the latter being empty of content, and already advances a preliminary thesis
about the ontic status of the ego.42
Hence, Descartes adopts the proposition ego sum, ego existo as a departure
point for defining the ego as a substance, which would mean not only that he surpasses
the narrow understanding of the ego as a mere operator of cogitationes, but also
that he goes beyond the theoretical problem of providing a foundation for knowledge.
Substance itself would be understood here as related to independent and persisting
being of the ego.
In addition, in Meditations, Descartes does not treat the ego as a perfectly
transparent reality, but rather as reality that must be clarified by means of egology:
“I will converse with myself and scrutinize myself more deeply; and in this way I will
attempt to achieve, little by little, a more intimate knowledge of myself”43—which
suggests a need for a totally new type of research or reflection.
Let us therefore assume that Ingarden cites the dictum from the Meditations
intentionally, seeing it as an inspiration to go beyond the purely epistemological
cogito that can only be justified in a narrow scope. From that perspective, interpreting
ego cogito as an Archimedean foundation of certain knowledge (in the sense of
nascent modern science and, later on, transcendental phenomenology) must be
abandoned in favour of a different type of research where the ego determines the
first-person experience—individual at first and then collective—of being human (an
“I” and a “we”). “I am” is a proposition about my existence that is not uttered in a
universal form as part of a “we” asserting a community of that experience.
From the very first words of his treatise, Ingarden positions himself in firstperson plural: “We all live in time and we know it”44. However, he believes that, if
the essence of the ego should be examined as “man living in time,” the experience
breaks into “two fundamentally different ways of experiencing time and ourselves
41
42
43
44
Husserl 1960, p. 24.
Jean-Marie Beyssade interprets the existential statement Ego sum as a direct ontological
experience where: “l’affirmation que je suis enveloppe depuis le début l’affirmation que je suis une
chose qui pense, puisqu’exister et être une chose sont ici termes synonimes” (Beyssade 1979, p. 227).
Although he seems to derive the ego’s substantiality from the experience of the multitude of acts
requiring one subject: “la première vérité est-elle toujours accompagnée de la condition qui la fait
connaître : la substance, qui jamais n’est immédiatement perçue, se donne par l’intermédiaire de
ses actes ou de ses modes” (ibid., 223)—he does acknowledge that the existential statement applies
to “l’individualité d’un Moi, mais aussi quelque chose comme une prémisse, qui lui sert d’antécédent
logique, voire psychologique ou chronologique (my underlining - W. S.)” (ibid., 222).
Descartes 1984, II, 24; AT VII, 34.
Ingarden 1983, p. 33.
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ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
in time”45. The first of the two experiences of time discussed by Ingarden in an
attempt to clarify the essence of the ego is related to our belief in our own true and
durable existence—i.e. substantiality in the sense of Descartes—that accompanies
the ego in spite of the simultaneous experience of constantly changing and passing
cogitationes. “According to the first [experience of time and ourselves in time] it
seems that what ’truly’ exists is we ourselves; time, on the other hand, is only something
derivative and merely phenomenal”46. Ingarden carries out a phenomenological
analysis of this primary belief in the durability of the ego—that is the basis on which
Descartes defines the ego as a substance—citing some more specific arguments to
corroborate it.
First, his aim is to clarify the problem of the ego’s permanent identity as the
main component of that belief. This has to do with experiencing one’s own identity
that resists change and the passage of time even though it is continuously confronted
with them. “In the constant passage and incessant newness of time I continually
feel myself to be this same human being and I live in the primordial sensation that
I shall remain myself in the future”47. This identity corresponds to Locke’s transitive
unity, coming down to the belief that “in the course of my life I am one individuum”48.
One remains the same in time, not only in abstraction or as a postulate, but
in the sense that “in the course of that very life I remain this same human being, in
his full qualitatively invariant, determinate nature”49. This means that the “nature”
is specific and unique for each individual as Ingarden’s use of proper names suggests:
“it is this qualification that I call my nature—thus, for each other person, e.g., Adam
Mickiewicz or some Joe Doe”50. As we can see, Ingarden does not put forward any
metaphysical thesis about universal human nature, but works on the basis of firstperson and second-person experience of the belief in the specific durability of one’s
own and other people’s individual natures expressed by a set of key qualities that
resist the phenomenon of changeability typical of experienced time.
