Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Twentieth Century: Book I. New Waves of Philosophical Inspirations (Analecta Husserliana)

PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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

VO L U M E C I I I

Founder and Editor-in-Chief: ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Hanover, New Hampshire

For other titles published in this series, go to http://www.springer.com/series/5621

PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Book One New Waves of Philosophical Inspirations

Edited by A N NA - T E R E S A T Y M I E N I E C K A The World Phenomenological Institute, Hanover, NH, U.S.A.

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

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Editor Prof. A-T. Tymieniecka The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning 1 Ivy Pointe Way Hanover NH 03755 USA [email protected]

ISBN 978-90-481-2724-5 e-ISBN 978-90-481-2725-2 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2725-2 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009926825 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

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

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / Theme

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SECTION I CLAIRE ORTIZ HILL / Husserl and Phenomenology, Experience and Essence

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ANGÈLE KREMER-MARIETTI / Jean Wahl the Precursor: Kierkegaard and Existentialism

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MARIA VILLELA-PETIT / The Transcendental and the Singular: Husserl and the Existential Thinkers Between the Two World Wars

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JOZEF SIVÁK / De l’ « In-Existence » intentionnelle à l’ « Ek-in-sistence » existentielle

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WITOLD PLOTKA / The Value of the Question in Husserl’s Perspective

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SECTION II JEFFREY M. WALKEY / The Essential Structure and Intentional Object of Action: Toward Understanding the Blondelian Existential Phenomenology

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JAROSLAVA VYDROVÁ / Subjectivity, Openness and Plurality: on the Background of Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenological Reduction

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PIOTR MRÓZ / What Does it Mean to be an Existentialist Today?

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MICHAEL BERMAN / Dufrenne and Merleau-Ponty: A Comparative Meditation on Phenomenology

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SUSI FERRARELLO / The Ethical Project and Intentionality in Edmund Husserl

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LARS PETTER STORM TORJUSSEN / Is Nietzsche a Phenomenologist?—Towards a Nietzschean Phenomenology of the Body

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´ JOANNA HANDEREK / The Problem of Authenticity and Everydayness in Existential Philosophy

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SECTION III GRZEGORZ GRUCA / Lev Shestov’s Philosophy of Crisis

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KATARZYNA STARK / The Idea of God-Man in Nicolas Berdyaev’s Existentialism

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TZE-WAN KWAN / Unamuno as “Pathological” Phenomenologist: Tragic Sense and Beyond

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CLARA MANDOLINI / Blondel and the Philosophy of Life

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SECTION IV ALEKSANDRA PAWLISZYN / From the Archeology of Happening . . . to the Matter of Death

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J.C. COUCEIRO-BUENO / The Phenomenology of Pain: An Experience of Life

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MARIA ZOWISŁO / The Existential Overcoming of Phenomenology in Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophy of Life and Myth

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SECTION V MOBEEN SHAHID / Temporality and Passivity in Edmund Husserl’s Analyses

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SEMIHA AKINCI / On Existence, Actuality and Possibility

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AURELIO RIZZACASA / The Consciousness of Time in Life Through Phenomenology and Existentialism

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SECTION VI WILLIAM FRANKE / Existentialism: An Atheistic or a Christian Philosophy?

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JOHANNES SERVAN / The Horizon of Humanity and the Transcendental Analysis of the Lifeworld

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STEFANO ZECCHI / Crisis and Culture

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SECTION VII MARA STAFECKA / Understanding as Being: Heidegger and Mamardashvili

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WIESŁAW KURPIEWSKI / Mind – its Way of Existence, Structure and Functions in Tibetan Buddhism – Comparison with Phenomenology

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NAME INDEX

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AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S

This collection of studies expands on the theme of the World Phenomenology Institute’s Fourth World Congress of Phenomenology— “PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.” On that auspicious occasion we attempted a philosophical appreciation of the origins, growth, dissemination of phenomenology and existentialism and of the metamorphosis they brought about in our culture in the twentieth century. The Congress was held at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland on August 17–20, 2008. The studies presented there are here appropriately divided in three, according to phases in this history. The present volume bears the title Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Twentieth Century, Book One: New Waves of Philosophical Inspirations. This Congress was hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University, and we owe our gratitude to the Dean, Professor dr. hab. Maria Flis, for the most friendly hospitality with which we were received. Our special appreciation goes to our local co-organizers chaired by Professor dr hab. Piotr Mróz, who was ably assisted by Dr. Joanna Ha´nderek, Mgr. Maciej Kałuz˙ a and their coworkers, who with sustained effort gave great care to all the details of the local organization of so complex a gathering of participants from all parts of the world and numerous fields of research. They truly felt at home in Krakow and Poland. The beautiful historic location of the event, the pleasant receptions, and the sightseeing, gave a special charm and aura to this conference. I owe special personal thanks to Professor Thomas Ryba, Vice-President of the World Phenomenology Institute, who in my absence assumed the directing role at the Congress, and to Professor Piotr Mróz, who with the assistance of Professor Konrad Rokstad carried out the Conference with masterly coordination. Last, but foremost, our thanks go to the Jagiellonian University, to its rector, Professor dr. hab. Karol Musial, for having received us with open doors. I am particularly sensitive to this, being an alumna of this university and feeling ever to belong to it.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our faithful associate Robert Wise Jr. and our editorial assistant Jeffrey Hurlburt deserve our appreciation for the editorial preparation of this volume. And we are indebted to our publisher, Ms. Maja de Keijzer of Springer Science+Business Media B.V., for her sympathetic encouragement of our work. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

THEME

We are so involved in the current of life, so immersed in its vital cultural tides, the passage of events, their impact on our feelings and thinking, our own inner tendencies and aims, hopes and fears, are so absorbed in these at every instant, that they succeed each other without our clearly distinguishing them. In the flux of our metamorphoses, they succeed each other spontaneously. Even dramatic happenings that seem to us to decide the course of things become doubtful in their significance upon closer examination. Our view of definitive outcomes also varies in our evolution, being dependent on what we bring to their appreciation. Was the Battle of Borodino necessarily “the beginning of the end” for Napoleon, as Talleyrand so famously said at the time? In World War II Churchill had the perspicuity to say that the Battle of Egypt was “perhaps, the end of the beginning” (emphasis added). If reserve in judging what is of definitive significance be prudent when assessing “the situation on the ground,” with what assurance can we discern the gathering and sweep of cultural tides? It is only with distance gained from the actual past that we can acquire a clearer view of a historic metamorphosis in human understanding for we can then be more broadly informed of what was then current than were those who experienced the shift in its immediacy, which allows us to arrive at new insights and take less prejudiced and more considered views. Ours too is the benefit of having seen the consequences of ideas. We may then obtain a clearer, more comprehensive overview of the crystalization of a cultural development now that it rests on a horizon. This is the point of our project in these three volumes, of which this is the first. These collections are dedicated to following the course of two highly significant and interrelated intellectual movements of the twentieth century, existentialism and phenomenology. The studies in the present volume treat the origins and reception of these two intellectual projects. Those of the next volume will examine how they cross-fertilized each other and cover the new expressions the movements generated after their launching. In the last volume there will follow appreciative assessments, yielding the harvest of a New Enlightenment. Although this effort is far from giving a complete account of this philosophical moment’s sources, tendencies, and high universal impact on the course of cultural history, we intend to pinpoint what appears to have been 1 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 1–5. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

THEME

We are so involved in the current of life, so immersed in its vital cultural tides, the passage of events, their impact on our feelings and thinking, our own inner tendencies and aims, hopes and fears, are so absorbed in these at every instant, that they succeed each other without our clearly distinguishing them. In the flux of our metamorphoses, they succeed each other spontaneously. Even dramatic happenings that seem to us to decide the course of things become doubtful in their significance upon closer examination. Our view of definitive outcomes also varies in our evolution, being dependent on what we bring to their appreciation. Was the Battle of Borodino necessarily “the beginning of the end” for Napoleon, as Talleyrand so famously said at the time? In World War II Churchill had the perspicuity to say that the Battle of Egypt was “perhaps, the end of the beginning” (emphasis added). If reserve in judging what is of definitive significance be prudent when assessing “the situation on the ground,” with what assurance can we discern the gathering and sweep of cultural tides? It is only with distance gained from the actual past that we can acquire a clearer view of a historic metamorphosis in human understanding for we can then be more broadly informed of what was then current than were those who experienced the shift in its immediacy, which allows us to arrive at new insights and take less prejudiced and more considered views. Ours too is the benefit of having seen the consequences of ideas. We may then obtain a clearer, more comprehensive overview of the crystalization of a cultural development now that it rests on a horizon. This is the point of our project in these three volumes, of which this is the first. These collections are dedicated to following the course of two highly significant and interrelated intellectual movements of the twentieth century, existentialism and phenomenology. The studies in the present volume treat the origins and reception of these two intellectual projects. Those of the next volume will examine how they cross-fertilized each other and cover the new expressions the movements generated after their launching. In the last volume there will follow appreciative assessments, yielding the harvest of a New Enlightenment. Although this effort is far from giving a complete account of this philosophical moment’s sources, tendencies, and high universal impact on the course of cultural history, we intend to pinpoint what appears to have been 1 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 1–5. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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the major sources, reasons, and universal significance of the two philosophical currents that have transformed humanity in the twentieth century and have placed it upon new roads thereafter. Phenomenology and existentialism, popularly called, are still, even as they lose their sharp outlines, being disseminated in all areas of life and are a yet growing force of the spirit permeating the evolutive stream of human development. Our venture is then an appreciation of these movements that is at once seasoned and vibrant, evaluative and transformative.

PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH C E N T U RY

Both, phenomenology and existentialism, popularly so called, are two vigorous thrusts of thought that marked a distinct phase of the cultural development of the Occident. While their germinal crystalization took place before World War II, they burst forcefully upon philosophical attention only after that desperate conflict. The profound philosophical concerns leading to their crystalization had actually been animating philosophical meditation from the time of the Greek philosophers’ incipient quest after absolute truth. These concerns have pervaded the search after the origins and the rational order of reality throughout Occidental history, reappearing in various guises until they came to receive primary focus toward the end of the nineteenth century. Antithetic focusing, now on essence and now on experience, has marked philosophical appreciations of the reality of beingness – now on being (esse, to be) and now on existence (existere, to stand forth, appear) – in various styles of thought unfolding through history, and through the controversies stimulated, deeper and more subtle intuitions were achieved. In our present-day perspective on the future it appears that it is precisely at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century that the philosophical controversies reached a culminating point in the concurrence of protest against the project of Hegelianism, on the one hand, and against the reductionism of biological science, on the other. Speculation was being rejected for the sake of appreciating the concrete, while empiricism, positivism, and naturalism were being rejected for the sake of an anchoring apriorism. Nihil sub sole novum. At the beginning of Western philosophy Socrates urged the examination one’s own life, saying that without such individualsubjective effort, a life was not worth living. Hence the significance of individuals in themselves, of the play of the passions, of the irrational motivations impinging on life’s conduct, and of the quest after personal freedom

THEME

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in individual responsibility and morality are themes running through the entire course of Western history. These themes received signal attention in the vastly influential St. Augustine, who examined himself more openly and extensively than any writer had before him. These themes were violently recast by Nietzsche. The protest against Hegel’s speculative assimilation of reality into thought registered by that strikingly autobiographical thinker Kierkegaard would have to await the twentieth century to be acclaimed and echoed in the thought of Jaspers, Mounier, Marcel, Camus, Berdyaev, Sartre, and others. Meanwhile the novels of Dostoyevsky sounding these same themes had found acclaim from the start. It is not accidental that it was a psychiatrist, Karl Jaspers, who introduced into the wider discourse the thought of Kierkegaard, which spoke to him profoundly during the days of World War I, as they would speak to many, many more after World War II. In his Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (1919), Jaspers coined the word Existentialismus to convey the sense of this philosophy. Later when it had become a byword, Jaspers would say that he himself was not an “existentialist.” After presenting prime examples of the precursors advancing the crucial ideas of the movement popularly called “existentialism,” we focus in this volume on the main representatives identified with the movement that bears the name, who characteristically denied taking part in any movement, defending their individual uniqueness and originality. With or without definition, they sustained a movement of thought, supplementing each other and informing a full cultural and philosophical blossoming. The directing ideas they advanced, indeed, swept through through the culture of the Occident and throughout the entire world, not least because they lent themselves to literary and theatrical expression. The germinal Socratic stance has found varied expressions over the course of history but never so dramatically as in the twentieth century, and that particular expression of the theme is fertilizing thought and lives still. A comet flying from another direction was the powerful inspiration of Husserl’s rationality of cognition. Again, the Greek fertilization of the philosophical ground saw the origins of our human reflection and meditation on sources, vital and dynamic, as well as on the architectonics of the constitution of the human reality, for Plato’s disciple Aristotle brought to the fore the question of stasis and becoming, of nature and existence, and that of our objective constitution of reality, framing it in the sharply contrastive terms of the essence and the existence of objectivities. In numerous configurations, the inward structures, the nuclei of things and living beings appear to the mind in contrast to their beingness, modes of being, existence. Within innumerable perspectives – logical, epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical – this

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contrastive metaphysical perspective endures, however variously nuanced, in our thought and practice. It was as an heir of mathematical rationalism that Husserl scrutinized rationality and saved it from being engulfed by the empiricist, naturalistic, and positivistic reasoning inspired by the great growth of the natural sciences. In reaction, he swung first, to the pole of an essentialism employing “eidetic” intuition, so that some of his first students at Göttingen drew from him an ontological continuation of Plato’s theory of ideas (e.g., Jean Hering). But then Husserl methodically shifted his focus to the cognitive/constitutive aspect of human consciousness and so to experience. In taking as his starting point our experience of reality, Husserl never repudiated the validity of apprehending eidoi, essences, ideas. He simply relegated their apprehension to “naive” ontology as he plunged wholeheartedly into the exploration of the innumerable perspectives of experience, seeking to uncover therein the existential foothold of reality. Before his great foundational ideas on rationality became digested and then incarnated in the researches of his first Göttingen followers – Reinach, Scheler, Pfänder, Conrad-Martius, Stein, Hering – Husserl had moved on to the genesis of the objective meaning that they heralded, that is, from descrying radical apriori objectivities to the constitutive processes at work in cognitive consciousness. To express it sharply, the search for apriori objectivity got absorbed in exploration of the transcendental genesis of subjective consciousness. Thus, the achievement of the pure apriori endurance of meanings was crowned by a transcendental turn toward meanings as they are found in subjective experience. This revelation of transcendental subjectivity fostered a new wave of philosophical insights and intellectual reorientations and mingled in a wondrous way with the inspirations of existentialism, and to that we will turn in our second volume. Strangely enough, while the basic tendencies of the two powerful new philosophical currents seemed at base to oppose each other in their vision of reality, and even though they independently radiated streams of intuitions and analytic findings in accord with seemingly opposed doctrines, in their inner unfolding they became closer and closer in such a way that the distinction of “phenomenology” and “existential philosophy” became blurred amid the cultural turmoil of the world. At their furthest fringes, the rippling circles thrown up by the impact of each on culture would join. Interfusion with each other weakened the initial inspirations of each movement but also yielded illuminations. Thus the essence and the existence of things in their innumerable aspects, shadings, and the functioning of human living beings and of their lifeworld became not just conjoined but amalgamated in their authentic diversity.

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What our debts are to each movement needs assessment. In the succeeding volumes we will, therefore, attempt to survey the progressive dissemination of the original ideas of both movements right through to the points where they acquired novel direction through their mutual influence. But here the points of first impact of these intellectual projects, their immediate precursors, and their generative continuities will be our focus. In the present collection you will find perspectives on the ground laying steps made by significant thinkers preceding the breaking out into full light of these protagonist projects at the moment when one was focused on existence (experience) and the other on essence. We will also treat herein the reception of these initiatives, limning what in the main was their appeal, what were the various perspectives they opened, so that their powerful new lights permeated the philosophical climate and transformed much of our culture from the middle of the twentieth century on. NOTE 1 For a summation of the various steps and phases of Husserl’s development, going through the genetic experience of constitutive process extending from the empirical stage of experience through the entire cycle of the “ideation” of the meaningfulness of the aprioric level of pure consciousness, see Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Introduction,” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations, Expanding Dynamics, Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, Analecta Husserliana LXXX (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), pp. 1–8.

SECTION I

C L A I R E O RT I Z H I L L

H U S S E R L A N D P H E N O M E N O L O G Y, E X P E R I E N C E AND ESSENCE

ABSTRACT

Husserl’s search to fathom the complex interplay between experience and essence was at the heart of the dynamic that brought phenomenology into being, and the slipperiness of the issues harbors one of the secrets of phenomenology’s impact. The underlying paradox of his phenomenology is that his science of subjectivity was his science of objectivity. At its heart, the science of intentionality is ambiguous, because intentionality points in two directions, towards the world of subjectivity and towards the world of objects. It had, and still has, the impact that signs of contradiction have. To support these claims, I examine the evolution Husserl’s ideas underwent at the time the foundations of phenomenology were lain. In particular, I examine the nature of the intellectual crisis that accompanied Husserl’s conversion from experience to essences during the last decade of the 19th century. I integrate texts and research first published during the last few decades into the more familiar picture of the genesis of phenomenology. For Husserl, which came first, experience or essence? That question is as slippery as the famous one about the chicken and the egg. And, since there is probably no completely satisfactory answer to it, it is surely something that is going to be debated as long as there are philosophers to debate it. However, whether or not there is an definitive answer, the question is well worth asking. For Husserl’s search to fathom the complex interplay between experience and essence was at the heart of the dynamic that brought phenomenology into being, and the slipperiness of the question harbors one of the secrets of phenomenology’s impact. The underlying paradox is that Husserl’s science of subjectivity was his science of objectivity. He taught that the ultimate meaning and source of all objectivity making it possible for thinking to reach beyond contingent, subjective, human acts and lay hold of objective being-in-itself was to be found in ideality and the ideal laws defining it.1 In Experience and Judgement, he 9 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 9–22. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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presents the world constituted by transcendental subjectivity as a pre-given world that is not a pure world of experience, but a world determined and determinable in itself with exactitude, a world in which any individual entity is given beforehand in an perfectly obvious way as in principle determinable in accordance with the methods of exact science.2 Yet, while insisting on the primacy of the objective order, Husserl stressed that, for example, logic turns both towards ideal objects, towards a world of concepts where truth is an analysis of essences or concepts, where knowing subjects and the material world play no role, and towards the deeply hidden subjective forms in which reason does its work. He considered that almost everything concerning the fundamental meaning of logic was laden with misunderstandings owing to the fact that objectivity arises out of subjective activity. He considered that even the ideal objectivity of logical structures and a priori nature of logical theories especially pertaining to this objectivity, and the meaning of that a priori, suffered from this lack of clarity since what is ideal appears as located in the subjective sphere and arises from it.3 Fortunately, texts and research published during the last few decades are shedding light on many of phenomenology’s puzzles. Here, I want to take a new look at what I have called Husserl’s paradox by integrating some of this less familiar material into the familiar picture of the genesis of phenomenology. In particular, I want to look at Husserl’s conversion from experience to essences during the last decade of the 19th century, a time that resembles our times on some respects. FROM EXPERIENCE TO ESSENCES

To see in what way Husserl’s paradox about subjectivity and objectivity is at the heart of the dynamic that brought phenomenology into being, we need to look at the evolution his ideas underwent at the time the foundations of phenomenology were lain. At first, we know, experience came first. As a student of Franz Brentano, Husserl was not receptive to the claims of metaphysical idealism. Brentano was entirely devoted to the austere ideal of a strict philosophical science as realized in the exact natural sciences. He considered metaphysical idealism odious and despicable.4 Only after experiencing the shortcomings of Brentano’s empirical psychology did Husserl begin veering in the direction of essences. There were ways in which psychology from the empirical standpoint never came to satisfy him. Once he tried to pass from the psychological connections of thinking to the logical unity of the thought-content, the unity of theory, he was unable to establish any true continuity and unity. The further he delved into his philosophical

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investigations into the principles of mathematics, the more he grew troubled by doubts as to how to reconcile the objectivity of mathematics and all science in general, with empirical foundations for logic, and the more he saw the need to engage in general critical reflections on the essence of logic and the relationship between the subjectivity of knowing and the objectivity of the content known.5 Husserl left dramatic descriptions of ten years of hard, lonely work and struggling during which he aspired after clarity, but only encountered confusion. He felt tormented by the incredibly strange worlds of the purely logical and actual consciousness that he saw opening up on all sides. The two had be interrelated and form a whole, but he did not see how to bring them together.6 He was assailed by questions. How are objective, mathematical and logical relations constituted in subjectivity? How can the mathematical-in-itself given to the mind be valid? If everything purely logical is an in itself, something ideal having nothing at all to do with acts, subjects or empirical persons belonging to actual reality, then how is symbolic thinking possible? If scientific knowledge is completely based upon being able to abandon ourselves completely to thought that is removed from intuition, or being able to prefer such thinking over thought more fully in accord with intuition, how is rational insight possible in science? How does one arrive at empirically correct results? We proceed without justification, guided by a psychological mechanism, but this does not answer questions about truth, for a logically unjustified procedure can well lead to true results.7 He saw himself standing before “great unsolved puzzles” concerning the very possibility of knowledge in general, as coming “close to the most obscure parts of the theory of knowledge”, as powerfully gripped by the deepest problems. Facing only riddles, tensions, puzzles and mysteries, and seeing all around him only unclear, undeveloped, ambiguous ideas, weary of all the confusion, he felt he had to risk setting out on his own.8 This crisis could be thought of as the birth pangs of phenomenology. During those years, Husserl kept company with Georg Cantor,9 the eccentric creator of set theory, who was hard at work discovering and exploring the strange worlds of pure mathematics and actual consciousness. However psychologistic his mysterious references to inner intuition or to experiences helping produce concepts in his mind might seem, Cantor was strictly opposed to any philosophy that located the sources of knowledge and certainty in the senses or in the supposedly pure forms of intuition of the world of presentation. A good measure of the freedom he felt he possessed as a mathematician came from distinguishing between an empirical treatment of numbers and Plato’s pure, ideal arithmoi eidetikoi, which by their very nature were detached from

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things perceptible by the senses. Originally untainted by the metaphysical idealism that Brentano disdained, Husserl drew near the Platonic idealism that Cantor espoused and renounced the psychologism, empiricism, and naturalism that he renounced.10 Husserl’s fully conscious and radical turn away from empirical psychology and his espousal of Platonism came about through his study of Hermann Lotze’s logic. Husserl said that his own concepts of ideal significations and ideal contents of presentations and judgments originally derived from Lotze, whose interpretation of Plato’s Theory of Ideas gave Husserl the key to understanding Bernhard Bolzano’s ideas about propositions and truths in themselves, which under Brentano’s influence, Husserl had thought of as metaphysical abstrusities, mythical entities suspended somewhere between being and non-being.11 The last years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century found Husserl teaching that the ideal entities so unpleasant for empiricistic logic, and so consistently disregarded by it, had not been artificially devised either by himself, or by Bolzano, but were given beforehand by the meaning of the universal talk of propositions and truths indispensable in all the sciences. This indubitable fact, Husserl now stressed, must be the starting point of all logic. This constant talk of propositions, of true and false means something identical and atemporal. No more is meant by the ideality than that it is a matter of a kind of possible objects of knowledge, whose particular characteristics can, and in scientific investigation must, be determined, while they are just not objects in the sense of real objects.12 As regards its essential, theoretical makeup, Husserl taught, science is a system of ideal meanings that unite into a meaning unit. The theory of gravity, the system of analytic mechanics, the mechanical theory of heat, the theory of metric or projective geometry are all units, not of mental experiences of one person or another, or of states of mind, but units entirely made up of ideal material, of meanings. And, in this lies truth and falsehood, what science makes into an objective, supra-individual unit of validity logically grasping and dealing with a sphere of objectivity.13 All truly scientific thinking, all proving and theorizing, operates in forms that correspond to purely logical laws. Pure logic embraces all the concepts and propositions without which science would not be possible, would not have any sense or validity.14 While all of natural science is an a posteriori discipline grounded in experience with its actual occurrences, the world of the purely logical is a world of ideal objects, a world of “concepts.” Pure logic is an a priori discipline entirely grounded in conceptual essentialities. There all truth is nothing other than the analysis of essences or concepts. With them, we are just not in psychology, in any sphere of empiricism and probability.15

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The empirical sciences, the natural sciences, Husserl tried to explain to Brentano in 1905, are sciences of “matters of fact.” The whole sphere of the genuine a priori is, however, free of all matter of fact suppositions. There we stand not within the realm of nature, but within that of Ideas, not within the realm of empirical generalities, but within that of the ideal, apodictic, general system of laws, not within the realm of causality, but within that of rationality. Purely logical laws are laws of essence. He wanted it understood that he was “far from any mystico-metaphysical exploitation of “Ideas”, ideal possibilities and such” of the kind Brentano despised.16

A SCIENCE OF IDEAL BEING

A rediscovery of metaphysics took place at the end of the nineteenth century, which had seen a positivistic revolt against idealism and Kantian inspired psychologism and a yearning for the real and the palpable that turned the thoughts of many in the direction of the natural world of perceptible facts and events. There had also been a revolt against the various forms of positivism, empiricism, naturalism and materialism that others felt the modern age was foisting upon them. Subsequently, still others wanted to unite what seemed to be two contradictory worlds. They wanted a scientific metaphysics, a scientific idealism. Lotze played an preeminent role in rehabilitating the respectability of metaphysical inquiry. Trained in medicine, he was initially caught up in the naturalistic movement that sought to extend natural science and its methods over the entire realm of intelligible existence. It taught that what science could not know, could not be. It did not admit any unknowable, supra-sensuous reality and easily evolved into materialistic philosophy that denied it. Lotze rebelled. He judged the basic ideas of the natural sciences inadequate, disconnected, and often inconsistent. His antagonism was directed toward their pretensions to deal with all the phenomena of human experience. He believed that they had nothing to say about what was most worth knowing. He wanted to show their inadequacy and that there was room and need for philosophy side by side with science. However, Lotze’s genuine respect for the methods and results of the natural sciences, as long as they confined themselves to their own proper domain, deepened his aversion to Idealism, which he saw as having turned its back upon the realm of facts and as having lost itself in the realm of empty thoughts. So to create his new philosophical outlook, Lotze had to clear the way by combating the errors of both philosophers inspired by the natural sciences and the idealists.17

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In a 1902 Paris doctoral thesis on Lotze’s metaphysics, Henri Schoen explains how Lotze inspired courage in worried and tormented consciences and communicated faith in the triumph of a spiritualistic conception of the world to young people whose confidence had been shaken by the ineffectiveness of idealism and the successes of materialism. To those impressed by positivism, Schoen explains, Lotze gave an exact method starting from observation and not a priori reasoning. He taught a generation disgusted with abstractions to start from given facts. Schoen saw his generation as being disgusted with materialism, with vague and confused aspirations and disposed to accept a metaphysics not in contradiction with its scientific views. He explains how he was guided and had tried to guide students through the philosophical and psychological crisis of German metaphysics, how he considered a return to the old dogmatism impossible, but saw the inadequacy of pure reason, how eclipsed by idealism, Kant’s realism wrought vengeance on the modern metaphysics that aimed to develop the seeds of realism contained in his theory, and not the idealism there as well. For Schoen, an equal balance had to be maintained between ideality and reality, between the supra-sensible world and the real world. He was completely confident about the future of metaphysics. It was a matter of creating a new philosophical outlook that could satisfy both the modern need for reality and concrete facts and the idealistic and mystical needs of the times.18 In his eccentric way, Georg Cantor too was part of the post-Kantian movement to reconcile the findings of modern science with metaphysical views. He made no secret of his intention to supply his new transfinite numbers with adequate philosophical and metaphysical foundations. His views were deeply pro-idealistic. He was an avowed enemy of the new empiricism, of all psychologism, empiricism, positivism, naturalism, sensualism, skepticism, and Kantianism. In 1894, he confided that “in the realm of the spirit” mathematics had no longer been “the essential love of his soul” for more than twenty years. Metaphysics and theology, he “openly confessed”, had taken possession of his soul.19 Pope Leo XIII was also intent upon reconciling modern science and metaphysics. His influential encyclical Aeterni Patris of 1879 captured Cantor’s attention and Cantor’s work captured the attention of a number of Catholic philosophers involved in the revival of scholastic philosophy in the spirit of the encyclical. Cantor scholar Joseph Dauben has described the interest generated by Aeterni Patris as a tonic for Cantor’s declining spirits.20 In talking about what Husserl’s contemporaries were searching for, it is important to realize that, while the end of the 19th century witnessed attempts to rehabilitate the respectability of metaphysical inquiry and to situate it centrally on the philosophical agenda alongside rigorous, rational, scientific

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thinking, alongside this metaphysical revival there was an occult revival. Like our times, the end of the 19th century witnessed a rise in cults, spiritism, Satanism, the occult, magic, witchcraft, and so on. As many were hard at work destroying the superstition of religion, some were indulging in irrational, superstitious, and unsavory pursuits, something that surely fanned antagonism towards any uncritical, unscientific metaphysics, or even a fear of it. Carl Jung once described the times as having prepared the way for crime. As he saw it, people were living in a lifeless nature bereft of gods. Enlightenment might have destroyed the spirits of nature, but it did not destroy the psychic factors corresponding to them, such as suggestibility, an uncritical attitude, fearfulness, propensity to superstition and prejudice. Even though nature is depsychized, demons do not really disappear, Jung insisted. He saw the psychic conditions breeding them to be as actively at work as ever. “Just when people were congratulating themselves on having abolished all spooks, it turned out that instead of haunting the attic or old ruins, the spooks were flitting about in the heads of apparently normal Europeans. Tyrannical obsessive, intoxicating ideas and delusions were abroad everywhere, and people began to believe the most absurd things . . .”.21 Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke explains that, though there were many forms of modern occultism, its function was relatively uniform. Behind the mantic systems of astrology, and palmistry, the doctrines of theosophy, the quasi-sciences of animal magnetism and hypnotism, the study of the esoteric literature of Cabalists, Rosicrucians, and alchemists, there was a strong desire to reconcile the findings of modern natural science with a religious view. Occult science strove to counter materialist science, with its emphasis upon tangible and measurable phenomena and its neglect of invisible qualities respecting the spirit and the emotions.22 Cantor’s unpublished correspondence shows that he was a Rosicrucian.23

I N T E N T I O N A L I T Y, A S I G N O F C O N T R A D I C T I O N

Into this intellectual climate, Husserl introduced a science of intentionality that was suitably ambiguous because intentionality points in two directions, towards the world of subjectivity and towards the world of objects. I said that Husserl’s paradox about subjectivity and objectivity harbors one of the secrets of phenomenology’s impact, because I think that his science of intentionality had, and still has, the impact that signs of contradiction have. According to Brentano’s definition of intentionality, every mental phenomenon is characterized by the intentional or mental inexistence of an object, by relation to a content, direction to an object or an immanent objectivity.24

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Husserl considered that by indicating the uniqueness of mental phenomena, Brentano blazed the way for the development of phenomenology and made it possible, but that the idea of a pure phenomenology was beyond his reach, because he held fast to his ideal of a strict philosophical science based on the exact natural sciences.25 The entire approach whereby the overcoming of psychologism was phenomenologically accomplished, Husserl maintained in 1913, showed that analyses of immanent consciousness had to be seen as pure a priori analyses of essence, that it was in this way that the immense fields of the givens of consciousness as fields for “ontological” “investigations” were opened up for the first time.26 What was new in the Logical Investigations, he maintained in Crisis, was “found not at all in the merely ontological investigations . . ., but rather in the subjectively directed investigations . . . in which for the first time the cogitata qua cogitata, as essential moments of each conscious experience as it is given in genuine inner experience, come into their own and immediately come to dominate the whole method of intentional analysis”.27 So Husserl’s science of intentionality produced masterpieces as diverse as Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being and Science of the Cross, Emmanuel Levinas’ Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, and even strongly anti-metaphysical works like Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Existentialism is a Humanism. Levinas saw phenomenology as reversing the scientific attitude that turned away from the subject for the greater glory of the object and decreed the expulsion of every so-called subjective element from the object,28 In comparison, Sartre considered that for centuries there had not been a philosophical movement that so “plunged human beings back into the world”.29 He proposed that the profound meaning of the discovery expressed by, “All consciousness is consciousness of something” could be grasped by imagining “a connected series of bursts that tear us out of ourselves, throw us beyond them into the dry dust of the world, onto the plain earth, amidst things . . .”.30 The great mathematician David Hilbert wrote of how Husserl was a product of Brentano’s school, which was oriented toward the creation of an exact theory of acts of judgment and logic with the goal of constructing a theory of science of the kind Bolzano had in mind, but how, in contrast to other representatives of the school, Husserl had adopted an a priori method and rejected psychologism. From this theoretical stance, Hilbert continued, Husserl befriended the speculative trend in philosophy by strengthening it enormously. For since he had expounded a far-reaching grounding of logic and related sciences, after he came out in favor of the methods of speculative dogmatics, he deflected the criticism of sterility normally attached to its application in the exact sciences.

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But, the problem was solved only apparently. For his method was in fact psychological, and only owing to misunderstandings about its true nature was he able to post successes on the “a priori dogmatism” side of the ledger.31 The democratic socialist Leonard Nelson complained to Hilbert that even if Husserl himself remained protected from mystical degeneration by inhibitions and restraints imposed by secure connections to mathematics that he could not strip away, after his school had burned its bridges to mathematics, it was frightening to see how unrestrainedly his students fell victim to every excess of Neo-platonic mysticism.32 M E TA P H Y S I C S , T H E O R Y O F K N O W L E D G E A N D T H E N AT U R A L S C I E N C E S

Husserl communicated the new vision of metaphysics, theory of knowledge and the natural sciences that he developed during the 1890s to the new generation of students in search of a scientific of metaphysics that could stand up to the challenges of the natural sciences. He told them of how he saw the metaphysical needs of his time going unmet and gave this as an explanation as to why spiritism and the occult were thriving and superstition of every kind was spreading.33 He blamed the overriding role and authoritative influence that the natural sciences had acquired in the lives of educated people for the prevailing contempt for metaphysics and its transformation into “a kind of a hobgoblin”, or its being considered a relic of scientifically backward times on a par with alchemy and astrology. As he saw it, the natural sciences had taken abundant revenge for the injustice they endured from the pseudo-scientific natural philosophy of the Romantics, but in speaking of metaphysics, natural scientists still had in mind a kind of philosophizing that was up to the old tricks of the Hegelian school.34 As Husserl told the story, after the collapse of idealistic philosophy in the mid-19th century, a great awkward lull set in when the philosophical race of Titans of Romanticism, with their extravagant promises and flaunting of the requirements of rigorous science, trained to storm the Mount Olympus of philosophy with their dialectical tricks, were flung down into the dark Tartarus of dissension and unclarity, and uneasy disenchantment, even disillusionment, followed the earlier exuberance. Then sounded ever louder the call back to Kant, who had set limits on the presumptuousness of uncritical metaphysics and established the critique of knowledge as the true foundation for philosophy. With the revival of Kantianism, for which an a priori science of concepts was impossible, the word “metaphysics” took on ominous overtones and people preferred not to use it.35

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The extent to which the hard questions about the objectivity of knowledge raised by Kant’s work could determine one’s entire conception of being in the world was a matter of concern to Husserl,36 for whom such problems could only be solved through a pure phenomenological elucidation of knowledge for which it was completely obvious that theory of knowledge was prior to all natural knowledge and science and on an entirely different plane. As long as we are in the state of epistemological innocence and have not bitten the fateful apple of the tree of philosophical knowledge, then every science suits us fine, Husserl taught. But, the moment the sphinx of critique of knowledge asks its questions, all sciences, no matter how beautiful, are nothing to us. All the puzzling questions combined signify that we do not understand sciences in general. No naturally obtained scientific result is free of the worm of doubt or unclarity. Therefore, we cannot use any as a premise from which to derive the answer to these questions.37 Husserl called for a science of metaphysics to study problems lying beyond empirical investigation, to engage in the exploration of what is realiter in the ultimate and absolute sense, and so provide ultimate and deepest knowledge of reality. He believed that such a science of metaphysics was possible, justifiable, and that human beings could attain knowledge of reality.38 Husserl taught that the sciences were in need of metaphysical foundations. But, he strove to make it perfectly clear that by that he “meant anything but a dialectical spinning of the concrete results of these sciences out of some abstract conceptual mysticism”.39 He proposed to have metaphysics understood in a broad sense as radical ontology, as the radical science of Being in the absolute sense, instead of the science of Being in the empirical sense, which we think we know, but upon closer inspection at times turns out to be deceptive and an illusion.40 It is certain, he argued, that the knowledge of the world provided by the natural sciences is not definitive knowledge of reality. They are merely sciences of being in the relative, provisional sense sufficient for practical orientation in the phenomenal world. Through them, we attain the practical mastery of nature, a far-reaching orienting of empirical reality, the possibility of formulating laws by which we exactly foresee, foretell and redirect the course of empirical processes, but we are not in possession of definitive knowledge, of ultimate, conclusive knowledge of the essence of nature. Lack of critical insight into the meaning of fundamental concepts and principles makes it impossible to be clear about what has been ultimately achieved and so about the sense in which the results may be considered expressions of ultimate Being.41 Husserl believed that it was certain that a most universal concept of what is real in general, of the particularities grounded in the essence of what is real, can and must be delineated. He reasoned that concepts like that of an

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individual real thing, Being for itself, or thing in the broadest sense, real property in the broadest sense, real relation, time, cause, and effect, are surely necessary thoughts concerning possible reality and require a study of the analysis of essence and of essential laws. There must therefore be, he concluded, a science of real Being as such in the most universal universality, and this a priori metaphysics would be the necessary foundation for empirically based metaphysics, which not only claims to know what lies in the idea of reality in general, but claims to know what is now actually actual.42 Husserl saw a science of metaphysics as being so necessary for science that even natural scientists could not do without it. The empirical sciences, he taught, are not creations of a purely theoretical mind. They are not based on absolutely scrupulously lain foundations in accordance with a rigorous logical method. They are subject to principles that govern thinking and research in the natural sciences, that make them possible, and that consequently cannot be searched for by investigations into the natural sciences. Even the most highly developed, most exact natural sciences uncritically use concepts and presuppositions originating in a prescientific understanding of the world. In fact, as soon as they begin reflecting on the principles of their science, natural scientists fall into metaphysics, though they most certainly do not want to call it by that forbidden name.43 The realm of truth, Husserl insisted, is no disorderly hodgepodge. Truths are connected in systematic ways, governed by consistent laws and theories, and so the inquiry into truth and its exposition must be systematic. The systematic representation of knowledge must to a certain degree reflect the systematic representation grounded in the things themselves. All invention and discovery involves formal patterns without which there is no testing of given propositions and proofs, no methodical construction of new proofs, no methodical building of theories and whole systems. No blind omnipotent power has heaped together some pile of propositions P, Q, R, strung them together with a proposition S, and then organized the human mind so that the knowledge of the truth of P unfailingly must entail knowledge of S. Not blind chance, but the reason and order of governing laws reigns in argumentation.44 Wherever it is a question of reality, in life and in all empirical sciences, he explained, we apply concepts like thing, real property, real relation, state, process, coming into being and passing away, cause and effect, space and time, that seem to belong necessarily to the idea of a reality. Whether or not all these concepts are actually intrinsic to the idea of reality, there surely are such concepts, the basic categories in which what is real as such is to be understood in terms of its essence. Thus, investigations must be possible that simply reflect everything without which reality in general cannot be conceived. This is where the idea of a metaphysical a priori ontology comes in.45

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For Husserl, the most radical reason why the natural sciences do not provide definitive knowledge of physical and mental reality and therefore require a metaphysics as the science of absolute being is that the possibility and meaning of the objective validity of knowledge is a mystery to us. So, the ultimate meaning of any reality, which for knowledge is just what it posits as real and has determined in a given way, is also problematical for us. In spite of all of natural science, we therefore do not know what reality is and in what sense we may claim to take the results of the natural sciences as being definitive for reality. Therefore, only by theory of knowledge and critique of knowledge practiced upon the natural sciences does metaphysics become possible.46 He warned against caving into the old temptation of grounding theory of knowledge upon metaphysics and wanting to solve the radical problems of the elucidation of knowledge by metaphysical underpinnings. Drawing in premises from metaphysics means radically missing the meaning of the genuine problems of theory of knowledge. Metaphysics presupposes theory of knowledge. Therefore, it cannot undergird theory of knowledge.47 And that brings us back to the paradox about the science of subjectivity being the science of objectivity. Paris

NOTES 1

Edmund Husserl, Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie, Vorlesung 1902/03, Elisabeth Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001, p. 200. 2 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgement, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973 (1939), §11. 3 Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978 (1929), §§7, 8. 4 Claire Ortiz Hill, “From Empirical Psychology to Phenomenology Edmund Husserl on the ‘Brentano Puzzle’ ”, The Brentano Puzzle, Roberto Poli (ed.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, pp. 151–67; Edmund Husserl, “Recollections of Franz Brentano”, in Husserl: Shorter Works, P. McCormick and F. Elliston (eds.), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, pp. 342–49. (Also translated by Linda McAlister in her The Philosophy of Brentano, London: Duckworth, 1976, pp. 47–55). 5 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, J. N. Findlay (tr.), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970, p. 42; Edmund Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations, A Draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations, Eugen Fink (ed.), P. Bossert and C. Peters (trs.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975, pp. 34–35. 6 Edmund Husserl, Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, Dallas Willard (tr.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994, pp. 490–91. 7 Husserl, Early Writings, pp. 37, 167–69; Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations, pp. 21–22, 35.

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Husserl, Early Writings, pp. 167–69, 492–93, 497–98; Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations, p. 17; Husserl, Logical Investigations, pp. 42–43. 9 Malvine Husserl, “Skizze eines Lebensbildes von E. Husserl”, Husserl Studies 5, 1988, pp. 105–25. 10 Claire Ortiz Hill, “Did Georg Cantor Influence Edmund Husserl?” Synthese 113 (October 1997), pp. 145–70 and “Abstraction and Idealization in Georg Cantor and Edmund Husserl”, in Idealization IV. Historical Studies on Abstraction and Idealization, Poznan Studies 82, F. Coniglione, R. Poli, R. Rollinger (eds.), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004, pp. 217–43. Both papers are anthologized in Claire Ortiz Hill and Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock, Husserl or Frege, Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics, La Salle IL: Open Court, 2000. 11 Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations, pp. 36–38, 46–49; Husserl Early Writings, pp. 200–03, 209; Hermann Lotze, Logic, New York: Garland, 1980 (reprint of B. Bosanquet’s translation of his Logik of 1888), Chapter II. 12 Edmund Husserl, Alte und neue Logik, Vorlesung 1908/09, Elisabeth Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003, pp. 45, 47, 241. 13 Edmund Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, Claire Ortiz Hill (tr.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2008, §12. 14 Husserl, Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie, Vorlesung 1902/03, p. 47. 15 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §13c. 16 Edmund Husserl, “Husserl an Brentano, 27. III. 1905”, Briefwechsel, Die Brentanoschule I, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994, pp. 37–39. 17 Henry Jones, A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze, the Doctrine of Thought, Glasgow: James Maclehouse and Sons, pp. 8, 28, 29. 18 Henri Schoen, La Métaphysique de Hermann Lotze, ou la philosophie des actions et des réactions réciproques, Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1902, pp. 8–9, 18, 22–23. 19 George Cantor, Georg Cantor Briefe, H. Meschkowski and W. Nilson (eds.), Springer, New York, 1991, p. 350; Hill, “Did Georg Cantor Influence Edmund Husserl?” and “Abstraction and Idealization in Georg Cantor and Edmund Husserl.” 20 Joseph Dauben, Georg Cantor, His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, pp. 140–48. 21 Carl Jung, Jung on Evil, Murray Stein (ed.), London: Routledge, 1995, p. 194. 22 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology, New York: I. B. Tauris 1985, p. 29. 23 Cantor’s letter books as found in the Niedersächsische Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Abteilung Handschriften und Seltene Drücke reveal this. 24 Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973 (1874), p. 88. 25 Edmund Husserl, Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. New York: Collier Books, 1962 (1913), p. 229. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book, Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989, p. 422 Husserl, Logical Investigations, p. 554. Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations, p. 61. 26 Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations, p. 42. 27 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University, 1970, §68. 28 Richard Sugarman, “Emmanuel Levinas: the Ethics of ‘Face to Face’/the Religious Turn”, in Phenomenology World Wide, A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002, p. 412.

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Yvanka B. Raynova, “Jean-Paul Sartre, A Profound Revision of Husserlian Phenomenology”, in Phenomenology World Wide, Tymieniecka (ed.), p. 324. 30 Jean Paul Sartre, “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology”, Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 1, 2, May 1970, pp. 4–5. 31 Unpublished Extracts from Hilbert’s Denkschrift for Leonard Nelson, undated, found in the Niedersächsische Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Abteilung Handschriften und Seltene Drücke. 32 Leonard Nelson, letter of December 29, 1916 to David Hilbert found in the Niedersächsische Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Abteilung Handschriften und Seltene Drücke. 33 See for example, Edmund Husserl, “Aus der Einleitung der Vorlesung ‘Erkenntnistheorie und Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik 1898/99”’, in Husserl, Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie, pp. 225–55. 34 Ibid., pp. 230–33. 35 Husserl, Allgemeine Erkennthistheorie, Vorlesung 1902/03, pp. 9; 229, 232–33; Edmund Husserl, Logik, Vorlesung 1902/03, Elisabeth Schuhmann (ed.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001, pp. 12–13. 36 See for example, Husserl, “Aus der Einleitung der Vorlesung ‘Erkenntnistheorie und Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik 1898/99’ ”, p. 232. 37 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, 32c. 38 Husserl, “Aus der Einleitung der Vorlesung ‘Erkenntnistheorie und Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik’ ”, pp. 232, 233, 252; Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §§20, 21. 39 Edmund Husserl, Logik, Vorlesung 1896, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001, p. 5. Husserl, Logik, Vorlesung 1902/03, pp. 12–13. 40 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §20. 41 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §20. Husserl, Logik, Vorlesung 1902/03, pp. 12–13. 42 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §21. 43 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §20. Husserl, Allgemeine Erkennthistheorie, Vorlesung 1902/03, p. 233. 44 Husserl, Logik, Vorlesung 1896, pp. 9, 13, 16–17. 45 Husserl, Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge, Lectures 1906/07, §21. 46 Ibid., 32c. 47 Ibid.

ANGÈLE KREMER-MARIETTI

J E A N WA H L T H E P R E C U R S O R : K I E R K E G A A R D AND EXISTENTIALISM

ABSTRACT

For Jean Wahl (1888–1974), Kierkegaard was the first “subjective thinker”, without whom we could not conceive any prefigurations of philosophy of the existence, which starts up the Christian existentialism. Jean Wahl began his career as a follower of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and the American pluralist philosophers. Kierkegaard is a hero of the existence and an ally in the criticism of Hegel and his speculative thought. Going like Descartes, starting not with the doubt but anxiety, Kierkegaard went to a new sort of issue, not the thought or cogito, but existence. Evocating also Martin Heidegger, Jean Wahl draws the big moments of Heidegger’s reflection, but presenting him as « a negation of Kierkegaardian individualism ». For Kierkegaard reviewed by Jean Wahl, the Myth of Adam embodies the original sin as a condition of possibility for any individual, guilty, as told in the language of psychoanalysis, in the subordination to the Autority of the Name of Father. Wahl presented Kierkegaard as being always in a state of choice: « Everything or nothing » (« tout ou rien »), « Of two things the one » (« de deux choses l’une »). Nietzsches’s dominant idea, for Wahl, is the will of overpassing, the first idea of transcendence. Wahl thinks that, in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, modernity refuses itself. In a negative theology, we see how a quest of fully reflective justification is undertaken at the same moment in which we are anyway justified. Classic philosophy considered the essence as the supreme, unchanging and constant value, and lets it precede the existence. Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was one of the first to oppose to the philosophies which denied the individuality, the subjectivity and the value of the human experience. For Jean Wahl (1888–1974), Kierkegaard was the first “subjective thinker”, without whom we could not conceive any prefigurations of philosophy of the existence, which starts up the Christian existentialism.∗ ∗

Jean Wahl was a French philosopher, a professor in Sorbonne from 1936 till 1967. During the Second World War, having been interned as Jew to the concentration camp of Drancy, where from

23 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 23–30. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Contemporary of the introduction of Heidegger (1889–1976), Jaspers (1883–1969) and Barth (1886–1968) and of the deepening of the knowledge of Hegel (1770–1831), Kierkegaard’s introduction in France contributes to the hatching of the philosophies of the existence in France. In the thirties, it rests on a narrow cultural middle. Kierkegaard embodies a figure of philosophic and religious modernity. By commenting on his philosophy, Jean Wahl and Léon Chestov (1866–1936) constitute a grammar of existence.4 The woman philosoph Rachel Bespaloff whose professor had been Chestov met Jean Wahl5 and joined to this nexus of existentialism. George Bataille6 has studied together Jean Wahl, Hegel and Kierkegaard7 to express together Wahl’s interpretation of Hegel and Kierkegaard’s opposition of Hegel. Indeed, Jean Wahl tried new ideas on Hegel (1770–1831), especially on Hegel’s Phenomenology. The works of Fondane (1898–1944), The unfortunate Consciousness,8 and of Jean Wahl, The Misfortune of the Consciousness in Hegel’s Philosophy,9 wear similar titles; the point of departure of both books is the chapter on “the unfortunate consciousness” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.10 For Benjamin Fondane and Jean Wahl, passion lets the existing escape from the Hegelian dialectic and lets him find the real concrete. For them, Kierkegaard is a hero of the existence and an ally in their criticism of Hegel and his speculative thought. In this way, both are the heirs of Kierkegaard. They looked for the existential possibility of living connected to the “real dynamism” of a being beyond the philosophic idea of the being.11 The peculiarity of Wahl’s book with regard to Koyré and Kojève’hegelian studies is to have based a new reading on the constant merger of Hegel and Hölderlin (1770–1843), a “crazy poet”, with whom he was often associated in the German Hegelian studies of this period, but to he escaped, he took refuge in the United States from 1941 till 1945, where he taught. He headed the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, starting in 1950. For many interpreters and especially for Robert Denoon Cumming (1916–2004),1 Jean Wahl was the most influential French interpreter of the philosophy of the twentieth century. Jean Wahl had numerous students in France and in the world, Jean Hyppolite (1907–1968) was one of them. Jean Hyppolite, professor at the Sorbonne in 1949 and elected in 1963 to the Collège de France, considered possible to reveal as a nucleus the existentialism in the Bergsonism.2 From bergsonism to existentialism, there was for him a route of the French thought with a very important meaning. The two philosophies were certainly states of mind letting understand the French spirit of two different periods. Jean Wahl’s philosophy is a witness of the relation evoked by Hyppolite. Jean Wahl said himself “Bergsonian” in the 1920s. Indeed, Jean Wahl began his career as a follower of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and the American pluralist philosophers William James (1842–1910) and George Santayana (1863–1952). He published in 1920 his thesis on the pluralistic philosophies3 of England and America, in which he analyzes in detail William James’s pluralism, in a reflection going on with a reflection on the idea of unity in his study of Platon’s Parmenides. The pluralistic thinkers have the concern of action and their philosophy is always attentive to the consequences of thought, which, too, is action. Wahl’s philosophy was an essential source for the thought of Gilles Deleuze (1825–1995); Jean Wahl was the big French interpreter of audacious thoughts about the concrete experience, the experience that troubles or excites.

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which seemed then hardly promised to be recognized in France a philosophic status. But for Wahl, Hölderlin’s great poems of Hyperion, Empedocle and the texts on Empedocle’s Foundations were philosophic tools to enter the secrets of Hegels’s Phenomenology. Wahl began his book on Hegel by these words that gave his tendencies by writing on this philosophy: The dialectic, before being a method, is an experience by which Hegel goes from an idea to the other one. Negativeness is the movement of a mind by which it always goes beyond what it is. And it is partially the reflection on the Christian thought, on the idea of a made man God, who led Hegel to the conception of a universal concrete. Behind the philosopher, we discover the theologian, and behind the rationalist, and also the romantic.

In the 1930s, his reflection turned towards the concrete (Vers le concret, 1932), title of another book and he became the champion in French thought of the Danish proto-existentialist Kierkegaard and of the German philosopher Nietzsche (1844–1900) he rehabilitated by analysing and deepening his thought. Wahl was one of the first French readers of the thesis of Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) on Kierkegaard, from the year of its publication, in 1933. On Kierkegaard’s philosophy he published Kierkegaardian Studies,12 a book in which he made of Kierkegaard the emblem of a refusal of the systems and the tension towards metaphysics, often described as the competences of his own thought. This essay which Jean Wahl dedicates him synthetizes all the problems of his own philosophy. Jean Wahl is well right to say in his Kierkegaardian Studies that “the theory of the truth is by Kierkegaard a theory of the faith”. Wahl adds: “and this faith is the love of eternity”. Faith, to Kierkegaard, is the most human of experiences; totally illogical and emotional. He praises those who are capable of faith, and laments his own inability to fully immerse himself in it. In this way, the Christ is indeed as an atom of eternity, some else who in the time skips outside of the time, toward the contemporary distance in all those who already crossed him. It is at every time that appears this crack of the interlude which invites us to fall out of time. Going like Descartes, however Kierkegaard went to a new sort of issue, not the thought or cogito, but the existence. Kierkegaard shows the difference between existence and thought; he places us in front of a new “here and now”, not, as by Hegel, susceptible to be absorbed in logical generalities, but maintaining the fascinated decision, in fear and shiver in the presence of the Other one, an absolute, of what or whom must be the absolutely different and that is the transcending. Jean Wahl writes in his book on metaphysical experience, published in 1965.13 “Kierkegaard says to us that ‘here’ and ‘now’ and ‘mine’ are inflexible, definitive realities, in which it takes there place to be held”. Furthermore, for Wahl, Kierkegaard thought that Hegel could not affirm that becoming is the combination of being and non-being, if he did not know it through his own experience of becoming.

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For Wahl, indeed, a general category is dominating Kierkegaard’s metaphysics and which is a metaphysical experience. As to Wahl himself, thought and being are the same thing.14 Then, there are all sorts of exteriorities: “We see a scale of ideas of exteriority, since the exteriority of the sensitive world and the common sense, up to the logical exteriority and until Kierkegaard would call the divine exteriority”.15 From the couple interiority/exteriority, we go to the intentionality: thinking presupposes always alterity. The substance of the self is always already constituted and perceived in terms of the idea of relation: human existence cannot be separated from that of an Absolute Paradox, whereas Jean Wahl’s Kierkegaardian Studies suggest that Kierkegaard’s view of existence does not presuppose God’s revelation. For Kierkegaard, it is clear that “cogito ergo sum” does not answer the reality of the existing man because “less I think, he says, more I am”. For Descartes, philosophy is manifestly the search for all which is stable and universal, ignoring the historic dimension of the existence. Then the concept “being” indicates all which exists, in the sense where we simply say “this exists” or “this does not exist”. On the contrary, Kierkegaard brings a logos of the refusal, which set dialectically – but not in a Hegelian meaning – becomes a logos of the existence, being and thinking in the pathos of his own limits. For Kierkegaard, according Wahl, « existing » signifies exactly « being sitting out of »,16 and then believing is connected to a negative theology. Kierkegaard did not begin with the doubt, but with the anxiety. Jean Wahl wrote an article titled “Nietzsche and the Death of God”, he published in the second issue (the 21st January 1937) of the review Acéphale (1936–1939),17 founded by Georges Bataille (1897–1962). In this article, Wahl compared Nietzsche to Kierkegaard; he wrote: “Kierkegaard’s faith is a faith which doubts, also the negation of Nietzsche. God’s absence is neither error nor truth. And that is why the thought of God’s absence is passion, is will, as well as Kierkegaard thinks God as passion and will.” Even we could see, with Jean Wahl’interpretations, the Hegelian anticipation relatively to Kierkegaard, concerning the effort of the individual, struggling not to lose himself, agonizing over his life and essential nothingness, we must however also note how Kierkegaard points out with irony that Hegel’s system anyway denies the peculiarity of the individual engaged in the faith. According to Jean Wahl,18 during one moment Kierkegaard had thought of Abraham’s sacrifice it were justified by a previous Abraham’ fault; but he abandoned this idea and thought that “fear and shiver” represented God’s terrible character, His immense strength with regard to the human being. According to Wahl and some searchers, Kierkegaard’s Abraham denominates a special type of figurative substitution in which the inconsolability of the present is expressed via a poetics of distance.19

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In his book published in 1951, Philosophies of Existence An Introduction to the Basic Thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre,20 Jean Wahl made some connections between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, also Kierkegaard and Jaspers. Wahl presented Kierkegaard as being always in a state of choice: « Everything or nothing » (« tout ou rien »), « Of two things the one » (« de deux choses l’une »). Nietzsches’s dominant idea, for Wahl, is the will of overpassing, the first idea of transcendence. Wahl thinks that, in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, modernity refuses itself: in a way, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche deliver us, going the first towards Christianity, the second towards antiquity, both in the direction of going back home. They are exceptions. Jean Wahl shows us how Jaspers’s philosophy as a philosophy of existence, transposes Kierkegaard’s ideas and deepens them.21 But Speaking of Nietzsche’s might, Jaspers says also that it is « The continual overtaking of all forms of the truth which want to give themselves a moment as the very truth. »22 Like Kierkegaard, Jaspers, according Wahl, comes to the Deus absconditus of negative theology, the very distant One. The negative theology joins the theology of existence as subjectivity, freedom and communication. Jean Wahl was a lucid and a hesitant believer, also a poet.23 In founding the French Existentialists movement, which grew under Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), he attempted to redraw briefly the genesis and the evolutions of « existentialism », especially in his book, A short history of existentialism (Petite histoire de l’existentialisme, 1947),24 where he tried to fix the big features of this “new mode of philosophizing”, that is to say a movement without doctrine; and the author collides with the difficulty to precising what it is really individuality, subjectivity and the value of human experience. Then, even if God is not any more in the center of the reflection, He always holds an important place. Jaspers was one of the first ones for secularizing the Kierkegaardian thought, eliminating God without rejecting however the notion of transcendence (not any more called Jesus), being “an absolute”, “something hidden who shows himself in escaped fleeting fragments”. There is a remainder of a connection embodied in one way emission of the oneness God-to-subject. So, by becoming aware of his limits and failures, humanity succeeds in coming true and in asserting his existence. Evocating also Martin Heidegger, Jean Wahl draws the big moments of Heidegger’s reflection: the finitude of the possible in the consciousness of the death (not “the impossibility of possibility”, as said Wahl, but the “possibility of impossibility”25 ), but also the run-up of transcendence pushing the humanity, always in project, towards the world, the others and the future. But thinking that Heidegger’s philosophy is « a negation of Kierkegaardian individualism », Jean Wahl does not stop questioning the paradoxes and ambiguities of Heidegger’s philosophy and mentioned the Heidegger’s support of the Nazi theses, from 1933 . . .

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Generally said himself as a thinker without doctrine, Jean Wahl did not stop in all his works asserting his distrust towards systems. That made him all the more able to describe and analyze the multiplicity of the concrete, the complexity of the lived. In a recently collection, Kierkegaard, the One before the Other (Kierkegaard. L’Un devant l’Autre26 ), there are now published all the articles and conferences which Jean Wahl dedicated to Kierkegaard, spread out from 1930s to 1960s. Some were unpublished: others were at the source of the Kierkegaardian Studies, published by Jean Wahl in 1938; others else, drafted or published after the war, testify of Wahl’s continuous attachment to Kierkegaard, and his idea of seeing in him the father of existentialism. Restored in their originality and in their completeness, these texts propose a unitarian and multiple reading of Kierkegaard, where are approached his categories such as: fear, moment, choice, paradox . . . In this exceptional encounter between two men and two thoughts, we can find the discreet thread which connects them with Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) and also Gilles Deleuze. The Myth of Adam embodies the original sin as a condition of possibility for any individual, guilty, as told in the language of psychoanalysis, in the subordination to the Autority of the Name of Father, that is a subordination originated in a free choice. Therefore we can speak of an “epistemic circularity”,27 as William P. Alston remarked: There is a certain kind of circularity [. . .] into which we frequently fall when we set out to adduce reasons for the reliability of a belief source [. . .] The quest of fully reflective justification is undertaken just when we ignore, or lose interest in, merely being justified. It is clear that either this quest for fully reflective justification generates an infinite regress and cannot succeed for that reason, or at some point it is vitiated by circularity, either because we encounter a basic source or because our reasons for a given source are obtained from a source we were relying on at an earlier stage.

In conclusion, I must say how much Jean Wahl inspired his students for studying Kierkegaard. I know, for instance, that, from 1954 to 1960, an original writer born in Warsaw, Vladimir Malacki (1908–1998) – called Jean Malaquais – began a thesis on Kierkegaard, supervised by Jean Wahl, and going as far as learning the Danish and staying in Copenhagen. Malacki wanted to dispute the reference to Kierkegaard which was made by Sartre; but his thesis was partially published. In April 1964, Jean Wahl participated to a symposium on “Kierkegaard Alive”28 in Paris, which brought together representative of the main thrusts of existential thought, and where Heidegger spoke of “the end of philosophy and the task of thought”, but where Sartre ended the session with a warning on the responsibility of writers. The same year, there was at Royaumont another symposium, but on Nietzsche. Some years later, Edith Kern published a view on the relation between existential thought and fictional technique.29

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In order to appreciate Wahl’s original reflection inspîred by Kierkegaard, we must remember among the favoured terms, used and/or often created by Jean Wahl, the following terms extracted from the Treatise of Metaphysics, for instance: transdescendence or the attraction towards Satan and transascendence or the rise towards God: the lesson was in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.30 Both terms, transascendence and transdescendence, are abundantly quoted by many contemporary writers and philosophs like Levinas, Sartre,31 Eero Tarasti,32 Hent de Vries,33 Regina Schwartz34 ; among them the Finnish musicolog Eero Tarasti adopted an existential semiotics,35 founded on the notion of Dasein, inspired by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Jean Wahl, and Sartre. Let us end by a disenchanted note concerning the past, but enthusiastic concerning the future of philosophy: as wrote Hannah Arendt who, curiously associated Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Marx: “Kierkegaard, Marx and Nietzsche is for us as the guides of a past which lost its authority. »,36 she writes. And, for a Kierkegaard’s interpreter,37 the Kierkegaard interpreted by Jean Wahl woul be a conceptual personnality; but we may strongly doubt of this interpretation. Université de Picardie, Jules Verne, Amiens Groupe d’Études et de Recherches Épistémologiques, Paris NOTES 1 Robert Denoon Cumming, « Phenomenology and Deconstruction », Volume Four: Solitude (Phenomenology and Deconstruction), vol 4, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, July 1, 2001. 2 Jean Hyppolite, « Du bergsonisme à l’existentialisme », Actas del Primer Congreso Nacional de Filosofia, Mendoza, Argentina, marzo-abril 1949, tomo 1. 3 Les philosophies pluralistes d’Angleterre et d’Amérique (1920) new ed. with a preface of Thibaud Trochu, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2005. See William James, A Pluralistic Universe, Longmans, Green & Co., 1909. 4 Margaret Teboul, « La réception de Kierkegaard en France 1930–1960 » (« The reception of Kierkegaard in France, 1930–1960 »), in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 2005, vol 89, no 2, pp. 315–36. 5 Rachel Bespaloff, Lettres à Jean Wahl, 1937–1947, Éditions Claire Paulhan, 2003. 6 Jean Wahl, « Hegel et Kierkegaard», Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger 111–112 (1931), 321–80. 7 Georges Bataille, “Jean Wahl: Hegel et Kierkegaard”, in Œuvres complètes, t. 1, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, pp. 299–300. 8 Benjamin Fondane, La Conscience malheureuse, Paris, Denoël et Steele, 1936. 9 Jean Wahl, Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel, Paris, Rieder, 1929. 10 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) J. N. Findlay, A. V. Miller, and A.V. Miller (Paperback – February 1, 1979). 11 Jean Wahl, Vers le concret, Paris, Vrin, 1932, pp. 16–17. 12 Jean Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1938.

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Jean Wahl, L’Expérience métaphysique, Paris, Flammarion, p. 39. Op. cit., p. 93. 15 Op. cit., p. 144. 16 Jean Wahl, La pensée de l’existence, Paris, Flammarion, 1951, p. 17. 17 Acéphale, réédition des numéros publiés et du numéro final non publié, éd. Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 1995. About Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche, Einführung in das Verstaendnis seines Philosophierens, Berlin, 1936. 18 Jean Wahl, Études kierkegaardiennes, p. 201. 19 See Chris Danta, « The Poetics of Distance: Kierkegaard’s Abraham », Literature and Theology, 2007, 21(2):160–1. 20 See Jean Wahl, Philosophies of Existence An Introduction to the Basic Thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, Sartre (La pensée de l’existence, 1951), F. M. Lory, Trans, Routledge & K. Paul 1969. 21 Jean Wahl, La pensée de l’existence, op. cit., p. 162. 22 Karl Jaspers, quoted by A. Kremer-Marietti in L’homme et ses labyrinthes, Paris, UGE, 1972, p. 173. 23 See Isabelle Kalinowski, « La littérature dans le champ philosophique français de la première moitié du XXe siècle », Methodos, 1 (2001). 24 Petite histoire de l’existentialisme, aux éditions Limoges pour le Club Maintenant, 1947. 25 See S. J. Michael Barnes, Theology and the Dialogue of Religions, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine, Paperback – April 1, 2002. » 26 Jean Wahl, Kierkegaard. L’Un devant l’Autre, Paris, Hachette, 1998. Worms (Frédéric), « La relation d’existence de Jean Wahl à Kierkegaard », Postface. 27 William P. Alston, “Epistemic Circularity”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol XLVII, no 1, September 1986, pp. 5, 24–25. 28 Kierkegaard vivant, symposium organized by UNESCO, in Paris, 21–23 April 1964, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, with texts of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, Lucien Goldmann, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Jean Wahl . . . 29 Edith Kern, Existential Thought and Fictional Technique: Kierkegaard, Sartre, Beckett, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970. 30 See Andrew Jones-Cathcart, « Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling: An Experiment in the SelfRecognition of Evil », in Analecta Husserliana, 2006, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, vol 85, pp. 77– 90. 31 Jean-Paul Sartre, Baudelaire, Les essais 24, NRF, 1948, in12, Note de Michel Leiris; L’être et le néant. Essai d’Ontologie phénoménologique (Being and Nothingness. Essay on Phenomenological Ontology), Gallimard. 32 Eero Tarasti, Signs of Music: A Guide to Musical Semiotics (Approaches to Applied Semiotics, 3, Walter de Gruyter Inc, August 2003, p. 126. 33 Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the turn of Religion, Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, June 17, 1999, p. 320. 34 Regina Schwartz, Transcendence: Philosophy, Literature, and Theology Approach the Beyond, Routledge; 1st edition, April 28, 2004. 35 Eero Tarasti, « Signs and transcendence », in Semiotica, 1999, vol 126, no 1–4, pp. 17–39. 36 Hannah Arendt, La crise de la culture, Folio essais, Paris, 1972. ThThaat he calls 37 Vincent Delecroix, in Jean Wahl, le Multiple – Samedi 16 Avril 2005, Journée d’étude de la série “passeurs” organisée par G. Bianco et F. Worms. [email protected] 14

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T H E T R A N S C E N D E N TA L A N D T H E S I N G U L A R : HUSSERL AND THE EXISTENTIAL THINKERS B E T W E E N T H E T W O W O R L D WA R S

ABSTRACT

An important part of Husserl’s work was produced between the two world wars. At that time, the question of existence was brought to the fore by those we call “existential thinkers” (preceding the French “existentialists”), who according to Karl Jaspers were largely under the spell of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Among existential thinkers we find the Russian Jew, Lev Shestov. It is surprising to learn through the article he wrote in honour of Husserl just after the latter’s death, that it was Husserl himself who advised him to read Kierkegaard. Despite this significant fact, even L. Shestov saw Husserl as an impenitent representative of the Western rationalist philosophy, which prefers knowledge to life and ignores the singularity of the individuals and their life trials. But the existential question was also central to Heidegger’s Being and Time. We have to take all these trends into account. When we try to grasp the reasons for the incomprehension roused by the Husserlian transcendental reduction. In those years most of Husserl’s writings were little known, including the articles he had written in the early twenties for the Japanese review The Kaizo where he already pointed out the crisis of reason and its disastrous consequences for our world. In order to go further in our inquiring of the transcendental and the singular, we have to understand what distinguishes the approaches of poetic-thinkers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard from that of Husserl as a rational-transcendental philosopher, concerned first of all with Man’s life in its essential aspects and its intrinsic ethical dimension. It was in 1929 while Lev Shestov visited Husserl in Freiburg that Husserl urged him to study Kierkegaard. That same day Shestov met Martin Heidegger whom Husserl had also invited. Even if the exact content of their conversation has not been preserved, it is not difficult to imagine the level of the exchanges between these three men. After the author of Sein und Zeit had left, Husserl encouraged Shestov to read Heidegger as well, adding that the latter’s basic ideas had been inspired by Kierkegaard.1 31 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 31–43. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Lev Shestov recalled this day at Freiburg in a text he wrote in 1938 in memory of Husserl,2 even though he himself died the same year, and as a result his text was already posthumous when it appeared. Shestov’s testimony is precious, for it leads one to ask what might have attracted Husserl to Kierkegaard. Perhaps it was his decision to accord such an important place to the interior man, to what Augustine termed inspectio sui. Let us not forget that Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations ends with the following citation from Augustine: Noli foras ire, in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas.3 An affinity of this kind between two thinkers situated on different sidesthose of reason and existence- looks surprising given that the thinking of the time tended to set these positions against each other. This is especially so if one is aware of the critical stance that existential thinkers, particularly those stemming from Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, were inclined to take with regard to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. At this point a word on Shestov himself. Whatever might have been his friendship and admiration for Husserl – did he not immediately follow Husserl’s advice by beginning to read Kierkegaard with passionate interest, as did all the major representative of the existential thought at the time?4 – Shestov took Husserl to be one of those rationalist philosophers (albeit the most important of his time) against whom he had declared war in the name of existence, even of Revelation. His work entitled: Speculation and Revelation bears witness to this, as also does his Athens and Jerusalem. The and here is less a matter of conjunction than an alternative, an option requiring that we make a choice between speculative philosophy, symbolised by the name “Athens”, and revelation, condensed into the name “Jerusalem”. Here we find ourselves confronting an Either . . . Or, the Shestovian presupposition being that a choice has to be made between these two paths. According to Shestov, philosophy was trapped in a cold rationalism leading it to ignore the mystery of creation. And yet, as suggested by the sub-title of Athens and Jerusalem – “An essay in religious philosophy”-, Shestov had not altogether given upon on philosophy. After all, he was ready to keep the name “philosophy”, provided that it was supplemented with the epithet “religious”. Relying on the primal narrative of Genesis, Shestov thought it necessary to present the tree of life in opposition to the tree of knowledge. However since the philosophy of the philosophers defends the cause of knowledge, and this at the expense of concrete life which it does its best to ignore, in the name of “general laws”, his thesis was in the main that in order to be faithful to Revelation the time had come to turn away from rational knowledge in favour of life.

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However close she might have been to Shestov, to whom, by her own admission, she owed her “awakening” to philosophy, Rachel Bespaloff understood that his option to pit Jerusalem against Athens was in the final analysis untenable, even vitiated by a certain incoherence. But her decision to distance herself from Shestov’s statements did not bring her any closer to Husserl.5 For her as for Shestov, Husserl’s philosophy erred in placing too much importance upon rationalism and in overlooking the concrete, often dramatic aspects of existence, aspects that reason despite its claims, could not handle or capture in its net. As matter of fact, neither Shestov nor Bespaloff managed to grasp the ethical meaning and the import of Husserlian transcendental “rationalism” in their own lifetime. What I want to do first is to try to grasp the main reasons why even Husserl’s early disciples failed to understand him. These misunderstandings were not entirely restricted to the followers of the existential movement or trend, but also proliferated amongst those who positioned themselves within phenomenology but refused to make the “transcendental” turn required by the philosophy of Husserl. It would be impossible to overlook the most famous instance of this misunderstanding, even though it remains only implicit: that represented by Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Even though, at first, he claimed to be doing phenomenology, in Being and Time Heidegger had already broken with the transcendental philosophy that Husserl had laid out from the time of Ideas I, with the firm intention of replacing questions of knowledge by questions of existence. As a matter of fact, despite the crucial role played by Kierkegaard’s work in his intellectual development, in Being and Time Heidegger decided to opt not for an existential philosophy, where consciousness of self remains decisive, but for an ontology of existence where what counts are the general structures of existence rather than the specific trials encountered by an individual in its own existence. Hence the distinction he draws between the existential (existential or existentialontologisch) and the existentiel (existentiell), existence itself being understood by him as plugged into the immanence of the world (being-in-theworld, in-der-Welt-sein), and therefore as not possessing any “beyond”, not even a transcendental one. It was only later that Heidegger will appeal to the difference between Sein und Seiende, Sein appearing then as a “beyond”, but which could not be assimilated at all to any personal God. Could one say that Husserl was mistaken in thinking that Heidegger had not understood his way of thinking and that in consequence he had not grasped “the full sense of the transcendental reduction”, as he wrote in a letter to Roman Ingarden?6

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In his lectures on the “Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology” (Grund Probleme der Phänomenologie), given in 1927 a the University of Marbourg, Heidegger himself was the first to recognize that if he had borrowed the fundamental element of the phenomenological method, namely, the “phenomenological reduction”, nevertheless he did not understand it in the same way as Husserl: «For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction worked out explicitly for the first time in his Ideas of 1913 is the method designed to lead phenomenological intentionality back from the natural attitude of a man living in the world of things and persons to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetico-noematic experiences, experiences in which objects are constituted as such as correlates of consciousness. For us, the phenomenological reduction designates the leading back of phenomenological intentionality from the apprehension of beings – no matter of what kind – to the understanding of the being of such being (inasmuch as this understanding gets projected towards its mode of disclosedness).»7

In fact, the Heideggerian reduction was one leading from the existentiell to the existential-ontological realm, as noted above. These brief remarks about Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit are far from being complete and definitive. But they inevitably come to mind when one wants to talk about existence in phenomenological circles, with the aim of reaching a better understanding of what have made Husserl’s contemporaries to take up a distance with regard to his thinking in the intellectual climate of that time. What we have to do is try to understand the situation prevailing in philosophy in the years between the first world war and the second. With this in mind, let us take as our guide the lectures given by Karl Jaspers, in 1935, at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The first of these, devoted to “The Origin of the Present Philosophical Situation” has as sub-title: “The Historical Significance of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche”. The collection of the five lectures given by Karl Jaspers at Groningen is now available in a work entitled Reason and Existence (Vernunft und Existenz).8 With a view to tackling the theme of the transcendental and the singular, the theme adopted in my title, I am going to offer you a few extracts from Jaspers’ first lecture, those bearing on the place occupied by the thinking of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in his day. “The contemporary philosophical situation is determined by the fact that two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who did not count in their times and, for a long time, remained without influence in the history of philosophy, have continually grown in significance.”9

A few paragraphs later, Jaspers tells us: “Both questioned reason from the depths of Existenz. Never on such a high level of thought had there been such a thorough-going and radical opposition to mere reason.” Jaspers then hastens to add: “This questioning is never simply hostility to mere reason . . .”10

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It is also worth noting that the name of Husserl is never mentioned at any point in the Groningen lectures. Husserl was made to look like one of those rationalist philosophers who, in the wake of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the thinkers of existence had sought to set aside in one way or another. As for the growing importance of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, we find confirmation of this development in the fact that shortly after Jaspers’ lectures in Holland Heidegger himself began his own course of lectures on Nietzsche, lectures delivered at the university of Fribourg-en-Brisgau from 1936 to 1940. Let’s now move to Husserl. Certainly, unlike Jaspers and Heidegger, Husserl never thought of lecturing on Nietzsche. All the same we know that in 1935, the same year in which Jaspers held his lectures at Groningen, Husserl gave his celebrated lecture in Vienna on “The Crisis of European Humanity and Philosophy”. After the publication of the manuscripts that make up the major work that goes by the title The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology readers suddenly became aware of Husserl’s interpretation of philosophy, especially that starting from the Renaissance, an interpretation had already begun to take shape in his mind from 1926–28. What remained practically unknown until 1989 was the series of articles Husserl wrote in the autumn-winter of 1922–23 for the Japanese review The Kaizo. Of the five articles planned to call On Renewal11 (I will come back to this notion), three were effectively completed and published in translation by Kaizo in 1923–24. Of these, only the first also appeared in its original version as well, the other two being published only in Japanese. The fact is that they remained largely unknown in the West. From that time on, Husserl looked ahead to the major crisis which, as is now more than evident, was about to engulf scientific reason, and which also marked the destiny of what he then called “European Humanity”, a humanity from which has come a civilization that in many respects extends far beyond the frontiers of Europe. A crisis of these proportions not only compromised philosophical knowledge and the future of philosophy, but also struck at humanity’s ethical guidelines as well. Husserl set himself the task of bringing to light the “un-truth” at which European culture had arrived, having moved away from the theoretico-practical telos of the philosophy inherited from the Greeks and from Medieval thinking. The diagnosis he presents in these writings is severe. The noise and fury of the 14–18 War can still be heard in them, a war in the course of which one of Husserl’s sons lost his life on the battlefield. After reading these articles it is difficult to endorse Hannah Arendt’s opinion, in an essay destined initially for the American public, where she points to Husserl in a peremptory manner as someone “without the least historical sense”.12

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Let us close this parenthesis and return to Husserl’s articles in The Kaizo. In the first one, which has for title: “Renewal, its problem and its method”, and where the general theme of renewal is presented, Husserl vigorously sets out an assessment of the situation. Does one have to give up in the face of such a preoccupying a situation, on the grounds that it follows from an inevitable destiny, such as that laid out by Oswald Spengler, whom he does not name but whose most celebrated work he quotes, “The Decline of the West”? Husserl writes: “This sceptical pessimism and the impudence of the political sophistry that dominates our epoch in so very deadly a way, and which makes use of socio-ethical arguments simply as a cover for completely degenerate egoistic and nationalistic goals, would not even be possible if the naturally engendered concepts of community had not been decked out, despite their natural character, with complicated and deceptive mediations whose clarification surpasses the strength of any inadequately formed thinker.”13

Looked at in retrospect, Husserl’s judgment takes on a prophetic character: the degenerate nationalism in question was just about to open up a second World War, dig an abyss of evil, and wreak enormous destruction on the continent of Europe and elsewhere. And these lines were only written in 1922 . . . What a pity that they were so largely ignored! However, this diagnosis is not enough in itself. How did Husserl envisage the struggle that had to be engaged by philosophy, faced with the menace of just such a Chaos. The reply following immediately upon the denunciation just cited, runs as follows: Only rigorous science can provide us with adequate methods and definitive results; they alone can provide us with the preliminary theoretical material upon which a rational reform of culture depends.14

A reply like this would be enough in itself to make the “realists” laugh right away, beginning with Hannah Arendt. Faced with the extent of the evil to be fought, and the complexity of the political situations, how could a philosopher be so “naïve”? It cannot be denied that there are innumerable situations and events that call for immediate action. And it pertains to a philosopher to address these issues as a responsible individual, as a person, a citizen capable of reflection. In his reply Husserl has nothing against this. He also sees that an individual can find himself in just such a situation. But motivated by a true philosophical vocation, what he regards as being absolutely fundamental is the theoretical work without which “solutions” could only be transitory and illusory. Only by getting to its roots could individuals struggle against the evil that then confronted humanity at that time, menacing the survival of so many communities. Having introduced in a summary and programmatic way

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his conception of a recovery – of the indispensable renewal of reason – Husserl points out the difficulties that this task conceals and that bear upon the very conception of science that has developed. After doing justice to the serious and unquestionable advances made by the natural sciences, and by practical, i.e. technological, rationality (remember this is 1922–23 and that it was impossible at that point to foresee all the negative implications of techno-science of which we are today only too conscious), Husserl says the following: But a rational science of man and of the human community, one which might provide a rational foundation for social and political activity and even for a technically rational politics, this is entirely missing.15 Let us be clear here. Husserl is perfectly well aware of the existence of psychology and of the social sciences. As he notes: “We have a number of valuable sciences related to the various domains of human consciousness or of humanity, but, from beginning to end, they are empirical, and “solely” empirical sciences.”16

Thus Husserl is not denying the contribution made by the human sciences but he is well aware of what they lack. In distinction from the natural sciences which are ordered by mathematical configurations and rely on these to disclose the formal principles underlying facts, the human sciences lack corresponding principles adequate to the conception of human being as a person engaged in a human community. The “causality” that applies to the natural world is an inadequate notion when it comes to human motivations, and further, to what falls within the realm of the spiritual life of human beings. The attitude of transcendental phenomenology quickly becomes apparent, in particular in the second article on the “Method of an enquiry into essences”. Only the knowledge of essences, as transcendental knowledge, is truly philosophical. And this requires that one does not stop at empty or sterile definitions but that one “draws from the depths of our intuition into essences”.17 Any essential intuition which is obtainable by the method of free variations, as Husserl frequently demonstrated, is consistent with or even requires that one should be able to spell out its differentiations. In the article to which I refer to we find an allusion to the various ways of conceiving of the essence “Man”. Here is a short extract from the passage in question: If we differentiate the notion of human being, for example with reference to the types of possible personal life, if we envisage the idea of a vocational life from the standpoint of its different possible types etc., these yield continually new a priori differentiations.

To better convey this idea of differentiations internal to the idea of human being, Husserl the mathematician resorts to an analogy with the notion of geometrical figures:

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‘We are talking here’, he adds, ‘about differentiations in a sense exactly analogous to those implied by the idea of figure in general, further differentiated into closed figure, then again into a polygonal figure, into a triangle, etc.’

The simplicity of the analogon should not put us off. Husserl is perfectly conscious of the complexity of the research into the essence of Man and its typical differences. He knows that there is an irreducible element of vagueness, calling for a clarification that can never be completed, all of which contributes to our knowledge of Man and to our own self-knowledge. One of Husserl’s goals is to think the ethical dimension implied in the very essence of Man, just as much on the plane of the personal life of the individual as on that of the community. His aim in his articles On Renewal is to deal with practical reason, in the sense of ethical reason, which according to him should not be disassociated from theoretical reason. He notes in a text from the same period: . . . any life that judges, and so any life that judges reasonably, functions as a medium for a desire, an effort, a will, a specific activity, whose goals are precisely judgements and judgments of a quite particular form. All reasoning is at the same time practical reasoning and this also holds of logical reasoning.18

At the level of the personal life of the individual as well as at the level of the community, Husserl wants to draw attention to the ethical dimension written into the very essence of Man. And this is particularly evident in the texts written for the Japanese review The Kaizo. The third of these articles was devoted to “Renewal as an ethico-individual problem”. He helps us to understand how – from the standpoint of a transcendental philosophy operating within the horizon opened up by the épochè – the question of the singular has to be addressed, that is, the question of the personal individual considered as singular, as unique, a essential question which for those thinkers belonging to the existential movement was at the core of their concern. From the beginning of the article, Husserl takes a stand that orients his reflections throughout all these articles: The renewal of Man – of Man in his singularity and of a human community – is the dominant theme of any ethics.19

So it is a matter of thinking the renewal of the self, of the individual, his very own self-renewal, in relation to the idea of ethical Man. And this requires everyone, no matter what one’s disposition, to seek some form of authentic life, and undertake a self-evaluation through a referential reflexivity regarding oneself. This is the only way in which Man can give himself the configuration of a “new” man, a “truly rational” man.

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“But what is clear from the outset, Husserl tells us, and what is clear for the one who evaluates himself and his life universally, is in every instance a general possibility, however imperfectly determined it might be in its content, a possibility of acting for the best according to knowledge and conscience (Gewissen), and in so doing to confer upon his active life at every moment, and as far as lies within his power, sincerity, rationality, legitimacy (or again what is even more visibly evident, truth, authenticity, justice).”20 Among Husserl’s thoughts on the necessary idea of the truly authentic Man, or, as he also says, the Man of reason – the man whose form of life is placed under the imperative of practical reason and which has for its ideal, perfection – one finds one bearing on the passage “at the limit”, the expression “at the limit” being understood in its mathematical sense. He then says that, “the pole that extends beyond all finitude, and towards which all human effort is directed, is the idea of God.” Here, I am tempted to develop some of the points in common between Husserl’s thought and that of other philosophers concerned above all with ethics. I have in mind in particular Jean Nabert and of the role played in his thinking of the idea of the divine.21 However, despite my lively interest in this question, what seems to me most important in the context of the present reflection is to draw attention to Husserl’s notion of effort, of human effort. Husserl does not hesitate to underline the constant effort that each individual has to agree to make with a view to giving his life the configuration of the good life, that is to say, a life in conformity with ethical imperatives. Only so is he in a position to become a fully human man in accordance with his essence as a rational being. It is to just such a struggle that Husserl is referring in the overall title of these articles: On Renewal. With regard to being attentive to oneself, to the type of life one leads, and consequently to ethical life in general, it is appropriate to ask: How can it (the ethical life) be brought to unfold more essentially; what are its specific dangers, its possible types of self-deception, its deviances, its degenerate tendencies, its most frequent forms of falsity about oneself, the unnoticed ethical restrictions? Bringing this all to light in a systematic way is the task of a carefully worked out individual ethics.22

And this is what Husserl wrote at the beginning of the “Conclusion” to this article on “Renewal as an ethico-individual problem”: From the above analyses, it is clear that ethical life is in fact, and in accordance with its essence, a life arising out of a renewal’, a will to effecting an original renewal, and one that has to be reactivated thereafter.23

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A few lines later one reads: To the extent that the ethical life is, in accordance with its essence, a struggle with «inclinations dragging one downward» it can also be described as a continual renewal.24

Husserl’s insistence on the notion of essence needs to be noted. As a philosopher, Husserl can only take account of individual, and therefore singular, life to the extent that he never loses sight of the question of the essence. But before comparing this transcendental approach to the singular with the approaches adopted by the thinkers of existence, I would like to add that what Husserl has in mind in his articles on renewal is not limited to the ethical individual. Aware of the fact that all individual life is inter-subjective and that one is not conscious of oneself without being conscious of the other, and that this also implies sharing a cultural background and, at least tacitly, a life in community, Husserl then goes on to devote the following article to precisely this issue, adopting as his title “Renewal and Science”, where by science (Wissenschaft) what he means is not the positive sciences, but philosophy. After briefly raising the question of the various communitarian organizations, right up to the level of the state, as a function of the ethical ideal that should be pursued, Husserl makes the following point: In any case, just as a singular man, as an ethical man, only exists in the course of becoming, and just as he only becomes in and through a constant struggle towards ethical progress, so also an ethical community is in essence a community in the process of becoming, a community in progress. And so it is that one of Husserl’s most cherished ideals concerning the development of every community, whether national or super-national, relative to other communities outside its frontiers, gets formulated in terms of the question “whether we are not ethically called upon to let an ethical community grow or develop across the entire world . . .”25

In our time, this ideal is becoming ever more pressing. However for it to begin to be realized, a critique is needed of what in the present process of “globalization” fails to respond to the ethical requirement, making someone like Régis Debray for example, say that “we have entered upon a process of «decivilization», due largely to the extension of egoism of all sorts and the deficit of true ethical values in the life of societies. Having made these brief remarks, let us get back to the question of the singular. There is no use insisting upon the singular character of the great existential thinkers like Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. This was evident to them first of all, even before it became evident to everyone else. As Karl Jaspers notes: “They were exceptions in every sense.”26 Thanks to their singularity they were able to grasp the wrongs of their age with great penetration, even while no one else seemed to see them. They knew solitude and, as Jaspers also said, “Thus they necessarily passed into an unprecedented intensity of self-consciousness. Their Existenz was in a very special state of affairs.”27

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This exceptional character, lived so deeply by each one of them, can only succeed in getting formulated and expressed thanks to a poetic thinking. Moreover in this they share many features in common with writers such as Fernando Pessoa or Franz Kafka, who also experienced in a peculiarly acute way the feeling of their “strangeness”, of their singularity. The expression “poet-thinkers” was quite appropriately applied to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche by Rachel Bespaloff, who in her “Reflections on the spirit of tragedy”28 , did not hesitate to compare them with poets and other writers. Karl Jaspers is saying something similar when he calls these two thinkers “creative in language to the degree that their works belong to the peaks of the literatures of their countries, and they knew it.”29 As poet-thinkers, these thinkers of existence in their exceptional singularity give the philosopher much food for thought, as can works of art, though from another standpoint. But it has to be admitted that their reflection, however profound and challenging for philosophy, nevertheless lacks the dimension of universality which is one of the principal requirements of philosophical reason. Earlier on Karl Jaspers had already noted that “for both of them reflection is above all reflection on their own self. Self-understanding is for them the path of truth.” But this self is first and foremost the self of each in its idiosyncratic particularity and its richness, and not the self thought in the element of the universal to which the philosopher refers when he talks of consciousness of self, or of the ego as transcendental ego, or even of the individual in its singularity, but referred further to its essential humanity. In the fifth and last lecture, “The Possibilities of Philosophical Research Today” – the lecture that closes the cycle of lectures given by K. Jaspers around the theme “reason and existence” – he comes back again to our two thinkers, by declaring that, confronted with the reversal they have effected in philosophy, even though in opposite directions (the one towards faith, the other towards atheism), philosophical research “has to secure once again the basis of its own authentically philosophical faith.”30 Even if we can not entirely agree with some of Karl Jaspers’ interpretations, we should at least grant him the merit of having seen that philosophy requires other foundations than those provided by the poetic thinking of existential thinkers. What is really regrettable is that, not having grasped the importance of Husserlian phenomenology, Karl Jaspers should not have been able to understand that the renewal of the foundations of philosophy had already been effected by the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl. On the basis of

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such an understanding, it is our task today to carry on the work undertaken by Husserl, taking into account the new challenges that arise in our time. Paris, CNRS, Archives Husserl (retired) Translated by C. Macann and Jocelyn D. Blomfield NOTES 1 With regard to Husserl and Kierkegaard, see the article by Michael R. Michau, «Suspensions in Kierkegaard and Husserl», in Cahiers Léon Chestov – The Lev Shestov Journal, no◦ 6, 2006, pp. 10–24. Such approach, however, eludes Husserlian’s philosophical attachment to Reason (theorical and practical reason). 2 Lev Shestov, «In Memory of a Great Philosopher: Edmund Husserl» (transl. by George L. Kline) in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 22: 4 (June), 1962. 3 Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, hrsg. von Stefan Strasser, Husserliana, Bd. I, 1963, p. 183/Cartesian Meditations-An Introduction to Phenomenology,transl. by Dorion Cairns, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, p. 157. 4 L. Shestov would later devote a work to Kierkegaard: Kierkegaard et la Philosophie existentielle, Paris, Vrin, 1948. 5 We also know, thanks to Benjamin Fondane, that when Husserl came to Paris to give his series of lectures at the Sorbonne, Pariser Vorträge, lectures from which the Cartesian Meditations eventually emerged, Shestov offered a reception in his honour at which Rachel Bespaloff was also present and which provided her with an opportunity to question Husserl on his philosophy. See the note 24 to the letter from Rachel Bespaloff to Daniel Halévy (letter dated 12/X/1932), in Conférence no◦ 19, Autumn 2004, p. 570. 6 We are following here the line of thought developed by Denise Souche-Dagues, «La lecture husserlienne de Sein und Zeit in Edmund Husserl, Notes sur Heidegger, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1993, pp. 119–152, en part., p. 127. See «Husserl’s remarks on Heidegger’s works» edited and transl. by Thomas Sheehan in Collective Works, vol. VI, Dordrecht, Boston, London, Kluwer Academic Publishers. See also Edmund Husserl, Briefe an Roman Ingarden, M. Nijhoff, 1968, p. 42. 7 Martin Heidegger, Grund Probleme der Phänomenologie, Gesamtausgabe, Bd. 24, hersg. Von F.-W. von Hermann, V. Klostermann, 1975, p. 29. 8 With the title Vernunft und Existenz, the first edition of these lectures were published in 1935 by J. B. Wolters Verlag. A version in English was translated by William Earle and published by Noonday Press in 1955. In what follows we will quote from this edition. 9 K. Jaspers, Reason and Existence, translated into English by William Earle, Noonday Press, 1955, p. 23. 10 Jaspers, Ibid., p. 25. 11 See Edmund Husserl, in Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922– 1937), edited by Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana, vol. XXVII, The Netherlands, Springer, 1989. 12 Hannah Arendt, «The Philosophy of Existence», in Deucalion no 2, Cahiers de Philosophie, edited by Jean Wahl, 1947. 13 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> (On Renewal), in op. cit., p. 5. 14 Ibid.

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Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. 17 Cf. the chapter ‘The Method of Enquiry into Essences’, from < . . . über Erneuerung > in Aufsätze und Vorträge, pp. 13–20, especially, p. 19. 18 Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (1918–1926), hrg. von Margot Fleischer, Husserliana, Bd XI, 1966, p. 62/Analyses concerning passive and active Synthesis- Lectures on Transcendental Logic, transl. by Anthony J. Steinbock, in Collective Works IX, Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, pp. 102–103. 19 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> (On Renewal), p. 20. 20 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> p. 33. 21 See Maria Villela-Petit, «Comment la conscience s’assure-t-elle de l’idée du divin?» in Jean Nabert et la question du divin, edited by Philippe Capelle, with a Postface by Paul Ricœur, Paris, Cerf, 2003. 22 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> (On Renewal) p. 39. 23 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> p. 42. 24 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> p. 43. 25 Edmund Husserl, < . . . über Erneuerung> p. 58. 26 Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existence, p. 37. 27 Karl Jaspers, Ibid., p. 40. 28 See Rachel Bespaloff, «Réflexions sur l’esprit de la tragédie», in Deucalion, no◦ 2, Cahiers de philosophie, edited by J. Wahl, 1947, pp. 171–193. 29 Karl Jaspers, Reason and Existence, p. 34. 30 Karl Jaspers, Ibid., p. 141. 15 16

JOZEF SIVÁK

D E L’ « I N - E X I S T E N C E » I N T E N T I O N N E L L E À ´L « E K - I N - S I S T E N C E » E X I S T E N T I E L L E

ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with the concept of existence in phenomenology and in philosophies of existence rooted in phenomenology. The author outlines a brief history of the forerunners of existentialism, from Socrates to Pascal. He focuses on several main figures of contemporary existentialism from S. Kierkegaard to M. Merleau-Ponty, including M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, P. Wust, J.-P. Sartre, G. Marcel and I. Quiles. He and refers in particular to the works of two historians of existentialism: E. Mounier, and H. Beck. The question addressed to each of them is: how did existentialist doctrines solve the problem of (philosophical) alienation effected by the existence. The solution oscillates between Sartre’s (nihilistic) “ek-sistence and Quiles” (immanent) “in-sistence”. Thus a conciliation, and even synthesis between these extreme positions is necessary and it was really undertaken by H. Beck. He dismiss the dialectical like positiviste approaches to the benefit of the “ana-loqical” approach to the relationship between the World and its ontological foundation. The union of two positions under the label of “ek-in-sistence” would create a “dynamics of the existentialist thought” leading to a new method, that of “ontological hermeneutics”. It aims at the “understand and explaining” the sense underpinning the existence of a “life-net” and comes to it from a “divine substance”. Even if contemporary existentialism was marked by the phenomenology for good and for worse, the contribution of the latter, in particular that of the phenomenology of intersubjectivity and of the theory of the whole and the part would be necessary to implement the project of this ontological hermeneutics. In conclusion this history of existentialism can be made in parallel to the evolution of Husserl’s thought concerning the phenomenological reduction and transcendental idealism. These ideas were unknown before the publication of Husserl’s latest unpublished manuscripts. In the light then the meaning of the reduction is the “mundanization” (Verwetlichung) of the transcendental ego which manifests itself in the world. And the transcendental 45 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 45–73. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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idealism is described as a synthesis of the natural and the transcendental attitudes to the world. RÉSUMÉ

Ce travail est consacré à la notion d’existence en phénoménologie et dans les philosophies de l’existence issues de celle-ci. L’A., après avoir passé en revue les précurseurs préhistoriques de l’existentialisme, de Socrate à Pascal, s’attarde à des cas de figure de l’existentialisme contemporain à commencer par S. Kierkegaard pour finir avec M. Merleau-Ponty, en passant par M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, P. Wust, J.-P. Sartre, G. Marcel et I. Quiles et en se référant notamment aux travaux de deux historiens de l’existentialisme: E. Mounier, et H. Beck. Comment ces doctrines existentialistes ont-elles résolu le problème d’aliénation (philosophique) posé par l’existence, telle est la question adressée à chacune d’elles. Cette solution oscille entre « ek-sistence » (nihiliste) d’un Sartre et « in-sistence » (immanente) d’un Quiles. Une conciliation voire synthèse entre ces positions extrèmes alors s’impose et elle a été effectivement entreprise par H. Beck écartant une approche dialectique comme celle postiviste au profit de l’approche “ana-logique” du rapport du monde et de son fondement ontologique. La réunion des deux positions sous la notion d’ «ek-in-sistence» créérait une « dynamique de la pensée existentialiste» motivant une métode nouvelle, celle d’une « herméneutique ontologique » qui aurait pour objectif de « comprendre et d’expliquer » le sens qui fonde les liens de la vie et qui lui vient d’un « fond divin ». Même si l’existentialisme contemporain était marqué par la phénoménologie pour le bon comme pour le pire, la contribution de celle-ci, et en particulier la phénoménologie de l’intersubjectivité et la théorie des touts et des parties, serait nécessaire à la réalisation du projet de cette herméneutique ontologique. En conclusion, cette histoire de l’exisistentialisme peut être mise en parallèle avec l’évolution de la pensée de Husserl au sujet de la réduction phénoménologique et de l’idéalisme transcendantal en général, pensée restée inconnue avant la parution des derniers inédits. A leur lumière, le sens de la réduction consiste dans la mondanéisation (Verwetlichung) par laquelle l’ego transcendantal se manifeste dans le monde. Et l’idéalisme transcendantal y est présenté comme une synthèse de l’approche naturelle et de l’approche transcendantale du monde. INTRODUCTION

Le thème du congrès nous ramène à la fameuse distinction brentanienne entre les phénomènes physiques et les phénomènes psychiques. Cette distinction

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n’apparaît pas au niveau des qualités sensibles qui peuvent faire l’objet aussi bien des phénomènes psychiques comme de ceux physiques. Et pourtant, avec les phénomènes psychiques pris à part, tels représentation, jugement, espérance, etc. nous entrons selon Husserl dans un « autre monde » qui a des principes et des objets propres. Ce sont ces principes et ces objets voire « êtres » qui nous intéresseront avant tout. Quant aux principes, c’est, comme on le sait, celui d’intentionnalité qui entre en considération en premier lieu. En vertu de ce principe, la conscience dans son ensemble comme dans ses structures, est toujours la conscience de quelque chose à titre d’ « objet intentionnel ». Un tel objet n’existe pas à la manière des choses, p.e. l’(objet) imaginé ne se trouve pas dans le monde mais dans l’imagination, c’est une « existence dans », une existence indirecte, une « in-existence », Inexistenz dans la a terminologie de Brentano,1 que Husserl empruntera dans son système. L’intentionnalité se trouve ainsi au fondement de l’apparition des objectités en permettant de suivre leur « naissance », à savoir leur constitution. Cette constitution allant de la restitution pure et simple d’un objet jusqu’à sa « création » a fait couler beaucoup d’ancre sans parler des scissions au sein du mouvement phénoménologique. D’un côté, la phénoménologie nous met devant un choix: soit de vivre les phénomènes à l’intérieur de nous-mêmes, soit de vivre auprès des choses, hors de nous-mêmes. La constitution touche ici à un autre phénomène, celui d’aliénation philosophique. Cette alternative a fait naître deux tendances en phénoménologie: l’une, « noétique » et l’autre, « existentialiste. » La première met, entre la réalité et la raison, un sujet connaissant à la recherche des concepts au moyen desquels les étants ou plutôt les choses sont saisis. La deuxième assume consciemment ou non, l’aliénation comme une expérience vécue, un mode d’être de l’homme que l’on continue d’appeler l’ « existence » à distinguer dès lors de l’existence au sens traditionnel. Les deux tendances phénoménologiques ou plutôt phénoménologies avec d’autres « hérésies » phénoménologiques (P. Ricœur) appartiennent déjà à l’histoire qui a déjà fait l’objet de nombreux travaux. Pour notre entreprise limitée et modeste à la fois nous en avons retenus deux, celui du fondateur du personnalisme français Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950), devenu classique2 et surtout celui plus récent d’Heinrich Beck (1929), professeur de philosophie émérite de l’Université de Bamberg, initiateur de recherches sur la « triadique » et 1’« ontodynamique », partisan et organisateur d’un dialogue philosophique Ouest – Est.3 Il sera notre référence privilégiée offrant non seulement un aperçu sur le développement de la philosophie de l’existence mais de plus une approche systématique et perspectiviste de cette force spirituelle contemporaine.