In this light, Ingarden defines the ego as a whole constituted of three
components, mutually related moments: (a) the phenomenon of consciousness
and conscious experiences which should be contrasted from (b) “psychic states and
processes, as well as psychical and physical properties”51, assuming their indirectly
conscious nature, and finally (c) “a certain completely unrepeatable and specific
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ingarden 1983, p. 33-34.
Ingarden 1983, p. 34.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
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WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
permanent qualification which determines the whole of me as a human being”52.
Appearing in first person, the “nature” mentioned above provides the foundation
for the experience of being oneself: “I feel myself to be a person constituted by this
specific nature”53. A negative illustration of this concretely experienced identity of the
ego is the phenomenon of split personality which represents an effective possibility
of the ego’s disintegration and, positively, lays bare the constantly renewed “ability
to recognize my own self as I was yesterday [...] the feeling of being the self of my
actual 'now' and my self of 'yesterday'“54.
According to Ingarden, profound mental and physical changes, the phenomena
of alienation and failure to understand oneself, occurring throughout the life of the
ego, are certain variants confirming this “more or less distinctive feeling of being myself,
of being the same as I once was”55. Conscious experiences, on the other hand, remain
the most direct manifestations of the ego, but neither exhaust nor encompass all
of human life. “I, as a human being, also appear to be independent of my conscious
experiences in the sense that I can be even when they are not. [...] I am, in
accordance with this feeling, a lasting or abiding being, whereas my experiences
are merely transient externalizations or manifestations of me myself. I alone
comprise the source and ultimate substratum of the experiences which on their side are
something grounded in me [...] “56.
It is worth observing that, in this analysis, whose point is to demonstrate
the identity as well as autonomy of the ego as something specific for its ontic
substantiality, Ingarden reconciles its two understandings, while referring to the classical
definition of substance as a substrate or foundation for different properties. He
founds this egologically and phenomenologically derived substantiality on the constantly
repeated (albeit mundane, common and hence rather overlooked by philosophers)
experience of life continuity that cannot be undermined by the transition from
consciousness to sleep and vice versa: “After a period of being unconscious or after
a dreamless sleep, I awake not only as the same human being that I was prior to
falling asleep, but also as someone who existed whilst I was asleep”57.
Therefore, when accounting for the ego as an independent whole providing
a foundation and substrate for different properties, Ingarden says that it is a reality
of a higher order compared to the reality of lived experiences or processes: “I am,
52
53
54
55
56
57
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
ibid., p. 35, 34.
Ingarden 1983, p. 35.
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ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
and have the feeling of being, a real entity, real to a higher degree, as it were, than
my experiences”58.
Ingarden eventually links the feeling of ego’s existence not with current
experiences, but first and foremost with being placed in the experienced world and
taking effective action within it. In this sense, Ingarden defines the crucial specificity
of the ego as not only having this or that special feature, but also as “really acting”:
“my action is not consumed in the experiencing itself, but in attacking a certain
actuality with my powers”59.
It is also worth noting that, existing as a durable reality of a higher order,
the ego does so in an inter-subjective world to which it lends some of its quality of
durability. “It seems to me likewise with respect to other people that they, too, are
continually the self-same individuals, though I do not at all thereby ignore what
happens to them, nor they change in this way or that as a result”60. Next, it is a world
of things appearing in a non-theoretical fashion: “with these same houses, streets
and cities, yesterday and today, and these same pieces of old furniture surrounding
me since my childhood years, known to me in their silence and passivity”61.
According to Ingarden, the higher order of reality, or rather its
transcendence, that is typical of the ego also manifests itself in a specific dynamic
relation to time whereby one can turn towards the past and future at will with the
possibility of “reviving” them. This relation is not necessarily theoretically-cognitive or
contemplative. On the contrary, turning towards the past seems to be woven into
existence as it copes with a “burden” that puts specific restrictions on freedom. In line
with Ingarden’s thesis whereby I am aware of myself on the basis on my constant,
albeit not directly perceptible, features that are manifested in action, living
existential memory operates primarily in the domain of past actions.