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P RO B L È M E F O N D A M E N TA L La notion clé de cette philosophie vouée à la situation et au sens de l’homme est celle d’existence et ses formes historiques diverses. L’existence au sens classique (existentia) concernait l’ « être-là » (Dasein) d’un étant quelconque, répondant à la question de savoir si « en général est ». Par contre la question « Qu’est-(ce)? » concernerait son « essence » (essentia). La philosophie de l’existence s’écartera, comme nous le savons, de cette conception abstraite de l’existence pour promouvoir l’ « existence concrète de l’homme »4 qui se rapporte à l’Etre et est conscient de ce rapport. Il ne s’agit donc pas de n’importe quelle existence mais de l’existence authentique ou de l’exister en dépassant l’état originaire d’aliénation de l’être-là dans les choses. Cela aurait exigé aussi une méthode particulière qui serait une combinaison de la phénoménologie et de la dialectique.5 La compréhension de soi-même, faussée par le sentiment d’insécurité de l’homme à l’heure de la technique, est en elle-même un problème et un « mystère du privé » (Ge-heim-nis) pouvant se pervertir en une « énigme » (Rätsel) d’étranger, d’ « in-quiétude » (un-heim-liches).6 La recherche incessante de son propre fondement est un « problème fondamental » (Grund-Frage) spécifiquement humain. La solution de ce problème dépendra de la manière d’aborder ce fondement (solution matérialiste, solution existentialiste de la formation de soi-même). Une autre solution refusant le fondement inconditionné et absolu de l’homme représente le positivisme et en particulier la « théorie critique du langage »,7 à savoir la philosophie analytique. L’expérience y est remplacée par des signes linguistiques et le contenu par la forme. Cependant le langage peut s’appliquer aussi à l’étude et à l’éclaircissement de l’expérience dans le but de devenir la « parole des choses ». Dans le cas contraire, le positivisme peut devenir une idéologie pure est simple. C’est le nominalisme qui aurait rendu possible aussi bien l’empirisme que le positivisme. Les notions ne sont que des noms, des désignations, par elles nous saisissons les choses, nous les prenons littéralement. Nommer, c’est prendre en possession.8 Il en résulte, paradoxalement, la préférence donnée à l’existence au détriment de l’essence de la chose et de l’homme, de leurs propriétés lesquelles ne leur viennent du dehors mais qu’ils possèdent d’eux-mêmes. Comme l’existence, l’essence subit, elle aussi, une modification: de générale elle devient individuelle comme elle l’était d’ailleurs déjà dans le thomisme. On peut être d’accord avec tout cela jusqu’ici mais la mise du procédé du positivisme du côté de la voie dite négative de la théologie appelle des réserves. A la saisie notionnelle échapperait non seulement l’essence des choses mais aussi Ur-bild divin, remplacé par Dieu comme « tout autre » (der völlig

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Andere), séparé du monde et des choses voire dialectiquement opposé et à celui-ci et à celles-ci. Or un tel Dieu inexistant serait inadmissible pour notre auteur, penseur catholique, qui en fait l’objet de la théologie négative et dialectique depuis le néoplatonisme à Sartre athée, en passant par Kierkegaard, protestant luthérien. Une telle approche de l’idée de Dieu chez quelqu’un qui réclame pour l’homme un fondement inconditionné, interpréta l’Etre comme acte et écrivit une « théologie naturelle »9 peut surprendre, si elle n’est pas liée à un malentendu.10 Un écueil à éviter: le renoncement à la saisie notionnelle de l’être, qui devient un « arrière-fond » (Hinter-Grund) en faveur de l’homme en tant qu’être libre, conduit cependant à la crise que l’on peut surmonter seulement en libérant et en réhabilitant le concept en tant qu’expression de la réalité qui se manifeste.11

PRÉCURSEURS Si par les phénoménologies « noétique » et « existentielle» nous entendons respectivement surtout celles de Husserl et de Heidegger, les précurseurs de l’existentialisme remontent jusqu’à l’antiquité et au Moyen âge. Selon Mounier, « à la rigueur, il n’est pas de philosophie qui ne soit existentialiste »12 La problématisation de soi n’a cependant pas chez l’homme une origine positiviste, mais remonte jusqu’aux présocratiques avec leurs protofondements (l’eau, le feu, l’air, la terre) et passe par Aristote, Augustin et Thomas d’Aquin. Cette recherche du fondement dans la direction du passé est en même temps une recherche du point de vue de la liberté, le rapport décisif étant celui à Dieu – Homme ou Dieu? Ainsi peut-on expliquer la naissance d’un même humanisme aussi bien de l’athéisme que du théisme. Socrate est existentialiste grâce à son impératif: « Connais-toi toi-même. » Et Les stoïciens invitaient les Grecs à la maîtrise de soi. Selon H. Beck, c’est saint Augustin qui peut être considéré comme le « premier » penseur existentialiste et précurseur de la philosophie de l’existence13 et qui part de l’existence humaine empirique pour surmonter la décadence du monde dans la rencontre personnelle avec le fondement divin. Plus concrètement . . . er betont, daß der Mensch nur insoweit seine Identität erreicht, als er sich aus der Gebrochenheit seines Daseins auschwingt zur Begegnung mit einem göttlichen Du, das durch persönlichen Anruf das geschöpfliche Ich begründet. Augustinus weist, der Existenzphilosophie voraus, auf die Vordergründigkeit eines unmittelbaren empirischen Daseins hin, er analysiert die Hohlheit und Verfallenheit der Welt und reklamiert inmitten der Verweslichkeit des Zeitlichen die Verwesentlichung durch die persönliche Begegnung mit dem ewigenen göttlichen Sinngrund.14

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Thomas d’Aquin, allant dans les traces d’Augustin, donnera à l’ «intentio », « esse intentionale » toute son envergure bien que dans une perspective théocentrique, Dieu étant le principe et le critère de toute la vérité.15 De l’autre côté, l’homme reste dans un dialogue privilégié avec Dieu, dialogue fondé sur la participation d’amour au divin.16 Une autre racine de la philosophie de l’existence au Moyen âge représente Occam avec son nominalisme: il s’ensuivra une attitude sceptique à l’égard de l’essence et la préférence de l’existence à celle-ci dans des conceptions philosophiques diverses allant du nominalisme kantien au nihilisme sartrien. Kant17 lui-même encore influencera Nietzsche, Dilthey et Bergson pour déboucher dans une philosophie volontariste de la vie et par là dans la philosophie de l’existence. Pascal, que Mounier considère comme le père de l’existentialisme moderne, réagira contre le scientisme et le mécanisme de son époque – Descartes fut selon lui « inutile et incertain » – en rappelant que l’homme est un tout et un être vivant. Ce qui caractérisera toutes les philosophies de l’existence, répétons-le, c’est l’ interprétation de l’existence en tant qu’acte d’ « être hors » (Hinausstehen) du moi empirique immédiat, ce qu’exprime la préposition grecque « ek-». L’homme, ainsi dé-centré, aliéné, cherche son fondement lui permettant d’accéder à son identité. E X I S T E N T I A L I S M E C O M M E P H I L O S O P H I E D E L’ « EK-SISTENCE »

KIERKEGAARD ET LA « THÉOLOGIE D E L’ E X I S T E N C E » Le vrai fondateur de la philosophie de l’existence est Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), critique de Hegel, avec sa « théologie de l’existence ».18 Au système absolu de celui-ci, il opposera l’existence absolue. Le point de départ en est la « décadence ontique de l’homme », à savoir la perte de l’individualité du moi en faveur de l’universel, qu’il s’agisse de l’universel philosophique (par ex., l’idéalisme dialectique de Hegel), de celui de la science naturelle ou de celui de l’existence de masse.19 Au fondement de l’homme, se trouvent les trois stades kierkegaardiens du cheminement de la vie qui devraient le faire sortir de sa situation eksistentielle: esthétique, éthique et religieux. Même si ces stades sont bien connus, voici en bref comment les aborde notre auteur. Au premier stade, l’homme se comporte « esthétiquement » à savoir comme livré aux stimuli et aux excitations venant de l’environnement extérieur. Même

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s’il parvient à raffiner ses goûts esthètiques, il est incapable de partager l’amitié ou l’amour. Et ne réussissant pas non plus à donner un sens à sa vie, il finit par tomber dans l’angoisse. Le deuxième et une réaction, tel « saut existentiel », au premier: l’homme prend du recul par rapport à son environnement immédiat en s’orientant aux valeurs éthiques (estime d’autrui, justice, responsabilité). Mais le caractère abstrait des valeurs peut se trouver en conflit avec sa situation concrète, de sorte qu’il ne parviendra à recouvrir son identité et à échapper finalement au même sentiment d’angoisse. Enfin, l’anonymat de la forme éthique d’existence pousse l’homme à effectuer un autre « saut existentiel » dans la direction d’un Toi divin inconditionné, qui d’ailleurs, l’appelle, cela dans l’entière liberté. La conversion est acte de liberté individuelle que personne ne peut faire à la place d’autrui. Ce n’est qu’à ce stade que l’Ek-sistence devient authentiquement humaine: on devient un homme par rapport à Dieu. En discutant cette doctrine, l’historien allemand lui reproche une trop grande séparation de ces stades malgré le fait qu’ils sont en relation dialectique qui est antithétique. L’altérité radicale du Dieu kierkegaardien excluant la similitude, «ana-logie » de l’être qui lui est chère, nous verrons encore, empêcherait le passage du monde à Dieu. La portée des stades en question serait alors très limitée à quoi s’ajoute l’attitude nominaliste de Kierkegaard mettant hors circuit le fondement essentiel des phénomènes. Et derrière l’angoisse et la négativité il faudrait voir l’amour primaire qui agit en elles.

JA S P E R S E T L A « D I A L E C T I Q U E D E L ’ E X I S T E N C E » Avec Kierkegaard enchaînerait en le radicalisant Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), présenté comme un « dialecticien de l’existence » chez qui l’existence finit là où commence la transcendance.20 Il part de la constatation que l’être-là, la conscience et l’esprit sont la source d’une décadence et de la culpabilité originelle de l’homme. A ces trois composantes ou couches de l’homme (qui rappellent les stades de Kierkegaard) s’ajoute l’« existence » comme quelque chose conceptuellement insaisissable rendant possible la rencontre de la transcendance. L’homme ne retrouve son fondement que dans des situations limites (mort, souffrance, maladie, lutte), dans ces situations, l’existence humaine en tant que possibilité pure devient elle-même. L’homme, avant de se retrouver dans de telles situations, est averti sous forme de « chiffres », qui sont en quelque sorte le « langage » de la transcendance.21 A cet appel de la transcendance, l’homme répond par une « foi philosophique » qui n’a aucun contenu concret de même

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que la transcendance que nous limiterions même si nous y voyons l’amour ou le Créateur omnipotent. Cet irrationalisme extrême, qui accompagne l’expérience de la transcendance, contient néanmoins une ontologie minimale liée à la transcendance qui nous appelle ou avertit par ses manières d’être telles « être-en général », « être–tel », « être–autre ».22 Un approfondissement du sens d’être est encore possible par ces contenus spirituels, tels que l’amour ou la vérité, qui bien qu’illimités, se réalisent dans le monde de façon limitée. Par exemple, l’ « amour » . . . begegnet uns im Weltbereich . . . nur in begrenzten Maße. Sie ist dann nicht deshalb begrenzt, weil sie Liebe ist, sondern weil die Bedingungen der Welt, wie bestimmte Fähigkeiten, Bereitschaften oder Umstände, ihrer Verwirklichung eine Grenze setzen. Dies gibt aber den Blick frei auf eine weltranszendente ursprünglichere Wirklichkeit von der ´Liebe´ mit uneingeschränkten Recht und unbegrenzter Wahrheit ausgesagt werden kann.23

En ce sens il y a une analogie entre l’être mondain et l’être transcendant à l’arrière-fond du non semblable infini: on approche la transcendance à distance infinie tout en ayant l’idée de l’illimité ou de l’indéfini. Quant à la réalité intramondaine, celle-ci est connaissable par un sujet connaissant qui doit sortir de soi pour entrer dans la réalité l’englobant. Aucun « saut » dans l’irrationnel n’est nécessaire.24 On pourrait, néanmoins, concéder à Jaspers l’affirmation que l’on ne saurait saisir le fondement transcendant à partir des concepts mondains. De l’autre côté, on pourrait se vouer à la transcendence indéterminée à condition de prendre ses formes (vérité, amour, beauté, etc.) dans leur positivité suressentielle. Et le « déjettement schizophrène » entre l’homme dans la « ’superstructure’ rationaliste », par laquelle il est enchevêtré avec le monde et la couche irrationnelle, par laquelle il éprouve la transcendance, serait surmontable à condition de saisir la réalité telle quelle se montre et non pas comme une construction intellectuelle.25

H E I D E G G E R E T L’ « O N TO L O G I E E X I S T E N T I A L E » Ce mot final de l’exposé de Jaspers peut servir de transition à un autre cas de figure que représente l’ontologie « existentiale » (existenzial) de Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)26 mettant encore plus l’accent sur la thèse de la philosophie de l’ek-sistence selon laquelle le fondement dernier de l’homme diffère absolument de celui-ci. A cela correspond la fameuse différence ontologique: au fondement de tout étant, de tout mode d’être, se trouve l’être qui est « néant ». Outre cette différence ontologique, c’est la question de l’être que se pose l’être-là (humain) (Dasein) qui préoccupe Heidegger dès le début. Ce Dasein

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n’est ni un sujet ni sa négation. Il part ainsi non pas des modes d’être mais des modes d’ek-sister, à savoir les « existentiaux » dont le souci occupe une position privilégiée. Dans l‘ « ek-sistence » (Ek-sistenz), l’homme représente le pronom « là» de l’Etre, il devient son voisin. Et l’être-là contingent devient « être-le-là » qui signifie que dans le dévoilement de la vérité (Alétheia) l’homme représente l’Etre comme « là », le présentifie. Ainsi l‘Etre émerge-t-il des ténèbres au jour, il devient l’ « éclairement » (Lichtung). Finalement, l’être étant exclu comme néant, il ne restera à Heidegger que de considérer Dieu (ou dieux) présent dans l’expérience religieuse comme le « destin historique de l’Etre ».27 Dans sa discussion (critique), Beck constate que la relativisation et l’historisation de l’être par Heidegger relativisent aussi sa propre position. Dieu, Etre et vérité sont intemporels même si leur connaissance, démonstration sont conditionnées par le temps. Même des déterminants de l’agir humain, tels que l’angoisse ou le souci ne sauraient être absolutisés car ils ne se rapportent pas, par ex., à la période de l’enfance. Sous le poids de ces arguments, auxquels on pourrait ajouter d’autres, le principe de Heidegger tourne: ce n’est plus le temps mais c’est l’être qui constitue l‘horizon de toute intelligence du temps. »28 S A R T R E E T L’ « E X I S T E N T I A L I S M E N I H I L I S T E » La radicalisation de la façon de raisonner dialectique – la dialectique serait, selon Mounier, caractéristique de tous les philosophe de l’existence – atteindrait le plus haut point chez Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), avec son « existentialisme nihiliste ». L’intention philosophique fondamentale de Sartre n’est ni l’être ni une manière d’être mais le « pur néant » (reines Nichts) qui est au fondement aussi bien de l’étant que de l’homme, lequel, à son tour, se fonde comme liberté absolue justement par cette « néantisation » (Nichtung). Ce néant, et par là la néantisation, concerne, avant tout, le monde, le prochain et Dieu. Le néant du monde est relatif. Pour être libre, l’homme doit faire le choix entre le déterminisme du monde fondé sur l’« être en soi » et l’ « être de la liberté » qui est « pour soi ». L’ « ek-sistence » sartrienne résulterait alors, d’un double mouvement. D’un côté, c’est l’ « acte de se tenir dehors dans le néant » (Hinausstehen ins Nichts) en néantisant les choses et en se libérant d’elles. De l’autre, c’est l’ « acte de se tenir hors le néant » ( Hinausstehen aus dem Nichts) par un retour à soi, dans une auto-position subjective, « en devenant libre pour soi ». Et la thèse qui a valu à la conception de Sartre l’appellation « existentialisme », mot qu’il refusait et Heidegger avant lui, à savoir que

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« l’existence précède l’essence » ne fait que confirmer cette création de l’homme par lui même à travers le mouvement circulaire de l’ek-sister venant d’être décrit. Le néant du prochain (Mit-Mensch) n’est pas moins relatif. Comme son regard déjà me fixe, m’objectivise, me menace même dans mon être et ma liberté, je suis forcé d’y échapper. Cela vaut également pour des relations spécifiques: maître-élève, parents-enfants ou conjugales (→ relations or époux – épouse). Deux voies sont alors possibles. Celle de la force (« starker Weg ») en opposant au regard analytique d’autrui mon propre regard analytique pour le « trans-cender ». Et celle de la faiblesse (« Weg der schwäche ») en me retirant, ce qui est accompagné d’une certaine néantisation du partenaire. Toujours est-il que l’homme se libère et se crée à partir du néant relatif d’autrui.29 Par contre, le néant de Dieu est absolu. A condition qu’il y ait un Dieu. Dans un tel cas, l’homme face au sujet absolu omnipotent et omnisavant perdrait toute sa liberté et toute sa personnalité. Aussi est- ce du néant absolu de Dieu que l’homme se crée-t-il au sens absolu. Il s’ensuit une radicalisation dudit mouvement circulaire de l’ek-sister. Der Mensch soll in das absolute Nichts das Nichts Gottes hinausstehen; d.h. ab-solut, un-bedingt ek-sistieren. Er muß jeglichen scheinbar Halt gebenden metaphysischen Sinn und Sinnanspruch auflösen und für nichtig erklären, um aus dem Ab-grund des ab-soluten Nichts her ganz allein auf sich selbst zurückgeworfen zu werden und aus dem absoluten Nitchts Gottes ab-solut zu sich her ´herauszustehen´, zu ek-sistieren.30

L’interprétation du concept d’« Ek-sistence comme l’« ek-stase », aurait permis à Sartre de passer même de l’existentialisme au marxisme. La néantisation conduit à de nouveaux points de départ, à savoir la chose et le soi-même et par-là finalement au matérialisme et au collectivisme qui, chez Sartre, avaient la forme de marxisme et de socialisme. Les choses intramondaines deviennent l’objet de la technique de l’homme qui s’objectivise alors, à son tour, et perd son individualité. Dans la discussion critique, les thèses sartriennes sur la liberté et la (re)connaissance objective qui néantisent et sur l’être sans Dieu s’avèrent intenables. Le retour à soi n’exige pas en même temps un détournement des choses et des autres, détournement, qui est accompagné par l’angoisse. Et celle-ci ne permet pas d’être pleinement libre. Il faut encore s’affirmer avec courage. Car, la liberté a toujours une dimension interpersonnelle. L’ amour ne rend pas moins libre à condition de se réaliser dans l’acte d’adresser la parole à autrui et de se réclamer de lui. Et que celui-ci, à son tour, ait quelque chose à nous donner. Enfin, étant donné notre structure sociale et avec elle le risque de perversion de l’amour comme de la liberté, perversion exprimée dans une « idéologie », une critique de celle-ci est nécessaire pour rétablir la vérité et la liberté ek-sistentielles.

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Je peux me libérer, ensuite, de l‘emprise d’autrui en l’analysant et en l’objectivant à mon tour. Or là encore, d’un côté, une connaissance et une explication objectives ne suffisent pas et de l’autre, ladite structure sociale peut influencer notre conscience dans l’ensemble sous forme d’un « scepticisme noétique » et d’un « nihilisme éthique ». La compréhension d’autrui présuppose, outre l’ouverture de sa part, un engagement co-effectuant et accompagnant du sujet connaissant tourné vers le futur. Enfin, Sartre en partant de l’alternative « Dieu comme sujet absolu ou l’homme comme objet impuissant » ne suppose pas moins sa notion de liberté en Dieu qu’il réfute par la suite. Cette dialectique porte l’atteinte finalement à la notion de liberté elle-même, et cela par le passage au marxisme. De l’autre côté, la protestation de Sartre contre Dieu est dirigée contre un Dieu haïssant et jaloux, en un mot, contre une idole. Car l‘ « athéisme comme protestation contre ‘Dieu d’angoisse’, à la différence de l’athéisme comme négation de ‘Dieu d’amour’, peut conduire à la liberté. »31 La mystique nihiliste de Sartre où l’ « ek-sistence » signifie l’ « ek-stase « dans le néant peut rappeler également la tradition mystique de la théologie « négative » (Pseudo Denys, Cusanus et autres) dont il fut déjà question. Avec cette différence toutefois: dans la « théologie négative », il s’agit d’un rien (nihil) au sens plein du terme, rien que remplira le « fiat » alors que le néant existentialiste n’est qu’un « voile » de l’être.

W U S T E T L’ « E X I S T E N T I A L I S M E C H R É T I E N » Pour surmonter cet existentialisme nihiliste, c’est tout naturellement que s’offre Peter Wust (1884–1940) et son « existentialisme chrétien » selon lequel on ne peut fonder quelque chose que sur quelque chose qui existe et non pas sur le néant. De même, il concevra l’incertitude (existentielle) dans le temps comme un appel à la « certitude métaphysique dans l’éternité ».32 L’homme éprouve cette incertitude dans son for intérieur, plus concrètement elle consiste « dans l’équilibre labile de la nature et de l’esprit « et dans la tension entre l’entendement et la raison. A cette situation interne originaire de l’ « ek-sistence », s’ajoute une dimension extérieure qu’est la « dialectique de l‘individu et de la communauté », dialectique qui est au fondement de l’histoire. Le leitmotiv de Wust sera alors la recherche de la certitude dans l’incertitude, ce qui présupposerait l’éclaircissement de trois niveaux de cette incertitude: celui de l’expérience du destin, celui de la raison philosophique et celui de la religion. Au premier niveau et le plus bas, l’homme est victime des vicissitudes de la fortune et de la malchance de son existence. Et bien qu’ayant à sa

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disposition la technique, il est impuissant face l’irrationnel et à l’imprévu de son environnement vital et de l’histoire. Au deuxième niveau, l’homme, animal raisonnable, essaie de pouvoir, grâce à sa raison philosophique questionnante, pénétrer le sens du tout de la réalité comme de soi-même. Mais il n’y réussira pas, sa situation existentielle étant celle de la « demi-obscurité ouverte » (offene Halbdunkel). Autrement dit, il doit se contenter, avec un « engagement maximal », d’un « minimum en évidence ».33 C’est au niveau religieux de l’ek-sistence que l’on atteint le centre d’existence au plus profond. L’homme a été créé avec une nature mixte, somato-spirituelle, à savoir comme indéterminé, insécurisé. Aussi ne peut-il que gagner en sécurité s’il se livre librement et sagement à l’amour de Dieu. Par là même il retrouvera son fondement décentré, et dissipé qu’il est, il pourra dans le recueillement retrouver son calme. L’analyse de la conception de Wust nous apprend des insuffisances, d’un côté, dans la fondation philosophico-théorique de la foi et de l’autre, de sa notion de « philosophie chrétienne » en général. Sa théorie de la connaissance est encore nominaliste et la pensée conceptuelle réduite à une « technique intellectuelle », ce qui, pour décider des dernières questions du sens, aurait, paradoxalement, pour conséquence un « irrationalisme subjectif ».34 Du côté français, comme pour répondre à Wust, on peut citer Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) que Beck ne mentionne qu’en passant et que Gaëtan Picon considérait comme le premier philosophe français méritant d’être appelé « existentialiste ». De l’autre côté, Marcel peut être mis en parallèle avec Heidegger, son Journal métaphysique datant de la même année que Sein und Zeit et traitant des thèmes ontologiques et existentiels semblables et, avec Jaspers, par sa notion d’ « être-en-situation » (J. Parain-Vial). M A R C E L E T L E « S O C R AT I S M E C H R É T I E N » Marcel part de l’existence, comme il se doit, pour aboutir à l’Etre. Car l’existence, selon lui, souffre d’une « déficience ontologique » et, située qu’elle est entre l’être et le non-être, elle est toujours inachevée. L’existence participe à la réalité, ce qu’exprime l’expression « être-au-monde » et aspire comme le Dasein heideggerien à l’être. De l’autre côté, c’est une unité primaire qui s’exprime par un sentiment immanent aux perceptions et par lequel le sujet participe à son environnement et finalement à l’être. Comme le sentir est invérifiable, il en va de même de la vérité laquelle n’est construite par le sujet ni non plus un reflet d’un être en soi, on ne peut, par conséquent, la posséder. On ne peut que la connaître de façon active, ce qui exige le courage et l’amour. Elle détermine même l’essence de l’homme,

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essence, qu’il ne faut pas confondre avec un concept, mais elle est à interpréter « dialectiquement »: elle n’est pas purement idéale, désincarnée puisqu’elle se rapporte à l‘existence et est éclairante bien qu’invisible. A côté de l‘être-au-monde, G. Marcel thématise d’autres modes d’être: amour, espérance, foi, liberté. Aussi sa philosophie n’est-elle pas seulement une philosophie de l’être et de la liberté (comme chez Sartre), mais elle est liée à l’inquiétude occultée par des philosophies conceptuelles. Cette inquiétude traduit quelque chose de plus qu’un état subjectif: « . . . être inquiet signifie chercher son centre ». C’est que la paix intérieure et l’harmonie que la philosophie est appelée à instituer ne sont pas données d’emblée. L’enjeu d’une telle philosophie, c’est un sujet qui évolue non seulement dans l’intériorité mais surtout dans la réalité à la manière d’un jeu voire d’un drame. Le philosophe français invitait, d’ailleurs, ses lecteurs à voir la clé de sa philosophie dans son oeuvre dramatique. M E R L E AU – P O N T Y E T L A « P H I L O S O P H I E D E L’ A M B I G U Ï T É » Si Mounier ne mentionne pas encore Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) dont nous nous rappelons, cette année, le centenaire, parmi les existentialistes, au moins on a l’impression que c’est à lui qu’il aurait réservé un rameau sans nom, cela juste à côté de Sartre. H. Beck le mentionne, il est vrai, mais ne lui consacre que quelques remarques sous la ligne. L’ek-sistence chez Merleau-Ponty serait liée à la corporéité organique de l’homme. C’est par son corps qu’il serait arraché à son milieu et jeté dans le monde, en un mot hors de soi, vers l‘autre. Et l’homme n’aurait pas le corps mais il serait son corps, il réaliserait son être à la manière corporelle.35 Tout d’abord, Merleau-Ponty se rattache à l’existentialisme comme Marcel, par l’expression « être-au-monde » en en rapprochant encore plus les termes: l’homme est relié au monde comme par un « cordon ombilical ». Cette relation pré-existe à l’apparaître du monde et des choses comme objets. Il faut repenser le rapport extérieur-intérieur en rejetant la solution idéaliste qui immanentise le premier et le réalisme qui soumet le second à une action causale. Le problème de la modalité existentielle du social rejoint . . . tous les problèmes de transcendance. Qu’il s’agisse de mon corps, du monde naturel, du passé, de la naissance ou de la mort, la question est toujours de savoir comment je peux être ouvert à des phénomènes qui me dépassent et qui, . . . n’existent que dans la mesure où je les reprends et les vis, comment la présence à soimême (Urpräsenz) qui me définit et conditionne toute présence étrangère est en même temps dé-présentation (Entgegenwärtigung) et me jette hors de moi.36

Des propos existentiels sont, ensuite, présentes dans sa philosophie du langage, le langage étant pour lui l’être du sens. Non pas forcément le langage

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direct, verbal des philosophies idéalistes, mais surtout « indirect », celui de la littérature comme par ex., le « discours indirect libre » à la Flaubert,37 celui de la peinture,38 celui du film, celui du corps propre . . . Mais aussi celui d’un paysage ou d’un son, tout cela sont des variantes de la « parole universelle ». Les philosophes passent très vite sur les qualités de ces « voix du silence » dans l’approche du réel comme de l’invisible. Merleau-Ponty est, enfin, existentialiste comme « philosophe de l’ambiguité » (A. de Waelhens). Il en était conscient, d’un côté et de l’autre, on se méprendrait sur le mot d’ambiguïté si l’on y voyait une équivoque, une errance ou obscurité purement et simplement. Le philosophe se reconnaît à ce qu’il a inséparablement le goût de l’évidence et le sens de l’ambiguïté. Quand il se borne à subir l’ambiguïté, elle s’appelle équivoque. Chez les plus grands elle devient thème, elle contribue à fonder les certitudes, au lieu de les menacer.39

Il s’agit d’une ambiguïté foncière, excluant toute transparence (idéologique), et qui est à la racine des phénomènes mixtes et de transition, tels la perception, la subjectivité, la corporéité ou la relation intersubjective. L’ambiguïté annonce aussi une dialectique sans synthèse,40 dialectique dyadique à l’ancienne, permettant même au prix d’une circularité de refaire la totalité. Toujours est-il que la notion d’ambiguïté évoluera, d’un côté, et de l’autre, s’ajouteront d’autres intermédiaires de cette dialectique réelle. Par rapport à Sartre, Merleau-Ponty n’accepte pas l’alternative l’être ou le néant: grâce à ma foi perceptive je me trouve en face de quelque chose, la néantisation étant secondaire face à ce qu’elle veut néantiser. Cette table est toujours là, que le monde environnant existe ou non. Le négatif, c’est celui de l’interrogation qui est inhérente à notre vie. Nos questions ordinaires – « où suis-je? », « quelle heure est-il? » – sont le manque et l‘absence provisoire d’un fait ou d’un énoncé positif, trous dans un tissus de choses ou d’indicatifs dont nous sommes sûrs qu’il est continu, puisqu’il y a un temps, un espace et qu’il ne s’agit que de savoir à quel point de cette espace et de ce temps nous en sommes. La philosophie, à première vue, généralise seulement ce genre de questions.41

Un tel questionnement, loin de néantiser l’être, me déplace par rapport à lui, je suis un « écart » sans être immergé entièrement dans lui comme dans l’En-soi sartrien. Ainsi je ne me confonds pas avec l’être dont je reste pourtant absolument près et éloigné en même temps, et cela grâce à mon corps. Comme proximité, mon corps est vision et « visible en droit » n’étant pas pour moi visible en fait. On peut parler même d’une intentionnalité corporelle sur laquelle reposera aussi la notion d’existence chez Merleau-Ponty. Si, ensuite, la phénoménologie merleau-pontyenne du corps annonçait déjà un dépassement de l’opposition classique « corps-âme », le corps propre y était encore prisonnier de la philosophie réflexive. Un « tournant de l’expérience »

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(R. Barbaras) était alors nécessaire pour trouver une expérience plus originelle de l’Etre et du monde et en même temps un autre médium, à côté du langage. Plus concrètement, ce tournant opéré dans le Visible et l’Invisible consiste dans le passage du corps à la chair que l’on observe chez le fondateur de la phénoménologie, mais Merleu-Ponty lui donnera toute son envergure, ce que lui permettra de passer de la phénoménologie à l’ontologie. Au point de la considérer comme un « élément » à ajouter aux quatre éléments des présocratiques. La chair, « corps de chaire » (Leibkörper) husserlien ne serait pas moins pour lui un être, l’Etre « brut » dans sa terminologie. En ce sens, le corps organique s‘égale au monde en l’enveloppant mais, de l‘autre côté, l’être du monde, cet Etre « vertical » l’englobe à son tours, ce qui rappelle Pascal.42 Ce double enveloppement est sans distance comme l‘est « touchant-touché » de mes deux mains. Voyant-visible est une autre relation de ce genre, relation concrète, charnelle où les deux termes s’entrelacent, s’empiètent réciproquement.43 Mieux: ils sont mutuellement réversibles comme des plis de la même chair. Le voyant doit sortir de soi pour voir le visible qui est dehors. De l’autre côté, le visible s’intériorise à mon corps, devient un dedans. Ainsi, la chair est-elle avant les distinctions sartriennes de l’en-soi, du pour-soi comme du pour-autrui pour leur servir de support en tant qu’ « intercorporéité » et, finalement, pour constituer ou plutôt instituer des « intermondes » (naturel, social, culturel, monde d’autrui, mon monde). Et comme le voyant l’invisible n’est pas non plus le contraire du visible, il s’inscrit en profondeur dans le visible en tant que son expression. Mais qu’en est-il du lien de la chair et de l’idée? On touche ici au point le plus difficile, c’est-à-dire au lien de la chair et de l’idée, du visible et de l’armature intérieure qu’il manifeste et qu’il cache. Personne n’a été plus loin que Proust dans la fixation des rapport du visible et de l’invisible, dans la description d’une idée qui n’est pas le contraire du sensible qui en est la doublure et la profondeur . . . La littérature, la musique, les passions, mais aussi l’expérience du monde visible, sont non moins que la science . . . l’exploration d’un invisible et, aussi bien qu’elle, dévoilement d’un univers d’idées. Simplement, cet invisible-là, ces idées-là, ne se laissent pas . . . détacher des apparence sensibles, et ériger en seconde positivité. L’idée musicale, l’idée littéraire, la dialectique de l’amour, et aussi les articulations de la lumière, les modes d’exhibition du son et du toucher nous parlent . . .44

L’invisible ne veut pas dire un retour pur et simple au monde d’idéalités, mais au langage inséparable de la pensée laquelle, à son tours, devient la « parole opérante » pour relayer la vision dans la description du visible. Le rapport entre le visible et l’invisible est encore celui d’un chiasme et d’une réversibilité mutuelle. Cette parole demeure ambiguë: d’un côté, elle parle sur le corps, et de l’autre, elle le prolonge.

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Ai-je ou suis-je, enfin, mon corps? La réponse de Merleau-Ponty serait oui et non et, dans les deux cas, on s’appuie sur l’expérience. J’ai mon corps dans la mesure où je l’instrumentalise pour le maîtriser; je le suis dans la mesure où il m’instrumentalise en m’écartant hors de moi, en me faisant ek-sister. D E L’ « E K - S I S T E N C E » À L’ « I N - S I S T E N C E » . I . Q U I L E S

La philosophie ou plutôt les philosophies de l’existence, pour la plupart difficilement conciliables avec la tradition à cause de leurs tendances nihilistes, leur théorie de la connaissance nominaliste, et ajoutons, à cause de leurs compromissions politiques et idéologiques, ont perdu beaucoup de leur actualité et d’influence. H. Beck n’hésite pas de parler d’une crise due surtout à l’unilatéralité de la notion (positiviste) d’ek-sistence. Pour se libérer d’un fondement positif, dit-il . . . muß der Mensch daher aus allem erfahrbaren Sein heraustreten, er muß radikal ´ek-sistieren´.45

De l’autre côté, la philosophie de l’existence a cessé d’être une spécialité de la philosophie dite continentale46 pour passer les frontières de l’Europe, notamment après la Deuxième guerre mondiale, et ce non seulement pour être lue mais aussi pour être discutée et critiquée. H. Beck, professeur visitant plusieurs universités en Amérique du Nord comme du Sud et un bon connaisseur de la philosophie et de la culture latino-méxicaines, notamment, découvre dans l’œuvre d’Ismael Quiles (1906– 1993),47 penseur argentin, d’origine espagnole, une alternative à la philosophie de l’existence sous forme d’une philosophie de l’ « in-sistence ». Aussi l’a-t-il introduit en Allemagne dans le cadre de son séminaire international « La paix créatrice par la rencontre des cultures mondiales ». Ayant analysé la notion d’ « existence » dans la tradition et chez les existentialistes, Quiles arrive à la constatation que l’essence de l’homme n‘est pas « ek-sistentielle » mais « in-sistentielle » et lui est immanente. Cette « insistence», il la définit, ensuite, par rapport à la conscience, à la liberté et à la transcendance. I N - S I S T E N C E VERSUS C O N S C I E N C E Le rapport « in-sistence – conscience » dans l’homme peut se réduire à celui de l’être et de la connaissance de l’homme, le premier servant de support à la seconde. Un rapport semblable existe aussi entre être et avoir. L’être de l’homme est un « être-dans-moi » (In-mir-Sein) ou un « être-danssoi » (In-sich-Sein) et son avoir, c’est d’ « avoir-conscience-de-moi » ou d’ « être-conscient-de-soi » (Mich-bewußt-Haben). Car, pour Quiles comme

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pour Husserl, la conscience est un être, être qui in-siste, être en acte. Mon « être-dans-moi-même » (in-mir-selbst-Sein) est non seulement le thème de la connaissance de moi-même (Selbsterkenntnis), mais aussi le fondement et l’origine de cette connaissance.48 En ce sens, l’être de l’homme n’est pas non plus quelque chose de figé mais une proto-réalité « effective » (wirk-lich) dans laquelle l’esprit s’actualise. Plus concrètement, le rapport en question est un rapport de non-identité, de subordination et de manifestation. En termes d’original . . . hat sich das Verhältnis von In-sich-Sein und Bewußtsein in drei Schritten bestimmt: 1. Beide sind nicht real identisch; 2. ersteres ist letzterem als die zugrundeliegende Wirk-lichkeit vorgeordnet, und 3. letztere offenbart und verwirklicht das Wesen der ersteren als den ´substantiellen Akt der Innerlichkeit´ (= als ´In-sich-und- In-sich-hinein-Wirk-lichkeit).49

I N - S I S T E N C E VERSUS L I B E R T É La « conscience-de-soi » (Selbst-bewußtheit) et la connaissance-de-soi (Selbsterkenntnis) permettent de s’autodéterminer et de s’autoaffirmer, cela dans l’entière liberté. En ce sens, le rapport entre l’être-dans-moi et la liberté est analogue au précédent: tout en étant du côté de l’avoir, de l’habitus, la liberté ne doit s’arrêter au phénomène, mais de le dépasser au-dedans du fondement ontique. La liberté qui partirait non pas de l’intérieur, mais de l’extérieur, tournerait en contrainte. C’est l‘erreur des philosophies classiques de l’existence (Jaspers, Sartre) lesquelles, avec leur notion d’ek-sistence décentrée voire excentrique, voient dans l’homme l’incarnation de la liberté et au nom de la liberté, elles favorisent la non-liberté. Un autre danger pour la liberté présente la situation dans laquelle la liberté provient d’un seul sujet, auquel cas, elle risque de dégénérer en arbitraire. Un tel danger peut être conjuré dans la mesure où c’est un sujet autonome (selbständig), à savoir tel qu’il se sent dans lui-même. En termes de Quiles Die freie Wahl stützt sich auf die An- und Mitwesenheit des aus-sich-heraus-wählen-könnenden In-sich.50

La liberté comme la connaisance plus haut approfondissent le fondement de l’être-dans-soi de l’étant, cela d’autant plus qu’elles font celui-ci sortir de soi. Par là même, elles ouvrent l’in-insistence à la transcendance. I N - S I S T E N C E VERSUS T R A N S C E N D A N C E Si la conscience et la liberté sont des modes du « retour sur soi » (Zurückgehen auf sich), elle sont aussi des modes d’ « aller au delà de soi » (Hinausgehen über sich), de se dépasser vers l’autre. Cet autre, ça peut être la nature,

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autrui, l’absolu ou le divin, tout cela des notions polaires comme le sont l’insistence et la trans-cendance. Dans cette rencontre avec l’autre, l’autonomie se renforce. Hineingehen in sich (aktuale In-sistenz) und Hinüber-und Hineingehen zum Andern (aktuale Transzedenz) sind deshalb notwendig polar und gleizeitig, . . ., das Selbst und das Andere, Seiende sind und so vom´Horizont des Seins´ gemeinsam ´umgriffen´ werden. Die ´Eröffnung dieses Horizonts´ in der geistigen Erkenntnis und Bewußstheit ist damit Eröffnung gleizeitig des Selbst und des Andern im Sein, . . .51

Dans ce rapport, c’est l’in-sistence qui est ontiquement première et fondamentale. Nur von meinem Ich, aus kann ich zu ihr (der anderen Person) kommen . . . Ich muß auch diese Innerlichkeit in jedem Augenblick wahren, indem ich bewußt von mir her handle . . ..wenn auch das Ziel das Volkommenere ist, so ist es dennoch nicht das Erste. In diesem Sinne ist . . . bezüglich der Transzendenz die In-sistenz die ontisch erste und wesentliche Grundlage . . .52

Parmi les étants, c’est la personne qui s’avère la plus parfaite puisqu’elle est non seulement “en soi” (in sich), mais aussi “près de soi” (bei sich), c’est-àdire autonome. De plus, la personne est un être à qui il ne va pas seulement de son être, mais par qui l’Etre est éprouvé, « sonne » (durchtönt), elle est le lieu de la naissance de la différence ontologique. Damit ist . . . aus dem Insistenz – und mitfolgenden Transzendenzbezug des Menschen der Begriff der Per-son vermittelt als jenes in ich und aus sich heraus-stehenden Seienden, bei dem das Sein als sein durchtönt (personat).53

Mais dès que la personne, dans son expérience in-sistentielle, touche à l’ « être en général », elle trans-cende elle-même comme tout être individuel pour s’élever au fondement absolu omnienglobant, à l’être total à partir duquel elle se rend compte de sa contingence et de sa finitude et découvre la stabilité qu’elle cherchait. Es ist das, was wir ´Sistencia´nenenn [vielelicht zu übersetzen mit: das ´schlechthin Be-stehende´], denn es gründet nicht mehr in etwas anderem, es ist das Absolute, welches ´durch sich selbst ist´.54

Le moi empirique contingent ne saurait se maintenir, persister que grâce à ce qui est par lui-même. En participant à ce fondement infini, il cesse d’être l’ « Insistence » (Insistenz) pure et simple et devient «In-sistence » (In-Sistenz). Dans l’horizon de l’ « être en général » se tienennt ainsi le monde et les autres. Par là, l’expérience métaphysique de l’In-sistence s’enrichit, s’élargit à l’ « Inter-in-sistenz », avec les autres et à la « Ko-sistenz », avec le monde.55 Ainsi, à la différence de la philosophie de l’Ek-sistence où la transcendance ne diffère pas de l’ek-sistence, la philosophie de l’In-sistence la découvre dans l’in-sistence, ce qui rappelle la démarche de Husserl. La première, avec son

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nominalisme aliénant l’homme, serait typiquement occidentale alors que la seconde, s’inspirant de la philosophie orientale et d’Asie,56 serait parvenue à surmonter l’aliénation causée par le nominalisme dans la philosophie de l’Ek-sistence, ek-sistence paraissant secondaire par rapport à l’in-sistence plus fondamentale. Daher ist nicht ‘Ek-sistenz´, wie Existenzphilosophie lehrt, sondern ´In-ssitenz´ ´das tiefste Wesen des Menschen´. Aber es erhebt sich die Frage, ob nicht alle ´In-sistenz in sich´, um in den Vollzug zu sich selbst zu kommen, notwendigerweise aus sich aufbrechen und in sich das Moment der Ek-sistenz entwickeln muß. In-sistenz is das Erste. Aber ist Ek-sistenz . . . das Zweite, kann In-sistenz nur dann be-stehen, wenn sie in sich selbst zur Ek-sistenz wird, um aus dieser her erst vollends zu sich selbst zu kommen? Ist Ek-sistenz für In-sistenz etwas nur Äußerliches und Zu-sätzliches (‘Akzidenteles’), wie es . . . nach reiner In-sistenzphilosophie scheinen könnte, oder etwas wesentliches und Grundlegendes (‘Substantielles’)?57

Se pose donc la question du sens ou du fondement de l’In-sistence qui n’existe pas par elle-même. D’ailleurs, il n’y a pas de philosophie de l’In-sistence pure comme il n’y a pas de philosophie de l’Ek – sistence pure. Et comme elles s’opposent l’une à l‘autre, n’est-pas une synthèse qui s’impose? Quiles découvre dans l’expérience d’in-sistence une « présence immédiate d’absolu » et déplace ainsi le fondement dernier plus profondément dans l’immanence. De l’autre côté, il ne faut pas non plus absolutiser ce fondement, il faut continuer d’admettre, au moins partiellement, la vérité de la philosophie de l‘ek-sistence pour, enfin, envisager la synthèse des deux; cette synthèse constituerait une nouvelle étape dans la pratique philosophique. D E L’ « I N - S I S T E N C E » À L’ « E K - I N - S I S T E N C E » : « HERMÉNEUTIQUE ONTOLOGIQUE »

La philosophie de l’Ek-sistence ou plutôt la pensée ek-sistentielle « enferme » (ein-schließt) non seulement des « conséqunces logiques » (logische Schlüsse), mais s’ouvre (auf -schließt) aussi à la vie par la vie. . . . ek-sistentielles Denken ist eine Weise des philosophischen Fragens, das die Wirk-ichkeit nicht durch ´theoretisch objektivierende In-Griff-Nahme und Beherrschung der Erfahrung in “rationale Be-griffe” und “logische Schlüsse” ein-schließen, sondern vielmehr durch lebendingn (. . .) Seinssvollzug bis in ihrem ´befreienden Grund´ hinein auf -schließen will.58

De l’autre coté, la philosophie de l’in-sistence offre plus: dans l’Ek-sistence on risque de perdre le soi dans l’autre alors que l’in-sistence rend possible le mouvement de l’Ek-sistence vers l’autre. Et même si, sur le plan individuel, l’identité consiste dans l’ « être-en-soi-même » (in mir selbst bin), des actes accidentaux qui se rapportent à celui-ci comme ses modes d’expression et d’effectuation relèvent aussi son caractère d’acte et de mouvement. Par ce

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mouvement, il s’ouvre à l’étant et son fondement. Ce caractère d’acte est confirmé aussi par le fait que le mot « être » n’a pas de forme passive. Die substantielle Seinstätigkeit ist von anderer Art als sämtliche akzidentellen Tätigkeiten; sie steht über dem Gegensatz von ´Tun und Leiden´ und ist schlechthin all-umfasend (transzendental).59

Revenant à l’ek-sistence, son sens se précise: à l’origine elle n’est pas l’acte d’ « être hors de soi du côté d’un autre » mais celui d’ « être hors de soi du côté de soi-même », l’un n’excluant pas l’autre, ainsi qu’en témoignent les attitudes telles que l’ « autolimitation » (Selbstabgrenzung) ou l’ « autodépassement » (Selbstüberschreitung). Et l’in-sistence peut encore renforcer cette ouverture à l’autre tout en s’approfondissant dans une répétition circulaire. Die anfängliche In-sistenz bewegt un öffnet sich in Ek-sistenz zum Andern und holt sich von ihm her in kreisender ´Wiederholung´zu noch tiefere und beziehungsreichere In-sistenz zurück; das heißt.: die vom Seinsakt her in Gang gesezte substantiell-akzidentelle Seinsbewegung artikuliert sich als transzendentale “Ek-in-sistenz”.60

Par ce mouvement in-ek-insistentiel triadique, on rejoint ainsi, finalement, la tradition et ses transcendantaux. Et dans le mouvement dialogique du Soi vers Autrui, leurs vérités se complètent et leur unité se perfectionne. Der ek-in-sistentielle Aktvollzug ereignet sich als kreisend fortschreitender Rhytmus in den Phasen der transzendentelen Einheit, der Wahrheit, und des Guten, wodurch das Seiende seine freie un vollere Wirklichkeit erlangt.61

L’idéal en resterait la forme divine de la plénitude d’être dont on pourrait s’approcher par un mouvement circulaire de l’ « acte de sortir de soi » supratemporel (Aus-sich Heraus-gehen), p.e. dans la connaissance de soi, d’un côté et de celui d’ « affluence-au-dedans-de-soi (In-sich-Hineinströmen), de l’autre. Le premier pas dans la réalisation de cette tâche de synthèse est donc le passage de l’in-sistence à l’ « ek-in-sistence ». La structure (triadique) dynamique ek-in-sistentielle de la réalité serait, ensuite, à appliquer au domaine de la nature, de l’esprit et de l’histoire ainsi qu’ au problème de « fondement omnienglobant et in-conditionné ». L E M O U V E M E N T E K - I N S I S T E N T I E L D E L A NAT U R E L’interprétation des sciences de la nature et notamment de la physique, quant aux résultats, suit des rythmes et des mouvements en spirale semblables à ceux observés au point de vue philosophique. L’être matériel n’est pas moins riche en événements dont la découverte, l’observation et la description vont en croissant. Aux événements

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macrophysiques correspondent ceux microphysiques avec leur nature ondulocorpusculaire double. Si les physiciens actuels semblent privilégier le monde microphysique invisible, la matière n’a pas disparu pour autant: les processus et rythmes microphysiques servent plutôt d’intermédiaire au rythme d’ensemble du monde macrophysique tel que le conçoit l’ « onto-dynamique ». Au niveau moléculaire, ce sont les processus chimiques qui concrétisent la matière toujours sur le fond du rythme physique et sur la base de l’être matériel. Avec la naissance de la vie organique, l’être de la nature afflue au-dedans de soi. Rappelons les grandes étapes de l’évolution phylogénétique de la vie: végétaux, animaux, l’homme. Dans cette évolution, comme dans ses étapes, on peut observer également des rythmes qui sont autant des modes d’être eksistentiels et in-sistentiels. Par ex., tel végétal étant entierèment dépendant de la lumière, de la température, etc. se trouve du côté de l’ « ek-sistence vers l’autre » alors que dans le cas de l’nimal qui aspire à l’autonomie plus grande il faut parler de l’ « In-sistence en soi-même ». Chez l’homme les propriétés animales et végétales se trouvent combinées dans une « synthèse transcendante » (H. André).62 D’un côté, il partage avec l’animal la moindre surface corporelle rendant posible l’intériorité et la concentration de l’esprit et de l’autre, avec la plante, la verticalité vers le haut, ce qui symbolise sa diffusion spirituelle dans l’ « espace de la vérité » et la dépendance de la lumière spirituelle. Et la « macro-rythmique » de ladite évolution phylogénétique se traduirait par de multiples « micro-rythmes » de l’évolution ontogénétique. Enfin, les vicissitudes de la vie qu’apportent la communication et l’interaction avec l’environnement, poussent les êtres vivants à sortir de soi pour chercher des conditions de vie favorables et plus ou moins bonnes. L ‘évolution est en ce sens une entreprise risquée. Darin liegt der ´Wagnischarakter´ aller Evolution, der tief in der ek-in-sistentiellen Ontodynamik der Natur wurzelt.63

L E M O U V E M E N T E K - I N S I S T E N T I E L D E L’ E S P R I T L’homme, cet « être- pour- la mort », est soumis, comme animal, à un autre rythme encore, à celui des phases de la vie, il a son printemps comme il a son automne, mais à la différence de l’animal, il en a conscience par quoi il dépasse l’être pur et simple de la nature. En ce sens, la culture est d’abord l’affaire de la personne individuelle. Son être, nous le savons déjà, n’et pas statique mais dynamique, son mode d’être est l’acte d’ek-in-sister soumis au rythme d’oscillation entre hors-de-soi et audedans-de-soi.