I (…) live under a distinct weight of the past; I am bound by it to a greater or
lesser degree. I bend what I do 'now' to adjust to events and occurrences,
which, though they had passed, still were, and which, once having occurred
and been revivified by memory, weigh on my present. [...] I feel constrained
not only because this or that once happened, but because it still exists for
me today in some remarkable way [...] I simply feel myself bound by, for example,
obligations and promises once made. [...] There is a certain special noblesse
of my own past, 'qui m'oblige' still today, just as there is a so called 'curse of
the past', an anathema of culpabilities long ago perpetrated and past, yet still
determining the course of my present life.62
58
59
60
61
62
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 35-36.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 37.
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WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
In this context, Ingarden follows traditional metaphysical terminology to
describe something that he calls preservation in being where, in each experience
of the present, the past becomes revived and assimilated in a special way, including
through efforts to break away from it.
Of course, talking about subjectivity constituting itself in the present, one
needs to take account of the subjective inclination towards the future and “living
through” it, which, however, should not be equated to Husserl’s protention or
Heidegger’s “being-towards-death” or projection. Ingarden believes that the future
is outlined in the present broadly and in many different ways as something awaiting
oneself in the form of what can and cannot be anticipated. In the first-person mode
this will manifest itself variously as waiting, hope or concern. Thus, Ingarden’s
transcendence of the ego means being independent from the present through the
possibility of reaching towards the future and the past at will and actively.
As I have already mentioned, the ego can experience time in yet another
way that stands in stark contrast to the first and leads to a totally different account
of time. Ingarden identifies two moments here. First, I am conscious of time as a factor
that contributes to the destruction of my existence which, in this light, appears to
itself as random and accidental. The experience exposes the frailty of all being (not
only myself, but also the entire accessible and experienced world) that can cease
to exist at any moment. It is not part of the ego’s essence that it must exist; quite
the contrary, the ego is contingent on something external, something that precedes
it. Importantly, the fact that the two experiences of time are mutually irreducible
does not mean that they simply coexist in experience. Instead, one can talk about
various forms of time experienced individually and collectively. For example, just as
the passage of time is experienced in a special way in decadent historical periods,
so too its perception is different depending on the age of an individual.
It is not hard to see that the theme of the accidental nature of the ego which,
in spite of its relative autonomy, must be sustained in its existence, is also present
in classical metaphysics, including Descartes’. Ingarden makes this thesis more concrete
in his analysis of the phenomenon of time perspectives which, within the second
meaning of time, means restricting the lived experiences of the subject to the present
and stretching the experience between two abysses of nothingness: the past and
the future. What this means for the ego is that it cannot free itself and be independent
of time.
As I have already mentioned, in the phenomenon of time perspectives, the
ego apprehends itself as intertwined with time or, more precisely, it experiences
the present in terms of past or future events or as its being-so. Hindsight knowledge
about the past compresses and expands time phases, but this should not be treated
204
ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
as an illusion or a mistake. It is rather a certain egological process of existential
importance thanks to which the ego always appears to itself in the aspect of a time
perspective, thus retaining its own integrity. By juxtaposing two mutually irreducible
temporalities, Ingarden endows his egology with a certain dramatic quality of
existence experienced by the ego, calling into question the previously assumed core
or stable foundation for the ego’s essential features that make it resistant to
obstacles and dependent only on its own force of being and actions in the world.
Hemmed in by the two abysses of nothingness—both when it comes to the
currently experienced and thus absolutely transient present moment and the
tension of life that can end at any time—the ego needs a new type of existential
knowledge that guarantees the possibility of keeping and ensuring its substantial
status.
At this point, Ingarden refers to the phenomenon he developed during his
studies into works of literature, namely shortened “time perspectives”63, in which
he sees a direct clash between two different and mutually irreducible experiences
of temporality. It may be surprising that Ingarden transposes a phenomenon that
has so far been described in the context of literary works onto the very heart of the
existential drama of the ego without any explanations or caveats, thereby opening
up the possibility of a reverse process whereby a work of art can be interpreted as
a non-theoretical source record detailing the experience of one’s existence.
The reference to this theory in the remarks concluding the first part of Man
and Time proves insufficient for the author, though. In the second version published
in 1938, Ingarden added Part Three where he writes explicitly about the urgent
need to look for self-knowledge that would be “capable of assuring us about the
existence and the properties of we ourselves as people transcending experience,”
admitting, in a rather peculiar way, that he himself is not able to undertake this
task64. He seems almost to capitulate and back away, mentioning his unpreparedness
and the general state of philosophy as an excuse. Nonetheless, he undertakes yet
another, albeit “modest”, attempt at interpreting the “existing conscious experience”
in the temporal aspect where, among the multitudes of considered variants, he
appears, on the one hand, to tend towards Bergson’s idea of time as a “pointcontinuum”65, and on the other, to claim that, in spite of the fact that its structure
slips into nothingness, the present does not destroy existence and so does not
undermine the order of substantial duration.
63
64
65
see Ingarden 1973, p. 233-242.
Ingarden 1983, p. 42.
Ingarden 1983, p. 44.
205
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
In spite of all the previous reservations about the possibility of carrying out
proper egological studies, in parts 4-6 that conclude Man and Time in its final version
published in 1946, Ingarden outlines a positive conclusion based precisely on the
existential knowledge he previously postulated and searched for. It requires a
rather radical transition to the domain of praxis where the relation with the
experienced time can be said to take on the form of an existential alternative in the
function of authenticity. On the one hand, the experience of being “threatened by
[its] passing on and by the unknown nothingness of tomorrow”66 prompts the ego
to adopt various escape strategies, forget and lose itself, which eventually leads to
self-destruction or disintegration. In the temporal dimension, when the ego forgets
about its own being, it needs to “kill” or fill time in order to detract attention from
itself; “[it] neglects [itself]” (ibid.), creating external works or even building an
ordered world around itself that only deepens its alienation. This losing of oneself
does not only mean subjecting one’s life to insignificant and worthless matters—”I
'lose' myself in the insignificance of life's everyday trivia […] spend myself in a
deceptive pursuit after illusory values”67—but also creates an illusion of
overcoming time and preserving oneself in a valuable work “of art, or science, or
technical—in this world which is presumably independent of time, and to embody
in it [itself], or that which [it] considers best in [itself]”68. Another type of an
existential attitude adopted in an inauthentic effort to overcome time consists in
succumbing to the illusion of modernity that breaks sharply with the past and
cultural tradition, considering them obsolete. Ingarden suggests that by reducing
and narrowing the world to the “present day,” one achieves a false feeling of living
“beyond time,” and thus fails to realise that “on his tombs, on the ashes of his
culture, about which some day no one will any longer know anything, others will
build their works”69.
How does Ingarden describe an existence that may be deemed authentic?
In contrast to the attitude of escape, the one who “is” does not run but stays “with”
himself. For Ingarden, this is equivalent to maintaining and developing a subjective
attitude of affection: “by grasping himself through every pain and every joy, and
through every effort and victory,” keeping “the capability of being moved and
enraptured”70, which needs to be juxtaposed with “the source of an ever renewed
66
67
68
69
70
Ingarden 1983, p. 46.
Ingarden 1983, p. 49.
Ingarden 1983, p. 47.
Ibid.
Ingarden 1983, p. 46.
206
ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
unrest”71 and the possibility of removing it thanks to finding in oneself “the traces
of being which is not subject to the passage of time”72. This discovery eventually
leads to the internal “power of resistance”—”from the beliefs which I fostered,
from the attachments with which I lived and from the desires which I tried to
realize, is born the power which must be alive in me if I am to succeed in
accomplishing the deed”73—and the knowledge that helps to make a choice with
“no reference to ready-made models, external prescriptions or norms, but rather
[…] according to his own knowledge, grown out of his own deliberate effort”74.