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Si la personne peut mener un dialogue avec elle-même, l’événement culturel achevé représente un dialogue interpersonnel à partir de la « petite cellule » qu’est la rencontre interhumaine concrète. Au fondement de la personne humaine, se trouve la structure: « corps-âme ». Même pour le actes vitaux est caractéristique un mouvement circulaire en spirale. Der Lebensakt des Menschen ´schwingt aufgrund seiner geistig-leiblichen Struktur von sich eksistentiell zur Wet aus und von dieser in-sistentiell zu sich zurück und vollzieht so eine ´kreisende Spiralbewegung´. Er ist damit permanent von der Gefahr sowohl des Selbstverlustes (. . .) als auch des Weltverlustes (. . .) bedroht und bedeutet so ein ´sinnvolles Wagnis´.64

Si, ensuite, les rencontres interpersonnelles, telles « micro-évenements » servent d’intermédiaire aux « macro-événements » de l’histoire mondiale, ce sont le travail et la technique qui font la culture ou plus exactement la civilisation. Dans la culture se reflète pour ainsi dire l’évolution de la nature, s’effectue un « saut » qualitatif. La domination de la nature matérielle et l’assurance de la survie présupposent un perfectionnement de la technique, mais le progrès, pour être durable bien que pas linéaire, exige un « feedback » non plus in-sistentiel mais re-insistentiel. Die mit der Perfektion der Technik zunehmende Beherrschung der materiellen Natur durch den Geist in Gegenwart und Zukunft steigert . . . die konstruktiven und zugleich destruktiven Potenzen ihres ek-insistentiellen Begegnungsereignisses bis zum Äußersten – und scheint so eine neue und tiefere Öffnung zum unverfügbaren Sinn des Seins zu erzwingen, um das Überleben zu sichern: Forschreitendes ek-sistentielles Heraus-und Gegenüber-treten verlangt eine umso tiefere re-insistentielle Rückbindung.65

Cela vaut non seulement pour la culture dans l’ensemble mais aussi pour la politique, l’économie ou la pédagogie. Le développement des sciences naturelles purement quantitatives place l’humanité planétaire devant le choix fondamental: ou bien se compléter dans une « culture mondiale communicative », ou bien courir une catastrophe globale.66

L’ E K - I N S I S T E N C E E T L E F O N D E M E N T D E R N I E R D E L’ E T R E Quiles pensait pouvoir trouver le « sens de l’Etre en général » dans l’expérience in-sistentielle, à savoir dans le profond de l’homme où il situait la présence « immédiate » de l’absolu. Etant donné notre contingence et l’imperfection de la conscience de l’absolu il y a lieu ici aussi de prendre en considération le moment extérieur de l’ek-sistence.

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Un caractère ek-sistentiel, dimension de notre in-sistence n’est pas seulement présente dans l’in-sistence mais les deux manières d’être alternent et se limitent mutuellement. Unser sein ist so im for-währnden Übergang und Anderssein wesenhaft sowohl ein In-sichSein als auch nicht, nämlich auch ein Draußen-Sein aus ich selbst, ein Aus-gedrückt-Sein. D.h.: Sowohl sein In-sistenz als auch sein Ek-sistenzcharaker sind etwas wechselseitig Begrenztes (und Kontingentes).67

Si l’in-insistence est limitée par l’ek-sistence, elle ne renvoie pas moins à la « (Re-)Insistence » irrelative, cela non seulement à titre de primauté mais aussi à titre de fondement. Es zeigt sich intuitiv-rational unsere endliche und relative In-sistenz in uns selbst als partizipierend an einer vorgeordneten unendichen und absoluten In-sistenz unseres Seins in sich selbst.68

Au point de vue de la connaissance, cette relation de participation change en relation « image-copie - protoimage » (Abbild-Urbild), telle est la relation entre mon identité limitée et l’identité illimitée. Le même raisonnement peut être appliqué à la relation inter-personnelle dont le prototype est l’autoconnaissance réfléchissante: mon moi y est « mon toi limité ». Comme mon fondement absolu est illimité, on peut en déduire un « Toi absolument indépassable et propre ». Der per-sonale Sinn (Logos) dieser Abbild-Urbild-Partizipation ist damit zutiefst die interpersonale Relation, die sich als Grund-Dialog aktualisiert.69

Si l’in-sistence limitée est en moi, l’in-insistence illimitée qui est en soi, en est la manifestation « ek-sistentifiée », elle s’adresse à moi de façon eksistentielle; y répondant je me sécurise re-insistentiellement. Ainsi, mon être devient-il achevé. Nous retrovons là, au plan vertical, le mouvement de l’Ekin-sistence qui doit être complété, horizontalement, par la communication « inter-ek-insistentielle » (inter-ek-insistentielle) avec les autres en « co-ekinsistence » (Ko-ek-insistenz). Ainsi, l’Ek-in-sistence se concrétise-t-elle dans l’histoire. Autrement dit, l’in-sistence du monde s’ex-plique dans le temps et dans l’espace. Et de même que l’ek-sistence du monde renvoie à l’in-sistence, de même l’ex-plication renvoie à son origine, elle n’est pas dernière mais son but est la re-implication sans laquelle elle ne conduirait pas à la vérité mais à l’aliénation et à l’obscurité. Plus concrètement . . . die als Explikation geschehende Ek-sistenzbewegung zielt auf eine im Modus der Reimplikationgeschende Re-insistenzbewegung. Ohne die letztere bedeutete die erstere nicht en Hervor-gehen von Sein (= Wahrheits-ereignis), sondern ein Zer-gehen und Unter-gehen im Nichts (= Entfremdung und Verdunkelung) und wäre so im eigentlichen Sinne gar nicht möglich.70

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Toujours est-il que c’est le « caractère d’être » (Seinscharakter), à savoir le contenu onto-dynamique du sens qui rend possible le mouvement alternatif des actes de sortir de soi et d’entrer en soi. Si ce caractère d’être est lié à l’identité illimitée de l’absolu, le mouvement prend la forme de l’ « acte d’inek-reinsister » (reiner In-ek-reïnsistenzakt). Ce n’est pas tout. Au niveau de la personne, se pose ainsi la question d’interpersonnalité comme présupposé de la relation « je-tu ». Mais tandis que celle-ci serait atteinte d’une limitation et d’imperfection, l’interpersonnalité en tant que « structure de sens de l’être de la personne » (Sinnstruktur von Personsein) se présenterait de façon illimitée et parfaite.71 Cependant, la participation à l’interpersonnalité divine exigerait quelque chose de plus, à savoir une foi répondable et approfondissante. Mein begrenzter ek-insistentieller Selbstvollzug als Mensch, der in der inter-ek-insistentiellen Kommunikation der Geschichte und in der Ko-ek-insistenz der Natur sich ereignet, erscheint so als defiziente Partizipation an inter-personaler göttlicher Urwirklichkeit. Doch dürfte mit solcher Bemühung um Grund-erhellung sich die philosophische Betrachtung in einem ek-sistentiellen Wagnis überschreiten in einen verantwortbaren Glauben, durch den eine noch tiefere In-sistenz in die Wahrheit zu erhoffen ist.72

Il résultera de cette « dynamique de la pensée existentielle » une méthode nouvelle, méthode d’ « herméneutique ontologique » dont l’enjeu serait de « comprendre et d’expliquer » le sens qui fonde les liens de la vie et qui lui vient d’un « fond divin » même – Hermès n’est-il pas le messager des dieux?73 Et l’herméneutique devient ontologique à condition que cet enchaînement vital concerne l’ « homme spirituellement éveillé » et en fait un « étant total et dernier ». Même si, d’après ce qui précède on s’attendait à un système plutôt qu’à une méthode, il n’est pas moins vrai qu’en philosophie, la méthode et le système sont inséparables. C’est alors la phénoménologie qui est appelée pour apporter une approche systématique de ces problèmes herméneutiques. Cette herméneutique comme toute herméneutique n’est pas exempte d’un cercle qui est celui de la question et de la réponse se conditionnant mutuellement. ´Ontologische Hermeneutik´will das Seiende (. . .) im Sinngehalt (. . .) eines Seins im ganzen und letzten zu verstehen suchen: Dies schließt ein zunächst die ´horizontale´ Frage nach dem Ganzen der Erfahrung sowohl des Mit-Menschen als auch der Natur – das Thema von Kultur – bzw. Geschichtsphilosophie und von Naturphilosophie.74

Pour que ce tout soit aussi le dernier, la question de la recherche d’un fondement doit viser également une dimension « verticale en profondeur » et se diriger, pour le trouver finalement, vers le fondement dernier omnienglobant, unifié de l’intérieur. Ce serait le thème d’une « méta-physique existentielle » (« méta-historique »).

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Pour l’herméneutique ontologique, ses origines ou son « archétype métaphysique » remonteraient à Augustin. Mais l’évolution ultérieure dont nous venons de donner un aperçu dévia sous l’effet de la technoscience moderne reposant sur le nominalisme, ce qui avait pour conséquence l’aliénation de la rationalité par rapport à la réalité, les concepts n’étant que des instruments intellectuels. Pour l’homme, s’aliéner signifie finalement manquer la liberté qui est à constituer, et cela « de la liberté de » à la « liberté pour ». Sur le plan de la méthode, le rapport ana-logique et de participation entre le monde et l’homme, d’un côté et entre le monde et le fondement de l’être, de l’autre fut per-verti par celui dia-lectique. Finalement, H. Beck reste convaincu que sa méthode d’herméneutique ontologique fondée sur le point de vue ek-insistentiel et utilisée dans le but d’une critique constructive serait de nature à surmonter et le nominalisme et les conceptions dialectiques modernes (de Fichte à Hegel) et par là même à renouveler l’unité et la totalité du monde spirituel actuel.

CONCLUSION: LE RETOUR À HUSSERL

Comme nous avons commencé par Husserl nous allons aussi conclure avec lui, d’ailleurs, conformément aux souhaits du professeur Beck préconisant une coopération avec la phénoménologie.75 C’est que le fondateur de la phénoménologie contemporaine autant qu’il revenait à la théorie et à l’application de la réduction (phénoménologique) qui devait protéger la phénoménologie justement contre l’existentialisme, autant il s’interrogeait sur son sens. Ce sens n’est épuisé ni par se motifs ni par son but ainsi qu’en témoigne le volume du Nachlass consacré entièrement à la réduction,76 d’une part et les travaux de son éditeur S. Luft, d’autre part. Les passages qui y sont consacrés expressément à la réduction et à l‘épokhè ainsi qu’ à leur sens soulignent la définition de la réduction comme l’acte de « ramener à . . . » en général, à savoir non seulement à l’expérience transcendantale ou à l’ego transcendantal, mais aussi à l’ego empirique, à telle attitude, à telle profession ou à tel intérêt. Ces attitudes et ces habitus peuvent s’alterner sans l’exclusion ni contradiction. Et l’apodicticité se déplace vers la validité du monde prédonné, dont l’être est avant les choses. Tout cela devient pour l’ego phénoménologisant l’objet d’une herméneutique et d’une anthropologie phénoménologiques. Tel est le sens de la réduction après la constitution. On y apprend aussi que la signification de la méthode de réflexion transcendantale est existentielle et que l’idéalisme transcendantal qui rebutait le nombre d’élèves comme de lecteurs de Husserl devait résulter d’une synthèse de l’approche naturelle et transcendantale du monde. Le sens de

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la réduction, ce qui ne doit plus surprendre personne, est la « mondanéisation » (Verwetlichung), sans quoi elle serait incomplète.77 Ainsi, finalement l’in-ek-sistence intentionnelle arrive-t-elle à son remplissement. Académie slovaque des Sciences NOTES 1 M. de Gandillac (1906–2006), traduisait: « présence » tout en notant qu’il s’agit de l’ « intentio » scolastique. Ainsi, via Brentano, la phénoménologie husserlienne enchaîne-t-elle avec la tradition non seulement scolastique mais même avec la tradition grecque. Bretanto lui-même se reférait à Aristote, Philon, St. Augustin, St. Anselme pour finir par St. Thomas d’Aquin. 2 E. Mounier, Introduction aux existentialismes, Paris: Gallimard, 1969 (coll. Idées). 3 H. Beck, Ek-in-sistenz: Positionen und Transformationen der Existenzphilsophie, Frankfurt a. M.: P. Lang, 1989. (C.r. J. Sivak, « Un bilan de l’existentialisme » (en slovaque), in Filozofia, 53, 1998/10, pp. 691–695). 4 Beck, op. cit., p. 15. 5 Ibid., p. 18. 6 Ibid., p. 19. L’auteur précise que tandis que l’on peut habiter le mystère, devant l’énigme on est impuissant ou perplexe. 7 Ibid., p. 23. 8 Cf. ibid., p. 32. L’allemand permet rendre un peu mieux, peut-être, que le français un certain parallélisme gnoséologico-linguistique et après Heidegger, Beck continue de mettre en relief cette propriété. Le mot allemand Be-griff, « con-cept » vient de l’ « em-prise » (in Griff ) intellectuelle de l’expérience en vue d’une maîtrise de la nature. Les énoncés scientifiques acquièrent ainsi une valeur positive et rendent possible le progrès. D’où le positivisme. L’homme est ainsi le créateur secondaire et « positiviste » avant la lettre non seulement par ce qu’il transforme la matière préexistante mais aussi comme un animal qui parle. De même, Name, le nom vient de nehmen, prendre en possession, d’où le nominalisme. Le sens du nommer s’y approche dans sa signification de « faire ». Toujours est-il que la connaissance scientifique (Er-kennen) ne veut pas dire la reconnaissance (An-erkennung) des choses-mêmes étant en dehors des intérêts technoscientifiques. 9 Cf. Aktcharakter des Seins. Eine spekulative Weiterführung der Seinslehre Thomas von Aquin aus einer Anregung durch das dialektische Prinzip Hegels, Munich: M. Hueber, 1965. Et aussi Natürliche Theologie. Grundriss philosophischer Gotterkenntnis, Munich-Salzburg: A. Pustet, 1986. 10 Au point de vue philosophique voire métaphysique, c’est la relation même dialectique qui ne permet pas de dépasser l’être copulatif et par là de reconnaître les corrélats en eux-mêmes, in se. Il faut donc sortir de la relation pour la fonder, de l’acte de relationner passer à celui de fonder ou de poser. Ce qui fait être ne peut pas être car s’il subsistait en lui une parcelle d’être se poserait la question d’un autre faiseur d’être. De même, ce qui fonde est sans fond, non-fondement inexistant, connu dans la littérature philosophique comme Un-grund étant avant la relation antithétique. Dieu inexistant à la manière des choses et de l’homme et insubsistant à la manière des essences décide lui-même de sa présence au monde encore qu’il serait vain d’interdire à l’absolu d’être parmi nous. Pour montrer de plus en détail que « les négations de la voie négative ne servent ni à éliminer toutes les épithètes sauf une . . . ni à brasser ensemble tous les épithètes pour obtenir une sorte de synthèse informe; ni à obtenir cette synthèse peu à peu par la médiation de l’anthithèse

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dialectique » nous renvoyons à Vl. Jankélévitch (cf. Philosophie première. Introduction à une philosophie du « presque », Paris: 1954, pp. 99 sq.). 11 Beck, “Ek-In-sistenz”, p. 36. 12 Mounier, op. cit., p. 8. 13 Mounier, quant à lui, le considère même comme le père de l’existentialisme moderne. 14 Beck, op. cit., p. 29. L’auteur ajoute cependant que pour être philosophe ou théologien de l’existence au sens plein du terme, il manquait à Augustin une notion plus radicale d’Ek-sistence (Ek-sistenz) au point de vider l’homme de son intériorité (In-sistence). 15 Pour le rapport entre le thomisme et la phénoménologie, l’article d’E. Stein, « Husserls Phänomenologie und die philosophie des heiligen Thomas von Aquino. Versuch einer Gegenüberstellung”, publié dans le “Festchrift” (in JPPF 1929) est toujours instructif. 16 Le principe dialogique, sans antithèse, rongé par la rivalité croissante entre l’homme et Dieu, rivalité prédite, d’ailleurs dans la Bible, finira par tourner en dialectique. C’est alors que tel Nietzsche, ce « penseur du soupçon » (P. Ricœur) pourra, selon Beck, proclamer la « mort « de Dieu, cessant d’être le fondement de l’être libre de l’homme. 17 Ne soyons pas êtonnés de voir ranger parmi les précusrseurs de l’existentialisme E. Kant. Celui-ci en professant l’inclinaison irrésistible de l’homme au mal et le « mal radical » aurait contribué, selon Beck, au renversement de l‘approche dialogique de Dieu en approche dialectique. On peut se demander si son mode de vie n’y est pas pour quelque chose: vivant dans sa tour d’ivoire à Kaliningrad (anc. Königsberg) il était privé, que se soit consciemment ou inconsciemment, d’un ancrage moral fondé sur une relation interpersonnelle et communicationnelle. Son esprit révolutionnaire et son cosmopolitisme pourraient, peut être, s’expliquer par son isolement extrême aussi. 18 Aussi sur l’ « arbre existentialiste » de Mounier représente-t-il le tronc, ensemble avec son proche du côté français Maine de Biran (1766–1824). 19 Beck, op. cit., p. 42. 20 Selon Jaspers « l’existence est même impossible empiriquement ». 21 Tout ou presque tout peut constituer un chiffre qui peut être immédiat ou médiat. Par ex., la réalité, qu’il s’agisse de la nature ou de la liberté humaine, est un chiffre immédiat qui présentifie le Créateur. Par les chiffres il faut entendre des formes de la culture (mythes, religion, historicité). L’acte de philosopher consistera alors dans la bonne lecture des chiffres (Chiffrelesen). 22 Ibid., p. 58 23 Ibid. 24 “Das rationale Erkennen übersteigt sich damit konsequent aus einer eigener Natur heraus in eine intuitive Erfassung des Grundes und ist selbst eine ek-sistentielle Bewegung des Menschen (. . .). Menschliche Selbstverwirklichung ist kein ´Sprung´ ins Irationale und Unbestimmte, sondern ist durch verbindliche Rationalität vermittelt.” (Ibid., p. 59). 25 Ibid. 26 Sur l’abre de l’existence, le rameau de Heidegger est posé sur celui de Nietzsche. 27 Ibid., p. 66. 28 Ibid., p. 70. Pas un mot, chez ce critique du nominalisme, sur le nominalisme et le lexicalisme de Heidegger que souligne, par contre, Cl. Imbert (cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paris: Ministère des Affaires étrangères, 2005, p. 59; www.adpf.asso.fr). Selon elle, la déconstruction de l’Etre et Temps due à une « lexicalisation brutale » restait sans une suite constructive attendue, mais l’engagement politique de Heidegger aurait empêché celui-ci d’achever son ouvrage. 29 On peut l’illustrer par des situations concrètes qui en résultent: échec, autodidactisme, divorce etc. 30 Ibid., p. 82.

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Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 103. 33 Ibid., p. 114. 34 Ibid., p. 119. 35 Ibid., p. 16–17n. 36 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard 1945, p. 417; cf. aussi « Krisis », p. 189. 37 Imbert, op. cit., p. 59. Valéry, Proust, Stendhal allongent la liste des écrivains favoris de Merleau-Ponty pour alimenter et enrichir sa réflexion au-delà d’une illustration pure et simple. 38 Que l’on se souvienne des pages, dans l’œuvre de Merleau-Ponty, consacrées à Cézanne, à Renoir ou à Rembrandt. 39 M. Merleau-Ponty, Eloge de la philosophie et autres esais, Paris: Gallimard, 1960, p. 10. 40 Merleau-Ponty fut sceptique à l’égard de la synthèse laquelle, si elle n’était pas une construction, répétait la thèse. 41 Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’Invisible (V.I.), Paris: Gallimard, 1964, p. 142. 42 « Par l’espace l’univers me comprend et m’engloutit comme un point; par la pensée je le comprend. » (Pensée 265). 43 Pour analyser cette relation de réversibilité réciproque que Husserl plaçait entre la noèse et le noème, Merleau-Ponty intitula le Chap. 4: L’entrelacs-le chiasme. 44 Merleau-Ponty, op. cit., pp. 195–196. 45 Beck, o.c., p. 121. 46 D’ailleurs l’expression « philosophie continentale », consistant dans l’échange entre la philosophie française et allemande a sans doute vécu. D’un côté, les centres culturels de par le monde se déplacent et de l’autre, la propagation des idées philosophiques ne connaît pas de frontières. Un troisième facteur en est la globalisation qui s’impose comme une idéologie nouvelle et impose, à son tour, une philosophie globale ou une éthique globale alors qu’il n’est de philosophies que nationales. 47 Ce père jésuite a mûri sur les traditions augustinienne et thomiste avant de subir l’influence d’un Blondel, d’un G. Marcel, d’un Jaspers ou d’un Heidegger. Son intérêt se porte en même temps sur les cultures d’Asie pour mener un dialogue notamment avec le bouddhisme et l’ hindouisme. Professeur de l’Université du Salvador à Buenos Aires, il fonda et dirigea jusqu’à sa mort l’Ecole des études orientales dans la même ville et qui fonctionne toujours. 48 Cf. Beck, op. cit., p. 127. 49 Ibid., p. 128. 50 I. Quiles, Vom Wesen des Menschen, p. 385; apud Beck, op. cit., p. 130. 51 Beck, op. cit., p. 131. 52 Quiles, op. cit., p. 394; apud Beck, p. 133. 53 Beck, op. cit., p. 134. 54 Quiles, Antropologia filosófica in-sistencial, p. 152; apud Beck, p. 135. 55 Cf. Beck, op. cit., p. 137. 56 Le Centre d’Etudes orientales fondé et dirigé par I.Quiles commençait ses activités par l’étude du bouddhisme et de l’hindouisme en parallèle avec le christianisme. Cependant, voir comme le semble faire Quiles, et Beck après lui, dans les philosophies orientales ce qui manque à la philosophie occidentale serait très simpliste. C’est tout le problème d’enculturation. D’un côté, il y avait toujours de échanges entre Occident et Orient, de sorte que des éléments de la culture orientale sont déjà présents dans la culture occidentale. De l’autre, une culture particulière, nationale ou régionale est déjà universelle quitte à se l’approprier dans la mesure où cela ne menacerait sa propre souveraineté culturelle. 57 Beck, p. 140. 32

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Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., p. 143. 60 Ibid., p. 145. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., p. 151. 63 Ibid., p. 153. 64 Ibid., p. 156. 65 Ibid., pp. 157–158. 66 Cf. ibid., p. 159. Ce dialogue mondial devrait être mené à l’échelle planétaire, cela non seulement entre Ouest et Est mais aussi entre Nord et Sud. 67 Ibid., p. 163. 68 Ibid., 164. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., p. 166. 71 Quelle place serait alors réservée à l’estime de soi qui apporte pourtant une limitation à cette suprématie inter-personnelle. 72 Ibid., p.169 73 Ibid., p. 169. 74 Ibid., p. 170. 75 Il voit notamment dans l’œuvre de Winfried Weier dont il se déclare proche une combinaison fructueuse des méthodes historique et systématique, d’un côté et aussi de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie de l‘existence, de l’autre. 76 Cf. Hua XXXIV: Zur phänomenogischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer, 2002. 77 C’est ce que constate l’interprète actuel S. Luft (« Quelques problèmes fondamentaux dans les textes tardifs de Husserl sur la réduction phénoménologique », in Recherches Husserliennes, vol. 20, 2003, p. 20). 59

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T H E VA L U E O F T H E Q U E S T I O N I N H U S S E R L’ S PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT

Within Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, the concept of question seems to be essentially connected to the concept of science, reason and language. Nevertheless, the position of the concept within phenomenological philosophy seems to be merely marginal. The article aims at the reconstruction of the inner development of the concept of question from the Logical Investigation to the Husserl’s mature philosophy. The reconstruction points out two possible concepts of the question, i.e., the instrumental and the existential concept. The latter involves responsibility as the condition of human practice. This article asserts that the very notion of question is fundamental for all phenomenological inquiry. The authors of An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology emphasize: “Husserl’s entire philosophical work moves within the magnetic field of the concept of science” (Bernet et al. 1993, p. 13). After this appropriate observation, let us add that within Husserl’s consideration of science there is also the logic and the reason in the very middle of his investigations. At the same time it could be observed that in the development of phenomenology Husserl’s attitude to these themes changes. In the background of the consideration of science, logic and reason, we can notice the problem of question, which seems to depend on the character of science itself. Thereby question could be understood here in two ways, analogically with two notions of science: positive science and science in primordial sense, i.e., a philosophical science.1 According to Husserl, as he points it in the Cartesian Meditations: “Positive science is a science lost in the world” (Husserl 1960, p. 157). It is so, because scientist in the field of positive science never asks for the sciences’ ground. The scientist accepts the world as objective and we could call this attitude, following James Dodd, naive (Dodd 2004, p. 179). In this naive attitude question seems to have instrumental value. In consequence, in such a proposition answer is more valuable than question itself; question aims only towards an objective answer, and only the latter has a value for scientist. 75 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 75–91. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Situation, in which scientist is interested in building a science as the system of objective propositions, is for Husserl a manifestation of the crisis of sciences. Undoubtedly, Husserl does not mean sciences’ successes, which are unquestionable, but he shows that objective sciences “no longer seems to order life, to give life the sense of itself necessary for its pursuit of itself, thus its future” (Dodd 2004, p. 140). After all, as Husserl writes in the Crisis: “In our vital need . . . this science has nothing to say to us. It excludes in principle precisely the question which man, given over in our unhappy times to the most portentous upheavals, finds the most burning: questions of the meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of this human existence” (Husserl 1970, p. 6). Hence, we could say about the crisis of sciences, because they exclude questions, which have, so to speak, existential value. Husserl suggests us in “our unhappy times”, we could focus on looking for questions rather for the answers. Furthermore, the primacy of question is characteristic for specific philosophical attitude, namely for transcendental attitude. Let us emphasize that transcendental attitude is grounded on “questioning-about” (in-Fragestellen) (Husserl 1956, p. 270), and this is the reason for calling the attitude critical. Let us assert that critical attitude involves not only theoretical attitude towards the knowledge about the world, but in principle it involves the attitude of human life, and thus naturally it has existential sense.2 In such an attitude, human stands opposite the new world,3 the unknown world, which is expressed, so to speak, in existential question. The question does not aim towards the simple answer, but questioning itself is paradoxical answer. It can be argued, that Husserl patterns critical attitude on concept of zigzag method of investigations. The latter is has been sketched already in the Logical Investigations (Husserl 2001c, p. 175), but it can be find also in research manuscripts (Husserl 2002a, pp. 221–222, Husserl 2003, p. 391, Husserl 2006, p. 357), in the Formal and Transcendental Logic (Husserl 1969, p. 125) and finally in the Crisis (Husserl 1970, p. 58) as well. From this point of view, critical attitude will be the way of questioning about the meaning of human existence, of investigating and of building the sense of human life. To put it precisely, the investigation, “Sense-investigation (Besinnung) signifies nothing but the attempt actually to produce the sense ‘itself’, which, in the mere meaning, is a meant, a presupposed, sense” (Husserl 1969, p. 9). Sense-investigation (Besinnung) is also “at the same time criticism for the sake of original clarification” (Husserl 1969, p. 10).4 The clarification of the sense itself concerns human existence human, it asks for the meaning of life. According to Eugen Fink, we could claim the aim of phenomenological philosophy is “not only the formulation of the question but the development of the question which astonishes as well” (Fink 1981, p. 25).

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Husserl’s way of the development of the most burning question we are followed through contrasting the status of question in the Investigations and in his mature philosophy. Let us suggest that while in the Investigations question has instrumental value, in Husserl’s mature philosophy question is considered as having existential value. As Herbert Spiegelberg emphasizes in The Phenomenological Movement, Husserl in the Investigations is heading for the formulation of an objectivist program of logic (Spiegelberg 1994, p. 70). Husserl’s aspiration to formulate of the program seems to arise from his conviction that science has an objective character. Generally, in Husserlian perspective, a scientific cognition is distinguished by objectivity. By “objectivity” Husserl means that, what is “in itself”. The author of the Investigations states: “Everything that is, can be known ‘in itself”’ (Husserl 2001c, p. 223). Husserl proposes to call the objectivity “everything that is”, because it seems to be “in itself”, at least it is known as “in itself”. What is more: “Its being is a being definite in content, and documented in such and such ‘truths in themselves”’ (Husserl 2001c, p. 223). In the perspective of Husserlian proposition, the being is definite in content, and this is the reason for the possibility of documentation them. Such a documentation involves a special kind of expressions. From ancient Greek period, truth concerns expressions that mean something. In general, the Investigations seems to refer to this tradition. Among the different expressions Husserl recognizes a special kind of expression, which documents the “truths in themselves”. Moreover, we understand the expressions as the correlates of the being “in itself”. In consequence, we can maintain the expressions are true, no matter who and when will utter them. The above interpretation leads us to notice that mentioned expressions are independent of any situation, time and place of uttering. In the Investigations, Husserl proposes to call objective this kind of expressions. He characterizes them in the following way: “We shall call an expression objective if it pins down (or can pin down) its meaning by its manifest, auditory pattern, and can be understood without necessarily directing one’s attention to the person uttering it, or to the circumstances of the utterance” (Husserl 2001c, p. 218). Inasmuch as we can understand expressions regardless of the situations of uttering them, we call the expressions objective. Additionally, we understand the expressions at the same time when we are uttering them. Therefore, within the understanding of the expressions persons uttering them as well as the circumstances of the utterance are not important for understanding the expressions. At the moment of utterance immediately, “by way of an experienced sense-complex, the intuitive presentation, whether percept, imagination, representation etc., of an object, e.g. an external thing, arises” (Husserl 2001c, p. 213). Consequently, the objective expression is understood at the same time

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when it is uttered; no matter who utters it and when someone utters it, already at the level of an experienced sense-complex the objective expression refers to the being “in itself” directly. The reference is possible due to the concept of the meaning, which Husserl presents in the First Investigation. As Husserl proposes in the Investigations, the meaning assures connection between expressions and truths, thanks to the reference to the expression’s object, so, to the being.5 Therefore, in the field of objective expressions, we could say about documentation of the “truths in themselves” thanks to immediate connection between the expressions and the being “in itself”. Following Husserl, the connection is founded on the interpretation of the meaning of expressions as ideal meaning. As it is introduced in the Investigations, uttering person could repeat the same objective expression in infinitum, and the uttered expression will always have the same meaning. This possibility belongs to the essence of objective expression. For this reason Husserl calls the meaning of the objective expression ideal. As he writes in the First Investigation: “Meaning is related to varied acts of meaning . . . just as Redness in specie is to the slips of paper which lie here, and which all ‘have’ the same redness” (Husserl 2001c, p. 230). In the above quotation Husserl describes relation between the meaning and the varied acts of meaning, namely these acts seem to have the same meaning. At the end, this is the reason for calling the meaning ideal, more precisely, ideal in the sense of species. Let us remark that ideal meaning in its relation to the objective expression “is not ideality of the second grade” (Bernet 1979, p. 49). In the expression ideal meaning discerns itself, and uttering person expresses the meaning in immediate way. On the other hand, the expression has the linguistic form of the utterance. Inasmuch as we consider the ideal character of the meaning from the perspective of this linguistic commitment of the objective expression, we can make some observations about the language. First of all, language as empirical being can only anticipate ideal meaning. For this reason, following Donn Welton, the language remains “unproductive” (Welton 1983, p. 270). Furthermore, we can call the concept of language instrumental (Waldenfels, p. 49). Moreover, instrumental conception of the language is fundamental for calling the value of question instrumental as well. As it will become clear in the following above mentioned convictions can be justified at least in two ways. We can consider the position of judgment in the theory of question, on the one hand, and we can investigate the position of question in the discourse of the science, on the other. In the context of above observations, needless to say, the ideal character of meaning, as well as the instrumental concept of language arise from the Husserl’s aspiration to formulate the objective program of the science. Additionally, the science is presented as the system of objective expressions. This

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presentation is justified as far as we involve special kind of acts which is the underlying reason for building objective expressions. Husserl calls these acts objectifying acts. Following Jitendra Nath Mohanty, we can remark that these acts “are cognitive acts as distinguished from the affective and volitional ones” (Mohanty 1971, p. 107). Affective and volitional acts are of course merely subjective acts and this is the reason why they cannot build objective expressions. By contrast, objective expressions are strictly cognitive acts. By these cognitive acts we can “isolate – and present – something as their objective ‘contents’, something as the objects they mean, just as they mean it. That is the sense of their ‘objectifying’ character” (Benoist 2002, p. 47). To phrase it differently, the acts lead to objective expressions immediately. For this reason, due to these acts science can be built. Consequently, in the Investigations Husserl writes that objective acts “may come to ‘intuition’ and thereby also to ‘knowledge’ ” (Husserl 2001d, p. 271). However, Husserl presents simple acts of perception as models of objective acts, and he presents perceptive propositions as models of objective expressions. In consequence, Husserl gives priority to judgments, especially to propositions, which seem to illustrate objective expressions.6 The consequence affects also the concept of question in such a way, that any question must be reducible to the judgment. “It would seem that the word ‘question’ has two senses”, emphasizes Husserl in the Investigations, “In one sense it stands for a definite wish, in another for a peculiar act presupposed by each such wish. Our wish aims at ‘judgmental decision’, i.e., it aims at a judgment which will decide a question, or which in the case of two-sided disjunction, will resolve a doubt. The wish, in brief, strives for an answering of the question: this last is not therefore itself a wish” (Husserl 2001d, p. 143). In other words, for Husserl, question can mean a wish, as well as an act presupposed by such a wish. Undoubtedly, in the perspective of science, the former is more important than the latter. After all, the latter is merely subjective act, and the former involves judgment and objective expression. The wish is characterized as definite, so it involves the judgment in such a way, that the question aims at the judgment. Consequently, the question seems to be reducible to a following form: “Whether A is B?”, and then it strives for an solution of two-sided disjunction: “Yes, A is B” or “No, A is not B”. This is the reason, why Husserl writes that judgment, understood as an answer, will resolve a doubt. On the other hand, a question presents a kind of function, namely, it is the function of two-sided disjunction. Above observations incline us towards calling the value of question instrumental. In the perspective of the Investigations, question is dependent on possible answers; only answer could express something, but question itself did not express anything (Benoist 2002, p. 48), at least, it expresses subjective

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wish reducible to judgment. Furthermore, if judgment has priority to question as such, then we could say about marginalization of question. The marginalization is observable also in the concept of monologue, which Husserl introduces in the Investigations. In the First Investigation, Husserl characterizes solitary life as a monologue. The concept of monologue involves the concept of objective science, as well as the concept of objective expression. As it should become clear in the light of above observations, in the case of objective expression there is immediate connection between the expression and intended object. For Husserl, the connection is only possible in monologue, i.e., in so-called solitary speech. To phrase it differently, Husserl opposes the speech to the communicative one. While the former guarantees the possibility of immediate connection and at the same time it guarantees the possibility of truth, the latter admits of unsuitability and untruthfulness of speech.7 In communicative speech, expression functions as indication, however, the object of the expression cannot be intended; therefore we cannot characterize pronouncing expressions as true or false; truth here coincidence with; sincerity (Husserl 2001d, p. 334). In the context of above observations, let us quote Mohanty’s appropriate remark: “For cases where the pronouncing function is entirely absent, Husserl directs us to the use of expressions in non-communicative speech, that is to say in monologues, ‘im einsamen Seelenleben’ ” (Mohanty 1964, p. 14). In the monologue, expressions do not function as indications, because here they are not marks or signs. Moreover, we could say that in the monologue expressions simply mean something immediate.8 In the First Investigation, Husserl asks rhetorically following question: “Shall one say that in soliloquy one speaks to oneself, and employs words as signs, i.e., as indications, of one’s own inner experiences?” (Husserl 2001c, p. 190). After posing the question he answers immediately: “I cannot think such a view acceptable” (Husserl 2001c, p. 190). Therefore, there is immediate connection between the expression and its object in monologue. In the perspective of objective science, monologue is more valuable than communicative speech. Let us emphasize that only in so-called solitary speech, so in monologue above mentioned connection is possible. As it was mentioned above, the connection makes possible the ability of trueness or falseness of the expressions, and the ability is fundamental for science. At the end, each sentence, except for the expressions in monologue, is valueless for scientist; by contrast, the sentence is merely marginal. Question seems to be such a sentence. In the Investigations, Husserl in fact did not include question in monologue. Moreover, in the last paragraph of the Sixth Investigation he even refuses legitimacy in such an inclusion. In the very paragraph he writes in the following way: “In a monologue a question is either of the form ‘I ask

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myself whether . . .’, or relation to the subject vanishes entirely: the interrogative expression becomes a mere name, or not really even that” (Husserl 2001d, p. 332). The question can be neither reducible to the judgment nor a sign. For this reason, the question is not really even a name, for Husserl. To put it precisely the question is not here a theoretical function, that is it did not lead towards knowledge (Husserl 2001d, p. 332). This is the reason for saying about the marginalization of a question. Obviously, Husserl did not exclude question from each kind of speech. Question, as non-objectifying act, “cannot be expressed as such in the strong sense of the term. According to Husserl, their function is merely pragmatic – i.e., communicative and not expressive” (Benoist 2002, p. 48). Incontrovertibly, question has a communicative function. At the same time, inasmuch as question is associated with such a function, it loses significance for scientist, hence, as we could see it above, question has merely instrumental value for the scientist. The scientist aims at objective expressions, rather than at nonobjective expressions; after all, let us remind that question did not express anything. To sum up, we could conclude that in the perspective of objective science question is only marginal. Husserl was made full professor at the University of Freiburg on the first of April 1916 (Schuhmann 1977, p. 199). We may claim, following Spiegelberg, Husserl’s move to Freiburg “meant more than a change of geographic location” (Spiegelberg 1994, p. 134). At that time Husserl revised his own view of the science. Together with this revision, Husserl changed the concept of logic, as well as the concept of the reason. Consequently, also the concept of question is changed, therefore, in order to reconstruct Husserl’s attitude to the question, we should follow through mutually connected considerations. Let us stress that apart from mentioned changes, a new subject is introduced into phenomenological philosophy, i.e., the subject of time. Within the critique of logic, the problem of time seems to be bounded up with Husserl’s revision of the concept of question. The problem of time, which is “the most difficult phenomenological problem” (Schuhmann 1977, p. 215), is a stimuli for changing phenomenological philosophy. Already in 1905, the problem of time and the concept of a consciousness as a flux leads to the revision of ideas, which Husserl presented in the Investigations. In his lectures on the consciousness of internal time, he postulates to include the temporal level to the discussion of logical categories.9 After Husserl’s move to the University of Freiburg, the postulate resulted in pointing up a mistake in the ideal concept of meaning. In his letter to Roman Ingarden from the fifth of April 1918, Husserl writes: “First of all there was a mistake, when a ‘meaning’ and an ‘sentence’, in the case of judging experiences, predicative sentences, as propositions and senses, was grasped as an

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essence, or an ‘idea’ in the sense of the essence (species). The independence of a sentence meaning of accidental propositions and a judging person still does not mean that the uniqueness is ideality-identity” (Husserl 1968, p. 10). Except for pointing up the mistake in grasping the meaning of the sentences as an idea, above passage can suggest that also the concept of language changes itself. As it was mentioned above, in the Investigations there is instrumental concept of language. As it was introduced in the Investigations, objective sciences focus on the being “in itself”. Actually, in consideration of the problem of time Husserl aims at something that is not really present. Husserl emphasizes in the Bernauer manuscript: “The time itself is not and it was not and it will be not present” (Husserl 2001b, p. 181). Therefore, considering the time means confronting with the unknown. In the proposition of the Investigations, ideal and timeless meaning could be given immediate; the time itself, however, seems to be the very opposition of the meaning. Furthermore, following Lanei Rodemeyer, in the Bernauer manuscript “Husserl begins his discussions of temporality by focusing on the retentions of protention and retention, without mentioning the ‘now-point’ or even the Urimpression” (Rodemeyer 2003, p. 128). The “now-point” is the residuum of the living present of the ideal being, nevertheless, in the perspective of the time, the point is in universal flow. The flow confronts the phenomenologist with the retentions of protention and retention of the “now-point”, also it confronts with the horizon of the point. However, the horizon defines what is given to us, the horizon itself is not given. For this reason, it is not the field of primordial experience.10 Husserl’s considerations on the time leads him to the introduction of the notion of the horizon to the phenomenological investigations. The very notion has significant influence on the concept of the language, and, at the same time, on the concept of question, more precisely, on the concept of occasional sentences.11 The latter involve the situation of utterance. In other words, the notion of the horizon points at the practical situation. Therefore, the notion of horizon leads to the considering of the practice. As it will become clear in the following, all mentioned themes meet in the problem of question. However, for now, our starting point for the reconstruction of the concept of question in the period after the 1916 will be the critique of logic from the perspective of time. The culminating point of the Investigations is the formulation of the ideal of logically adequate language (Husserl 2001d, p. 311). After Husserl’s move to Freiburg, the philosopher discerns that the ideal of the language bases on the presupposition of object’s presence in the “now-point”. The objectivities of the logic can be reactivated and identified again and again, and this is the reason why Husserl writes in the Formal and Transcendental Logic that the objectivities are henceforth “at hand” (Husserl 1969, 185). The expression “at hand”,

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analogically to the Ideas I, where the very expression indicates immediacy (Husserl 1983, p. 53), suggests that the objectivities are fully definite. Moreover, these objectivities seem to be definite in the series of affirmative sentence. For this reason, in the logic there is “universal domination of affirmative sentences that means that each sentence in wide sense and its predicative matter – each question, each doubtfulness, each probably sentence – has its equivalent in affirmative statement, while there is no opposite case” (Husserl 1996, p. 64).12 Here Husserl recognizes that the logic bases on the universal domination of affirmative sentences. Consequently, question is merely a function in the system of the logic. In this context the following Welton’s remark is appropriate for capture the position of the question: “By connecting the process of questioning to that of judgment and thereby to ‘cognition and its formations’, questioning is understood as an internal part of ‘a logic understood as a science of cognizing and the cognized”’ (Welton 2000, p. 289). In the perspective of the logic, question and questioning itself can be merely an internal part of the logic, to put it precisely, it has merely instrumental value. In the period after the 1916, Husserl recognizes in the instrumental concept of question presupposition, leading him to a certain determinism. In the field of the objective science, particularly in the field of the logic, the scientist becomes a kind of technician, and his activity transforms itself into a sort of technique criticized by Husserl in the Crisis (Husserl 1970, pp. 46–48). The sciences after transformation of questions into merely instrumental, in fact, exclude the most burning questions (Husserl 1970, p. 6). As we shall see in the following, phenomenology aims at the restoration of these questions, and what is more important, it aims at new concept of question, i.e., the existential one. After Husserl’s move to Freiburg, he preserves the concept of the question, which he developed in the Investigations, only in broad outlines. Undoubtedly, for Husserl questioning has the form of wish intention, where a respond is the fulfilling of the wish.13 For this reason, following Welton, “Questions are teleologically organized” (Welton 2000, p. 289). More precisely, questioning aims at a resolution in the clarity of self-giving. As Husserl asserts it in the lectures about passive syntheses: “Every confirmation is a process of bringing something concealed to light, a process of bringing it to the clarity of selfgiving” (Husserl 2001a, p. 252). In consequence, Husserl presents the state of the clarity of self-giving, as a state of the lack of questions.14 However, as far as we are taking into account the concept of universal flux, we must affirm that above mentioned state of the lack of questions is not achievable once and for all. The state achieved in any response leads finally to the incertitude of the question, rather than the intelligible certitude itself. In the early 1920s, Husserl states in one of his research manuscripts in the following way: “And so intelligible certitude itself leads . . . again to incertitude,