What this means for Ingarden is that the ego “ha[s] [itself] at [its] command and, in
skirmishes with the adversities of fortune [...] shape[s] [its] own self as a continually
growing inner power”75. This power and the feeling of having it also creates the
sense of existential trust necessary “to ground [its] spirit in [itself]”76.
Let us sum up the egological argument in Man and Time: Ingarden takes
the Cartesian ego sum, ego existo, links it with the thesis about the substantiality
of the ego and reflects upon it phenomenologically from the perspective of the firstperson experience of one’s own uniqueness and identity. He then juxtaposes it with
two experiences of time appearing in that perspective. The first of those is the
experience of identity that is specific to every ego, identity that resists temporary
changes and leads to the thesis of the ego as a permanent being. Providing evidence
of the ego’s substantiality, this ontic permanence is not abstract and undefined.
Rather, it inspires the phenomenological account of the ego as equipped with inner
strength to act and create, i.e. transform reality. Here, the substantiality of the ego
seems to offer an opportunity to become independent of time which appears to be
secondary category. This definition of time stands in contrast to the other definition
where the ego experiences itself not only as living in time, but also as being
implicated in time or temporarily entangled so that it “carries the burden” of its
past and future. Eventually, it becomes overwhelmed by the accidental nature of
its existence and the world that it inhabits. Accidentality, randomness and
existential frailty of the ego (including the collective ego and, consequently, certain
constituted and relatively stable living worlds or civilisations) whose existence may
end at any moment, all create the dramatic experience of the ego as located
“between two abysses of nothingness.”
71
72
73
74
75
76
Ingarden 1983, p. 48.
Ibid.
Ingarden 1983, p. 48.
Ingarden 1983, p. 46.
Ingarden 1983, p. 48.
Ibid.
207
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
IV. Conclusion
An important feature of Ingarden’s method of existential egological studies
is his belief in the possibility of approaching classical metaphysical theses from a
phenomenological standpoint to make them more concrete and thus give them
new meaning. Taking the Cartesian thesis as his point of departure, Ingarden not
only contrasts his position from the Husserlian conception of the transcendental
ego, inner awareness of time and Brentano’s inner perception, but also resists the
temptation or formalising or homogenising time in the version suggested by both
Kant and Heidegger.
His positive inspiration is Bergson’s philosophy of time, idiosyncratically
transformed, as a category that is secondary in relation to human cognitive activity.
This is opposed to the extra-temporal experience of moments of duration which,
as Ingarden believes, should be linked with single performances of free acts that
are eventually described in more general and grand terms as a voluntary
commitment to the “creation of goodness, beauty, and truth”77.
The significance of this last expression is that the self-reflexive relation of
the subject is not one of narcissistic egoism, but is in fact an attitude of a liberating
detachment from oneself. It may be said that Ingarden’s egology opens the door
for the development of a personalistic-existential philosophy which stems from the
experience of the accidentality or finality of existence, but in which the limitation
to the present does not destroy the existence of the subject, or does not do so
entirely, thanks to the subject’s proper, i.e. authentic attitude. In this context, Ingarden
diagnoses a specific crisis of philosophy, or even phenomenology, claiming that, in
spite of the great number of accumulated studies carried out in many different,
specialist areas, the two have little to say about the vital problems of human existence.
Although elaborating on the idea seems difficult, it is both urgent and feasible. From
that point onwards, descriptions of the phenomenon of the ego’s existence are based
on new reflections on its authenticity/non-authenticity. On the one hand, this entails
focusing on, staying with and building oneself, all of which require maintaining and
controlling the “tension of inner effort” and the courage to “forge ahead through
effort and exposure to dangers”78. On the other, it involves fragmentation, being
lost in time and escaping from oneself, which leads to “inner disintegration”, “loss of
faith”, “betraying oneself”, “slow breakup” or self-destruction through “extermination
of my inner unity”79. This can be interpreted as heroisation of the ego, rather typical
77
78
79
Ingarden 1983, p. 51.
Ingarden 1983, p. 49.
Ingarden 1983, p. 49.
208
ROMAN INGARDEN’S EGOLOGY AND CARTESIANISM
of existentialist philosophy, where existential cognition of the ego results from the
effort of the will and the ability to face reality during moments of trial. Hence, to exist
means to resist becoming lost in time or, more precisely, to resist losing the rhythm
of existence that is compatible with one’s being and therefore proper.
Ingarden suggests an inward journey from the assertion of the ego’s
existence to the profound “ego” that, although usually not accessible to cognition, is
not demoted to Kantian noumen or reduced to a transcendental structure. Even though
it is radically exposed only during key moments of existential trial, this ego remains
accessible to the subjective sphere of self-affecting experience of “the greatest
treasures of rapture and happiness and aspires to actualize them”80. From this
perspective, Ingarden perceives the life of the ego, on the one hand, as a
continuous process of gathering existential resources, and on the other, as moments
of “trial” when the amassed force is unleashed, breaking the bonds of temporal
structures and overcoming them by performing, as he writes, free acts in
responsibility.
Coming back to the Cartesian theme on which this article is based, I will
venture the thesis that Ingarden’s egology may be interpreted as one of the most
consistently mapped out and phenomenologically modernised Cartesian journeys
(from Rules to Passions of the Soul; from cogito to the union of soul and body; from
a universal theoretical subject to an individualised ethico-aesthetic subject), a
journey that is notable for the way it clarifies and phenomenologically develops the
many unthematised ideas present in Descartes in their rudimentary form. These
undoubtedly include the figure of madness (Ingarden refers to it through the recurring
argument from psychopathology), the transition from sleep to wakefulness or the
specification of freedom as a directly fulfilled, first-person experience. It seems that
Ingarden’s rather radical handling of the existential theme of the ego, whose originality
rests in simultaneously retaining and working out the classical theory of substance,
corresponds to the direction taken by Descartes in the last period of his thought
when he developed the problems of the “third primitive notion”. Finally, I believe
that the experiment of reading Ingarden’s egological fragments in isolation from the
entire structure of the ontological “dispute” yields positive results as it opens up
new vistas of research into Ingarden’s philosophy and may also provide a promising
foundation for the philosophical interpretation of Descartes’ evolution that took
place between his early and late period.
80
Ingarden 1983, p. 51.
209
WOJCIECH STARZYŃSKI
Acknowledgment
The project was held within the research grant on “The Presence of Kazimierz
Twardowski’s Thought in Early Phenomenology in Poland” financed by the National
Science Centre, Poland within the OPUS program (No. 2017/27/B/HS1/02455).
I would like to thank Guillaume Fréchette, Marek Piwowarczyk and Witold Płotka
for their stimulating comments and suggestions.
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STUDIA UBB. PHILOSOPHIA, Vol. 66 (2021), 1, pp. 213-216
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
BOOK REVIEW
Mircea Dumitru, Cristian Iftode, Savu Totu (eds.),
2400 Years of Thinking with Aristotle,
Editura Universității din București, București, 2020
Published in 2020 at
Editura Universității din
București (University
of Bucharest Publishing
House), the book ”2400
Years of Thinking with
Aristotle” gathers together the contributions of participants at
the International Conference 2400 Aristotle,
hosted by Faculty of
Philosophy at the University of Bucharest in
2016, celebrating ”Aristotle Anniversary Year”,
announced by UNESCO.
This volume represents
a generous contribution to the western philosophical cultural,
its horizon opening opportunities for a more
precisely form of Stagirite’s discourse, covering theories and concepts of political philosophy, ontology, logic, ethics, aesthetics,
anthropology and cosmology.
The editors Mircea Dumitru, Cristian Iftode
and Savu Totu have successfully created a
strong and fluid structure of Aristotelian
exegesis, each one of the twenty-one articles coming as a consolidation of the whole
intellectual character of the paperwork. It
is gratifying to see that
the Romanian philosophy is updating and
highlighting the meaning and destiny of Aristotle’s way of reasoning,
in a time when the society is facing public approaches of truth full of
negligence, superficiality and a wane of inspirational approaches.