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to doubtful and to question” (Husserl 1958, p. 332); moreover, in his lectures about passive syntheses he writes: “but not every decision must have the mode of a firm certainty” (Husserl 2001a, p. 102). Both above quotations signify that Husserl’s phenomenology after 1916 can be characterized as strictly critical philosophy. The philosophy restitutes the question as the alpha and omega of every investigation, rather than merely instrumental. As it was mentioned above, instrumental value of question means that the latter is meaningless for human existence (Husserl 1970, p. 6). On the contrary, existential value of question involves the human life. The change is accompanied with the change of the concept of the reason. In the perspective of the Investigations’ objective proposition: “Clearly, in fact, to say that each subjective expression could be replaced by an objective expression, is no more than to assert the unbounded range of objective reason” (Husserl 2001c, p. 223). As it was mentioned above, objective reason is above all cognizing reason, which is leading to objective knowledge. After move to Freiburg, Husserl emphasizes that all theoretical reason is the practical at the same time. He writes: “All reason is at the same time practical reason, and this also holds for logical reason” (Husserl 2001a, p. 103).15 The introduction of the wide notion of the reason is the major step towards Husserl’s change of attitude to the concept of question, to put it precisely, the field of practice can be introduced into phenomenological considerations. First of all, science can be presented as a kind of practice (Husserl 1993, p. 309). Furthermore, the practice bases on the questioning, which, as it was introduced above, is the alpha and omega of the science. Additionally, in such a view, question arise, from practices and the latter is shaped by the process of questioning, as well. In the manuscript dated from the 1923, which is entitled “Is there the aim of universal cognition in general senseless?” Husserl presents the connection between reflection and practice as follows: “The sense-investigation is thought as motivated by unsatisfactory praxis, general reflection on the possibilities of satisfactory life” (Husserl 1958, p. 343). Therefore, the sense-investigation, which confronts us with questions, is motivated by practice. Additionally, the process of questioning is organized teleologically, namely, it aims at the possibilities of satisfactory life. Obviously, the aim involves merely possibilities, and for this reason, just like on the temporal field, in all activities we have element of incertitude (Husserl 1958, p. 352). Nevertheless, the sense-investigation itself gives us belief that “there is also a sense in the world and in my live, there is cheerful confidence that all is not for nothing and all goes good” (Husserl 1958, p. 355). Above passage makes it evident that the process of questioning could organize human life, in such a way that the process itself, and no response, gives us belief in meaningfulness of the life. Consequently, it should be stated that the process

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of questioning presupposes the possibility of a response, also it presupposes the presence of the sense. At the end, the presupposition refer to the world. Husserl emphasizes explicitly: “Each my question implicates . . . the world that already-validates-me, that is-already-for-me and is-for-my-We” (Husserl 2002b, 276). The world can be called the presupposition of all questioning in, at least, three senses. Firstly, the process of questioning which is a king of practice involves the world which is the horizon of all practice. Secondly, the process builds the meaningfulness of human life; the latter is always the life in the world. Thirdly, the structure of question seems to mirror the general structure of the world, i.e., as a horizon. The first and the second reason arise from above sketched considerations. Let us investigate the third reason. When a person acts in the world, he has interest in the nearest things. So, the person focuses his attention on a mere part of the world horizon. In man’s surroundings there are only singular beings, but they are related each other. Husserl emphasizes: “All being is relative” (Husserl 2008, p. 5). This is precisely the point where the building of the system of the things’ references has its own source. Undoubtedly, in each moment of acting, the world as horizon is defined by the practice itself. Hence, some of things arise from the interest, but the most of them are not even given to acting person. Therefore, “The being world has in itself the difference between practical near-world and distanthorizon, distant-world, which . . . is practically beyond question in practical present” (Husserl 2008, p. 329). It is evident that the practice constitutes the world. Although the world never seems to be given a man as a whole, and, moreover, each singular, definite being seems to have unknown horizons, acting person can build the near-world and have a confidence in the surrounding world (Husserl 1993, pp. 63, 199). Nonetheless, the building of the near-world is possible thanks to practice. Inasmuch as the near-world bases on the confidence in the world, the things surrounding acting person seem to be at hand. The person which has interest in the nearest things asks no questions about the things, because they are well known by him. In contrast to this situation, in questioning the same person can aim at the distant-world, to phrase it differntly, at the unknown world. We cannot forget, that the world has the structure of the known and the unknown (Husserl 1973, p. 37). Therefore, the position of a man in such a world can be presented by the following Fink’s appropriate presentation: “A man exists as a paradox. He combines in himself the matters, which seem to be contradictory. He understands the being in original strangeness and original confidence” (Fink 1958, p. 30).The paradox of the structure of human existence, as well as human world seems to be expressed in every question. Following Husserl, the process of questioning is circular, because it concerns essentially the whole of human life (Husserl 2002b, p. 257). The questioning is not only interested in

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a particular situation, but it reflects the structure of the world, and precisely in this sense it was claimed above that the question presupposes the world. Above remarks finally culminate in the concept of the existential value of question. Above all, let us stress that Husserl reframes the concept of instrumental question by adding to the two-sided disjunctive of response’s possibilities the horizon of the known and the unknown. While the question with instrumental value aims at responses which seem to be at hand, question with existential value confronts us with that what is not at hand (Husserl 1993, p. 216). More precisely, it aims not at the responses directly. In consequence, in such cases even following phrase can be a paradoxical response: “I have no response”.16 The response dose not solve any doubt, however, it expresses the essence of human existence, i.e., above mentioned paradox. According to Husserl, man is within fundamental tension between the known and the unknown. In everyday life the tension can be forgotten, nevertheless, the questioning in the form of sense-investigation restores the world in the “university of questionness” (Husserl 2002b, p. 485). Summing up, “Phenomenology . . . is a thematization of something strange, alien to what is already a part of us” (Dodd 2004, p. 70). The existential value of question is noticeable in the field of the senseinvestigation of historical sense.17 However, what is more important, considerations about historical sense involve the field of human practice directly. Namely, these considerations indicate responsibility as universal medium of human practice. Jacques Derrida points out essential relation between senseinvestigation and responsibility as follows: “To meditate on or investigate the sense (besinnen) of origins is at the same time to: make oneself responsible (verantworten) for the sense (Sinn) of science and philosophy, bring this sense to the clarity of its ‘fulfillment,’ and put oneself in a position of responsibility for this sense starting from the total sense of our existence” (Derrida 1989, p. 31). Sense-investigation, to put it precisely, the process of questioning reaches human existence in the point of responsible practice. The process is a form of our existence, rather than merely instrumental questioning aiming at the solve of two-sided disjunction. Hence, we could understand sense-investigation as philosophy itself, where cognitive actions reflect ethical actions.18 In the connection of these existential ways of the questioning we have phenomenology, which, as Ulrich Claesges points it, has at the same time a therapeutic function (Claesges 1972, p. 85). To sum up, we may say that by questioning phenomenology teaches us responsibility. At the very end of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, the author presents philosophy as self-cognition and he combines the philosophy with the Delphic words: “Know thyself!” (Husserl 1960, p. 157). In the conclusion, let us assert that the process of self-cognitions involves the process of questioning. Within

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the process, questioning person stands opposite the horizon of the known and the unknown. At the same time, any question expressing the horizon reaches the understanding of human position in the world; namely, a man is always confronted with the unknown. This is the reason for calling the questioning the essence of self-understanding. Hence, phenomenology “is a questioning that falls entirely out of the purview of the naïve, for it asks after a ground of selfclarity that is not the clarity of an idea or concept, but one that arises out of an achievement of subjectivity’s relation to itself, of a self-understanding that grasps an essence in evidence, in experience” (Dodd 1998, p. 70). As we have seen above, the essence of self-understanding seems to be the responsibility as the universal medium of practice. Summing up, the concept of the phenomenology was here presented as the process of questioning, in the context of the inner move of the Husserl’s thought from the Logical Investigations, on the one hand, to the Freiburgian period, on the other hand. However, above investigations of Husserl’s concept of question, which seem to be merely introductory considerations, demand further inquiries. No doubt, we must ask about the relationship between language and practice within Husserl’s phenomenology. Furthermore, we can ask the intersubjective level of responsibility. Nevertheless, subsequent questions lead us back through the phenomenology to ourselves. University of Gdansk NOTES For Husserl “Science in primordial sense arose from φιλσ oϕ´ια” (Husserl 2002, p. 3), but at the same time “Not all sciences we call the philosophical” (Husserl 1956, p. 306). 2 In the Crisis Husserl writes: “All reflection undertaken for ‘existential’ reason is naturally critical. But we shall not fail to bring to a reflective form of knowledge, later on, the basic meaning of the course of our reflections and our particular kind of critique” (Husserl 1970, p. 59). 3 “In turning towards the existent with astonishment, man is as it were primevally open to the world once again, he finds himself in the dawn of a new day of the world in which he himself and everything that is begins to appear in a new light. The whole of the existent dawns upon him anew” (Fink 1981, p. 24). 4 Cf. Dodd 2004, pp. 44–46. 5 Ernst Tugendhat considers this traditional concept of truth, i.e. as “adaequatio rei et intellectus”, as one of possible concepts of truth, which Husserl introduced in the Logical Investigations (Tugendhat 1970, p. 91). 6 Perception seems to have an immediate access to the object of perception. Furthermore, the object is given to us, so to speak, in living present. “In perception”, as Theodore de Boer emphasizes it, “the object is not represented by an image but is ‘itself’ present ‘in person”’ (Boer 1978, p. 145). On the account of immediate presentation of the object, we can present perception as model for objective acts. Indeed, Husserl involves the perception and the possibility of building immediate expressions. In the Investigations, he gives following example: “I see white paper 1

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and say ‘white paper’, thereby expressing, with precise adequacy, only what I see. The same holds of complete judgments. I see that this paper is white, and express just this by saying: ‘This paper is white”’ (Husserl 2001d, p. 272). The author postulates immediate connection between an expression and the object of expression, so what the expression expresses. Let us assert that in the Investigations the concept of objective expressions finally results in limiting all sentences to propositions: “In short,” as conclude Welton, “sentences are viewed only as propositions” (Welton 1983, p. 270). 7 “Regarding the adequacy of an expression (as word-sound) to our thought, we can speak in two senses, one which relates to unsuitability – as when a speaker chooses to express the thoughts which fill his mind in words whose customary meaning conflicts with the latter – and one relating to untruthfulness, i.e. to deliberately deceptive, lying speech – as when the speaker does not wish to express the thoughts actually filling his mind, but others at variance with these, and merely imagined by him: he wishes to express those thoughts as if they were filling his mind” (Husserl 2001d, p. 325). 8 “The soliloquizing thinker ‘understands’ his words, and this understanding is simply his act of meaning them” (Husserl 2001c, p. 321, note). “In a monologue words can perform no function of indicating the existence of mental acts, since such indication would there be quite purposeless. For the acts in question are themselves experienced by us at the very moment” (Husserl 2001c, p. 191). 9 “The judging always has the character of the flow. Consequently, what we called ‘act’ or ‘intentional experience’ in the Logical Investigations is in every instance a flow in which a unity becomes constituted in immanent time (the judgment, the wish, etc.) a unity that has its immanent duration and that may progress more or less rapidly” (Husserl 1991, p. 80). 10 “The future, which is for me in each present available thanks to my ability of pre-memory, is not the field of original experience” (Husserl 2006, p. 92). 11 “According to Husserl, the usefulness of the notion of horizon consists also in that it provides an explanation of the ‘occasional judgments’ and their validity” (Kuhn 1968, p. 120). 12 Cf. Husserl 2001a, p. 101. 13 “Questioning – wish intention, it aims at a decision: it presupposes incertitude, or doubtful, tension of opposite beliefs or opposite sentences, guess sentences. A respond is the fulfilling (of wish intention), the breaking free that produces the certitude (or conjecture) and thereby ‘It all fits only into place”’ (Husserl 1958, pp. 329–330). 14 In the Experience and Judgment Husserl defines “self-evident” in the following way: “As ‘self-evident,’ than, we designate consciousness of any kind which is characterized relative to its object as self-giving this object in itself, without asking whether this self-giving is adequate or not” (Husserl 1973, p. 20). In German edition of the book the sentence: “without asking”, reads as follows: “ohne Frage” (Husserl 1973, p. 12). The latter can be also translated as “without question”. 15 Identical opinion we can find in the Experience and Judgment (Husserl 1973, p. 308). Moreover, in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl emphasizes: “even logical reason is practical” (Husserl 1960, p. 77). 16 “For in a certain sense, to say ‘I don’t know,’ or even ‘I’m not sure,’ is also a response to a question. This obviously concerns communicative interaction in which I merely inform the other with my response that I cannot comply to his wish, that I have no response at all for his question. And in fact one can also reply in such cases with the phrase: ‘I have no response”’ (Husserl 2001a, p. 102).

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17

What is well known, the sense has for Husserl temporal character. If we will remind of the horizontal structure of the time, then from this perspective even the sense seems to have an element of the unknown, namely what is not present. After the assumption that sense is not present for investigating person, we could indicate a special kind of question which, for Husserl, has precisely existential value. The kind of question is return inquiry (Rueckfrage). No doubt, return inquiry, as question in general, asks for the unknown, which is not at hand. Moreover, it builds the meaningfulness of the life, because “concrete, historical a priori . . . encompasses everything that exists” (Husserl 1970, p. 372). 18 “Another way of defining rigour is to say that to be rigorous is to be responsible, to be able to justify each and every position taken, to be willing to provide the evidence for one’s beliefs. This definition expresses the ethical imperative which Husserl felt regarding philosophy. To be sure, there was also an ‘epistemological’ imperative: philosophy is, after all, about ‘knowledge.’ But true knowledge for Husserl is that for which one can ‘answer’ (verantworten)” (Buckley 1992, p. 22).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Benoist, Jocelyn. “Non-objectifying Acts.” In One Hundred Years of Phenomenology. Husserl’s “Logical Investigations” Revisited, D. Zahavi and F. Stjernfelt (eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. Bernet, Rudolf. “Bedeutung und intentionales Bewusstsein. Husserls Begriff des Bedeutungsphänomens.” Phänomenologische Forschungen 8 (1979): 31–64. Bernet, Rudolf. Kern, Iso. Marbach, Eduard. An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, L. Embree (foreword). Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1993. Boer, Theodorus de. The Development of Husserl’s Thought, T. Plantinga (trans.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978. Buckley, R. Philip. Husserl, Heidegger and the Crisis of Philosophical Responsibility. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992. Claesges, Ulrich. “Zweideutigkeiten in Husserl Lebenswelt-Begriff.” In Perspektiven transzendentalphänomenologischer Forschung. Für Ludwig Landgrebe zum 70. Geburtstag von seinen Kölner Schülern, U. Claesges and K. Held (eds.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972. Derrida, Jacques. Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry. An Introduction, J. P. Leavey, Jr. (trans., preface and afterword). Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989. Dodd, James. “Attitude – Facticity – Philosophy.” In Alterity and Facticity. New Perspectives on Husserl, N. Depraz and D. Zahavi (eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Dodd, James. Crisis and Reflection. An Essay on Husserl’s “Crisis of the European Sciences”. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. Fink, Eugen. Sein, Wahrheit, Welt. Vor-Fragen zum Problem des Phänomen-Begriffs. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1958. Fink, Eugen. “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.” In Apriori and World. European Contribution to Husserlian Phenomenology, W. McKenna, R. M. Harlan and L. E. Winters (eds. and trans.), J. N. Mohanty (introduction). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981. Husserl, Edmund. Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil. Kritische Ideengeschichte, R. Boehm (ed.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956 (Husserliana vol. 7). Husserl, Edmund. Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Zwieter Teil. Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, R. Boehm (ed.), The Hague: Nijhoff, 1958 (Husserliana vol. 8). Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, D. Cairns (trans). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960.

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Husserl, Edmund. Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Mit Erläuterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl, R. Ingarden (ed.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968. Husserl, Edmund. Formal and Transcendental Logic, D. Cairns (trans.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969. Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, D. Carr (trans. and introduction). Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1970. Husserl, Edmund. Experience and Judgment. Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, L. Landgrebe (ed.), J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks (trans.), J. S. Churchill (introduction), L. Eley (afterword). Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1973. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, F. Kersten (trans.). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983. Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), J. B. Brough (trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Husserl, Edmund. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentele Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937, R. N. Smid (ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993 (Husserliana vol. 29). Husserl, Edmund. Logik und allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie. Vorlesungen 1917/18 mit ergänzenden Texten aus der ersten Fassung von 1910/11, U. Panzer (ed.). Dordrecht: Nijhoff 1996 (Husserliana vol. 30). Husserl, Edmund. Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. Lectures on Transcendental Logic, A. J. Steinbock (tans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001 [2001a]. Husserl, Edmund. Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18), R. Bernet and D. Lohmar (eds.), Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 2001 (Husserliana vol. 33) [2001b]. Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations, vol. 1, J. N. Findlay (trans.). London and New York: Routledge, 2001 [2001c]. Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations, vol. 2, J. N. Findlay (trans.). London and New York: Routledge, 2001 [2001d]. Husserl, Edmund. Natur und Geist. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1919, M. Weiler (ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002 (Husserliana Materialien vol. 4) [2002a]. Husserl, Edmund. Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), S. Luft (ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002 (Husserliana vol. 34) [2002b]. Husserl, Edmund. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Vorlesungen 1922/23, B. Goossens (ed.), Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 2003 (Husserliana vol. 35). Husserl, Edmund. Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte, D. Lohmar (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2006 (Husserliana Materialien vol. 8). Husserl, Edmund. Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), R. Sowa (ed.). Dordrecht: Springer, 2008 (Husserliana vol. 39). Kuhn, Helmut. “The Phenomenological Concept of ‘Horizon’.” In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, M. Farber (ed.). Rpt., New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. “Husserl’s Concept of Intentionality”, Analecta Husserliana 1 (1971): 100–132. Rodemeyer, Lanei. “Developments in the Theory of Time-Consciousness.” In The New Husserl. A Critical Reader, D. Welton (ed.). Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press, 2003. Schuhmann, Karl. Husserl-Chronik. Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1977.

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Spiegelberg, Herbert. The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, with the collaboration of K. Schuhmann. (3 rev. and enl. ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994. Tugendhat, Ernst, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger. (2 ed.). Berlin: De Gruyter, 1970. Waldenfels, Bernhard. “Between Saying and Showing: Reflections on Huserl’s Theory of Occasional Expressions.” In Husserl’s “Logical Investigations” in the New Century: Western and Chinese Perspectives, K.-Y. Lau and J. J. Drummond (eds.). Dordrecht: Springer, 2007. Welton, Donn. The Origins of Meaning. A Critical Study of the Thresholds of Husserlian Phenomenology. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983. Welton, Donn. The Other Husserl. The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

S E C T I O N II

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T H E E S S E N T I A L S T RU C T U R E A N D I N T E N T I O N A L O B J E C T O F AC T I O N : T O WA R D U N D E R S TA N D I N G THE BLONDELIAN EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY

ABSTRACT

Maurice Blondel (1861–1949), the French philosopher from Dijon, has been associated with intellectual movements of various sorts. Most relevant to our purposes here, he has been considered a precursor of both the phenomenological and existential movements of the 20th-century. In this essay, we will begin by discussing particular affinities between Blondel’s philosophy of action and phenomenology – two in detail, namely, “intentionality” and the phenomenological epoché. In this discussion I will attempt to show that Blondel’s phenomenological analysis, by way of his “suspending reserve,” reveals the essential intentional structure of human action – specifically illuminating the fundamental object of intentionality in all willing. Building upon the case established for a phenomenological reading of Blondel, I argue that we also discover its existential character. Finally, having shown the legitimacy of calling Blondel’s philosophy of action an existential phenomenology of action, I will propose Blondel as a dialogue partner for furthering our understanding of phenomenology as conceived by A.-T. Tymieniecka.

INTRODUCTION Yes or no, does human life make sense, and does man have a destiny? – Maurice Blondel, L’Action (1893)1

With these words Maurice Blondel initiates his grand masterpiece – an investigation into what he sees to be the central question of human existence. It is an unfortunate fact, though, that this thinker of such genius is so often ignored – especially in the English-speaking world. In what follows, the hope is that we will see in Blondel a significance and relevance too often overlooked. In his writings we find thought of great originality and complexity. So complex that during the defense of his dissertation (i.e., L’Action), Blondel was bombarded with objections to – among other things – his writing style and 95 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 95–110. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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obscurity. One such objection is captured in this somewhat amusing exchange between Blondel and an examiner, Paul Janet: Janet: Your thought is obscure; your manner of writing obscures it still more. I have spent an hour on one of your pages and have not succeeded in understanding it . . . Blondel: There is a certain clarity which, as Descartes himself remarks, is often deceptive and dangerous . . . If I have rewritten certain parts of my work six or seven times, it was not for the pleasure of remaining obscure. Style is not only a passage giving others access to our thought, it is also a protection against their hasty judgment.2

Similarly, William James commenting in a letter, remarks, “Reading, yes! But understanding is another matter . . . In spite of the rare felicity of much of your expression, you remain to me esoteric.”3 Given his supposed obscurity, it comes as no surprise that Blondel is notoriously difficult to classify. However, there has been no shortage of attempts. Commentators have placed him alongside those who espouse voluntarism, fideism, crypto-apologetics, modernism, irrationalism, and subjectivism. In a more positive (or at least neutral) tone, Blondel has been associated with personalism (Emmanuel Mounier and John Macquarrie), philosophies of life (I.M. Bochenski), Bergsonism (also Bochenski), and the Scottish common sense school (Fiachra Long). He has even been dubbed a “kindred spirit” by James, who was a prominent (if not “the” prominent) figure in pragmatism.4 Most relevant to the present discussion, Blondel has very often been associated with the methods and figures of both Phenomenology and Existentialism. Specifically with regard to phenomenology, Knut Hanneborg has noted the provocative, though “not unfounded opinion” that Blondel is the “first phenomenologist.”5 Eugene Thomas Long, in his treatment of twentiethcentury philosophy of religion,6 goes so far as to include Blondel as a phenomenologist. Given this, it does not seem illegitimate to attempt further elaboration of particular similarities between Blondel and phenomenology. And with this, it is my hope that the discussion below may aid in our understanding of these similarities, and perhaps put us on more stable ground in adopting Hanneborg’s own position – namely, that “Blondel is a principal precursor of 20th-century phenomenology.”7 With regard to Existentialism, the connections initially seemed much more spurious. Yet, upon further study, one begins to notice a marked similarity in the projects and conclusions of Blondel and certain existentialist thinkers. Macquarrie has noted Blondel’s “tendencies”8 as an anticipation of “ideas later developed in existentialism.”9 In fact, Macquarrie credits him with being a precursor to, and possibly an influence on a non-German derived French existentialism, whose “best-known representative” is Gabriel Marcel.10

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Marcel, himself acknowledges Blondel’s influence, suggesting, “That goes without saying.”11 Also, William James likens some of Blondel’s work to another existential thinker, Sören Kierkegaard. He recognizes a common view of philosophy, noting, “[w]e live forward, we understand backward.”12 Citations could continue . . . but let us move on. It seems that we are not wholly unwarranted in making a strong association between Blondel and existentialism. There are marked differences, but a great many similarities. In what follows, the hope is to establish a firmer footing for Macquarrie’s claim that Blondel is indeed a “precursor” – in this case a precursor to twentieth-century existentialism. Thus far we have looked at the many opinions of various commentators dealing with Blondel’s phenomenological and existentialist “tendencies.” In the sections that follow, there will be three main objectives; (1) first, our most important (and the most lengthy) discussion will be an attempt to draw out the particular affinities between Blondel and phenomenology – with the ultimate goal being that of establishing whether he is actually “doing phenomenology,” (2) second, building on certain key features revealed during the “phenomenological” inquiry, we will offer a much briefer discussion of the “existential” character of these discoveries, and finally, (3) having unpacked the various phenomenological and existential features of the Blondelian philosophy of action, we will discuss any implications for moving forward in our understanding of the phenomenology of life. SEEKING A BLONDELIAN PHENOMENOLOGY

It should be pointed out that Blondel’s most important work13 (i.e., L’Action) preceded that of Husserl’s Logical Investigations by seven years,14 so in some sense, it seems anachronistic to attempt to associate him with a movement that had yet to develop. However, with that said, in this section, we will be asking ourselves this somewhat anachronistic question, namely, “Is Blondel doing phenomenology?” It seems that at best, we may find Blondel’s significance to phenomenology to be similar to that of other “precursors” (e.g., Johann Lambert, Hegel, C.S. Peirce, et al). At worst, we may find that there are nothing more than interesting, yet superficial likenesses. In order to better position ourselves for making a judgment of this kind, it is appropriate to simply compare the thought of Blondel to a very generic definition of “phenomenology.” Understanding the risk of winnowing down such a diverse and complex movement, it remains seemingly unavoidable that we must offer some guiding definition expressing certain key points, knowing that not every thinker would affirm it in its entirety. For the purpose of this essay, our guiding definition will be as follows;

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Phenomenology is a philosophical sub-discipline, an attempt at providing a ‘rigorous science’ that seeks to describe the essential features of ‘phenomena’ (properly understood) as a given ‘originary experience’ in consciousnesss.

From this definition, we hope to be able to; first, draw out any “superficial” similarities that are present, second, we will attempt a more substantive analysis, by unpacking the term “phenomena,” specifically as it relates to intentionality, and what this may have to do with Blondel, and finally third, we will focus our attention on the most commonly recognized affinity between Blondel’s work and phenomenology, namely, the phenomenological epoché. S U P E R F I C I A L I T I E S A N D I N T E R E S T I N G C O R R E L AT E S Given our generic definition there seem to be six specific characteristics that should be accounted for in order that we could say with sincerity, that Blondel is doing phenomenology15 – specifically, (1) it must be an attempt to ground a “rigorous science,” (2) it should be descriptive, (3) it should concern essences, (4) it must have “phenomena” as its object, (5) it should seek these phenomena in an undifferentiated unity of a given experience, and finally, (6) it must deal with the phenomena in the first-person, as it appears to the subject in consciousness. Our first characteristic, that of grounding a “rigorous science,” is mainly interesting in a superficial respect. Both Husserl and Blondel had a particular interest in both the “exact” and the “observational” sciences. However, both rejected the view of reductionist rationalism and reductionist positivism. To them there was more that was necessary. Opposed to the rejection of all science, Husserl wished to “provide the foundations for the existing sciences by providing clear explications of the concepts which the sciences use but do not themselves explicate.”16 For Blondel, the task was not wholly dissimilar. Likewise his intent was not the wholesale rejection of the role of science, he says, “We cannot believe that the sciences do not have a real bearing; they have one indeed.”17 However, there is “something” else, something not captured by science. He suggests, the “very existence of the sciences is possible only through a mediation on which, far from explaining it, they depend.”18 For Blondel this additional “something” is the science of action, for Husserl it was the phenomenological method. I do not wish to push this much further, but nonetheless it remains an interesting note regarding the similar “jumping-off” point of their works. Our next characteristic to consider is whether Blondel’s project is descriptive. This is a fairly simple, yet a much more superficial aspect to consider. It seems quite clear, upon reading Blondel’s work, that yes, he is certainly providing a description of the features that are given in consciousness (in his case,

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as they relate to action). However, we must make the point that description for description’s sake – whether apodictic, or not – if left as a kind of knowledge for knowledge’s sake would be inappropriate. Blondel would be fearful of such a disconnected sort of knowledge. This type of knowledge, which he calls “reflective,” by itself, “only goes in the direction of truth by becoming an appeal to action and by harvesting action’s response.”19 This purely descriptive account of phenomena is only appropriate when it is done in order to be reintegrated into what he calls “prospection” – a more direct knowledge that is oriented toward an end. The main point to be made, is that while, yes, Blondel proceeds in a descriptive manner, he does not wish to remain in the realm of pure description, but calls us to reintegrate this new knowledge for the purpose of concrete acting and living forward. Our third characteristic – that is, that the phenomenology should deal with essences – is slightly more complicated. While Blondel, in some sense, is attempting to elaborate the necessary and invariant features of a particular phenomena (i.e., human action). Ultimately, it may be difficult to produce sufficient support for the claim that he is a philosopher of essence. However, this discussion is not unrelated to sections dealing with “intentionality” (as well as Blondel’s existential tendencies). Given this, it seems appropriate to postpone the discussion until later in the essay. With regard to our fourth characteristic, we must offer, at the very least, a basic account of “phenomena” in the Husserlian sense in order to safely determine whether Blondel is attempting to describe “phenomena” properly understood. When we speak of phenomena in this narrower sense, we are talking about “experience rather than what is experienced.”20 For instance, in the case of thinking, we have the manifestation of the experience – such as thinking of the number 3 – as well as the object thought – simply the number itself, in this case, 3. It is this experience of thinking, rather than the object thought, that is to be described in the phenomenological method. This raises the very important issue of “intentionality” or “aboutness.” In our attempt to evaluate the legitimacy of calling Blondel a phenomenologist, this key idea seems to have great potential. With that said, we will leave the more in-depth analysis for the discussion below. Our fifth consideration in determining the legitimacy of calling Blondel’s work phenomenology, is the presence of a given “originary experience” – later developed by Husserl, as the Lebenswelt, or life-world. For him, the term life-world represented “a ‘prepredicative experience’ . . . [an] experience before it has been formulated in judgments and expressed in outward linguistic form, before it becomes packaged for explicit consciousness.”21 Or, “the pregiven manifold of all appearances, a totality possessing a determinate, but extremely rich, structuring consisting of typical objects, possible objects and

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experiences.”22 This sounds a great deal like the language of Blondel. He calls this “pregiven manifold” – among others things – a “concrete unity,” the “original reality,” and the “whole.” For him this represents an undifferentiated unity not wholly unlike the “direct knowledge” (i.e., prospection) mentioned above. In this type of knowledge, we have a direct un-fractured “vital unity”23 that is the “object” of the other type of knowledge – namely, “reflection.” The sixth and final characteristic under consideration deals with the “firstperson.” This is surely the most superficial of the aspects discussed thus far. Blondel’s project begins with – like Descartes – a return to the subject. However, in Blondel’s case, he begins with the “I act” rather than the “I think.” Very simply, Blondel’s philosophy is a first-person account of human action, but this is a very superficial step in building a case for calling his project phenomenology. So what have we established Attending to the six characteristics laid out in our generic definition of phenomenology could we feel comfortable considering Blondel – as Hanneborg suggests, a “precursor of 20th-century phenomenology”24 ? Well, if we are to simply run through the characteristics in a quasi-checklist style, the case is looking fairly good. But before we can offer a final response, we must deal with the two remaining characteristics that require further elaboration. First, in the next section we attempt to offer a more thorough account of the role of “intentionality” in the thought of Husserlian phenomenology, while determining the implications this has on a phenomenological interpretation of Blondel. Second, in order to better understand the role of essences in the Blondelian philosophy of action, we will discuss in detail, the role of the phenomenological epoché, or in Blondelian terms, the “suspending reserve.” T H E S T RU C T U R E A N D O B J E C T O F I N T E N T I O N A L I T Y IN ACTION As indicated above, what follows will be an elaboration on the discussion that was begun regarding “phenomena” in the Husserlian sense. The main objective will be to unpack the meaning of “intentionality” in order to apply this idea to the work of Blondel. Unlike the section on the epoché below, this analysis will be more interpretive than expository. Blondel does not mention “intentionality” (or a correlate) in any strict sense, but it seems that we may be able to offer an account that shows an implicit presence of the concept. To do this we will focus on three central threads; (1) we will offer an overview of the Husserlian idea of “intentionality,” (2) we will also discuss the key differences between this Husserlian definition and that of Brentano/Scholasticism, and (3) simply, we will attempt to discover these ideas in Blondel.

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When we speak of intentionality in the Husserlian and Brentanian sense, we are considering the “aboutness” of an act given in consciousness. What is meant by “aboutness” is simply that every conscious act has an “aimed at” object of that act – every act of thinking, willing, hating, or loving is an act of thinking, willing, hating, or loving of something. Every intentional act has this structure – it will always be an experience of something. Husserl also makes the further point, that (for him) [t]here are (to ignore certain exceptions) not two things present in experience, we do not experience the object and beside it the intentional experience directed upon it, there are not even two things present in the sense of a part and a whole which contains it: only one thing is present, the intentional experience.25

It is this “intentional” experience that is the object of phenomenological “phenomena” inquiry. However, Husserl’s position was a deviation from his teacher, Franz Brentano. For Brentano, as well as in scholastic thought, the intentional relationship between conscious act and its object is a “real relation” – that is with two components, not just the one. As noted by Thomas Ryba, for Brentano “there is not ‘hearing without something heard, no believing without something believed, no hoping without something hoped.”26 On the surface, this does not sound different from the Husserlian sense, but behind Brentano’s assertion is this idea of ‘real relations’ between the conscious acts and actual existent objects. Husserl rejects this particular feature, and begins to move toward a more idealistic notion of intentionality. When we come to Blondel, as suggested above, there is no explicit mention of the idea of intentionality in his work. Yet, there is an implicit understanding of intentionality in both a Husserlian and Brentanian sense. Initially this may sound odd – if not impossible. However, upon further discussion it will be shown that, indeed, Blondel’s entire project has “intentionality” as a key, though unnamed, aspect that seems to incorporate both the Brentanian “real relation” and Husserl’s idealistic tendency. As the quote at the beginning of this essay suggests, Blondel’s project is concerned with the ultimate “destiny of man.” His central category for investigation is action. When he speaks of action – it could be argued (and has been) that he means what existentialists were soon to mean by “existence.” Action, for Blondel, is a term that covers all willing – thinking included. This idea is summarize well, when Mounier states (in a slightly different context), “existence is action . . . [w]e are indebted to Maurice Blondel for having amply substantiated these ideas.”27 It is apparent, for Blondel, if we do not act, we are not. For as long as we exist we cannot help but act. Therefore, Blondel is attempting an analysis of nothing other than human existence. In fact, Blondel’s entire treatment of the science of action is an intellectual procession

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through all the various strata of human existence – namely, willing in relation to self, other, family, proximate community, nation, humanity as a whole, and eventually, the transcendent. What Blondel’s analysis of human existence suggests is that at each step we find an always-present-willing. However, in each particular instance of this willing, we find a “qualified”28 willing of something. In each of the strata, there is an object of the will (e.g., pleasure, art, family, etc.). This relation seems to be none other than that of an “intentional” relation in the Husserlian sense. However, what we come to discover through Blondel’s study of action is an inadequation of la volonté voulanté (the will-willing) and la volonté voulue (the will-willed). The suggestion is that in each instance of willing, we are frustrated – we do not do what we fundamentally will. The will-willing always exceeds the will-willed. No finite object, whether pleasure, art, or “Other” is sufficient to effect an adequation of the will-willing and the will-willed. So, ultimately Blondel comes to suggest that the reason that there is always an inadequation, is that no natural object is sufficient to effect the adequation of the wills. What this seems to do is to point beyond the natural to an indeterminate transcendent object. Basically, what Blondel has discovered is that in every instance of willing, there is this always-present-willing whose only adequate object is something transcendent of the natural. If this is the case, Blondel’s analysis of action has done nothing but partially reveal the fundamental object of intentionality. Ultimately, what the will-willing intends is something transcendent and this is the destiny of man. Though Blondel’s science of action seems to reveal this fundamental object, it remains an indeterminate object. We cannot say whether this object actually exists, but only that the expansion of the will has presented us with the idea – it has pointed in the direction of the possibility of this transcendent object. Nonetheless, by temporarily bracketing its actual existence, it seems to be an “intentional” relation in the Husserlian sense. However, this is not the end of the discussion. As suggested above, Blondel seems to be providing a synthesis of the “idealistic” Husserlian theory and the more “realist” view of Brentano. In order to understand this further, we must first offer a detailed account of the role the phenomenological epoché as used in Blondel’s work.

THE SUSPENSION OF THE ONTOLOGICAL A F F I R M AT I O N In the discussion that follows, we are attempting to elaborate on the significance of essences in the work Blondel. As has been mentioned, the theme most widely considered an affinity between Blondel and phenomenology is

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easily the use of the epoché. Though this is the case, we very often find that comments remain short and superficial. In this section, we will try to remedy this by offering a discussion of three kinds; (1) we will suggest a generic definition of the phenomenological epoché, as often explicated, (2) an attempt will be made to elaborate what Blondel calls the “suspending reserve,” and finally, (3) based on these elaborations, we will discuss whether Blondel’s “suspending reserve” could legitimately be named a phenomenological epoché. When we are talking about the phenomenological epoché, we are discussing what Husserl considered his most significant discovery. In phenomenology, Husserl is offering what he believes to be an apodictic description of essences as given in phenomena. In order to produce the apodicticity desired, Husserl suggests we must question “the ‘basis of validity’ . . . of the objective world, seeking to suspend our natural tendency to validate what is presented in experience.”29 In order to get to the ‘things-in-themselves’ we must suspend all scientific or philosophical assumptions, we must ‘bracket’ all such presuppositions in order that we “attend only to the phenomena in the manner of their being given to us.”30 As Robert Solomon suggests, in the phenomenological epoché “we do not ask whether something exists or not, is real or not. When we describe the essences of something, its existence is irrelevant . . . a main function of the reduction . . . is to ‘bracket out existence’ for the purpose of phenomenology.”31 Well, what has Blondel to say? At the outset of Action (1893), Blondel is attempting a very similar methodology. As he suggests, “[a]s I approach the science of action, then, I can take nothing for granted, no facts, no principles, no duties.”32 Elsewhere, he tells us that “the price which philosophy has to pay here for entry into its own domain, is not to make any prematurely ontological claim.”33 Or, “I have constantly to subordinate my analysis to a suspending reserve.”34 As we can see, for Blondel, as it was for Husserl, we must begin our inquiry without presupposition – including the bracketing of the object of intentionality, having no concern for its extra-mental reality. Thus far, Blondel’s account of the “suspending reserve” sounds a great deal like the phenomenological epoché. However, a very important distinction must be made – namely, for Blondel’s philosophy we cannot remain in this “suspending reserve.” We necessarily act – for if we do not act, we are not. If this is the case, then, in order to act (i.e., live) we cannot remain in this suspension. Our discussion above made note of the distinction between Husserlian “intentionality” and Brentanian “intentionality.” For Husserl, there was no distinction between the intentional conscious act, and the object of this intentional relation – they were one. However, for Brentano, there exists a “real relation” between conscious act and the intentional object of the act. For Blondel, Husserl’s position is not wholly inappropriate in theory . . . initially. However,

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his philosophy of action (i.e., of human existence) is lived and practiced. All knowledge must be reintegrated into the prospective orientation of the lived action. And if we can do nothing but act, we must intend some real object – we must will something. So, it seems that during the philosophical inquiry, the phenomenological epoché – or “suspending reserve” – is appropriate. Yet, in order to act, we must “by a reversal of perspective, at the end of the analytic regression . . . freely” affirm the ontological existence of the object as a “directive of human action.”35 Having worked through the Husserlian epoché and the Blondelian “suspending reserve,” it seems fairly clear that they have a great deal in common. But what does this have to do with our original question regarding essences? Well, Husserl was attempting to “bracket” existence in order to establish the essential features of phenomena, and we have seen that Blondel does much the same thing – though only temporarily. For Blondel, the central category under discussion is action. This “action” is nothing other than human existence, or life. In his analysis, what he attempted to do – and seemingly succeeded in doing – was to shows that the “essential” features of existence are twofold; (1) we act of necessity, not in the sense of determinism, but in the sense that if we exist, we cannot help but act, and (2) when we act, there is an always-present inadequation of the will-willing and the will-willed – which ultimately points to the idea of an indeterminate transcendent object of intentionality. In some sense, what he has accomplished is a description of the essence of man, which is action, or rather, existence. A F F I R M AT I O N O F T H E P H E N O M E N O L O G I C A L C H A R AC T E R O F B L O N D E L’ S P H I L O S O P H Y O F AC T I O N Our main objective has been to attempt to establish the significant – and in some cases, insignificant – affinities between Blondelian philosophy of action and phenomenology. Beginning with our generic guiding definition, we had hoped to discover each of the key characteristics of this definition in Blondel’s work. Having worked through the remaining two characteristics – namely, dealing with “intentionality” and the concern for describing essences – we are now better positioned to judge the legitimacy of calling Blondel’s project a “precursor” to phenomenology – if not outright “phenomenology.” And, on the surface it seems quite plausible. At the very least, each characteristic seems to be present implicitly, if not explicitly. It seems highly plausible to concede that he is doing phenomenology (of an idiosyncratic sort). This suggests that it is appropriate to echo Hanneborg in saying that, indeed, “Blondel is a principal precursor of 20th-century phenomenology” – to deny this, seems to be another injustice to an already too often overlooked thinker.

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THE EXISTENTIAL CHARACTER OF BLONDELIAN PHENOMENOLOGY

One of the interesting developments in our unpacking of the Blondelian phenomenology is the appearance of “existence” as understood in a quasiexistential sense. We also uncover many of the themes of the existentialist movement. Besides the superficial similarities dealing with the rebellion against highly abstract systems, and the return to the concrete lived experience of man, we have other more substantive affinities – specifically, (1) the role of essence and existence and (2) the significance of Freedom. In order to better understanding these existentialist tendencies, we will attempt a brief elaboration of the similar role that each theme plays in the Blondelian phenomenology. T H E P R E C E D E N C E O F E X I S T E N C E OV E R E S S E N C E The most widely recognized slogan of the existentialist movement – for good or bad – is surely Jean-Paul Sartre’s suggestion that “existence precedes essence.”36 For him, there is no blueprint for man existing in the mind of God. Sartre elaborates that “existence precedes essence” simply means “that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.”37 As others have pointed out, this is a Blondelian idea as well. Jean Lacroix notes that “the substance of man is action; he is what he makes himself,” this “was Blondel’s formula before it came from Sartre.”38 Blondel himself states, “[t]he role of action, then, is to develop being and to constitute it.”39 Now, would Blondel accept Sartre’s contention that “existence precedes essence” and that there is no pre-determined essence of man? – probably not without qualification. Though action (i.e., existence) plays a role, if not “the” role for constitution of man, this existence itself has an essence. As we discovered above, for Blondel, there are two essential features of human existence that are necessary – namely, (1) we act of necessity and (2) there is always an inadequation of the will-willing and the will-willed. This is the essence of existence. It seems much more accurate to interpret the Blondelian relation of existence and essence in a more Heideggerian sense. As Jean Wahl points out, “Heidegger rejects this position [that “existence precedes essence”].”40 Rather, he proposes a position quite different, that is, that the “essence of man is existence.”41 If Wahl’s interpretation is correct, similar to Heidegger, Blondel seems to have also discovered that the essence of man is action (or existence). The necessity that we act, means that it must be an essential structure of our

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existence. However, along with this, the “intentional” nature of action requires that there be an object of this willing. Blondel believes this object of the intentional relation in action is an indeterminate transcendence. Ultimately, we return to the opening quote, “does man have a destiny.”42 It appears that the Blondelian existential phenomenology of action has revealed the necessity of the idea of transcendence as our object of intentionality – that is, of action, further, of existence. The essence of man is to will transcendence – and along the way, by acting, participate in his own constitution. THE NECESSITY OF FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM We have established that both Sartre and Blondel believe that man’s existence plays a role in his own constitution. In order that this be the case, both suggest that man must be free. If man is not free – if he is in some sense determined – we cannot say that man is of his own making, but rather the result of antecedent conditions that determine his action, antecedent conditions which play the constitutive role. For Sartre, “[i]f existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom.”43 One of the reasons this is important for Sartre, is that he wants to make man wholly responsible for his actions. He believes “[w]e are alone, with no excuses.” To allow the idea of determinism is to push responsibility back off of man himself. For Blondel, we find a very interesting position. He is also concerned with both the relationship between determinism and freedom, as well as freedom and responsibility. Blondel’s position is very complicated, but what he suggests is that from the recognition of determinism of the antecedent conditions of action, we in fact “escape from it.”44 He states, “[t]o be conscious of determinism it has appeared that we must be free; for the awareness of any definite state supposes and constitutes a higher state.”45 Or, “[t]here is consciousness of determinism only through freedom.”46 As we can see, Blondel, like Sartre, goes to great lengths to point out that freedom exists. Yet for Blondel it is not the recognition of determinism that negates freedom, but it is the condition of our freedom. And it is the freedom that allows man’s active role in his constitution. Just as for Sartre, Blondel is very concerned with establishing the responsibility of the individual for his action. He suggests, “[i]t is true, the option is imposed on us; but it is through it that we become what we will: whatever may result from it, we will have only ourselves to blame.”47 Whatever action we perform, whatever thought we actively think, all this is ratified by the free will to act. “We make ourselves as we will”48 and for this we are free and responsible.

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THE EXISTENTIAL CHARACTER OF BLONDELIAN PHENOMENOLOGY CONSIDERED

Given the diverse and fluid nature of the existentialist movement, there will surely be no consensus regarding the relevance of Blondel for existentialism. There are certainly distinctions49 – most notably, that some existentialist (i.e. Heidegger and Sartre) reject the phenomenological epoché. However, it seems plausible that Blondel’s idiosyncratic use of the “suspending reserve” is a sufficient guard against characterizing his position as completely contrary to that of existentialism. With this said, as we have also shown there are definitely significant affinities – and more beyond those considered. We have already noted the aversion to highly abstract systems, and a desire to return to the concrete subject (in action) as the starting point of philosophy. Yet, we cannot stop there . . . though we do not have the space to consider them in depth, we are able to detect correlates of other existentialist themes – namely, the always-present “feeling” of Dread and the significance of inter-subjectivity. Regarding Dread (or Anxiety, Anguish, Nausea), we have a much less developed notion in Blondel. However, he does seem to recognize the “difficulty” experienced by the acting man in the face of “choice and a sacrifice.”50 Concerning the role of inter-subjectivity – and the “Other” – it has been suggested that “[w]ell before Buber, Scheler, or G. Marcel but in different terms Blondel affirmed that the subject exists only through other subjects.”51 What has become quite clear is that Blondel is certainly dealing with many of the same issues taken up by the existentialist movement decades later. His phenomenological analysis was an analysis of action, that is, “existence” itself. He tailors his phenomenological method to, in a sense suit both the phenomenological requirement of bracketing existence for the purpose of describing essences, as well as emphasizing the significant constitutive role of existence. Also, freedom, responsibility, the “Other,” the sense of “Dread,” and the rebellion against abstraction all play a particular role in what seems to be nothing other than a Blondelian Existential Phenomenology. B L O N D E L I A N E X I S T E N T I A L P H E N O M E N O L O G Y M OV I N G F O R WA R D

Is Blondel relevant to our contemporary pursuit of the phenomenology of life as proposed by A.-T. Tymieniecka? Shall he remain interesting merely as an historical figure? Or rather, is there a place for him at the table; as teacher and partner? It seems possible. As Ryba suggests, Tymieniecka’s attempt is “a re-orientation toward human involvement in life . . . a re-orientation in which

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‘response, deliberation, selection, choice, imaginative invention, planning,’ as they occur within concrete living, become the central phenomenological concerns.”52 Like Blondel she wishes to “spurn”53 reductionist scientific and rationalist methods. Ryba suggests, that “this kind of science . . . eschews the transcendent, a feature which [Tymieniecka] wishes to restore to centrality.”54 In seeking to discover the “destiny of man,” Blondel, through his existential phenomenological analysis, discovers the necessity of the idea of transcendence in the expansion of human action. Given these interesting parallels, it seems plausible to believe that the project begun by Blondel in the 1890s could still bear fruit for our understanding of phenomenology and of life. Though, at present, I am unprepared to propose particular areas of inquiry, I do wish offer you Maurice Blondel, the existential phenomenologist, as a dialogue partner in considering the next movement in the further development of phenomenology. Duke Divinity School Durham, North Carolina

NOTES 1 Maurice Blondel, Action (1893) Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Olivia Blanchette (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) p. 3. Hereafter, Blondel, Action. 2 James M. Somerville, Total Commitment: Blondel’s L’Action, (Washington: Corpus Books, 1968) p. 21. Hereafter, Somerville. 3 Frederick J.D. Scott, “William James and Maurice Blondel,” The New Scholasticism, Vol. XXXII (1958) p. 42. Hereafter, Scott. 4 Interestingly, along these lines, Blondel himself “proposed the term ‘Pragmatism’ to designate his philosophy of action.” However, it seems highly unlikely that he would approve of ‘pragmatism’ as it was to develop in Anglo-American thought – particularly given pragmatism’s theory of truth. See Scott p. 37. 5 Knut Hanneborg, “Husserl, Ingarden and Tymieniecka,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXX, ed. Hans H. Rudnick (1990) p. 45. Hereafter, Hanneborg. 6 See Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion 1900–2000. 7 Hanneborg, p. 45. 8 John Macquarrie, Existentialism, (New York: Penguin Books, 1972) p. 174. Hereafter, Macquarrie, Existential 9 John Macquarrie, “Maurice Blondel,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Edwards (2nd ed., New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1972) p. 323. Hereafter, Macquarrie, “Blondel.” 10 Macquarrie, Existentialism, p. 59.