In this way, the current volume is marking
a fresh shade of the intellectual speech on
various sides of reality, a
celebration of lucidity, a
disclosure of depths, a
courageous act emerged as a result of a duty
towards our psychological, moral and social
manhood. In Aristotelian key, the life of
every individual includes the relationship
this one has with values, with meanings and
its purposes. To a large extend, this capacity to reflect on the meanings of his existence is of a great importance for his own
process of individuation, also for his dedication to the world. In so far as the horizon
of knowledge is penetrated by the limpidity
of pure reflection, the man begins to assert
BOOK REVIEW
himself as self-centered, free, self-determined, stimulating energeia to become excellency, entelecheia.
Being able to recognise the particular
shades of reality is not easy and it’s not to
be done in any conditions. The philosophy
of the Stagirite is similar to a rigorous design of concepts where dynamis becomes
energeia, a living organism of reason, prima
materia for any future step. This freshness
and boldness of reason is very much present in this volume. Its editors detach themselves from the corrupt and obscure deep
sense, engaging in an original search, often
using strong bibliographic resources, relevant for a wider understanding of the great
Greek philosopher’s mind. I would dare to
say that the volume is showing off as an act
of awe for the things we forgot ourselves to
surprise with. We are turning way too fast
the act of philosophizing into a verdict, trying to save resources and to rationalise the
tools and effort. The haste replaced the
systematic reflection, exactly the one that
touches the spirit of the self-thinking reason.
This volume releases the eyesight territory in order to reconsider obsessive interrogations, making them accessible to the
reader, challenging him to explore meanings
and to engage himself into a free philosophical speech. In this way, the thirst to conquer
increases and it can be seen as a sparking
technique for mental liberty, free of any biases, meticulously shaped to look for symbolic meanings of the analysed world. The
book’s guides, passionate and dedicated
researchers on Stagirite’s philosophy, propose a process rather than a product. Instead of highlighting the accuracy of language
in giving a verdict, they are paving the ways
214
towards wisdom with a sincere, responsible wish, like a pathemata mathemata, a
deepening in itself with the aim to overcome the impersonal, public thinking. Thus,
the authors approach, similar to the Greek
philosopher’s, becomes a purposeful search,
and not a mentally comfortable way to
publish an anomalous verdict. The tone of
research is not indifferent, however is specifically addressed, and the courageous energy manages to fill in the pages of the volume. Therefore, the reader will be pleased
to discover various research that belong to
philosophers who appreciate the authenticity and the value of Aristotelian contributions for the history of philosophy. We can
enjoy a beautiful work on Aristotle’s view
on philia and substance, contemplation
and happiness, a brilliant interpretation of
Aristotle’s Categories in the Middle Ages of
the scholastic theology of Thomas Aquinas,
a questioning of Aristotle as a political philosopher, or some interesting studies of his
semantics, syllogistics and biology considerations.
The structured logic of all the articles are
chasing a well-defined contextual drawing.
Thereby, concreteness and coherency rules
the volume, and the author’s honesty treats
and spreads away the anguish of meaninglessness. This small gathering of wisdom lovers resembles the Greeks polis, a living organism, effervescent, governed by specific
laws to which existence must participate
different parties. The main necessity of this
dialectic form is to find what is proprium to
the nature of things. The antipodes and the
finitude cannot be dissolved, however revealed, lifted to the surface of the mind in
order to be discussed, a fundamental feature of the Greeks way of thinking.
BOOK REVIEW
The space of thought, so well highlighted
in his volume, is that special place in which
the philosopher is not dissolved into the
black void of abstraction. On contrary, the
discretion of reflection is a fortified privacy
that opens its gates to the others under the
form of a particular cultural destiny. Therefore,
in each and every argument we discover a
world of logos who puts aside the borrowed
metaphors and gained exemplarity. With
the aid of different conceptual systems present in this paper, arouses a new essence of
truth and a rationality which is revealing itself both vertically- by stepping into all stages
of seeking the meanings- and horizontally,
containing a various particular expression
of exploring knowledge. With Aristotle, it is
allowed to move freely into an original way
of thinking and it is clearly highlighted the
fluidity between physics and metaphysics.