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This story is a citation from an entry in Truth Journal by Dom Illtyd Trethowan, entitled “Awareness of God.” The article can be found at URL = http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth05. html. 12 Scott, p. 34. For further elaboration of the context in which James makes this association, see Scott’s article, as well as the articles under consideration by Blondel – i.e. The Starting Point of Philosopohical Research. 13 Much of the discussion in this essay will deal mainly with Blondel’s writings between 1893–1906 – to the exclusion of his later volumes on being, thought, and Chrisitan philosophy. These earlier works are widely considered to be his most influential. Specific attention is paid to L’Action (1893) and a pair of articles written in 1906, namely, The Starting Point of Philosophical Research. 14 This is the case with the exception of Husserl’s early work in mathematics and logic, namely, On the Concept of Number (1887) and Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891). Our concern here is with the period beginning with the publication of the first installment of Logical Investigations, appearing in 1900. 15 For the purposes of this discussion, the phenomenology under consideration is mostly limited to a quasi-generic Husserlian type. 16 Richard Schmitt, “Phenomenology,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 6, ed. Paul Edwards (2nd ed., New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1972) p. 138. 17 Blondel, Action, p. 91. 18 Ibid., p. 61n. 19 Maurice Blondel, “The Starting Point of Philosophical Research,” in The Idealist Illusion and Other Essays, trans. Fiachra Long (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000) p. 142. Hereafter, Blondel, “Starting Point”. 20 David R. Cerbone, Understanding Phenomenology, (Stocksfield: Acumen Publishing, 2007) p. 3. 21 Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, (New York: Routledge, 2003) p. 12. Hereafter, Moran. 22 Thomas Ryba, The Essence of Phenomenology and Its Meaning for the Scientific Study of Religion, (New York: Peter Lang, 1991) p. 171. Hereafter, Ryba, Essence. 23 Blondel, “Starting Point”, p. 119. 24 Hanneborg, p. 45. 25 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, Vol. II, trans. J.N. Findlay (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1970) p. 558. 26 Ryba, p. 180. 27 Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952) p. 83. 28 Somerville, p. 44. 29 Moran, p. 152. 30 Ibid., p. 11. 31 Robert C. Solomon, Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. Robert C. Solomon (New York: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2000) pp. 22–3. 32 Blondel, Action, p. 12. 33 Blondel, “Starting Point”, p. 130. 34 Ibid., p. 131 emphasis mino. 35 Somerville, p. 33. 36 Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Humanism of Existentialism,” in Essays in Existentialism, ed. Wade Baskin (New York: Citadel Press, 1993) p. 34. Hereafter, Sartre, “Humanism”. 37 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

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Jean Lacroix, Maurice Blondel: An Introduction to the Man and His Philosophy, trans. John C. Guinness(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968) p. 33. 39 Blondel, Action, p. 425. 40 Jean Wahl, “The Roots of Existentialism,” in Essays in Existentialism, ed. Wade Baskin (New York: Citadel Press, 1993) p. 13. 41 Ibid., p. 13. 42 Blondel, Action, p. 3. 43 Sartre, “Humanism”, p. 41. 44 Blondel, Action, p. 125. 45 Ibid., p. 132. 46 Ibid., p. 128. 47 Ibid., p. 328. 48 Ibid., p. 183. 49 For a better understanding Blondel’s own opinion of the (Sartrean) existentialist position, see his article, “The Inconsistency of Jean Paul Sartre’s Logic,” in The Thomist, vol. X, (Washington: The Thomist Press, 1947). In it, he offers a critique of specific facets of the existentialist movement that he does not embrace. In particular, he finds the pessimistic and relativistic overtones deeply problematic – if not, outright illogical. With this said, I do not find his critique to be problematic for the thesis of this eaasy. It comes as no surprise that Blondel would be unable to adopt certain beliefs held by many of the (especially atheistic) existentialist thinkers. It remains, nonetheless, that the project sought by both converges in many respects, regardless of their diverse results. 50 Blondel, Action, p. 134. 51 John J. McNeill, S.J., The Blondelian Synthesis: A Study of the Influence of German Philosophical Sources on the Formation of Blondel’s Method and Thought, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966) p. 191. 52 Thomas Ryba, “Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life,” in Phenomenology World-Wide, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka (Boston: Springer, 2003) pp. 448–9. 53 Ibid., p. 448. 54 Ibid., p. 448.

J A R O S L AVA V Y D R O VÁ

S U B J E C T I V I T Y, O P E N N E S S A N D P L U R A L I T Y: O N T H E B AC K G RO U N D O F E D M U N D H U S S E R L’ S PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION

ABSTRACT

There are many forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity and this constitutes a complex problem in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and in the philosophy inspired by it as well. This essay will look at this problem in the connection to the phenomenological reduction as methodological access to it, and to the interpretations of the thesis that subjectivity is intersubjectivity. This text will consider three ways of reading this thesis. The first and the most common possibility is to look at it from the side of subjectivity; the second possibility presents the argument from the side of intersubjectivity. The third way is paradoxical: to try to stay in the middle, to see that the ego and the other (alter) are connected inside and out, from the side of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Then this essay will consider practical issues that are very important (existential) for key tasks of life of man among others, such as the phenomena of plurality, limit, alterity, and solitude, the absence of other on the one side, and on the other side density, the crowd, and the reduction of people to a summary, by which they lose their own uniqueness. In some situations, the presence of the self points clearly to the absence of the other, such as radical solitude like that of imaginary Robinson Crusoe, inwardness, borderline example of pathological loneliness, in which it is impossible to communicate one’s experiences and one’s misunderstanding of the world of others – or when the other becomes a strangely nonindividual, impersonal form, as in behavior of crowds, where one feels similarly solitary and lost, despite the presence of others. The other doesn’t appear here as a nothing or nobody, but rather as a fullness, a density, a multiplicity, which denies the subject the ability to step out, to go away from somebody, or to go to somebody.

I would like to thank Professor Cliff Foreman from Covenant College for his careful reading and correction of the English text, and Doctor Peter Šajda for his consultations during the preparation of the essay. This study was supported by the project VEGA 2/0168/08.

111 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 111–125. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Different forms of being-without-the-other or the solipsistic form of being-foroneself refer to their counterpart, when the other presents himself, and when even his existence can be portending in some common or even extreme cases, such as the special mode of relation which develops between a mother and her child from conception, strong relationships of blood in the family, personal communication, a feeling of ethical responsibility for someone in the smaller and broader communities, in national or ethnic, international or intercultural situations. Different forms of more asymmetry than symmetry are possible, as certain thinkers have postulated, when the other enters intensively into our personal and even intimate world. Aren’t these kinds of being-with, being-without known in the lives of people of the 20th and 21st Century? These themes function not only as a wide inspiration for phenomenology and existentialism, but they are fundamental for the human of this and last century. In these instances, the other appears by speaking or being silent, being present or absent, and this presence is connected with kind of inaccessibility as well, which causes to ask who, indeed, is the other? There are many sorts of intersubjectivity or many ways in which we experience the interconnections of our subjectivity to the other (to the alter) in his or her different manifestations. Intersubjectivity can be felt as urgent, common, unproblematic, plural, or also as minimal, deficient, or anomal. We would like to look at some selected aspects of this complex problem, which has been addressed in many ways and from many viewpoints in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and in the philosophy inspired by phenomenology. These questions are set out of play and set into play (außer Spiel setzen – ins Spiel bringen) with the method of phenomenological reduction and are developed in the interweaving (Verflechtung) of the theses that subjectivity is intersubjectivity and intersubjectivity is subjectivity. This essay will consider this theses three times in three possible ways. Then we will address the connection of intersubjectivity to the problem of the practical, which will be right at hand. This discussion is based on selected texts from classical phenomenology (Edmund Husserl’s consideration of intersubjectivity and reduction) and interpretations and new articulations of those texts.1 Though limited, these selections will enable us to see the some of the theoretical problems as they are revealed in the contemporary situation. A detailed notion of a shift from the static to genetic and to generative phenomenology; the analysis of the given problem in this shift of points of view; and the question of the science of consciousness, which becomes urgent in the intertwining of phenomenology and an interdisciplinary account, will be absent from this consideration, but be presupposed and stay in the background. We will not also analyze the question of normality. Finally, given the amount of literature related to the problem of intersubjectivity, which is very wide, our

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scope will be based more on selected recourses and approaches than on any comprehensive account. INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM: PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD

Let us begin with three short queries into the phenomenological method, based only on fragmentary reading of selected texts, but which can serve to help us understand the problem and to orientate in it. We may notice that Husserl sometimes assigns certain attributes to the reduction when he wants to tie it – through the connection between starting point, execution and result – to intersubjectivity. If we omit the somewhat understandable designation “intersubjective,” we can also find the terms “double,” “original,” or “ambiguous” reduction.2 Using these terms – as bases for our queries – we can uncover some important characteristics of the relation between subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Reduction makes the problem of the experience apparent, and by elevating it to the level of science establishes the science of experience: “singular individual investigation of consciousness within the phenomenological epoché.”3 Reduction represents a fundamental approach to consciousness and subjectivity, which can be seen in the phenomenological clarity.4 Husserl extends its movement (in the direction to the other, or he goes near to it in the direction to the phenomenological) in order to ensure the intersubjective dimension of the phenomenological field. This is made possible by the double reduction. In what sense? Let us take a look at two correlative parts of the Text No. 6 of Hua XIII. Beginning in § 33, Husserl aims mainly for pure consciousness and its stream which is linked with the reduction of the natural. The doubleness can be read as subtle reducing which is related to empathy (Einfühlung) as the basic experience of intersubjectivity: “But on the other hand the empathy is an experience of empathized consciousness, within we can also practice the phenomenological reduction.” (§ 39)5 Although Husserl leads to the sphere of I, he denies that it will be solipsistic.6 And he continues: “All phenomenological being is then reduced to a (to ‘my’) phenomenological I, which is specified as a sensing and remembering, empathizing I, that is at the same time a phenomenologically reducing I applied to other I’s, that are set (gesetzte) in empathy and are seeing, remembering, or empathizing I’s.”7 We find the empathizing I, and we find the empathized I, too. Husserl’s investigation then proceeds on to anything which connects this I and another I, to their mutual time and objective indices, which belong to every “Monade-Ich.” Double reduction is, of course, interweaved with the intersubjective reduction. In the Text No. 5 (Hua XIII), Husserl first distinguishes between the

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physical and psychophysical spheres, the body, physical characteristics, the “dead” properties of things and then proceeds to the connection of the body to the subjective and he is interested in nexus in the consciousness, in manifold experiences, he moves from consciousness to consciousness, to foreign consciousness. And here comes the intersubjective reduction.8 Every sphere brings its own “draw” of the reduction, which is realized as the assignment of the critical or skeptical index or, in the other words, as the change of theme. What is now the phenomenological theme? What kind of indices (Index) stay out of play, and which are set into play? It is the experiencing body, the connection of experiences, willing, imagining, remembering, etc. in the reflection, and Husserl continues that it is not only this connection, but also what is in it “given as in it unfolding even the I, the person,” what he changes twice, to “in it given as itself in it operative, living, even the I, what is even inseparable from it,” or “not only this connection of the life of the consciousness in itself, but as itself in it operative, living I, what is even inseparable from it.”9 By this continuous and iterative deepening, we come to two questions: Which level of intersubjectivity do we have here? To establish the connection of the consciousness is important, but as Husserl says, that is for the meantime separate – he calls this separation insidiousness. How can this connection of the consciousness be developed? There are both direct and indirect experiences,10 which belong both to my immanent experience and to empathy, and which extends my field of consciousness by foreign one. Here the text begins to encompass wider issues, because the multiple of the streams of consciousness open possibilities for their mutual relations – the meaning of the terms “betätigend” and “lebend” I broaden and differentiate this field. It can be developed as interpretation, communication, action, the expansion of relations, practice, social and spiritual life – anything which produces “Verflechtung” of I and You in its different levels and various proportions. It is then necessary to move from the science of consciousness to question form areas like sociology, history, tradition, language, culture as levels developed in and through intersubjectivity. In the first part, Husserl alludes the solipsism and in the second part he tries to avoid the isolation. In the third textual query (from Hua XXXIV), Husserl leaves the plane of experience and the consciousness behind in favor of the plane of “attitude,” and one of his goal is to overcome the anonymity of “unbeteiligter Zuschauer,” the phenomenologist after the reduction. The performance of the methodological act is necessarily connected with the performer himself. Solipsism, isolation or anonymity are three warning signs of intersubjectivity which we find here. The original reduction, which is situated in the connection between I and the other and discerns what belongs to “my” sphere, is also significant here.11 The uninterested observer leaves the

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natural attitude but he doesn’t loose everything by the reduction – the original sphere of the ego goes along with the others in this case. A different giveness of the world, in which I live and in which I live with the others, belongs to total connection of subjective field. This contains attitudes and creates an overall “attitude” (Konnex) which develops possibilities for different relations – from the natural, through the phenomenological to the ethical. As Sebastian Luft shows: “Different attitudes ‘intend’ different worlds . . . and henceforth one can speak of plurality of worlds as meaningful ‘contexts’ that are correlated to plurality of attitudes.”12 Husserl opens a field of phenomenological investigation and writes, that what he finds “ist die reine Subjektivität als Intersubjektivität.”13 This last remark shows on the one hand that reduction gives us various possibilities, various ways to set out, various starting points and various destinations whereby we don’t loose its power and radicalism. Marie Bayerová follows the “nodal point” of reduction within its beginnings and ends, “. . . all depends here on the resource question, on what is to be inquired, and from it follows the specific cross-connection of thinking processes which presents the theoretical solution of resource question.”14 On the other hand, our vision opens: we are situated in the world as a milieu, as a horizon and consequently have the corresponding attitude/s. The question of the plural aspects of attitudes, of world/s and of the reduction itself should be asked once more in conclusion in light of what Husserl claims to have found. The reduction to the primordial sphere, the reduction relating to the different levels of the natural, which are the approaches to the different levels of the phenomenological, the reduction within the global relation to the world, the second reduction, goes hand in hand with the problem of the other. Reduction, which leads to the subjective, also uncovers the intersubjective. This characteristic is pointed out by Dan Zahavi, and Edmund Husserl himself speaks of a certain ambiguity. The reduction doesn’t lead only to subjectivity, but incorporates intersubjectivity as well.15 After this strategic (methodological) observation, we can go back to the theses, that subjectivity is intersubjectivity and intersubjectivity is subjectivity, and we can explore the different forms, appearances, and phenomena of both.

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We can try to read these two theses through two directions, through two optics. At first sight it seems that it is a tautological expression with circle structure. But it may not be a vicious circle. We can say that by our reading transposes the starting point, the “node,” which lays accent to one part of it.

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A L R E A DY- I N - R E L A T I O N Let us start with the movement from subjectivity to intersubjectivity, which develops from an interpretation of intersubjectivity through subjectivity, through perspective of I. The way the other appears to me, the way I perceive him/her, the way we communicate and live – Husserl sees this as a process of going from myself to the other that takes place in four phases. These phases progress from the body, through mental states and expressions, to emotions and affections, from a primordial sphere to communication and life in ethical society. These stages of empathy are illucidated by Natalie Depraz: “(1) A passive association of my lived body with your lived body, (2) An imaginative self-transposal in your psychic states, (3) An interpretative understanding of yourself as being an alien to me, (4) An ethical responsibility toward yourself as a person.”16 I do not want to recount these phases, which are described well enough in these passages; I am only going to discuss some connected issues. In Text No. 1 (Hua XIII), we find a body, surrounding, processes of consciousness, attitudes, the world, etc. These are also the spheres which connect us and set us apart – spheres that enable us to speak about ourselves and the other, about the foreign, about the limits of our connections, about our identity. The element of the collective and the different, one world seen from different places, when the I experiences, when something is alien to me, when I call mine, when I discover and overcome the boundaries between myself and the other, I understand all of these things by a process of analogy, which balances this tension and keeps us from splitting off into a multiplicity of solipsistic non-communicating worlds. There are several possible ways to grasp the relation between mine and alien – from wider and narrower perspectives. For example, an inquiry into attitudes can open different possibilities of relation between phenomenological and natural attitudes and can be combined with mutual interventions, influences, and effects (Ingerenz). Husserl mentions the example of a theologian as a member of the city council, then a philosopher, and then a mayor, whose jobs are intertwined with their lives, et vice versa. Some possibilities are brought forward by a description of a life of a scientist in society, in the scientific community, and in his family. Man enters into different relations, and the more symptomatic of them may have a certain lack of clarity, non-lucidity, meeting with aliens or foreigners, with some degree of conflict. Although Husserl leans toward a “peacefulness” in relations, the problems they provoke may be revealing, inasmuch as they point out the rules, boundaries, possibilities and impossibilities of mutual life. The problematizing of relations doesn’t necessary mean negative encounters will occur.

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The I enters into relations and has already been in relations, whereas the other I has also had experiences and is an already related, situated I, not as my projection, an object or a thing, not simply something “opposite” to me, and so we create together the intersubjective dimension. If the reduction offers an entrance into the problem of consciousness and experience, now we can see how its viewpoint opens onto the dimension of praxis, the practical and the ethical.17 The identity of a subject of some attitude is also connected to the integrity of his actions amongst his relations and in the community (or to the disintegrated forms of ones paradoxical decisions, too). Different approaches sketched in the examples help us to see the openness of the I – the I enters into relations; the I opens himself or herself toward the other.

ON THE BORDER OF THE I One of the important characteristics of intersubjectivity is that I realize that I can be alien, too, when I experience that the other is experienced I, when the alien is the foreign and is not – and could not be – taken as that which can be transformed into me. “Everyone identifies himself as the same spiritualbodily I, and differs from other, and only in this distinction from other identifies himself, and only so knows himself properly as unity.”18 In other words: “Intersubjectivity appears to be this mutual discovery.”19 This formulation of Natalie Depraz, at the conclusion of her analysis of empathy, can carry us forward to the second thesis. By following the movement in the opposite direction, from intersubjectivity to subjectivity, as subjectivity is interpreted by intersubjectivity, we can find several forms of being-with-other/s, which can lead us to discover who we are. This question is interestingly presented in the Japanese context, where aidigara means the dynamic relation between individuals, which constitutes what the “I” means. As Yoko Arisaka says, the Japanese language has fifteen expressions, which describe the I: “One’s self-identity is necessarily highly context-dependent” as “self-in-a-situation,” “self-withanother.”20 The other, the foreign, the alter, the alien can serve as a good reference for what is mine – the home, the ego – as well. Natalie Depraz in her text The Intimate Other: A Phenomenology of Lucid Embodiment in the Light of the Lived Experience of Pregnancy writes about the awareness of the other in our body coming from own experience. This may be experienced as a certain contact, a habituation to the other, as his way of making his presence known, which may even change so that this other becomes inherent, even to the extent that this other starts to force, to “occupy” the place of a mother. The other starts to govern her body, to determine her – “it is becoming omnipresent at the end and makes me feel alien to myself. Not only

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does it fill me up, it overflows me.”21 The other work, The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology, also suggests examples of borderline, limit-subjectivities such as: “Infants/children, animals/beasts, mad people/the insane, aliens/foreigners/strangers,” in this class we can with Waldenfels also include automats.22 Limit-phenomena, described by Steinbock, such as “the unconscious, sleep, birth and death, temporality, the other person, other worlds, animal and plant life, the Earth, God, etc.” also exist on the borders.23 Specific cases are symptomatic not just on the level of an analysis of intersubjectivity, but they also turn us back to subjectivity itself, which, as Natalie Depraz says, can be deepened; they can serve as feedback.24 They open new question for us: (1) We are not able simply to go near to them; we must open or enrich our efforts, but not to loose them as the alien; (2) The more or less expressed alterity moves on or even beyond the boundary of identity, constitution, solipsism, anonymity, etc.; or, on the contrary, it demonstrates some elements of subjectivity. We can see this in the interesting relationship between a mother and infant during and after the pregnancy, in the example of the interaction between animals, by the fragmentation experienced by the insane, by the specific experience which is lived and constituted by, for example, autistic people. Some characteristics of experience are lived as extended to the extreme, some are missing. Experience, the uncovering of our relation to others, the connections of consciousness – in its normal or limit-form – point to the overlapping of subjects, which can take place on a scale from intentionality,25 through self-alterity, to the dynamic structure – if we follow the analysis of Natalie Depraz. These overlappings are outer (directed at something around us, close or far from us and in the relations – what was described in the first part of the reading of the thesis) and inner openings of subjectivity, which touch the core of subjectivity itself (the exemplary cases show the possibilities of these openings). Husserl mentions this depth and its levels e. g. in the context of time: “Das Ursein, the Absolute that times itself in itself, in the absolute immanent temporality, in the absolute stream – the last–, then das Ursein as an ego in the absolute streaming life, in its primordiality, its absolute stream in the intentional mediation united with transcendental others, implicated in itself, each one constituted in it as alter in a primordial stream.”26 Natalie Depraz speaks of “what is foreign to the I but deeply inhabits me: in short, the alien within myself and inherent in me”27 – the I is already altered. Dan Zahavi (describing the analysis of Merleau-Ponty) points out that “I am always already a stranger to myself and therefore open to others.”28

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THE THIRD READING Finally, there is a third possibility, a third way of reading. This possibility doesn’t necessarily appear as an alternative, but rather as an outcome. Can these theses in the living subjectivity in the world exist as separated and not as cross-connected, without “Verflechtung”? Can they be consequently studied as separated? Doesn’t subjectivity also fall with the collapse of intersubjectivity, et vice versa? Doesn’t the world fall with it?29 Husserl’s conception of intersubjectivity is very extensive and cannot be presented in its fullness in this place. Our purpose was to understand it in singular insights and provisionally in the artificial split of the united problem, but also to point out that the different perspective – on subjectivity and on intersubjectivity – shows that they are interconnected and we can’t favor one over the other. “Far from being competing alternatives, subjectivity and intersubjectivity are in fact complementary and mutualy interdependent notions.”30 Subjective openness is anchored in outer relations but inside of the self as well. In other words, ego and other are connected inside and out, fixed and disturbed, both from the side of intra-subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. The movements from subjectivity to intersubjectivity, et vice versa, can shift to the movements between the approaches of egology and alterology.31 The ambiguity of the reduction finds now its counterpart on the level of approaches, forms, appearances, and phenomena of inter-subjectivity. CONCLUSION: ON PLURALITY

After looking at intersubjectivity, we can come back to the methodological path, which opens up a new sphere of consciousness, an attitude and new access to the other and which has been ever-present. We can look at it one more time from the perspective of idea of “plurality.” Two ends of this specific problem will be indicated by the reduction and by the situatedness of its performer, “Zuschauer,” in the world. The effort of epoché and reduction can occur in more spheres and give us a larger phenomenological vision. We can observe and compare their execution in Husserl’s different texts; we can follow three ways of reduction – cartesian, ontological and psychological – or from a minimalist perspective we can find their attributes (there are more possible adjectives of reduction than was mentioned in this essay, which develop the sphere of its action: critic, genetic, habitual, ethic reduction . . .). The question of plurality enters so into the methodological field.32 It is useful to interpret these terms in the context in which they are situated and realized. They don’t stay as rigid or fossilized; they vary in several texts and connections, but don’t loose their intensity and their purpose. The theoretical dimension is bound also with praxis.

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In her essay, Natalie Depraz considered the “reduction understood as a disciplined embodied practice,” “to make reductive act an incarnate and shared act.”33 This line helps us to unlock the door. The uninterested observer has the key in his hand. To dismantle and overcome his anonymity is to situate himself in the life which he originally lives in the world with others. There is the possibility of developing the concept of “co-reduction,” of finding “co-actors in this experience.”34 Analogical example might be helpful. In a one-character play with one actor on the stage, who performs and creates the scene, the action of this actor is not the entire performance. There are also the auditorium, the costume, and words described in the script, which create more levels of meaning. The uninterested observer is not in a vacuum either. The other is here, not only as the co-participant in reduction, the other uninterested observer, but also anyone else. We can ask: Doesn’t the goal of this effort lead more to extension “to” or “toward” than “by” the other? Not more “toward” with expectations of difference than “by” with the claim of uniformity? One Slovak actress who performed in a one-character play of theatre of one actor says about her experience: “I didn’t look for a teammate on the stage; I look for a teammate outside it.”35 Co-existence can have divergent forms, from the group of scientists or from authentic society (Liebesgemeinschaft) to the negative (vulgar) examples of a collectivizing, summarizing or multiplying group in which man and the world lose own uniqueness. The unique, as we have seen in the examples above, is in fact difference (alterity) but with its own individuality, because it shouldn’t be melded into an unspecified togetherness, general “together.” Reduction should not destroy the diversity of relationships, the spectrum of connections which are created in society. And, simultaneously, the reduction should not lead to a Robinson Crusoe state for the phenomenologist. The concept of plurality can be more developed through the different situations of “nebeneinander,” “miteinander,” and “ineinander.”36 The questions, which can be asked about these terms, can be formulated positively, but perhaps it is more urgent when asked negatively. (How do we mediate conflicts? How do we overcome xenophobia? Contrary, how do we develop islands of “positive deviation” in societies that lack freedom? etc.)37 Behind the possible conflicts and reconciliations are the different interpretations and interests of divergent groups. These are some of the practical consequences of alterity. But they are in phenomenology deep inscribed in subjectivity as well. Therefore on the one hand, we don’t lose our view of the other, and, on the other hand, we don’t lose the concept of the ego, which is also carefully described by Husserl’s phenomenology; “. . . singularity is of a kind which admits the others.”38

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In other words, the phenomenologist as rigorous theoretician should be also opened practitioner – not only scientist of consciousness, but also practical ethicist. The plurality allows to see the hermeneutical nuances of the interpretation (the openness, milieu of the world), to ask questions from the phenomenological as well as from the existentialistic perspective (in connection to praxis as one of the domain of existentialistic philosophy, and in themes which are deeply existential for the human), to see phenomenology in broader context of philosophical tradition; and not to loose the methodological ground – in the reduction. According to the Husserl’s principle of iterative structure – described as “always” and “again,” “ich kann immer wieder und werde immer wieder können . . .”39 – we can once again formulate the motive of this essay. There are two observations which are inspired by Husserl’s phenomenology, and which I would like to mention in the end. The first is from the analysis of Natalie Depraz and opens new dimension of interweaving: “By thus aggravating the oxymoron of the practical and the theoretical, internal to the reduction in its Husserlian heritage, my point is that, in fact, reflection and incarnation, contemplation and action are not opposed until each begins to fertilize the other, thereby intensifying each other to the point of becoming virtually indistinguishable from each other.”40 The second analysis important for this topic is presented by Sebastian Luft. In the context of the methodologically and philosophically cross-connected question of the practical in the study of the development of Husserl’s ethical thoughts he concludes: “The existentialist is he also not. He is no rationalist in the Kantian sense either. The alternative would be to say either he goes middle way or – what is more correct in my opinion – he has a fundamentally different understanding of emotion and Vernunft, of heart and Verstand. They don’t create dichotomy or opposition.”41 The way how this tension is revealed in these two quotations is very suitable. Positions formulated in their extreme forms, as theory versus praxis, ego against alter, inner and outer (etc.) are more revealing in the relation than in separation. As the concrete examples function in the practical sphere, the queries of phenomenological reduction have their theoretical scope. Both were in this essay chosen selectively but with the effort to refer to their intrinsic connection. The situation of the phenomenologist is specific and he can grasp this tension with the means of reduction in his hand. Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava

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1 I found the analysis presented in certain texts inspiring (Natalie Depraz, Sebastian Luft, Anthony J. Steinbock, Dan Zahavi, for example – see the References). The choice of these texts was necessarily selective, and so I do not consider the wider views of these authors. 2 We will discuss their use in texts of Hua XIII (Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität I, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1905–1920, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973); Hua XV (Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1929–1935, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973); Hua XXXIV (Edmund Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1926–1935, ed. Sebastian Luft (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001) and in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003) Dan Zahavis. We will consider the terminology of epoché or reduction in the contexts where it is discussed and defined. 3 Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität I, op. cit., p. 169. (The chosen citations from Hua XIII, V, and XXXIV are translated into English, some parts in notes stay in the original.) 4 How the field of consciousness and its correlates is reached – in its clarity, modifications, variations – is made clear in Ideas I, especially in the third section. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (3rd ed., Issue from Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Halle: Verlag von Max Niemeyer, 1928) vol. 1. 5 Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität I, op. cit., p. 190. 6 For this discussion look at the parts of Text No. 6, ibid., pp. 18–19. 7 Ibid., p. 190. 8 “Feststellung von Zusammenhängen des ‘eigenen Bewusstseins’ besagt nicht . . . mitzubesagen Feststellung von Tatsachen der Natur; und dasselbe gilt von der Feststellung von Zusammenhängen des fremden Bewusstseins und von Beziehungen zwischen eigenem und fremdem Bewustsein.” (ibid., pp. 79–80) 9 Ibid., p. 82. 10 “. . . einen eigenen Bewusstseinsfluss ausmachend, sich in offener Endlosigkeit ausbreitend, ganz von derselben allgemeinen Artung, wie es mein in Akten der Reflexion etc. ‘direkt’ gegebener Bewusstseinsfluss ist, also mit Wahrnehmungen, mit Erinnerungen, mit antizipierenden Leermeinungen, mit Bestätigungen, mit Evidenzen usw., die sind, aber nicht die meinen sind.” (ibid., p. 87) 11 “. . . wie mein konstituierendes Bewusstseinsleben andere Menschen mit anderem Leben konstituiert und wie die, die in ihnem als konstituierten eingefühlten, originalen Weltbezogenheiten Bezogenheiten auf die Welt sind, die für mich Erfahrungswelt in originaler Reduktion ist und die vorgegebene ist, wie diese gemeinsame Bezogenheit von mir aus sich versteht als Bezogenheit auf dieselbe nächste ‘Umwelt,’ in der wir uns gemeinsam finden, indem ich zunächst den Anderen finde als aud dieselbe Umwelt bezogen” (Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, op. cit., p. 117). Compare also (Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III, op. cit., p. 76. 12 Sebastian Luft, “A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp and Cassirer,” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, vol. IV (2004) p. 243. 13 Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, op. cit., p. 99. 14 Marie Bayerová, “Husserlova fenomenologická metoda a její pˇredmˇet,” Filosofický cˇ asopis, 13: 2 (1965) p. 215.

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Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, op. cit., p. 242. Natalie Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology. Emergent Theories and Wisdom Traditions In the Light of Genetic Phenomenology,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7 (2001) p. 172. 17 Different approaches of this problem are developed in the analysis: Natalie Depraz, “Phenomenological reduction and the political,” Husserl Studies, 12: 1 (1995) pp. 3–4; Natalie Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 2– 3 (1999) pp. 105–106; compare also Sebastian Luft, “Subjekt ako morálna osoba. K Husserlovým neskorým reflexiám pojmu osoby,” Filozofia 63: 4 (2008) p. 371. 18 Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität I, op. cit., p. 244; Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, op. cit., p. 117; Dan Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy. Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7, (2001) p. 160. 19 Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology,” op. cit., p. 174: “Through the other’s own embodiment, I become fully embodied and become aware of the constitutive effacement and forgetfulness of my own functioning lived-body at the very moment where the other acquires such a self-awareness.” 20 Yoko Arisaka, “The Ontological Co-Emergence of ‘Self and Other’ in Japanese Philosophy,“ Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7 (2001) pp. 198–199. From this point of view ordinary Slovak language is very narrow, but it can be developed more fully, in the creation of art or philosophy. 21 Natalie Depraz, “The Intimate Other: A Phenomenology of Lucid Embodiment in the Light of the Lived Experience of Pregnancy,” in Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, t. 7, z. 1. Special issue: Embodiment and awareness. Perspectives from phenomenology and cognitive science, ed. T. Komendzinski (Toru´n, 2003) p. 175. 22 Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology,” op. cit., p. 169, pp. 174– 178, compare also Edmund Husserl, Karteziánské meditace, tran. Marie Bayerová (Prague: Nakladatelství Svoboda-Libertas, 1993) p. 120; Bernhard Waldenfels, Znepokojivá zkuˇs enost cizího (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 1998) p. 68. 23 Anthony J. Steinbock, “Limit-Phenomena and the Liminality of Experience,” Alter: Revue de Phénoménologie, vol. 6 (1998) p. 276. 24 Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology,” op. cit., p. 169, 177. Anthony J. Steinbock writes about “rupturing our expectations, calling our independence, our ‘owness’ into question.” (Steinbock, op. cit., p. 291) 25 “In dieser intentionalen Durchdringung wird für mich das von den Andern Bewusste zugänglich, mein Bewusstsein ist intentional bezogen auf das fremde und durch dieses hindurch auf das in diesem Bewusste, und umgekehrt, wobei auch diese Umkehrung, dieses auf mich und mein Bewusstes zurückbezogene Bewussthaben des Anderen mir bewusst wird, so dass mein Bewusstsein im Kreis durch das in ihm sich erschliessende fremde zu sich selbst zurückkehrt . . .” (Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III, op. cit., pp. 76–77) 26 Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, op. cit., p. 172. Nicola Zippel writes about “original alterity“ – “The Living Future of Phenomenology,” On the Future of Husserlian Phenomenology (New York: The Husserl Archives in Memory of Alfred Schutz, online, URL: www.newschool.edu/GF/phil/husserl/Future/Future_Zippel.html). 27 Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology,” op. cit., p. 171. 28 Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy,” op. cit., p. 163. 29 Dan Zahavi, in his systematic look at the problem of intersubjectivity, draws attention to objectivity, which is nevertheless bound with the conception of intersubjectivity (Dan Zahavi, “Husserl’s Intersubjective Transformation of Transcendental Philosophy,” in The New Husserl. A 16

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critical reader, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, pp. 235–236.); or in another place he argues that the “three regions ‘self,’ ‘others,’ and ‘world’ belong together.” (Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy,” op. cit., p. 151). 30 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, op. cit., p. 123. 31 Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology,” op. cit., p. 171; Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis,” op. cit., pp. 95–110. Compare also the special issue Journal of Consciousness Studies (Evan Thomson, “Empathy and Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8: 5–7 (2001) pp. 1–32; especially pp. 13–16). 32 With regard to this complex problem, we should mention the concept of the three ways analyzed in Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern, Eduard Marbach, Úvod do myˇs lení Edmunda Husserla (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2004) pp. 76–88; compare also Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis,” op. cit., 102–108. A kind of clue can be found in Elisabeth Ströker’s Husserls Werk, Zur Ausgabe der Gesammelten Schriften, Register (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1992) pp. 145, and 196. We especially explored these ideas in Hua XXXIV (Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, op. cit.). Anthony Steinbock also discusses these ideas in his investigation of “methodological dimensions of openness” e. g. in his “Limit-Phenomena and the Liminality of Experience,” op. cit., p. 295; compare also Sebastian Luft’s “A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp and Cassirer,” op, cit., pp. 228, 237, 243, and his Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie. Systematik und Methodologie der Phänomenologie in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Husserl und Fink, Phaenomenologica 166 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002) p. 79. 33 Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis,” op. cit., pp. 95, 105. 34 Ibid., p. 105; compare also Depraz, “The phenomenological reduction and the political,” op. cit., p. 10. 35 Zuzana Šímová, Divadlo jedného herca (Bratislava: VŠVU, 2006) p. 18. 36 Compare Karl Schuhmann, Husserls Staatsphilosophie, Alber-Reihe praktische Philosophie 29 (Freiburg/Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1988) p. 79. 37 The concept of islands of positive deviation played an important role in Slovak society during the decades since the revolution in 1989. 38 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, op. cit., p. 242. 39 Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, op. cit., p. 436. 40 Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis,” op. cit., p. 97; for this context compare also p. 109; Depraz, “The phenomenological reduction and the political,” op. cit., p. 11. 41 Luft, “Subjekt ako morálna osoba,” op. cit., p. 373.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Yoko Arisaka, “The Ontological Co-Emergence of ‘Self and Other’ in Japanese Philosophy,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7 (2001) pp. 197–208. Marie Bayerová, “Husserlova fenomenologická metoda a její pˇredmˇet,” Filosofický cˇ asopis 13: 2 (1965) pp. 214–227. Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern, Eduard Marbach, Úvod do myˇs lení Edmunda Husserla (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2004) vol. 109. Natalie Depraz, “Phenomenological reduction and the political,” Husserl Studies 12: 1 (1995) pp. 1–17.

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Natalie Depraz, “The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology. Emergent Theories and Wisdom Traditions In the Light of Genetic Phenomenology,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7 (2001) pp. 169–178 (trans. Filozofia 62: 5, 2007). Natalie Depraz, “The Intimate Other: A Phenomenology of Lucid Embodiment in the Light of the Lived Experience of Pregnancy,” in Theoria et Historia Scientiarum, t. 7, z. 1. Special issue: Embodiment and awareness. Perspectives from phenomenology and cognitive science, ed. T. Komendzinski (Toru´n, 2003) pp. 163–179. Natalie Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6: 2–3 (1999) pp. 95–110. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (3rd ed., Issue from Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, Halle: Verlag von Max Niemeyer, 1928) Vol. 1. Edmund Husserl, Karteziánské meditace, trans. Marie Bayerová (Prague: Nakladatelství SvobodaLibertas, 1993). Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität I, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1905– 1920, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) Hua XIII. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität III, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1929– 1935, ed. Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) Hua XV. Edmund Husserl, Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1926–1935, ed. Sebastian Luft (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001) Hua XXXIV. Sebastian Luft, “A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Subjective and Objective Spirit: Husserl, Natorp and Cassirer,” The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, IV (2004) pp. 209–248. Sebastian Luft, Phänomenologie der Phänomenologie. Systematik und Methodologie der Phänomenologie in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Husserl und Fink, Phaenomenologica 166 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002). Sebastian Luft, “Subjekt ako morálna osoba. K Husserlovým neskorým reflexiám pojmu osoby,” Filozofia 63: 4 (2008) pp. 365–373. Karl Schuhmann, Husserls Staatsphilosophie, Alber-Reihe praktische Philosophie 29 (Freiburg/Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1988). Anthony J. Steinbock, “Limit-Phenomena and the Liminality of Experience,” Alter: Revue de Phénoménologie 6 (1998) pp. 275–296. Elisabeth Ströker, Husserls Werk. Zur Ausgabe der Gesammelten Schriften. Register (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992). Zuzana Šímová, Divadlo jedného herca (Bratislava: VŠVU, 2006). Evan Thomson, “Empathy and Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7 (2001) pp. 1–32. Bernhard Waldenfels, Znepokojivá zkuˇs enost cizího (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 1998). Dan Zahavi, “Beyond Empathy. Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 8: 5–7, (2001) pp. 151–167. Dan Zahavi, “Husserl’s Intersubjective Transformation of Transcendental Philosophy,” in The New Husserl. A critical reader, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003) pp. 233–251. Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2003). Nicola Zippel, “The Living Future of Phenomenology,” On the Future of Husserlian Phenomenology (New York: The Husserl Archives in Memory of Alfred Schutz, online, URL: www.newschool.edu/GF/phil/husserl/Future/Future_Zippel.html).

PIOTR MRÓZ

W H AT D O E S I T M E A N T O B E A N E X I S T E N T I A L I S T T O DAY ?

This slightly provocative title is mainly intended to bring into focus the question of the topicality and relevance of existentialism – a vast, unsystematic body of doctrines whose presence has been so vividly felt in such fields of human discourse as philosophy, psychology and psychiatry, literature (novels and dramas) and the visual arts for almost two centuries. It cannot be denied that existentialism or existentialisms1 is not a front page (if one is allowed to resort to such a criterion in the humanities) phenomenon whose general purport and meaning – or perhaps better mission – is already accomplished. One should, however, be very cautious in using the term existentialism, as it has at least three basic connotations, more often than not lacking in sharp terminological distinctions and shades of meaning. Let us recall the most popular and at the same time the most misleading understanding of the word. It came into current usage in Paris during the gloomy, meager post-war years in the late forties of the last century Existentialism was regarded as a true, authentic voice of the lost generation, “a completely new way” of interpreting the surrounding reality (facticité to use the technical term). Moreover, this style of philosophizing seemed to pose embarrassing questions (what is the sense of it all, why must we die, why is one condemned to overpowering, uncontrollable freedom, is it not better to commit suicide right now?) which once were not accepted and admitted into a proper, academic i.e. Cartesian discourse. Soon this kind of existentialism (a victim of unprecedented vulgarization2 ), referring to some Sartre’s and Camus’ key ideas, was to pass into the history of a certain life style, a certain fad, as exemplified by those les jeunes who used to wear black, existentially worn-out sweaters and tight pants, cut their hair à la Gerarde Philippe, listened to jazz (like A. Roquentein in Sartre’s La Nausée) and talked and talked over alcohol in smoky Parisian cafés late into the night. This all – pervasive feeling of historical and personal crisis, of abandonment, this acute consciousness of the lack of moral or ethical orientation (after all this horrible carnage, the Nazi and Soviet atrocities), the experience of Absurdity (the Godot syndrome) and the absence of any justification or raison d’être of both human-being and the world were constitutive elements and factors of the world-view of the time, a world-view closely associated with existential philosophy. 127 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 127–143. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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In the rich, abundant and by now voluminous literature devoted to existentialism the above-mentioned phenomenon belongs to what the present author classified3 as existentialism sensu-largo; a set of existentialism-related events, fads, manners, “thought idioms” and a certain life-style in post-war Paris, and much later in New York, Rome or Warsaw. Only in this sense can the so-called existentialism be understood (or rather misunderstood) as a philosophy of gloom, crisis, unsurpassable disillusionment and spiritual, intellectual or social indolence. Sartre was infuriated seeing those youngsters reveling in heavy boozing, time and again raving about his literary output, about Camus’ absurd l’homme revolte or the Heideggerian Sein zum Tode, doing all this under the auspices of a philosophy he was so closely connected with. In his famous lecture Existentialisme est un humanisme the author of l’Etre et le Nèant categorically states that “the word existentialism is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all”.4 In the aforementioned lecture (addressed to a broad public) Sartre proposes that a precise terminological delineation be made at last. Existentialism should be regarded as a strict philosophy: the philosophy of an epoch demanding concrete solutions. It is worth mentioning here that Sartre goes so far as to try to discard, to turn a blind eye to all apparent (soon it turned out otherwise) differences, rifts and polemics among the Existential thinkers.5 Thus the Parisian manner of “doing philosophy” is a passé event now and it goes without saying that it has totally lost the sense the French term actualité, and only in this sense can existentialism be deemed dead and defunct. However, what we are interested in this essay is the meaning (or connotation) that this vast notion can have in XXI century. Thus another sense of the term (of existentialism sensu largo) ought to be invoked in this place. To my mind the term (or rather the semantic part of it) covers a vast area, multifarious, enormously rich, rife with images, ideas, fictional but life-like situations. As has often been underlined (see the studies of Marcel, Sartre, Camus, Unamuno, Shestow and Heidegger) existentialism – as a strict philosophy has always had (from the time of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche) close relations, if not affinities with the art-world, to resort to Arthur Danto’s terminology. Here any historical criterion would certainly fail us.6 As Walter Kaufman observed on one occasion this type of – let us call it literary, or still better, aesthetic existentialism reflects a perennial tendency, deeply seated in human creative resources. The latter are expressive of attempts to grapple with problems of our being (our existing) in the world, “here and now”. It would be very difficult, if not impossible to mention even the most important figures of this literary existentialism.7 From the widest perspective one is justified to include most of the literary works of Sophocles, Dante, Langland, Shakespeare, Milton, the metaphysical poets, the English and German Romantics, Lautrément, Dostoyevski and

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Tolstoy, Amiel, Strindberg, Rilke, Eliot, Kafka, Pesoa, Beckett and the theatre of Absurd, Pielevin, Nootebaum, Marai, or Kertesh. The list is highly arbitary, and its sole purpose is to intimate that the problem we are dealing with has a long history as our consciousness of being human – that is, to exist as inalienable, inimitable and concrete entities in such a sharp opposition, in ontological contrast with so-called external, transcendent reality. All in all, as John Macquarrie has it, literary art proved to be a staunch ally, a natural friend of this kind of philosophical reflection, mainly of certain of its anthropological ideas.8 But in a specific, unique “feedback” it was also literature that enabled the expression of certain philosophical notions. It should be borne in mind that this strong mutual relation of existential philosophy and art (especially literature and drama)9 was supported by some of the most influential existentialists themselves.10 It was Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and partly Stirner in the 19th century and Marcel (his role as a playwright is somewhat undervalued today), Sartre, Camus and Simone de Beauvoir in the 20th who thought very highly of literature as the proper medium to express in the most adequate manner the “gist” of human reality, all the vicissitudes of independent, spontaneous, free individuals facing this abandonment and the state of having been thrown into a hostile world of things and other human beings. No wonder that existentialists – being artists as well – took so strong an interest in the intentional reality of literature and drama, in the creative individuals (writers and artists) whose fate might serve as the epitome of – as Sartre once said – les aventures de la liberté.11 The literary, psychological, and psychoanalytical – based on newly developed branch of existential psychoanalysis – studies devoted to Van Gogh, Strindberg, Dostoyevsky (Jaspers) Nietzsche and Dostoevsky (Shestov), Baudelaire, Genet, Flaubert (Sartre), existential rebels – Lautrement, Dostoyevsky (Camus) all point to one fact: the great importance and significance of other than philosophical (academic) media which the existentialist thinkers employed in order to better give expression to their emotionally tinged ideas and concepts connected with the human condition made up of our fears, tremblings and despairs, as well as hopes and projects. One might pose the question why this terminological query is being carried out at this preliminary stage, but the answer seems obvious. In order to evaluate existentialism proper, in respect to its present topicality, we should know what kind of “phenomenon”, what kind of discourse we are referring to: a fad, a parisian mode after the World War II, a certain highly individualized outlook on life in general, existentialism in art and literature or something else: a group of doctrines, strict, concrete knowledge as Sartre had described it in his lecture? As is widely known, the case of existentialism is still a highly complicated one. Not only does it seem to embrace – as has already been explained – cultural

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events, ranging from sociological to artistic (aesthetic) ones but also as soon will be clear various, often conflicting tendencies in the scope of the very philosophical reflection. (Here we introduce the second connotation: existentialism sensu stricto.) No wonder there have been numerous attempts to grasp the essence of philosophical existentialism, its unique style of communicating its truths, revealing certain phenomena, “border” and every day situations, and many terminological efforts to describe it in more or less precise terms, trying to preserve its inimitable texture and “flavour” in the process of such descriptions. In so far as existentialism sensu stricto is concerned it has been referred to as a doctrine and a group of loosely connected doctrines, a movement, a trend, an ideology, a style of philosophizing12 but-and this we regard as a telltale characteristic of existentialism – the latter has almost never gained the name of “a system”. This is a kind of clue, a beacon which might (as it did in many a thematic monograph) provide us with a methodological assistance. The first iconoclastic use of the very term existence in reference to the problem of a human being, a concrete individual can be found in the profuse work of the first “existentialist”, S. Kierkegaard; M. Stirner, F. Nietzsche and F. Dostoyevski followed – as it were – into the footsteps of the Dane, but it was a kind of independent, free choice of a certain path. Those philosophers seem to play the role of true, unquestionable progenitors of the movement. However, what really counts in the history as well as in the very philosophical purport {message} of existentialism is not the term itself but the change of the “old” – Heidegger would have said metaphysical – perspective. (In the times of Kierkegaard such perspective was epitomized in the all-embracing system of all systems, to wit Hegel’s philosophy). In the supra rational system of Hegel (the object of love-hate for Kierkegaard) any aspect of reality (whose development was something rational and logical) had its position, place and explanation or raison d’étre. As all contradictions (feared and dreaded so fiercly by all essentialist, rationalist thinkers) were to be reconciled through the “famous” meditation, rebuked and derided by Kierkegaard, and an individual was expected to believe more in his essentia rather than in his/her unique, irreplaceable and inimitable existence. Thus the first existentialist revolt postulated a totally new, unexpected {unprecedented} hitherto type of philosophical reflection. We shall count as a philosophical existentialist any philosopher who irrespective of “historicity” and no matter what kind of methodology he practices – be it phenomenology or just intuitive description (Camus, Marcel, Abbagano, Stirner), neokantianism (Jaspers), all versions of ontologies (radical or fundamental: Sartre and Heidegger) – subscribes to this anthropological turn regarding a concrete, given in her, his ontic-ontological uniqueness (to use Heidegger’s terms; or notions), in situ, in a here and now with all the differentia

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specifica type of traits rather than essentia-like. The motif of this revolutionized approach, this rejection of essentialism in regard to human beings was soon to become a recurrent theme in all versions of existentialism, theistic or atheistic, irrespective of all terminological or substantive differences13 . What all existentialists had done (and are still doing – although the movement has already seen its heyday) was to turn our attention away from the general, universal topics of all-embracing metaphysical systems trying to reveal unchangeable, fixed and immortal essences, the immutable laws of nature and all the reasons standing behind the latter and to turn our attention to that which is unique, singular – in one word – that which exists in the most peculiar way. Thus, to the possible question of a curious commentator wondering if existentialists have substituted for this classical view a model which does justice to the facts of human life, one could answer that what really mattered (during the first existentialist revolt) was the very problem of man’s existence – “a being who in his being is concerned about his being” (Heidegger). In nearly all of his writings the Danish architect of modern thinking about man declares philosophical war on all forms of the abstract and general in connection with existences (it would be too much to qualify existence by an adjective human as only men exist while “things” are).14 We find Kierkegaard saying that “abstract thought is sub specie aeterni, it makes an abstraction of the particular, of the temporal”.15 This is not a perspective designed for a unique individual as “he thinks and exists, and existence separates thoughts from being, keeps them successively distant from each other”.16 In other words, the message is very clear, what the Dane proposes is nothing else but a call to philosophical reflection that would address itself to the concrete human being, treated both as the object and as the subject of philosophical analysis. Thus all philosophical existentialists, apart from many diversities (e.g. the very term invoking strong protests on the part of Heidegger or Jaspers) do regard every human being, existence, the man-in-situation, the man-in-the-world along with his/her historicity as the only valid object of description and analysis. It will have been commonly accepted that all types, still better, versions of existentialism will deliberately, with acute methodological self-awareness address the human situation as philosophers themselves are engaged in it. The analysis of an individual being given in its concretness was an invaluable proposal along with the analysis and descriptions, or insights into the everyday texture of ordinary life proposed by almost every existentialist thinker. Although this set of doctrines (existentialisms as M. Duffrenme puts it)17 cannot be said, in so far as its popularity (measured by the dwindling number of publications, books, articles, interviews), general appeal and the “didactic” presence at the European and American university is concerned, to have been the first intellectual and spiritual power (already in the middle of the 60s of the last century it) it would be a

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gross oversimplification to pronounce its death. Quite the contrary, the philosophical version of this anthropology has been successfully leading a series of campaigns, battles – not only to retain its position or hold its ground but to make us all aware that this philosophy of freedom, subjectivity, utrammelled choices and total responsibility for everything we do has something salient to say in order to decipher – as Jaspers would have put it – our personal and universal situation. The late 60s was the time of the Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Warsaw student riots, the death of senator Kennedy and racial unrest in the USA. Some of the leading existential philosophers were still alive: Jaspers, Heidegger, Marcel, Sartre. Existentialism was proving its worth in the deadly polemics with structuralism (the problem of personal, individual, Cartesian consciousness, “I” or, subject, the problem of historicity, “time”, history) poststructuralism and postmodernism. Paradoxically enough it was not marxism that proved to be a mortal enemy of existentialism. Sartre gained same support (on the part of certain eastern-european philosophers e.g. H. Schaffi, L. Kolakowski i K. Pomian) having published his Question de la methode in which he attempted to combine certain par excellance existentialist ideas with the marxist approach: the existentialist subjectivity was positively juxtaposed with collective “subject”, individual actions and choices with social praxis. All in all, existentialism sensu stricto has not lost its vital powers, its ability to strike back and thus to successfully function as a specific {unique} kind of philosophical anthropology. Let us now return to our starting point and pose a question concerning its value and significance as a philosophical reflection today as well as a possible contribution it might still offer to all of us living {existing} in a totally revolutionized, global reality. It may sound like a historical irony that the universality, generality and abstractedness so vehemently rejected by the progenitor of the movement Kierkegaard has become an evident and an “indelible” element in Existentialism as we know it today. In other words, this kind of anthropology seems (after all those years) to have successfully managed to bring into focus a concrete, unique existence – me, John, her, engaged or thrown into inimitable situation and reflection on it as a universally treated object and subject of reflection. But analyzing the existential predicament of Willy Loman, Joseph K., Ivan Ivanowicz, the existentialist thinker reaches a kind of concrete universal – preserving the uniqueness of the person in question (not the abstract object of a study), and yet reflecting on the general significance of him/her. To put it differently: it is man, a human being, an existence in his/her givenness, or – still better – her/his facticity but always along with freedom that is the subject matter of this philosophy. (It stands to reason that all existentialists were acutely

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aware of their own facticity, as well as the role it played in their philosophical outlook).18 But one is fully justified to raise yet another question directed to the existentialist: if you point to a man declaring him/her a constitutive element of your discourse what exactly do you mean by this both – as you claim – theoretical object and ontologically real, concrete – person or entity? We have seen by now that all versions of existentialism have underlined the fact of our deprivation, of our ontological lack – to wit – of having no pre-given nature, essence or form.19 This sharp opposition – man versus things, pour soi and en-soi so dramatically grasped by Sartre in his renowned dictum that we are what we are not, and we are not what we are is a current thought idiom of this philosophy. It seems that human beings exist (are not as beings merely are) in a different ontological sphere as it were, as ever open-ended entities. But what is the most essential problem here is our endevour, our striving for obtaining an essence (nature: Peter, John, a writer, an actor – in one word – somebody who confirms the human nature as such). Thus our road to human nature is always (again the universality motif) a kind of moral task imposed on all of us as we not only build our personal essence but that of humanity – to-come as well.20 Existence then is not to be identified with a static being, with something closed-in, something not transcending. Men are nothing else but a bunch of possibilities and not yet constituted actualities. Only a table is what it is; likewise a pencil “performing” one, limited function only. But existences fear and at the same time rejoice because of their possibility-like status. There is however – existentialists say – the most unique, the inevitable possibility one cannot avoid, shirk or ignore: It looms over our life-horizon as the most authentic offer so to speak: it is our death, confirming the fact of our real status. We, as absurdly contingent, unjustified, de trop, Sartre would have put it, beings are also mortal entities, but the latter fact does not alter the condition of our being free to the very end, and not predetermined in any way. This approach to death is a part and parcel of the real me, you, him, epitomizing our primordial condition of being-thrown-in-the-world, our facing an unpredictable avalanche of situations (the Jaspersian border situations like death, guilt, suffering and strife included) is not only conducive to but it actually leads to a strongly pronounced conception of both the individual and the world surrounding him. (As a matter of fact existentialism is the only philosophy which made a unity out of those two, hitherto disjunctive, elements). Since the declaration of the death of God (Nietzsche, Camus), His ontological impossibility (Sartre) – to mention the atheistic versions of philosophical existentialism or absence {lack of presence}, the so-called Deus absconditus the existentialist conception of man concentrated on our total responsibility for choice, project, fact and value, shifting the whole burden of freedom onto our shoulders, thus forcing us to exercise it irrespective of the so-called facticity;

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no existentialist would deny that we were born one day, at a certain historical time, that we speak Spanish and not German, that we are male not female, beautiful, handsome or simply unattractive, that we are Polish or American. All these comprise the pre-given which we have not chosen, but have found ourselves in. As human beings are never (provided they lead an authentic life, eigentlich Heidegger would have certainly said) ready to accept a given status quo – trying to transcend it, their being-in-the-world is a continual attempt at transformation, change and introducing their own values and norms. (We always choose in a given situation thus transforming, or negating it: we accept or reject a part of the reality we have been engaged into for no reason whatsoever). The world, referred to by existentialism as our field of possibilities and the multifarious set of the aforesaid elements of factuality is peopled with others and things.21 Heidegger divides the latter into two categories: Seiende and Zeuge. Zeuge are useful, they help us to deal with various tasks to be accomplished in our existence. It goes without saying that things have a “nature”, an essence while we ourselves as well as others we encounter (Mitsein) have not. Our nature, essence is in existence, states Heidegger, and other existentialists aptly take up this characteristic motif of all existential philosophy. Soon human beings discover (and according to Sartre this is one of the most dramatic moments) that our-being-in-the-world, our attempts to constitute the essence of both ourselves as well as of humanity in general is groundless; based on the famous notion of nichts or néant (nothingness). Time and again Existentialists do teach us that the mere fact of being-in-the-world does not solve by itself, as it were, any of our problems (the latter are hierarchically graded: the problem of our being seems to have genuine priority). Deprived of apriori essence, surrounded by an indifferent if not hostile milieu, free to make choices grounded in nothingness, human existence is a definite task (the Heideggerian Zusein). Through a series of diverse choices and projects a human being enters upon the path of the onerous, oft dramatic and challenging process of introducing (that is transcending that which is pre-given, that which he/she feels should be changed) his/her own, unique, reality. Thus – the most important source of Heideggerian, Sartrean or Marcelian existentialism, for example is this call to transcendence; only existences are capable (being ontically and ontologically privileged as Heidegger puts it) to pose the question of the Being of each and every being, das Sein des Seindes, thus raising the question of the sense, or meaning of our in-der-Welt-Sein. Let us recall once again that it is the possibility structure of both Dasein and pour-soi, the structure of freedom identified with nothingness (all our choices cannot refer to any moral authorities, respected norms, established values unless it is we who choose them, thus making them valid!) that “forces us” to transcend both ourselves and the world, that prompts us to break away from all the limitations that have been imposed

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on the given reality. In a word, we are condemned to freedom, freedom to (the future aspect of our temporality) and freedom from (the past aspect of the time which comes owing to our presence in the world)22 and face the most cruel paradox that we are free to the final moment of our existence and are not free to shed this burden from ourselves. Here existentialists embark upon one of the most revealing parts of their doctrine: the description and analysis of the mysterious experiences of Angst, Fear, Despair.23 These – according to existential thinkers – have nothing to do with the so-called psychology (even its deviated forms) but are ontological experiences connected with our very constitution, our project-like Nature in the process of self-creation. It should be borne in mind that the Christian representative of existentialism, its actual founder (intellectual architect) S. Kierkegaard was the first to have attatched despair (three kinds of despair) to our very nature/essence: we despair because we are not conscious of ourselves, because we want or do not want to be ourselves. The act of despair is part and parcel of being human, concludes Kierkegaard. In turn for Heidegger and Sartre (both atheistic existentialists) there is no external hope (as there is in Kierkegaard’s notion of the Other You or Absolute Power). Being “negative”, nothingness-like structures – we choose, create, refute – in a word – negate that which is nothing else but the positivity of full being-in-itself, says Sartre.24 In other terms, we envy being its “en-soi” status – to wit – its having a definite nature while we human beings – free, spontaneous and for itself – must create it against the hostile, contingent and nauseating reality. What is more, this horrible pressure of freedom makes us feel ill at ease all the time. (It was Sartre and Camus who – being excellent artists themselves – describe those experiences by resorting to literary means and “aesthetic” techniqus.) In every act, intentional project, making inroads into the world out there our consciousness “comes across” all forms of completed, “closed-in” as it were beings, “imbued” with fixed essences. This desire, so masterfully rendered by Sartre in his existential psychoanalysis,25 to become that which has an essence, in other words, to become a being-in-itself, although retaining its status as a being for-itself is a futile, impossible yearning (désir inutile). We are to remain a torn apart, unhappy and tragic consciousness thrown into a hostile, indifferent world. But – as has already been mentioned – there is a false hope lurking over the horizon of existence – the illusion of obtaining a self-identity – of being what we are. This self-contradictory project (giving up our true “nature”) has been masterfully described in the form of the following phenomena: the Sartrean bad faith and spirit of seriousness, the Heideggerian Das Man, and the Jaspersian self-imposed ignorance of our transcendence. They are all vivid descriptions of an alluring path to inauthencity, our oft-dramatic attempt to reject our true structure of being human. Most commentators of the existentialist ontology of man tend to regard them as defensive

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stratagems, or tricks we play in order to avoid facing our true, inalienable status quo. It is impossible to enter here into a detailed description and analysis of those fascinating phenomena, but one thing must be categorically stated: they all try in vain to hide, cover the impact of nothingness we are and the power of the freedom we are subjected to.26 “Feeling”, experiencing this kind of pressure, human beings try to lessen the very burden – as it were – of all those possible choices (groundless, as we have shown), despair, suffering, imminent death, guilt, bad conscience, all the responsibility we must take for our life {existence}. The afore–mentioned “stratagems” we employ ourselves – as fully conscious, aware of our deeds – to cheat ourselves so he who resorts to a lie, “double-thinking”, cheating, trickery knows with all clarity and lucidity (existentialists are phenomenologists believing in the absolute transparency of the intentional consciousness) the contents of the lie and the contents it tries to hide. Moreover, the lying and the lied one happen to be the same person, that is me. In all those self-deceptions we try to avoid the authentic aspect of our conditio humana. Bad faith, so masterfully depicted by Sartre influences most of the relations with others: this Parisian girl (the metaphor produced by the author of L’Être et le néant) who exposes her delicate hand on the café table knows (is fully aware) that it is to sexually attract this young boy who pretends not to know the real intentions on her part. The apparent triviality of the above example is however the epitome of our mutal relations with others: lying, pretending and knowing about it at the same time constitutes – according to Sartre – the texture of our social life. The spirit of seriousness (êsprit de serieux) reveals yet another aspect of the latter. Accepting this attitude an individual (a free, spontaneous, yet contingent entity) tries with all his might to shift both his freedom and responsibility (closely related with it) on so-called external factors or circumstances. History, ideology, fate or destination, our superiors do really matter, as the working of the spirit of seriousness displays its power. Like naughty children who have broken the window while playing ball we always point to somebody else exclaiming: “It is not me, it is him” as a possible response to this predicament. This attitude was conspicuous after the tragedy of World War II. Sartre and Camus (along with H. Arendt) analyzed it thoroughly in connection with the Nazi and Soviet atrocities: “we could have done nothing to save the deported Jews because we were so powerless ‘or’ it was the Stalinist, distorted and narrowminded, biased ideology of the tyrant that in consequence had sent millions to the Gulags but not our actions as the Party” etc., epitomize this inhuman and alienated attitude of giving up the willingness to exercise our freedom for the sake of humanity. Kierkegaard once observed that our despair (characteristic of conscious existences) consists in – among others – of three elements, not wanting, still better, rejecting our true, authentic being in the face of this Power who constituted us.

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But the world of Kierkegaard was less complicated, less dramatic in so far as the mass scale problems – to put it that way – were concerned. However, the very rejection of ones true essence, nature (to be created through free, responsible choices and projects) has something of universal, perennial dimensions about it. In bad faith, in the spirit of seriousness, as well as in the Kierkegaardian stage of aesthetic existence we would like to achieve a state of not being bothered, a state of total irresponsibility and fixed thing-like status. Not to choose on our own – would be the motto of such an inhuman life, to be as others seems like a dreamed-of (longed for) solution. To no avail however. In vivid yet somewhat morbid descriptions in Sein und Zeit Heidegger presents his invaluable contribution to the existentialist analysis of modernity. As is well-known existences may not (this is a possibility as well) realize, achieve their full, still better, their authentic essences: those of creative, responsible and free human beings. The Kierkegaardian aesthete (e.g. Johannes the seducer and Don Juan) soon learns that the world of sensuality is likely to pass away as quickly as his youth, beauty and erotic attractiveness. In a word, his existential suffering, his discomfort becomes unbearable. It is the despair which overwhelms him now. The Sartrean man of bad faith, and the spirit of seriousness attempts to reject the freedom he is condemned to, to discard responsibility in order to achieve a state of false equilibrium. But existing as a free, spontaneous being he must inevitably learn that these tricks are not going to pay off. And what about the Heideggerian man in bad faith? The author of Kant and the problem of metaphysics as early as in the mid twenties of the last century proposed a unique and revealing concept of collective consciousness as mass behaviour. Resorting to his oft crypyic terminology Heidegger calls this phenomenon das Man (it is a coined term not so obvious even to those who speak German) but one cannot understand it in the categories other than ontological ones. (According to Heidegger it has nothing whatsoever to do with either psychology or sociology.) Das Man pertains to the sphere, region of Dasein’s possibilities and hence it constitutes part and parcel of fundamental ontology. Human being faces a series of choices, each of which is intended to realize, still better, constitute his true, authentic nature. But as truth is always accompanied by untruth, revelation entails the opposite state, understanding entails non-understanding, and that which is authentic (eigentlich) comes along with uneigentlich. In other words, unauthentic existence is one of the possibilities Dasein may choose. Note that Heidegger does not recall ethics or morality in his analysis of das Man. It is a mere description and explication of our everyday reality. What then is this famous phenomenon? Our condition is a series of possibilities, which-being connected with the element of unconditional freedom, begets the experience of Angst. The latter comes – as Heidegger cryptically says – from nothing. Man fears nothingness, fears this call to responsibility

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(the voice of conscience) and would like to achieve a “solid ground”, a more stable basis of his ecstatic ek-sistence.27 This is the alluring (tantalizing) road to one of our possibilities: the inauthencity that many of us were so naïve to have entered upon. Like the Sartrean or Jaspersian men of bad faith (discarding the obvious fact of border situations we all face) Das Man is a trick we play on ourselves as well as a trap which terminates our true individual nature, “giving” us a collective one. We lose “our own say” so to speak. Being in the world entails being with others (Mitsein). But taking on the mode of das Man we give up our power {ability} to choose, to decide on our own. We hide – it appears – behind the backs of others whom we “trust” and “choose as our intellectual, spiritual, social leaders”, there is no real me – ek-static, transcending, realizing authentic possibilities – excercising my freedom – but there is socially, politically, intellectually accepted “me” instead. In the mode of das Man one does everything as others do: one reads these and not those newspapers, books, one talks in a certain manner, spends leisure as members of the team one belongs to. The basic manner of existing Sorge (Care) is superseded by something totally inhuman, something just inauthentic: mechanic imitation, repetition of mass or collective behaviour. Heidegger deciphered this process of self degradation: human being {man} is bogged down by all those aspects which destroy his/her authenticity. Sprache, the way to communicate the truth of Being becomes mere prattle, the most valid, authentic, unique possibility – the human notion of death is “deterred” and made blurred by the “not-yet”, “not-me” attitude. Thus, this ultimate point of je meines is not an orientation point any more. The mode of das Man promised to solve all my fundamental problems, but as a matter of fact they have only been deprived of their reality, true significance having become meaningless behavior on the part of a large section of human society. The most fundamental idea or rather the ideal of authentic existence, which is understood in all versions of philosophical existentialism as that which existence strives to achieve, constitutes the only genuine, authentic project which makes our essentia conceivable. In a word, the process of authentic existence entails – as it were – moulding ourselves in our own image, which happens to be the image of the whole of humanity as well. It is our projects, choices, finally the values we constitute as free but “abandoned”, forlorn beings that make us authentic. As there is no God-given, society-given or other man-given nature, we must enter upon this arduous path of being true to our-nature-tocome. (The future aspect of our temporality was given priority in all kinds of existentialism.) Without this project, this original choice28 we could not be referred to as human at all. In the inauthentic mode, however, we try with all our might, to give up, reject both the pressure of our freedom and the call of

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our conscience. It seems, that we would like to be willingly moulded by external influences, whether they be pre-given circumstances, moral codes, political or ecclesiastical authorities, or whatever. For all philosophical existentialists it is the form and shape of our constituted, free and spontaneous existence that is the very measure of our authenticity. It is our responsibility – we often try to free ourselves from in an inauthentic mode – acting as the very challenge undertaken and accepted by us, that allows us to achieve a kind of unity, characteristic of our projects. In the atheistic version of existentialism (expounded by Sartre and Camus) authenticity is a very peculiar and difficult mode of existence. We all remember the significant words of Sartre who – in a conversation with a former pupil in occupied Paris – states: “Since you are free, choose – that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do, no signs are vouchsafed in this world”.29 In this concept of abandonment Sartre and, to some extent, Camus underline the disquieting fact that since there is no God (no metaphysical ground to look to for orientation) who through his prophets establishes and imposes values or sets a general, universal ideal of humanity, we (as Sartre so vehemently declared in his full-blown existentialist play Les Mouches) take the position of God – to wit – we impose our own values and norms. This very sensitive area {sphere} of existential axiology should not be read in nihilistic or purely voluntaristic terms, however. As the forefather of literary existentialism says in The Brothers Karamazov not everything is permitted. This horrible burden can make or break us all, but in so far as the project of authentic existence is concerned there is no other alternative. Thus, in every choice I am committing not only myself, but all mankind (hence the anguish arising the very moment we choose). It sounds as if Sartre were trying to smuggle into his totally atheistic doctrine some universal principles, or values prior to all our choices. This is true in part, for the concept we are referring to now, that is, humanité appears to be a new, hardly predictable element in the Sartrean ontologie radicale, stressing the fact that pour-soi is unique, individual and free. Unfortunately Sartre did not manage to specify this problem, or make it more precise. What we get from a perusal of his profuse work is only same vague suggestions. Being alone in the world, facing all the contingency of everything that exists, the lack of justification – and last but not least – the overwhelming absurdity of both the transcendent as well as the personal human, conscious world, we may look for “fellow travelers”, others (les autres) whom Sartre does not treat as “ontological” enemies any more (lurking in wait to go for my freedom in order to turn me into a thing, to give me some definite qualities) but my partners who are ready to take responsibility for themselves to the same degree as for the surrounding reality.

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Camus is much clearer in so far as this essential problem in philosophical existentialism is concerned. Having introduced and successfully developed such categories as “the absurd” and the closely correlated notion of “rebellion” and “the rebel”, Camus seems to have shed new light on the conditio humana, an especially universal mechanism present in our projects towards authentic existence. He frankly admits that “everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my own proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest”.30 Thus, one of the most important factors of our being thrown into the world is our moral obligation to say “no” to all attempts to deprive us of this humanity, which existentialists refer to in the context of our involvment, freedom and truth.31 Each act of rebellion is a choice and an invention, creation of certain values. Moreover, it is a kind of refusal to be treated as an object that is wholly passive, non-transcending and totally deprived of any form of dignity, deprived of a project-like, ecstatic, ontic-ontological structure of freedom and responsibility. Although the presence of so many diverse elements can be discerned in the writings we classify as existentialist, all philosophical versions of this movement can be viewed as a unity. At the same time one restriction or stipulation must be made: it’s impossible to treat it in terms of a system. This specific type of anthropology, sharing common ontological and ethical aspects, is backed up – as it were – by the methodological strategies which philosophical existentialism has adapted. It is a well-known fact that XXth century existentialism is closely related to phenomenology.32 M. Warnock and other commentators categorically state that no serious existentialist be regarded as such without resorting to certain phenomenological assumptions: both pertaining to its subject-matter and methods (descriptions, reductions and analysis).33 The Husserlian “rigorous science” aiming not only at grasping essences but at revealing the very nature of real things irrespective of all prejudices, foreknowledge, aprioristic assumptions attracted “new” philosophers of existence: Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, we as human existents, as conscious beings – have first-hand acquaintance with what philosophical existentialism refers to as the human condition, so strongly attracting their attention and engaging their theoretical endevours. Such existential phenomena as the ontological incompleteness, openness, and fluidity of human being, their uniqueness, the latent possibilities for realizing constituting one’s essence, the acute problem of experiencing and “living through” total abandonment, despair and Angst were excellent material for unbiased and spontaneous phenomenological description. Husserl’s methodological proposals to set aside or “bracket” all presuppositions concerning transcendent reality (the question of its “real” existence or being) along with the genesis and status of objects

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of consciousness (the latter is always directed at something external, transcendent) was supposed to lead to the overcoming of all forms of dualism, be it Cartesian, Kantian or Positivistic or idealistic. The main purpose of the Husserlian stance was to set us free from all epistemic illusions and make our return to the “real” world possible. In this respect existentialism and phenomenology shared exactly the same attitude. There is only one world which we were thrown into and – as Sartre declares – “phenomenal being manifests itself, it manifests its essence as well as its existence”.34 Thus, it was Husserl who seems to have opened a new vista for philosophical research: the agelong dualism appeared – at last – to have come to an end. It stands to reason that all philosophical existentialists took enormous interest in the opposition of essence and existence. Since existence as underlined by Sartre was the manifestation of essence it was encumbent upon the philosopher of existence to “catch”, “grasp it and describe it in statu nascendi – to wit – to analyze and describe all projects, intentions and choices on the part of a human being: a free and spontaneous agent yet desperately searching for a meaning of the surrounding world and of himself. The idea of the constitutive role of our awareness was widely approved of by the existentialists. Was this concept not in accordance with their notion of a human being treated as creative, ever free to change and to rebuild the world around him? Being intentional, consciousness is never – the existentialists unanimously proclaim – to be identified with what it is conscious of. Thus, the very “nature” of consciousness points to a constantly created and recreated essence of man. In this respect philosophical existentialism (especially in so far as the sensitive problem of the Transcendental Ego is concerned) has modified and changed the main ideas and postulates of the phenomenology worked out by Husserl and his staunch, orthodox supporters. However, it should be borne in mind that existentialism sensu stricto drew heavily on this philosophical science, but where Husserl would have liked to refer to the structure of transcendental consciousness (as the “pregiven”, universal, transtemporal? and trans-spatial? metaphysical element) the existentialists preferred to talk in dramatic and thus more human terms of a concrete man: lonely, abandoned, absurdly free, and wholly responsible until the ultimate moment comes. The present author is fully aware that it is extremely difficult – if not entirely impossible – to evaluate this vast, and rich phenomenon of philosophical existentialism from a methodological point of view. However, there are at least two things we can be absolutely certain about. For one thing the so-called existentialism sensu largo need not be admitted into serious, academic type of analysis. The first kind of existentialism (a fad, a social phenomenon of post-war Paris) is in itself an interesting event but of a historical nature, hence constituting a material for historians of the movement. While what has been

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denominated in this introductory essay literary or – more precisely – aesthetic existentialism is a fascinating phenomenon – still thriving and offering invaluable insights, intuitions and descriptions of our existence-in-the-world. This kind of reflection – although it seems to have nothing to do with philosophy proper (the doctrinal type of philosophical reflection geared up to some kind of method of both analysis and description) may be of some interest to an existential philosopher. Is not the work of Beckett or Musil or Martel an invitation of sorts to go deeper and deeper – to wit – to go to the intellectual sources found in the work of Marcel, Sartre or Jaspers and Camus? Finally, the philosophical existentialism – as we have been trying to show – due to its chosen topics and themes, (thought idioms) seems to be a living anthropology. By the term living we mean certain age-old problems which in the writings of existentialists from Kierkegaard to Merleau-Ponty have received ever-appealing handling: the latter directly addressing problems which are essential and salient to all of us: transcendent, conscious beings who desperately seek for the meaning and sense of our life. Such a search is written into the ever open-ended definition of the world and humanity as such. Jagiellonian University, Kraków NOTES 1

Piotr Mróz, Four essays in Existentialism, Kraków, Aureus, 1997 pp. 5, 6. Ibid. 3 Piotr Mróz, Egzystencjalizm w sztuce i filozofii, Kraków, PAM, 1992, pp. 1–10. 4 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris, 1954. 5 Ibid. 6 Mary Warnock, Existentialism, London, 1970. 7 Piotr Mróz, Egzystencjalizm w sztuce i filozofii, op. cit. 8 John Macquarrie, Existentialism, Penguin Books, pp. 203–206 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 In his Saint Genet. 12 Piotr Mróz, Four essays . . ., op. cit. 13 R. L. Shinn, Existentialism, London 1990. 14 S. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Papers, Toronto, 1959, p. 90. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Mikel Dufrenne, Existentialism and Existentialims, Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 51–62. 18 As R. L. Shinn observes: “. . . the existentialist wants to say I am myself and I don’t like your effort to fit me into your classification”, see: Existentialism, op. cit. p. 90. 19 Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological movement, The Hague, 1969, p. 95. 20 Ibid. 2

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Mary Warnock, op. cit., pp. 50–60. Walter Kaufman, Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, Meridian Books, 1968, p. 303. Piotr Mróz, Four . . ., op. cit., p. 19. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre et le Néant, Paris, 1948, Chapter 1, 2. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre et le Néant, op. cit., chapter on Possessing and Having. Ibid. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, chapter on the Dasein’s analytic. Piotr Mróz, Four . . ., op. cit., p. 22. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialisme . . ., op. cit. p. 16. Albert Camus, The Rebel, Toronto, 1965, p. 90. Ibid. Mary Warnock, op. cit., p. 35. Ibid. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Etre . . ., op. cit., p. 20.

MICHAEL BERMAN

D U F R E N N E A N D M E R L E AU - P O N T Y: A C O M PA R AT I V E M E D I TAT I O N O N P H E N O M E N O L O G Y

ABSTRACT

This meditation examines the meaning and function of the a priori in Mikel Dufrenne’s The Notion of the A Priori (The Notion, hereafter), and shows that the project of this important, though neglected figure in continental philosophy is an inspired example of the phenomenological approach found in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Dufrenne does not state this in The Notion, but the essential point of departure for his thesis can be found in Merleau-Ponty’s earlier work. The goal of this comparison aims to deepen our understanding of their respective phenomenological approaches. The Notion is an outstanding effort that reinterprets and successfully re-appropriates the a priori. Dufrenne’s efforts are grounded in his encounters with Kant’s philosophy, as well as that of Hegel, Husserl, Scheler and Merleau-Ponty. These historical figures provide the sounding board against which Dufrenne develops his phenomenological version of the a priori. Justifications for doing comparative philosophy have to a great extent become cliché. Rather, the philosophical content produced through comparative analysis speaks to and evidences its own justification by the meanings it deepens and elucidates. The present meditation assumes that its content accomplishes these goals. The content of this analysis will examine the meaning and function of the a priori in Mikel Dufrenne’s The Notion of the A Priori (The Notion, hereafter) and show that Dufrenne’s project is an inspired example of the phenomenological approach found in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception (The Phenomenology, hereafter). But we can keep a qualification in mind for this task; as Dufrenne notes about sociology, so too ought we note about comparative philosophy, “. . . a sociology of sociology might reveal to the sociologist that his concepts are in a manner dictated by his own culture and that his effort at detachment by which he tries to understand a foreign culture is never perfectly realized.”1 Hence, this comparative effort will not be perfectly realized, even though such an ideal is an essentialist notion 145 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 145–160. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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of Western culture and modernity. These philosophers share similar concerns; this assertion by no means intends to efface their important and significant differences. In many ways, their differences highlight how phenomenology proceeds. Let us then initiate this comparison and deepen our understanding of their phenomenological approaches. Dufrenne is an important though neglected figure in continental philosophy. The Notion is an outstanding effort that reinterprets and successfully re-appropriates the notion of the a priori. Dufrenne’s efforts are grounded in his encounters with Kant’s philosophy. Additionally, Kant’s inheritors, most importantly Hegel, Husserl, Scheler and Merleau-Ponty, frame these encounters. These figures from the history of philosophy, especially the last mentioned, provide the sounding board against which Dufrenne develops his phenomenological version of the a priori. While Dufrenne does not explicitly state this in The Notion, an essential point of departure for his thesis can be found in Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology.2 In particular, Merleau-Ponty states, “This new conception of reflection which is the phenomenological conception of it, amounts in other words to giving a new definition of the a priori” (The Phenomenology, 220). His critical argument briefly outlines the manner in which Kant “has not followed out his programme” in regard to the status of the a priori and its distinction from the a posteriori; he even goes so far as to state that some “a priori truths amount to nothing other than the making explicit of a fact” (The Phenomenology, 221). Merleau-Ponty justifies this tall claim in his description of “the unity of the senses”, which is the formal expression of the fundamental contingency that is the synaesthesia of embodied experience. “From the moment that experience – that is, the opening on to our de facto world – is recognized as the beginning of knowledge, there is no longer any way of distinguishing a level of a priori truths and one of factual ones, what the world must necessarily be and what it actually is” (The Phenomenology, 221). Merleau-Ponty is here engaged in explaining that sense experience is spatial, that contingency and necessity, particularity and universality are structurally intertwined. “The a priori is the fact understood, made explicit, and followed through into all the consequences of its latent logic; the a posteriori is the isolated and implicit fact” (The Phenomenology, 221).3 Dufrenne echoes this declaration that experience, specifically perceptual experience is where knowledge commences: “Perception is the beginning [of all inquiry and reflection]; it is that which puts us in the world.” It is our “contact with the real”. “Our relation to truth lies in this contact” (The Notion, 208). Dufrenne’s version of the a priori serves as the mediator that guarantees this contact; it shows that this contact, this accord between human beings as beings-in-the-world and the one world as real, is possible and engendered by the a priori as fact. Hence,

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Dufrenne’s work unpacks Merleau-Ponty’s basic insight about the a priori. Dufrenne’s method first tackles the historic situatedness of the a priori, and then delves into its subjective and objective aspects. The Notion begins with the intention of freeing the a priori from the artificial constraints that the tradition has thrown over the term. As Merleau-Ponty had pointed out, beginning with Kant, the a priori indicates completely formal and necessary concepts and judgments that are prior to and anterior from the experiences they manufacture. These a priori are housed within the subject. They are employed in the generation of the understanding of the world. All appearances are produced (often through the passive application/synthesis of the mind or) by the mind’s active transcendental constitution of phenomena. The things in themselves, the noumenal objects of the world, are the given manifold of raw, unintelligible data, material, or content for experience. The subject receives these chaotic inputs from its senses whereupon the a priori structures sift the chaos into intelligibility. Hence, phenomena take on form and order imposed by the subject’s mental apparatus for the consumption, as it were, of the understanding. Husserl follows in these footsteps with his transcendental phenomenology. The world as given is constituted within the intentional frameworks of consciousness. These structures can be shown via the Husserlian reductions4 to be noetic, that is, a priori. The pure forms of intentionality do not have any empirical content and are located within the acts of consciousness. An important difference between Kant and Husserl in this vein is that phenomena for the former are passively received and passively constituted within the transcendental aesthetic, whereas for the latter, the material content of phenomenal experience is indeed given as passively received, but its meanings (Kantian intelligibility) are a product of active constitution. Dufrenne though is more concerned to point out the fact that for both thinkers, the a priori is contained within the subject. This provides one horn of the problematic dilemma that he must respond to in order to free the a priori from its traditional restraints. Hegel’s philosophy represents the other horn. For Hegel, the a priori is not housed within the subject per se, but within the Absolute Subject. Hegel’s historicizing of the Kantian project is simultaneously a leap from and a continuation of the same trajectory. Reason unfolds its meaning over the course of the dialectical movements of history. The realization of its ends occurs with the overcoming (aufhebung) of the differences between the particular/individual and universal/community in the actualization of an Absolute Universal, understood in this context as a Unity, a “hyper” Individual. Thus the home of the realized a priori, the accomplishment of meaning as such, is the external Subject, Geist. This is the second horn of the dilemma, the a priori housed in the pure externality of a totalized Spirit.

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The a priori has been caught between these extremes. Either it is found only within the purview of the subject (interiority) or it is the proper domain of the Absolute Subject (exteriority). Neither option is acceptable for Dufrenne because the consequences of these positions render the a priori unintelligible. In the both cases each position must assume what it attempts to reject: if the a priori remains within the subject, then in what manner could it possibly be employed to make sense or intelligible that which cannot by definition share any of the qualities that its application is meant to impart (e.g., formal, general, or universal properties)? If the a priori stands completely outside the subject, completely outside the given world of phenomenal appearance, then in what form can it enter the experience of or in which it can by definition take no part? Hence, the dilemma ensues. Dufrenne’s intention is to re-enliven the a priori, to identify the actual roles it plays in what our experiences constantly present to us as human beings. Fundamentally, “. . . [The] a priori is given in perception . . . its original state is thus given, before reflection makes it explicit” (The Notion, 94).5 With reflection, the a priori can be expressed, that is, stated in a proposition. The basis for this, the condition that makes this possible is found neither in the subject’s internal transcendental or conscious apparatus (Kant or Husserl), nor located in some heavenly idealization (Hegel), but rather in the givenness of experience. “The a priori is logically independent of all experience, yet not anterior to experience” (The Notion, 80). With this, Dufrenne voices his objection to the traditional dilemma about the a priori. But what is one to make of such a claim? In what ways can the a priori appear within experience (not anterior), yet remain distinguishable (logically independent) from said experience? To answer these questions, an engagement is necessary with Dufrenne’s upfront characterization of the a priori on the first page of Chapter 1, “Why the ‘A Priori”’: “It is easy to see that in defining the a priori as the mediating factor in the fundamental and prerequisite accord of man and the world we risk alienating ourselves from Kant on at least two points” (The Notion, 45), and as will become evident, he will risk the same in regard to Hegel. In some ways, Dufrenne is understating the goals of his project. This alienation involves ripping the a priori out of the sole possession of the subject, while leaving it in its grasp, or better yet, showing how the subject’s grasping, its ability to understand an intelligible world points to a basic and required accordance between the subject and experience, between the human and the world. For the first point of difference he says: “In the first place, we shall speak more readily of man than of subject, since we will be trying to give a concrete nature6 to the subject instead of considering him as the impersonal correlate of pure knowledge, or as the abstract unity of a system of syntheses; at the same time, we shall refuse to grant this subject the power to constitute the object in

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the fashion of a transcendental demiurge” (The Notion, 45). A corrective for Dufrenne is called for, but in so doing more support for his two main points will be garnered. Dufrenne, in the language and the language of translation of his time, speaks of man, but “Man is a historical idea and not a natural species. In other words, there is in human existence no unconditional possession, and yet no fortuitous attribute [such as gender]” (The Phenomenology, 170).7 In attempting to account for the “polyvalence” and “seductiveness” of this ideal that is “humanity”, he insists “all men participate in humanity, though they never fully actualize it” (The Notion, 165), that “humanity is an infinite task” (The Notion, 183). To give a concrete nature to the subject, to treat of the subject as human, Dufrenne wishes to avoid considering the human being as a knowing object (“impersonal correlate” or “abstract unity”) that stands up against known objects (“pure knowledge” or “system of syntheses”). In this regard, Dufrenne reiterates in numerous places that the human subject is born, that the for-itself of human consciousness is the Sartrean upsurge into being, and that subjectivity is an historical advent. However, the traditional use of the language of exclusion (e.g., man as referring to humanity) ought then to be recognized and corrected as one reads Dufrenne especially in the attempt to understand the subject more concretely; no single gender ought to be granted priority in this vein. Dufrenne does make some comments along these lines when he claims the subject is “unengenderable”, but the context shows that he is working to explain the subjective a priori in terms of implicit (virtual) knowledge in this example (The Notion, 123). His second simultaneous point moves him away from both Kant and Husserl. By showing that the human subject lacks the facility to completely constitute the objects of experience, the god-like authority that had been ceded to the transcendental subject is externalized such that the transcendental a priori is also the purview of the objects of experience. Perhaps an example from Plato’s corpus can well serve to illustrate the dilemma with which Dufrenne says the a priori is entangled. In the Euthryphro, Socrates is engaged in uncovering the nature of piety or holiness, . . . if that which is holy is the same with that which is dear to the God, and is loved because it is holy, then that which is dear to God would have been loved as being dear to God; but if that which is dear to God is dear to him because loved by him, then that which is holy would have been holy because loved by him. But now you see that the reverse is the case, and that they are quite different from one another. For one is of a kind to be loved because it is loved, and the other is loved because it is of a kind to be loved. Thus you appear to me, Euthyphro, when I ask you what is the essence of holiness, to offer an attribute of being loved by all the gods. But you still refuse to explain to me the nature of holiness.8

Certainly the a priori is not merely an attribute like holiness; however, Plato’s dialogue grapples with a similar structural problem. Socrates is asking whether

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holiness is an intrinsic property of some objects or whether some external – read constituting – influence must cause the object to acquire said property. In either case, the observer will attribute the property to the object, but the nature of the property, at least for Euthryphro, remains unexplained – either it is in the object or it is placed in the object. Dufrenne rejects both disjuncts, and seeks a third alternative. Dufrenne then rightly claims that the constituting of experience is a dialectical or dialogical unfolding that splits the horns of the realist and anti-realist dilemma. This is evident in the other point of difference: “We shall diverge from Kant in a second way because, instead of conceiving the a priori as a universal condition of objectivity imposed by an objectifying subject on a sensible manifold, we shall consider it as a structure immanent in the object and apprehended during the very act of perception, although known implicitly or virtually before perception occurs” (The Notion, 45). The a priori then is not a categorical or conceptual form that has to be used to inform the sensory data, the Kantian sensible manifold, but rather is already configured or prefigured in the objects of experience; the a priori is always and already informed in the objects of experience prior to actual experience taking place.9 This intelligible sensibility is seized in perception. In fact, the sens of the world is presupposed; this is what Merleau-Ponty calls our primary10 or perceptual faith.11 However, Dufrenne is asserting more than Merleau-Ponty does about perception. The a priori grants an implicit or virtual knowing before perceiving takes place; it is as if there are fulfilled anticipations that the perceiver already has before the direct experience takes place: the a priori “is a power of anticipating and revealing, a nonacquired familiarity with certain aspects of the world; this power exists in the subject like a mode of being” (The Notion, 155). This is the logically independent component of the a priori. But how is this possible? How can there be a knowing before the experience? Is Dufrenne rejecting the insights of empiricism, taking up a Platonic position of knowledge as recollection (see his reference to Plato’s Meno; The Notion, 122), or is he claiming something more radical in attempting to be more empirical than the empiricists? We shall distinguish between a subjective and an objective aspect within the same a priori. In our opinion, the main reason for retaining the notion of the a priori is found in the fact that there is an accord of man and the world which is realized in knowledge (and in work, though work is founded on knowledge); this accord manifests itself less as a power of man over the world— or, from a naturalistic perspective, as a power of the world over man—than as familiarity, the consubstantiality of man and world (The Notion, 45).

The a priori is specified with these claims: it presents itself to the human being as fundamental to his or her own experience and as fundamental to that

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which is experienced. The a priori is medial, partaking of or projecting from both subjective and objective experiential poles (as Merleau-Ponty holds), yet ensconced in between. Both subjectivity and objectivity are informed by the a priori, for without the a priori neither would occur. Yet how is this assertion radically empirical? To illustrate, one can consider a current theoretic orientation in evolutionary thinking. One could perhaps say that the a priori is a metaphysical metaphor for the interactive dynamic between environments and adapting species.12 Both of these latter are subject to dynamic change; however, the timescales of these historical processes dwarf the very cultures and philosophical traditions within which we think and through which such notions are expressed. Biologically speaking, species are driven by evolutionary pressures to adapt and change. Those that cannot respond to these intraand extra-species variables tend not to survive. These demands force biological organisms over the course of generations to cope. However, the coping by species can and has in turn modified the environments they inhabit. This reciprocity has shaped and continues to shape the planet’s biosphere. This shaping or informing is another way to explain Dufrenne’s notion of the a priori. Dufrenne could respond to this consideration by claiming that the evolutionary perspective is a mere naturalization13 of his point. In “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, he writes, However, to the objection that experimentation and technique are being applied to man, it is not sufficient to reply that the social sciences need only pursue their vocation and follow the lead of the natural sciences. For the natural sciences do not possess unlimited rights either; and in any case man is not an object to be treated like the things in nature.14

Dufrenne means (in an assertion of a value judgment) that the human being ought not to be treated merely like other living organisms; perhaps the foremost reason in this context is that science itself is a product of human understanding based on our primordial experiences as beings in the world. But that would oversimplify the position, for both the philosopher and this scientific viewpoint subscribe to the fundamental consubstantiality and accord between human beings and world. Why does the world make sense to us? Because, in part, the world has forced our species down this particular evolutionary path in which we have exploited our niche and become extraordinarily successful as a species. Each person carries within himself or herself the history of which he or she is “the heir, not the [mere] product” (The Notion, 183). Our successes though also include the dangers that we see in human technology, language, and culture; respectively instantiated in weapons of mass destruction, hate speech, and genocide. Nonetheless, our world and biology are intertwined (Merleau-Ponty15 ); the human species is a living Gestalt. The a priori that we encounter in our experiences is not a metaphysical condition

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for its possibility, but rather the potential virtualities (Dufrenne) or affordances (J. J. Gibson) lived by us because of the kinds of beings we are and the kind of world we inhabit. This is the reason why our knowledge can work for us, because the human accordance with the world is also the world’s accordance with us. “For knowledge is possible only if the world is open to man and vice versa: the a priori expresses this reciprocal openness” (The Notion, 45).16 The reciprocal openness between the human and the world is never completely given or transparent. The relation requires explication and work. “The relation of man to the non-human, through which the meaning of man might be seen, is not always developed.”17 The development of this relation, between the given and the receiver of the given leads to or constitutes knowledge. “In itself, the a priori is not pure knowledge, at least insofar as it is still implicit; nor is it a condition for knowledge, a condition which exists before the object is known; rather, it is the object of knowledge, since it is the structure of the object as known” (The Notion, 104). Knowing the structure of an object requires not only the expression of the a priori (in an explicit reflection), but also experiencing the implicit a priori with one’s own subjectivity (again, metaphorically: “the a priori is body” (The Notion, 155)) connecting with and/or fitting into the a priori of the object(s) of experience. From this essential insight, Dufrenne’s re-appropriation of the notion is concretized with this proclamation: “The a priori is the meaning present and given in both object and subject, and it assures their communication while maintaining their difference” (The Notion, 45). Thus the a priori shows itself in the human encounter with the world wherein each pole exhibits its own characteristic a priori. The encounter, and here we see Dufrenne following the lead of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, is primordially or originally perceptual. “No perception exhausts the real; the perceived object is given only in profile and always with a horizon of potentialities” (The Notion, 96).18 This horizon is not open merely through a passive acceptance on our part: “. . . we are not merely receptive in our relation with the world; we go out to meet it, and always anticipate it. There are things we do not learn; we know them from the beginning, as if we had always been familiar with them – as if comprehension implies connaturality” (The Notion, 121).19 Our embodied perceptual engagement with the world is both prefigured and creative: “To experience a structure is not to receive it into oneself passively: it is to live it, to take it up, assume it and discover its immanent significance” (The Phenomenology, 258). Dufrenne states this in his own idiomatic manner, which further fleshes out the objective and subjective aspects of the a priori: The given is always already meaningful, and perception places us in the presence of the world. Even if we must learn to perceive . . . perception always teaches us something; if this instruction did not already involve meaning,20 we could not invent meaning for it . . . [This] presence of the world

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is a presence for me; the openness of perception is the fact of a subject: the world is made known, is revealed as world to someone capable of knowing it; this defines the a priori . . . perceptual meaning is significant: a meaning given and not created, a meaning which is for me and not made by me . . . the a priori . . . introduces itself into the subject (The Notion, 100).

The meaningfulness of the world is available for the perceiver. It is not constituted by meanings legislated by a subjectivity, but these meanings manifest or present themselves for subjects who find themselves amidst the world in a particular situation with a specific perspective. This subject-world accord constantly reveals itself in the perceiving of the perceptible by the perceiver. Thereby Dufrenne agrees with Merleau-Ponty’s claim that “. . . I am able, being connatural with the world, to discover a sense in certain aspects of being without having myself endowed them with it through any constituting operations” (The Phenomenology, 217). Human beings constantly exercise pre-thematic understandings in their explorations or interrogations (Merleau-Ponty) of experience. As beings-inthe-world and as beings in and with nature, each experiences “the echo of the past” (The Notion, 131) which is not one’s own or anyone else’s; one is only an heir (and perhaps progenitor of an as yet future via one’s offspring) and bears one’s heritage within oneself (and again perhaps passing forward an inheritance to one’s descendents). This is the history of the world with which each is intimately intertwined, and it points to worldly temporality through which understanding occurs and meaning happens. The world regulates itself according to its own rules or objective a priori, some of which can be identified by consciousness, but in no manner can consciousness express all of the meaningfulness inherent in any given phenomenon. The immanent aspects of phenomena can be thematized or expressed, but such objects are always found within the general horizonal background of conditioning phenomena (transcendence in Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology), which has the organization of a phenomenological field that is animated by a perceptible logic (The Phenomenology, 313). The organization of an intrinsically meaningful world informs experience. This informing is value-laden in the sense that there are perceptual elements that entice us. These appealing vectors are meanings that call out to us as provocative experiences, “eye catching” so to speak. Dufrenne, and in this context we can see him following the thoughtful trajectory of Scheler, identifies this informing with the objective aspect of the a priori. When we speak of the various a priori of the understanding, this signifies only that the understanding is solicited by these a priori, which it exploits, and not that it manifests itself in producing them. Far from producing them, it is provoked by them, and it becomes what it is upon their proposal. The world solicits science [for example]; although it does not elaborate the scientific representation of the world, science does not constitute the world . . . (The Notion, 95).