By the way, the authors express the exemplarity of Stagirite’s thinking; we can
broadly identify the logic core of his speech.
It is clear that Aristotle stood out in philosophy as a systematic mind. Each analysis
done in the name of science must be developed under the form of an axiomatic system, a kind of geometry in which the analysis and the ordering of elements are part
of research’s ethos. The methods, premises
and the terminology of the Stagirite’s philosophy are carefully selected and analysed
by the authors, with any skipping stage. In
this way, the authors managed to create a
frame to reference and a comprehensive
approach of a more complex structure of
reason.
This is a clear evidence of cognitive efficacy, which allows the reader to easily go in
the Aristotelian interests, such as his distinction of categories, the logical syntax of
language, the concepts of continuum, time,
substrate, form and final cause or the notion of being and that of substance. In this
way, the volume touches all the key elements of the Stagirite’s interests, like: reality and truth, the meaning of political activity, logic and the structure of science, arts
and psychology. Thus, the light of knowledge
sparkles, and takes the reader to a deeper
personal search of the true nature of things.
The methods, the arguments and the conceptual soil of each article leads to a disciplined
understanding, released from the pressure
of a kidnaped thinking, without any destination.
The Aristotelian reason, successfully represented through the articles of the volume
”2400 Years of Thinking with Aristotle” is
aiming to foresee its limits and options, its
comprehension mechanism and its own freedom territory. We might often encounter
questions that, at first glance, seem more
ambitious then the mind’s capacity to understand. Therefore, we are drawn into a wide
range of inquiries by an irresistible force, a
kind of strange obsession to go beyond cognition, into a state of logos undressed by
impotence and confusion. This mighty mechanism of self-improvement is the core element of Aristotelian destiny of mind. Selffulfillment is summum bonum, and the reason, prima materia, is the inducement of conquering the unknown.
Apart from convenience, inertia and volatility, the art of Aristotle’s reflection encourage us to research, to become an active part
of a well-grounded hermeneutics. This selection of articles makes a strong and useful
addition to the literature on Aristotle’s range
of research, as it brings together the components of a wide research perspective, originally shaped. The stylistics are miscellaneous, technical or narrative, with an obvious
215
BOOK REVIEW
lexical diversity, where rhetorical interrogations are being balanced by stringent arguments, highlighting the true meaning of terms,
with a high interest on maintaining a standard intellectual attire.
Fluctuating between critical function,
neutral or controversy of the affective message of the articles, this volume manages to
go through along with the reader, diverse
positions from the presented ideas, without
arousing partisanship or ignoring thesis and
principles. In this way, the elegant and scientifically expressive note of the paper is maintained, and the stylistic subtlety manages to
enrich and ennoble the content of the volume.
What remains after reading this volume
is a sincere appreciation for the diligence
and effort of each editor and author of
structuring their contributions in a set of
notions, thoughts and paradigms, orderly,
structured and strong fundamented. It is
comfortable to know that you can venture
to unknown places of self along with partners who can maintain the certainty of a liberating and dignified intellectual path. Obvious as it is, we are troubled at every step by
overwhelming and confusing temptations,
by humiliating seductions of things, of moments of empty time of ridicule and boredom. The terrible prospect of agony and a
216
sleepwalking personal movement in the
world can frighten and overwhelm us alike.
Chaotic, indefinite thoughts are always presented to our minds, and getting to know reality is often a difficult task for a distracted
mind. It is therefore necessary to enter into
a nourishing dialogue with the world of
meanings in order to embrace them in a
worthy way. The Stagirite’s thinking is an
oriented one, which wants to get somewhere and it’s looking for valid options,
well-anchored, to perfect itself. This volume reveals an active participation, full of
passion and boldness, in the process of
overcoming all the narrative and practical
elements that fragment and undermines
our possibilities. Last but not least, the volume suggests a conduct released from the
pressure of haste and sensationalism, a kind
of being specific to the explorer of the unknown, whose quality as a witness of the
truth empowers and exalts him.
Radu SIMION,
Associate lecturer, Faculty of History
and Philosophy, Babeș-Bolyai University,
Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Email: radu.simion@ubbcluj.ro.