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The provocative and solicitous a priori cohere with their counterparts in the embodied perceiving subject. “The body, as the potentiality of this or that part of the world, surges towards objects to be grasped and perceives them” (The Phenomenology, 106). The phenomena of the world elicit motor activities from the body and its perceptual capabilities; for example, “an inspection by the gaze . . . [means the] act is not primary or constituting, but called forth or motivated. Every focus is always a focus on something which presents itself as to be focused upon” (The Phenomenology, 264). The focusing of (perceptual) attention answers the callings of meaningful experience and exemplifies the functioning of the a priori. Humanity “is where nature becomes human and becomes meaningful” to human beings.21 To accept this assertion requires that we keep in mind the objective aspect of the a priori, otherwise Dufrenne’s claim could be taken as an anthropomorphization of the non-human. There is a balance inherent in the human experience of the accord with the world. The human being in the world is the world’s being in the subject for “. . . a reciprocal envelopment exists between world and subject . . .” (The Notion, 209; italics added). This dynamic mutual enclosing or double enwrapping grounds Dufrenne’s radical insight that “the a priori of the a priori does not allow a transcendental reduction of the a priori” (The Notion, 233; the a priori is plural in this context, see note 9). The world as given (to the human being as a subjectivity) is inherently meaningful; any inquiry into the ground of such meaning (e.g., via phenomenological reduction, scientific investigation, ethno-genealogy, etc.) is bound to presuppose both the intelligibility of the object (region) under scrutiny and the ability to understand by the subject (an internal specificity or tendency to already have familiarity). In other words, since the a priori is subjective and objective, no reduction to either is possible, and a reduction to both presupposes the very functionality of what is under interrogation. But at this point, does another danger present itself here? Are we left without a ground for the a priori? How can we account for its appearance, emergence, or manifestation? Dufrenne’s answers in this regard are rather traditional and down to earth. For Dufrenne, the poetic is the key to understanding the a priori. “The poetic is another a priori” which has “a certain primacy in that it indicates that other a priori bonds [relations, connections] are possible . . . here a precritical ontology is correct” (The Notion, 236). The poesis that is a priori expresses the pre-thematic in experience. It points to our perceptual ground (Merleau-Ponty22 ), and the felt and valued in our living (Scheler). It discloses (Heideggerian uncovering) the deepest existential a priori of humanity and reveals objects in their objectivity, their a priori. But this human activity is not fundamentally divided between these referential spheres, rather the a priori function in the human-world accord, most noticeable but easily forgotten over

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the course of perception. “Poetry moves within the sphere of feeling [the culmination of perception]. There is poetry when something is communicated to us which is communicable in this way alone: all art is poetic . . . an experience we live by virtue of openness” (The Notion, 238). Poetry thus speaks to, with, about, and from within that accord, that affinity between the human and the world. “Reflection on the a priori [i.e., philosophy] cannot avoid being allured by the inaccessible horizon of the origin and lead to the threshold of that philosophy of Nature which thought spans only on the uncertain and lofty wings of poetry.”23 Poetry, like authentic speech,24 is the paradigmatic example of expression for Dufrenne. Expression is “the peculiar property of subjectivity” (The Notion, 173), even of objects as quasi-subjects, e.g., artworks or society (The Notion, 175 and 181). In this sens, the solicitations for expression are bi-directional, from and to the objective and subjective a priori. Poetic expression shows both the creative openness and intrinsic value of human beings. Here we see Dufrenne rejoining with Kantian ethics; the a priori, even in its existentialized expression, remains connected with the ethical (though perhaps through the poetic). The a priori retains its moral character over the course of The Notion, which in part explains the trajectory of Dufrenne’s thought as he delves into the issues of intersubjectivity, history and sociality.25 It is also one of the clear elements that differentiate Dufrenne from Merleau-Ponty’s thought. The latter never explicitly articulated an ethics or moral framework, though critical readers have delved into his corpus to infer and ferret out the possible content of such philosophical ideas.26 Drawing on Kant, but attempting to maintain his distance, Dufrenne writes, “. . . the a priori is not in itself material: it is essentially a rule or a principle. (This is more clearly manifested in the Critique of Practical Reason, where universality is not only the form of the imperative but the imperative itself; the same is true even for the judgment of taste.)” (The Notion, 9) While the latter part of his parenthetical remark alludes to his earlier work, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience,27 it is the former part that is of concern here. The categorical imperative, the supreme law of morality for Kant, is an objective universal principle valid for and acceptable to all rational beings. This a priori principle is completely formal and without any material content. This formal principle is, in essence, instantiated in each and every rational being, for only a rational being can both generate such an ideal and adhere to the obligations that it entails. “It is because the universal is actualized in the person that the person can be considered as the sole content of a formal ethics, and that Kant can pass from the first to the second maxim of duty” (The Notion, 165). Let us recall here that it is a rational being’s duty to follow the moral law. There are three propositions of duty identified in Kant’s Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, namely: (1) The moral worth of an action stems from

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whether or not the motive/maxim for such an action is drawn directly from one’s duty (rational obligation) or inclination (desire, feeling, emotion, affect, sentiment – which may conform to duty, but not be morally worthy); (2) An action’s moral worthiness is not determined by the purpose or end towards which it is directed, but rather it stems from the principle of volition or the maxim of the good will that motivates the acting agent; and (3) Duty is the necessity of acting from respect (a feeling which is generated by reason before an action/event takes place – it is not an effect like other sentiments) for the moral law (determined according to the a priori principles of pure practical reason).28 The first proposition provides two alternatives in its disjunction – either an act has moral worth because it is done from duty or it lacks such worth because it is motivated by some other (contingent) consideration. Hence, if the act is be morally worthy, the second proposition specifies that the motivation must arise from the good will, that is, pure practical reason, for it is the principle behind the act that determines its worth, not the (again, contingent) consequences that stem from the act itself. Dufrenne thus holds that the moral agent, the rational being who can exercise a good will, “actualizes” the “content of a formal ethics” in adhering to the universal principles (self-) legislated by pure practical reason. In this context, the third proposition describes the motivation for the rational being to adopt the a priori objective principle as the principle of a subjective (individualized) volition. Kant is herein able to maintain the separation of the a priori as objective from the merely subjective material and contingent content of the agent’s volitional capability. But Dufrenne’s goal is to free the a priori from this understanding: understanding freedom’s real expression aims to do just that. “Without a doubt we must understand ‘freedom’ not as the being of a mind but as the being of a person, prepared and prefigured by nature.”29 With a broader, more existentialized understanding of the person, the functioning of the a priori indeed leads to freedom, but this is a freedom contextualized, situated within history (Hegel) and nature (Merleau-Ponty), both of which present themselves as meaningful, as meanings waiting to be actualized or expressed. Furthermore, the explicit references to Kant aid Dufrenne in retaining for the subjective a priori the inherent dignity ascribed to the rational being. “For the Kantian subject is also a moral agent, and reason is also practical reason. This moral subject is no longer purely logical; his free actions insert themselves into the temporal web, and the kingdom of ends to which he belongs must be attained within history” (The Notion, 123–4). Dufrenne though, distinguishes between what the future holds for the individual as opposed to humanity, for “what is to be engendered [for humanity] is the kingdom of ends, not the person” or individual (The Notion, 206). That being said, he still recognizes that “man exists as an individual, irreplaceable and inalienable, consequently

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as a person.”30 Thereby as the kingdom of ends is the ideal to be instituted by humanity, much like the ideal that is humanity itself, the individual as an instance of humanity is worthy and deserving of respect being that representative of a will good without qualification. Dufrenne moves beyond Kant’s ethics, for as Scheler has shown goods and values are not merely the properties of human subjects, but of many varied phenomena. Dufrenne says, Values are concepts only for reflection. They are first of all goods, goods for man and as a good which enliven daily experience. Each one must know to what goods he is sensitive and to what extent he values them. To know this is already to be thinking about the world and man and the relation which binds man to the world. And this latter is the principle of all meaning. These values are sometimes said to give meaning to life. Indeed, they are the manifestation of the meaning to which each life is dedicated just because the value accomplishes itself in that life.31

Here we can rejoin Merleau-Ponty to the discussion, and simultaneously broaden our understanding of his thought. For Dufrenne, the accord that exists between human being and the world expresses our subjective and the objective a priori. The a priori is medial, functional and existential. Through the expression of the a priori of experience meanings are made explicit. As Merleau-Ponty rightly held we are condemned to meaning – this is evident in the perceptual and social character of our experiences. And through Dufrenne’s insights into the role of the a priori in the givenness of meaningful experience, we can and must rightly ascribe an intrinsically ethical component to the meanings to which we are doomed. Hence the logos32 that is borne by the world adumbrates itself also as an ethos whose apriority is not merely subjective, but also objective. This directly injects ethics into the practice of phenomenology for both thinkers. It opens a new line of interrogation for Merleau-Ponty’s corpus, especially his late thought.33 To conclude, the comparative meditation on Dufrenne’s notion of the a priori and the relations his phenomenology has to that of Merleau-Ponty’s approach has recast the a priori. No longer can the term be reserved for abstract metaphysical propositions, but rather it opens a new means for analyzing experience. While The Notion concludes with a brief discussion on the relation between poetry as the means for the creative expression of the fundamental accord and bond between human beings and the world, and philosophy as the means for providing a rigorous analysis of meaningful experience, the discussion is haunted by what Merleau-Ponty calls “savage Being”, that primordial ground to which we are constantly recalled but to which we can never arrive. Poetry and philosophy (phenomenology) are then always on the way; and thus, just as humanity’s project is a kingdom of ends, the seductive project of meaning is an infinite task.

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1 Dufrenne, Mikel, “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, Philosophy Today, 4: 1 (1960: Spring), 41. 2 See Dufrenne, Mikel, “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, Philosophy Today, 14: 3 (1970: Fall), 204, where he explicitly acknowledges that his endeavour is close to that of MerleauPonty’s work, though Dufrenne also sees important differences in regard to the emphasis he places on the phenomenological accord between human beings and the world. This claim is not quite born out in The Notion; please refer to the discussion below. 3 In regard to the “latent logic” of experience, more will be said below. In this context, we ought to keep in mind Dufrenne’s distinction between the a priori and a posteriori, though this essay will not delve into the specifics of the following contention: “The matter is the a posteriori . . . if the a priori is given, it is given as immanent in the given . . . meaning belongs to something in itself meaningless. The a posteriori is this meaningless matter [and it is what is learned]: the sensory which calls for and immediately finds meaning . . . the a priori and a posteriori elements are indiscernible in the act of perception itself. On the basis of reflection, however, we can begin to distinguish between them” (The Notion, 101). 4 There are two texts that deserve mentioning in this regard. Quentin Laurer’s Phenomenology: Its Genesis and Prospect (New York: Fordham University Press, 1958), Chapter 3; and Dan Zahavi’s Husserl’s Phenomenology (USA: Stanford University Press, 2002). Both provide excellent interpretations of the different reductions employed in Husserl’s methodological approach to phenomenology. Dufrenne actually cites the original French publication of Laurer’s work (The Notion, 127). 5 Dufrenne’s treatment of the a priori has much in common with Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of the body in the The Phenomenology: “It [the body] inhabits space and time” (139) and “My body has its world, or understands its world, without having to make use of my ‘symbolic’ or ‘objectifying function”’ (140–1). Specifically, Dufrenne even states, “the a priori is body. In fact, we can, like Merleau-Ponty, speak of a priori of the body, designating by this the fundamental activities corresponding to the Umwelt’s lines of force . . .” (The Notion, 159). 6 As one proceeds through The Notion, one cannot help but be struck by the clear predications Dufrenne ascribes to the human subject: natural, corporeal, born, mortal, conscious (ensouled), curious, perceptive, creative, cultural, social, historical, etc. Given this litany and the humanistic trend in his thinking, an alternative title for the work could have been “The Notion of a Philosophical Anthropology”. In an inverted manner, he expresses this in “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 211: “A philosophy of man based on a theory of the a priori brings an ethic with it.” 7 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966). 8 Plato, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (New York: Prometheus Books, 1988), trans. Benjamin Jowett, 19. 9 The Phenomenology: “The miracle of the real world . . . is that in it significance and existence are one, and that we see the latter lodge itself in no uncertain fashion in the former” (323), and “in reality the significance encircles and permeates matter” (324). 10 The Phenomenology, 241: “I posit the stuff of knowledge when, breaking away from the primary faith inspired by perception, I adopt a critical attitude towards it . . ..” 11 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Sense and Non-Sense (U.S.A.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 179: When we “. . . have to deal with the existing world . . . [each] of our perceptions is an act of faith in that it affirms more than we strictly know, since objects are inexhaustible and our information limited.” Dufrenne also discusses this point in “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 204.

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12 The Notion, 159: “The system formed by the corporeal a priori constitutes a style of life for a species in a certain environment: a specific difference must manifest itself for all living creatures both in the lived and the objective body, and we apprehend this difference in behaviour, even if we express it mythically [or even metaphysically] before using anatomical terms.” This illustrates Dufrenne’s claim that there is a “historicity to the a priori” (The Notion, 183). 13 “The naturalist holds that the methods and approaches of the sciences, in their dependence upon verification and falsification, provide us not only with meaning, but also with truth claims about the world;” see my review essay, “The Dilemmas of a World without Design”, The European Legacy, (September 2007, 12: 6, 741–744). 14 “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, 38. 15 The Phenomenology: There is “a certain gearing of my body to the world” (250) and “that through [the] body I am at grips with the world” (303). 16 “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 207: The world or considered more primordially, nature “carries within it, at the heart of its inconceivable unity, the principle of openness . . ..” 17 “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, 41; see also The Notion, 167, if the a priori borne by human beings “represents knowledge [savoir] of the world, it is the world as human that is thus known.” 18 The Phenomenology, 324: “The real lends itself to unending exploration; it is inexhaustible.” 19 “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 201: “the accord between man and the world is a carnal one which attests to their co-naturality, their common belonging to Nature.” 20 Dillon, Martin, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 65–66: Dillon calls this notion in Merleau-Ponty’s corpus the autochthonous organization of the world. This principle “maintains that there are intrinsic relations obtaining among the parts of the perceptual whole [the Gestalt], that these relations are grounded in phenomena, and that they constitute the perceptual significance or fundamental meaning of phenomenal experience. The claim here is that meaning is intrinsic to phenomena and is not, at the basic levels of perception, imposed upon them by supervenient formal activities grounded in immanent structures [that is, a constituting consciousness]. According to the principle of autochthonous organization, the perceptual world is intrinsically meaningful.” 21 “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, 43. 22 “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 205: “. . . it is necessary to conceive another form of knowing and the known which preserves between them a fundamental proximity and whose description avoids the distinction of subject and object. Such is indeed the aim of MerleauPonty, who constantly returns to the analysis of perception. If he is not trying to capture the first state of the a priori, he is at least exploring the place where it can be found.” 23 “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 208. 24 This phrase “authentic speech” is admittedly ambiguous and underdeveloped in this context. I would like however, to point to both Merleau-Ponty’s emphases in this regard (ref. The Phenomenology) and Plato’s assertions to this effect in Phaedrus. Dufrenne will later say, that “We have to die to the world for the reign of raw being to come again, for nature to be restored to itself and that every authentic word is haunted by death” (“The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 205). 25 “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 211: “Social life is a moral life.” 26 See my essays, “Merleau-Ponty’s Hermeneutics of Comparative Philosophy Revisited”, Phenomenological Inquiry: A Review of Philosophical Ideas and Trends, (Vol. 31, 2007) “The Situatedness of Judgment and Action in Arendt and Merleau-Ponty”, Politics and Ethics Review, (Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 202–220, Fall 2006) “Merleau-Ponty and Nagarjuna: Relational Social Ontology and the Ground of Ethics”, Asian Philosophy, (Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 131–145, July 2004) and

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“Merleau-Ponty and Nagarjuna: Enlightenment, Ethics and Politics”, Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion, (Vol. 7, pp. 99–129, October 2002) as well as the recent anthology, Interrogating Ethics: Embodying the Good in Merleau-Ponty (USA: Duquesne University Press, 2006). 27 Dufrenne, Mikel, The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 28 For a discussion of some of the implications for this third proposition, see my “A Metaphysics of Morality: Kant and Buddhism”, Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies, (No. 2, pp. 18–41, 2006). 29 “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, 43. 30 “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, 208. 31 “The Role of Man in the Social Sciences”, 43. 32 See the note above with respect to “latent logic”. 33 In this regard, special attention ought to be given to Merleau-Ponty’s Nature, Course Notes from the Collège de France (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2003). Given Dufrenne’s comments in “The A Priori and the Philosophy of Nature”, there is an unmistakable line of influence, but to explore this would take the present project too far afield.

SUSI FERRARELLO

T H E E T H I C A L P RO J E C T A N D I N T E N T I O N A L I T Y IN EDMUND HUSSERL

ABSTRACT

In this chapter we will focus on the relation between the ethical Husserlian project and the theory of intentionality. We would like to show how the ethical project influences on the progress of phenomenological research and compels Husserl to uphold some original thesis about reason and its intentional skill. Husserl wants to become an “Aristoteles der reinen Ethik” through an ethical project aimed to the foundation of an ethical science analogous to the logical science (described by himself in Prolegomena). This project plays a strategic role in the Husserlian thought. In fact, it is based on a parallelism (Parallelismus) between the modalizations of reason (Vernunftarten) of the consciousness. Following Husserl ethics should be shaped on the same rational structure of logic and it should have the same validity of logics. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the practical reason are different from those of logical reason. The practical reason in fact, is linked to the sphere of sentiments, feelings, instincts and it cannot be perfectly intentional. Husserl himself defines the practical acts as nearly intentional acts. Hence, in the chapter we will show that the parallelism is imperfect. Moreover we will show the theoretical consequences of Husserlian ethical position respect to the modification of his definition of intentionality.

INTRODUCTION

Phenomenology and existentialism signed in a different and significant way our century. Starting with Heidegger, Sartre or Merleau-Ponty, Husserlian phenomenology has been criticized from different, and often irreconcilable, perspectives. This gave origin to new waves of studies and philosophical

Susi Ferrarello, lecturer at La Sapienza University of Rome, department of pharmaceutical biotechnologies, piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00186, Rome Italy, mail: [email protected]

161 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 161–177. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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interests. Here we would like to show what Husserlian thought can still express, above all, in the ethical field. In the years after the death of Husserl, his work has been read following diverse critical lines. As for the ethical context, we can say that in Seventies, the practical side of phenomenology starts to gain attention. It is studied, for instance, as a possible employ on various scientific fields (psychology, psychiatrist, linguistic, sociology)1 or as an ‘operative’ thought, useful in the political discussion.2 Only after the publication of dense manuscripts in the Husserliana XXVIII (1988), the ethical Husserlian thought comes out as a relevant subject of study, even if still set in a political and social perspective.3 Above all, it is with the edition of Einleitung in die Ethik (2003), that Husserlian ethics begins to be studied for its philosophical relevance and not for its methodological or conceptual opening to others contexts.4 With this work we would like to show how Husserlian ethical thought affects the progress of phenomenological research thanks to the position it holds in the husserlian thought. We retain, in fact, that the ethical project, elaborated since 1908, compels Husserl to uphold some original thesis (maybe unexpected even by himself),5 about the reason and its intentional skill. THE TEXTS The ethical writings elaborated by Husserl are many and different for clearness and homogeneity. Here we are going to choose the ethical lectures of 1914 and 1924, collected respectively in volumes XXVIII6 and XXXVII7 of Husserliana, to make possible a conceptual comparison on the ethical Husserlian project.8 As well as these, we will refer also to the volumes of Prolegomena (1889),9 Logische Untersuchungen (1900–01)10 and Ideen I (1913),11 because explicitly cited in the lectures of 1914 as a useful guideline to understand the ethical project.12 T H E PA R A L L E L I S M B E T W E E N L O G I C A L A N D PRACTICAL REASON In the lectures of 1914, Husserl exposes his ethical project, summing up its essential notions in the title of the first paragraph: “The parallelism (Parallelismus) between logic and ethics”. The parallelism he talks about represents, in general, the structure where the ethical project is articulated and founded. Traditionell werden Wahrheit, Güte und Schönheit als koordinierte philosophische Ideen hingestellt und ihnen entsprechende parallele normative philosophische Disziplinen angenommen: Logik, Ethik, Ästhetic. Diese Parallelisierung hat ihre tiefliegenden und nicht hinreichend

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geklärten Motive, sie birgt in sich große philosophische Probleme, denen wir im Interesse einer wissenschaftlichen Begründung der Ethik (. . .) nachgehen wollen.13

The ethical project consists in the foundation of the ethical science and its realization is strictly connected to the enquiry of the idea of good, that the “philosophical tradition” posed on the same stage of the idea of truth. Husserl wants, substantially, to become an “Aristoteles der reinen Ethik”,14 making ethics a science analogous to logic. But, differently from him, Husserl wants to avoid the error of leaving out the idea of good in virtue of that of truth. It is necessary, according to the philosopher, to go through both the terms of parallelism to recognize the rational fundament of a possible ethical science. In this set, we can affirm that the ethical Husserlian project is immediately linked to the general scientific project of Husserlian phenomenology. The parallelism of “philosophical tradition” in fact coincides with the parallelism of his philosophical position. The ideas of truth and good are, for Husserl, the correlatives objects of the modes (Arten) of logical and practical conscience. Geht man nun den Parallelen von Logik und Ethik nach bzw. der Parallele der Akt- und Vernunftarten, auf welche diese Disziplinen wesentlich zurückbezogen sind, der urteilende Vernunft auf der einen Seite, der praktischen Vernunft auf der anderen, so drängt sich der Gedanke auf, dass nun auch Logik in dem bestimmt und eng Sinn einer formal Logik als Parallele entsprechen muss eine in analogem Sinn formale und ebenfalls apriorische Praktik. (. . .) Soweit Zeit übrig bleibt, soll dann auf die großen Problemgruppen der Phänomenologie und Kritik der Vernunft eingegangen werden, die sich nach diesen radikalen formalen Disziplinen orientieren.15

Ethics seems to be born as a sort of reprove of the philosophical and logical project. In fact, the consciousness is for Husserl a rational unity that changes its structure in accordance with its object of interest (it can be in fact a logical, practical or axiological consciousness), and the fundament of science comes from this rational structure.16 Thus, if it is possible for Husserl to found a logical and philosophical science, it will be also possible to found an ethical science. Its rational fundament can be found out through the analysis of practical conscience and the model, we can use for the enquiry, is that already described in Logische Untersuchungen. Wie der formalen Logik ein System fundamentaler Strukturen des Glaubenbewusstsein (. . .) entspricht und somit eine Phänomenologie und Theorie der formale Erkenntnis, so ähnlich verhält es sich mit der formalen Axiologie und Praktik hinsichtlich der ihnen prinzipiell zugehörigen Disziplin der Phänomenologie bzw. der Wertungs- und Willenstheorie.17

Therefore, in this project the ethical science has to be a science analogous to the logical science and grounded on the practical reason of the consciousness.18

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As well, it is a part of phenomenological method and science as “Idee einer allgemeinen Methodolgie wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse”.19 Now we would to point out that Husserl shapes the parallelism of “philosophical tradition” on his definition of conscience and he fits it to his philosophical project with the aim of finding the rational root of the ethical science. He accepts the parallelism without verifying it. That is, he uses the structure of parallelism, as Drummond says, in an instructive manner,20 like a structure that aims to teach the characteristics of future ethical science. The logical science in fact, is taken as a model of the ethics, before demonstrating that a practical reason exactly parallel to that logical can exist and be at the ground of a science. The logical science, already analyzed and described in the Logische Untersuchungen, becomes, using an expression of Benoist, a sort of guaranty: the analogy with the logical rationality, it is useful to give ethics a path where there are “all the intuitive guaranties of a value that will not put in question anymore”.21 As well, the structure of parallelism traditionally acquired by Husserl, is explained and integrated, by an other structure opposed to it, that of interlacing (Verflechtung). In ihr <Parallelismus> drückt sich eine gewisse Wesensverflechtung des doxischen Bewusstseins mit dem Gemütsbewusstsein und so jedem Bewusstsein überhaupt aus, dergemäss jedes Stellungnehmen, jedes Schön- oder Gut-Werten apriori in ein urteilendes Stellungnehmen umgewandelt werden kann.22

Husserl thinks that, the parallelism needs for the structure of interlacing to be explained. In this way, we have another difficulty: in fact, the ethical project is thought within a structure, whose existence is not scientifically proved and whose organization can be explained through a structure opposed to it (that of interlacing). We have two difficulties that make the ethical project not possible: • The logical reason and its scientific structure give to ethics an instructive model and a guaranty that is not justified, because we are not sure if there is a practical reason analogous to a logical one. As well, the parallelism between logical and practical reason has to be thought, at the same time, as a interlacing. The ethical science is built on two different structures. • The failure of the ethical project influences on the success of the philosophical project. The ethics in fact, founds itself on one of modes of reason (Vernunftarten) of consciousness. Phenomenology is “Wissenschaft vom Bewusstsein”23 and the logic is science of the logical reason of the consciousness; if the ethical project fails and the analogy and parallelism continues to subsist, the failure of the one affects that of the other sciences,

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because ethics is strictly tied to logic and phenomenology lays on the same fundament.

T H E M O D E L O F S T RU C T U R E O F T H E S C I E N C E In the lectures of 1914 the recall to the texts of Prolegomena and Logische Untersuchungen is useful to understand the model of scientific structure that Husserl follows. The logic described in Prolegomena is articulated on three stages: theoretical, normative and technological; according to Husserl, these are, at the same time distinct and dependent each other.24 The theoretical stage constitutes the fundament of truth upon which the value of laws lays; the normative stage is constituted by laws and, at last, the technical one represents the domain of application of laws. The theoretical dimension is, in itself, the most important stage: Wichtigkeit ist, nämlich dass jede normative und desgleichen jede praktische Disziplin auf einer oder mehreren theoretischen Disziplinen beruht, sofern ihre Regeln einen von dem Gedanken der Normierung (des Sollens) abtrennbaren theoretischen Gehalt besitzen müssen, dessen wissenschaftliche Erforschung eben jenen theoretischen Disziplinen obliegt.25

The pure ethics, following Husserlian project, has to be articulated like of logic; it has to organize itself following these three stages, to keep empirical or psychical contents well distinct from those of pure consciousness. Husserl writes: “Jedes Hineinziehen psychologischer Gedanken in ihren Inhalt sie verfälscht, wie ich das im einzelnen in meine Prolegomena nachgewiesen habe”.26 The ethical science has to found its knowledge on pure truths of pure consciousness not to fall in the different variants of psychology. The problem we pose concerns these three stages of science: they are not so clearly distinct each other. When Husserl talks about value of the law or of the duty of the science, he links the normative stage of science to the axiological reason. The duty (Sollen) in fact, coincides with the value of truth which the norm lays on. But at the same time, the truth is described and recognized by theoretical reason. Thus the capability of axiological reason to consider the value or not of truth depends on the capability of logical reason to represent truth. This involves two consequences: the parallelism is asymmetric because the axiological reason depends, on the epistemological capability of the logical reason to recognize the objects. In fact, without it, the axiological reason cannot refer to its objects. Second, the three dimensions of the science (that should let the ethics be a pure science, distinct from the empirical one) are not completely autonomous and distinct within this parallelism.

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In the following paragraphs, we will analyze the meaning of logical and axiological reason in relation to the ethical project and to the main theme of phenomenological thought, the intentionality.

T H E N O R M A T I V E VA L U E O F A X I O L O G I C A L R E A S O N AND THEORETICAL DESCRIPTION OF LOGICAL REASON In the second chapter of Prolegomena logical and axiological reasons are not posed as autonomous and parallel reasons, probably because not the ethical project, but the possibility of showing the existence of a Wissenschaftslehre was put in question. Even if in the Prolegomena Husserl does not seem to consider the necessity of a parallelism between the different forms of reason, introducing the idea of the duty of science, he argues, an ethical question, that, nevertheless he leaves outstanding. He says in fact that every discipline has to describe the rational fundament it lays on, in order to be a science.27 The duty of theoretical reason consists in the description of the rational fundament of the science, but at the same time the truths, described by theoretical reason, are evaluated in their correctness by axiological reason. Thus, theoretical analysis and normative assumptions are respectively necessary tasks of logical and axiological reason to make every discipline a science. Wir ersehen aus diesen Analysen, dass jeder normative Satz eine gewisse Art der Werthaltung (. . .) voraussetzt, durch welche Begriff eines in bestimmtem Sinne “Guten” (Werten) bzw. “Schlechten” (Unwerten) hinsichtlich einer gewissen Klasse von Objekten erwächst. (. . .) Um das normative Urteil “Ein Krieger soll tapfer sein” fällen zu können, muss ich irgendeinen Begriff von “guten” Kriegern haben, und dieser Begriff kann nicht in einer willkürlichen Nominaldefinition gründen, sondern nur in einer allgemeinen Werthaltung, die nach diesen oder jenen Beschaffenheiten die Krieger bald als gute, bald als schlechte zu schätzen gestattet.28

The axiological reason is a form of rationality that is necessary to the formulation of any kind of normative judgment. It is interlaced with theoretical rationality even if, Husserl says, the theoretical disciplines do not need the axiological reason. In den theoretischen Disziplinen entfällt hingegen diese zentrale Beziehung aller Forschungen auf eine fundamentale Werthaltung als Quelle eines herrschenden Interesses der Normierung; die Einheit ihrer Forschungen und Zusammenordnung ihrer Erkenntnisse wird ausschließlich durch das theoretische Interesse bestimmt.29

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The theoretical discipline is absolutely independent from that normative, because its aim consists in the definition of its objects of interest (that can be true or false, correct or incorrect). Es ist nun leicht einzusehen, dass jede normative und a fortiori jede praktische Disziplin eine oder mehrere theoretische Disziplinen als Fundamente voraussetzt, (. . .) dass sie einen von aller Normierung ablösbaren theoretischen Gehalt besitzen muss, der als solcher in irgendwelchen, (. . .), theoretischen Wissenschaften seinen natürlichen Standort hat. 30

The problem we want to stress here is related to the ethical project. In fact, if the axiological discipline needs the theoretical reason to be able to elaborate an idea of duty, it cannot be considered parallel to the logical one, because it depends on it. Hence, if their functions are interlaced, the ethical science cannot be a science exactly parallel to the logical one because, it will depend always on axiological reason as for the normative stage, and on logical one as for the theoretical stage (in the description of its meanings). Here the model of interlacing prevails on that of parallelism, and ethics seems to be more a product of logic and axiology than an autonomous science.31

INTENTIONALITY OF AXIOLOGICAL REASON The dependence of practical reason on axiological and logical one can be explained by the notion of intentionality. We retain, in fact, that Husserl does not give to the practical reason a real intentional skill. Before going through this point, we explain what Husserl means for intentionality. In the first edition of Logische Untersuchungen (1900-01), where the ethical project still seems not to be completely elaborated by the philosopher,32 Husserl uses this term in the significance of Bedeutungsintention.33 He considers intentionality as a specific property of consciousness to acquire its objects of knowledge. Das determinierende Beiwort intentional nennt den gemeinsamen Wesenscharakter der abzugrenzenden Erlebnisklasse, die Eigenheit der Intention, das sich in der Weise der Vorstellung oder in einer irgend analogen Weise auf Gegenständliches Beziehen. Als kürzeren Ausdruck werden wir (. . .), das Wort Akt gebrauchen.34

Thus the Erlebnisse of pure consciousness are intentional acts that can be shortly called ‘acts’. In the fifth Logische Untersuchung, Husserl uses two definitions to classify all the acts of consciousness; he writes that all the psychical phenomena are characterized by an intentional reference and “sie entweder Vorstellungen sind oder auf Vorstellungen als ihrer Grundlage beruhenit”.35 Therefore the Erlebnisse of consciousness can be either acts

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(reel) or non acts (real). All the acts are intentional; the non acts, instead, are not intentional because they do not refer to any object represented. They are tied to the instinctive or psychological sphere of the conscience. “Dass nicht alle Erlebnisse intentionale sind, zeigen die Empfindungen und Empfindungskomplexionen”.36 The sensations arise without an object is represented or intuited; it is perceived without any intentional reference to it. The object of sensations remains an immanent object and it is a part of the sensations as a moment of that specific psychical condition. The feelings or emotional acts are not really pure acts of conscience. Nevertheless also the acts of feeling can be elevated to the range of intentional acts: “Sie alle ‘verdanken’ ihre intentionale Beziehung gewissen ihnen unterliegenden Vorstellung”.37 Ein Kentaurenkampf, den ich mir in einem Bilde oder in der Phantasie vorstelle, ‘erregt’ ebenso mein Wohlgefallen wie eine schöne Landschaft der Wirklichkeit, und wenn ich die letztere auch psychophysisch als reale Ursache für den in mir seelisch erwirkten Zustand des Wohlgefallens auffasse (. . .). Das Wohlgefälligsein, bzw. das Wohlgefallenempfinden ‘gehört’ zu dieses Landschaft nicht als physikalischer Realität (. . .), sondern in dem hier fraglichen Aktbewusstsein gehört es zu ihr als so und so erscheinender evtl. auch so und so beurteilter, an dies oder jenes erinnernder usw. als solche ,fordert’, ,weckt ’ sie dergleichen Gefühle.38

If the feeling of pleasure lays on the representation of the object and not on the object empathically experienced for itself, this feeling becomes an act or an intentional lived of conscience. Findet man eine Schwierigkeit darin, dass nicht jedes Begehren eine bewusste Beziehung auf ein Begehrtes zu fordern scheine, da wir doch oft von einem dunkle Lagen und Drängen bewegt und einem unvorgestellten Endziel zugetrieben werden; und weist man zumal auf die weite Sphäre der natürlichen Instinkte hin, denen mindestens ursprünglich die bewusste Zielvorstellung mangle, so würden wir antworten: Entweder es liegen hierbei bloße Empfindungen vor (. . .), also Erlebnisse, die wirklich der intentionalen Beziehung ermangeln und daher auch dem wesentlichen Charakter des intentionalen Begehrens gattungsfremd sind. Oder wir sagen: es handle sich zwar um intentionale Erlebnisse, jedoch um solche, die als unbestimmt gerichtete Intentionen charakterisiert sind.39

“Die Freude ist nicht ein konkreter Akt für sich und das Urteil ein daneben liegender Akt, sondern das Urteil ist der fundierende Akt für die Freude, es bestimmt ihren Inhalt (. . .), denn ohne solche Fundierung kann Freude überhaupt nicht sein”.40 Thus the judgment is always an intentional act, because it represents the object which it refers to. On the contrary, the joy needs judgment be an intentional act. Then, the acts of practical sphere are not properly intentional because they cannot be founded on aware representations. They refer, following Husserl, to their objects in a impulsive or instinctive way, and they can become intentional only when they lay on the representations of these (above all of the logical acts of the judgment). Their intentional references depend on the capability of representation of the logical acts.

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In every intentional content, we have to distinguish three concepts: the intentional object of the act, its matter (in regard to its intentional quality), its intentional essence.41 Dwell now on the second of these three concepts, that is the most important to define the new position that Husserl will assume in rapport to the intentionality of the practical sphere: the distinction between matter and quality of the act. The distinction, Husserl writes, concerns “dem allgemeinen Charakter des Aktes, der ihn je nachdem als bloß vorstellenden oder als urteilenden, fühlenden, begehrenden usw. kennzeichnet und seinem Inhalt, der ihn als Vorstellung dieses Vorgestellten, als Urteil dieses Geurteilten usw. kennzeichnet”.42 Quality, according to Husserl, determines only if what is represented is intentionally present as what can be desired, asked or judged. Matter instead, works as what gives to the act the reference to an object in a specific way.43 These two moments, quality and matter of act, set up the intentional essence of the act and they could not subsist without their essential representation. The representation is, in fact, the content of every matter and it is a sort of exception to all the kinds of acts because it is the only fundamental kind of act. Vorstellung in dem ersten Sinne ist ein Akt (bzw. Eine eigenartige Aktqualität) so gut wie Urteil, Wunsch, Frage usw. (. . .) In dem anderen Sinn wäre Vorstellung kein Akt, sondern die Aktmaterie, welche die eine Seite des intentionalen Wesens in jedem vollständigen Akt ausmacht, oder, konkreter, gefasst, diese Materie.44

Then, the representation is the most elementary and original form of act through which it is possible to express intentional essence of the act and it is the intentional content of “die objectivierende Akte”. So haben die objektivierenden Akte eben die einzigartige Funktion, allen übrigen Akten die Gegenständlichtkeit zuallererst vorstellig zu machen, auf die sie sich in ihren neuen Weisen beziehen sollen. Die Beziehung auf Gegenständlicthkeit konstituiert sich überhaupt in der Materie.45

Then, Husserl retains that intentionality is deeply linked to capability of the acts to represent their objects, “jedes intentionale Erlebnis ist entweder eine Vorstellung oder hat einen solcher Akt zur Grundlage.”46 Every “nichtobjectivierender Akte (wie Freuden, Wünsche, Wollungen) in objektivierenden (Vorstellungen, Fürwahrhaltungen), wobei primär eine Aktqualität in einer anderen Aktqualität und erst mittelbar in einer Materie fundiert ist“.47 The acts of axiological and practical reason are not primarily intentional because they found themselves on the objectivating acts of the theoretical reason. In this schema the axiological acts are put in the category of acts of feeling and then they are considered non-objectivating acts, oriented to the content already objectivated or represented of the facts (Tatsachen). As for the ethical project, this involves that the radical asymmetry that we had already put in evidence, between practical and logical reason, is justified

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by a relevant theoretical cause. There is not a practical reason that is analogous to the logical reason, because both the will and the valuing reason are not completely intentional. The model of parallelism is impossible and only the model of interlacing (Verflechtung) can be a scientific possible structure (even if it would involve that the normative stage of science, that is the stage of correctness of science, it would become not a pure stage because the axiological acts, as not completely intentional,48 would be not totally pure acts of conscience).

A N AT T E M P T AT S O L U T I O N : T H E U N I V E R S A L I T Y O F THE INTENTIONAL ACTS After the introduction of the ethical project, the thesis of intentionality, now laid out, contrasts with the idea of ethical science; Husserl seems to be aware of this and in Idee I he reconsiders his position. Bernet, comparing the studies of Melle,49 points out this change in the husserlian position and he advances, to justify it, the same our reasons: “Il semble que la décision en faveur du caractère objectivant de l’intentionnalité des sentiments fut à nouveau prise dans les années situées entre la parution des Recherches Logiques et des Idees I et qu’elle fut motivée par le souci d’une fondation phénoménologique de l’éthique”.50 According with this assertion, we think that around 1914, with the aim of justifying the rational fundament of the ethical science and defending the parallelism and the analogy between logical, axiological and practical reason, Husserl recognizes to the will an own intentional activity and he uses, in reference to it, expressions like ‘intention of will’ (Willensintention or Willensmeinung). Around these years in fact, he carries on his idea of analogy and he develops the possible correspondence between the intentionality of judgment and intentionality of decisions. We take as a reference point the § 117 of the first volume of Ideen (1913). In this text all the acts, the acts of sentiments too, are defined as intentional. Gemüts- und Willensakte jeder Art eben Akte, intentionale Erlebnisse sind, und dass dazu jeweils die ‘intentio’, die Stellungnahme gehört.51

The intentional essence is described in Idee I, not only as quality and matter of an act, but also as capability of taking position, or in the Greek version, to be thesis (archontische Thesis) in relation to the objects. Every act can be intentional because every act involves one or more thesis in rapport to the objects. Every act, that is, can refer itself to the object following more modes, or as Husserl writes, following more “Setzungscharaktere”,52 in accordance with a position of will, knowledge, evaluation etc.

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As well, “zum Wesen jedes intentionalen Erlebnisse, was immer sonst in seinem konkreten Bestande vorfindlich sein mag, gehört es, mindesten einen, in der Regeln aber mehrere, in der Weise der Fundierung verbundene, ‘Thesen zu haben; in diese Mehrheit ist dann notwendig eine die sozusagen archontische, alle anderen in sich vereinigend und sie”.53 The schema that Husserl used in Logische Untersuchungen is translated here in a different and still ambiguous manner. All the acts now are objectivating, also the acts of sentiments, in virtue of the intentional essence that consists not anymore only in the quality and matter of act, and then not anymore in the capability of representing, following different ways, the objects of interest. The intentional essence seems to consist now in the simple skill to refer to the object. It is possible in fact, that within every act, there are more forms of acts and that only one, according to the action, prevails on the others. Die dem Gemütserlebnis nach allen Komponenten innewohnende doxischen Form würde es also sein, welche die Anpassbarkeit des Ausdrucks, als eines ausschließlich doxothetischen Erlebnisses, an das Gemütserlebnis ermöglichte, das als solches und nach allen seine Gliedern mehrfach thetisch, darunter aber notwendig auch doxothetisch ist.54

The intentionality of practical reason then, is defined following new terms, because Husserl does not seem anymore to think to a clean and parallel distinction between different forms of reason, but it seems rather to believe that the practical, logical and axiological reason, are the parts of a same position and they are equally skill of an intentional life, or of an autonomous skill to aim to the objects of knowledge and to interact practically with them. We think that, in the modification of the intentional character of the acts of feeling (and the practical and axiological acts too), the necessity of realization of the ethical project has played a certain importance. THE AMBIGUITY OF ETHICAL LESSONS OF 1914 Now we come back to the lessons of 1914. This text seems to be still ambiguous as for the intentional skill recognized to the practical acts. In fact, even if Husserl wants to make the ethical project possible and to describe the practical and axiological acts as intentional acts, he retains theoretical acts as superior compared with the others: Theoretische und wertende Vernunft sind miteinander überall verflochten. Hierbei ist die theoretische viel freier und unabhängiger. Denn die wertende Vernunft ist notwendig mit der theoretischen verflochten. Es hängt das schon damit zusammen, dass jedem wertenden Akt notwendig zugrundliegen intellektive Akte, objektivierende’ (vorstellende oder urteilende oder vermutende Akte), in denen die bewerteten Gegenständlichkeiten vorstellig werden und eventuell als seiend oder nichtseiend oder nichtseiend in Gewissheit oder Wahrscheinlichkeit dastehen.55

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This is a particular passage: in 1913 Husserl had defined all the acts as intentional and objectivating acts, but here (in 1914) he continues to subordinate the valuing acts to the logical acts. Even more he writes: “Vielmehr ist der wertende Akt wesensmässig gerade insofern, als er die Werterscheinung konstituiert, in dem intellektiven Akt fundiert”.56 This assertion annuls what Husserl had explained in § 117 of Ideen I about the ‘Universalität’ of the objectivating acts and of the archontische character coming out from them. The axiological acts seem not to be still autonomous and parallel to the logical acts, because they need for the intellective objectivating acts to realize themselves. Nevertheless, maybe because aware of this contradiction, in the following paragraph he writes: Diese Verflechtung führt leicht in die Irre, da sie nahelegt zu sagen, dass die wertenden Akt nur in dem Sinn intentionale sind, dass sie auf die vorgestellten Gegenständlichkeiten gerichtet sind. Aber wir werden noch ausführen müssen, dass im eigentlichen Sinn nur objektivierende Akte auf Gegenständliches, auf Seiendes oder Nichtseiendes gerichtet sind, wertende Akte aber auf Werte, und näher, auf positive und negative Werte. (. . .) Werte haben ihre Gegenstandsseite und zugleich ihre spezifische Wertseite, die erstere für die letztere fundierend, und wenn Werte selbst zu Gegenständen der urteilenden Erkenntnis werden, so wird die Wertseite selbst objektiviert.57

In substance, the axiological and practical acts seem still not to be considered as autonomous and intentional acts, because they miss of epistemic property; they are not able to represent their objects. Hence it follows that they cannot be set alone at the basis of the ethical science and that, with them, neither the practical reason can be considered as an autonomous reason that can supply alone, the scientific fundament for the ethical discipline. The kind of intentionality exercised seems to be, as Benoist said, “a double look”: it is not directed toward its object but toward something that does not have less objectivity. The objectivity that this kind of acts can represent is just of teleological kind; it is just a ‘direction to something’. In this sense, it is nearly an intentionality. “Die wertende Akte sind nicht auf Werte als Objekte gerichtet” [because] “objektivierende Akte sind, wenn auch nicht im eigentliche, so doch teleologischem (normativem) Sinn auf Objekte ‘gerichtet’. Objekt ist Seiendes. (. . .) Andererseits, wertende Akte sind nicht auf Objekte ‘gerichtet’, sondern auf Werte. Werte ist nicht Seiendes, Wert ist etwas auf Sein oder Nicht-Sein Bezügliches, aber gehört in eine andere Dimension“.58

The intentional affective act is still something of different that happens, so to speak, in a second moment. It is added to the representation with its affective determination. From writings of 1900 until those of Idee I, Husserl modifies his position and the analogy between the practical and logical acts seems to be just a teleological analogy. There is just an analogue tension toward its own content. The

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practical acts are, as we said, nearly intentional and they need cognitive capabilities of logical reason to be referred to the objects and to realize themselves in real actions. THE INTENTIONALITY OF THE PRACTICAL ACTS IN THE ETHICAL LECTURES OF 1920 In the second group of the ethical lectures, conceived in 1920-24, Husserl is far from the definition of intentionality he had given in Logische Untersuchungen. Here he gives to intentionality a meaning nearer to the life of person, than to pure domain of consciousness. In the ethical lessons of these years in fact, all the acts are considered as intentional acts. This time the intentional character is not only of teleological kind, but it is also of ‘constructive’ kind. The intention of the acts in fact seems to be aimed to the construction of the personal identity of I. Diese Subjekte sind Iche, personale Subjekte; sie sind als personale Subjekte, indem sie in der Form des Bewusstseins leben, indem sie mannigfaltiges Bewusstsein vollziehen, erfahrendes, vorstellendes, fühlendes, wertendes strebendes. (. . .) In diesem intentionalen Leben ist das Ich kein leerer Schauplatz seiner Bewusstseinerlebnisse (. . .). Das Ich-Sein ist beständiges Ich-Werden. Subjekte sind, indem sie sich immerfort entwickeln.59

Putting aside the problems that terms as “I”, “subject”, “person” and “consciousness” recall, in this passage we would to stress how the intentional life of the conscience is connected with the personal life of an I which develops and builds himself. Differently from the ethical lectures of 1914, every act has to be intentional, that is it has to grant the opening of personal subject to the world. Every act is a chance for the subject to build his identity. The essential structure of the act is still the same: intentional act and the object intentioned. Da heißt es (. . .), dass es in jeder Gattung von Ichakten, von urteilenden, wertenden, wollenden Stellungnahmen einen Wesensunterschied von 1) ‘bloßer Meinung’ und 2) ursprünglichem Besitz des Gemeinten (. . .); z. B. in der Urteilssphäre ein bloß urteilendes Vermeine und andererseits eine Einsicht, in der der vermeinte Sachverhalt in seiner Selbstheit, in seiner Wahrheit von dem Ich (. . .) zugeeignet ist.60

But, differently from the lectures of 1914, the intentional activity is conceived now in relation to the active and passive development of a personal I which lives the world. Intentionality does not represent the life of pure consciousness only, but also that of an I that is in the world and exchanges with it his knowledge and experience. “Die Subjektivität baut sich in ihrem passiven und aktiven Bewusstseinsleben ihre Umwelt auf, die ist, was sie ist, vermöge der immer neuen intentionalen Charaktere”.61

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Thus, the definition and the function of intention and reason changed. Consequently the ethical project (and with it the philosophical project) is now possible because all the reasons are analogous each others and the structures of ’parallelism and interlacing’ are compatible in virtue of the “universality” of intentional acts. Husserl, with his exigency to answer first intuition of his project, shaped some central points of his philosophical theory on his idea of ethics. Even if this project was born as a sort of reprove of his philosophical and logical project, it opens, new fields of research and it leads Husserl to new theoretical positions. Respect to critical points we showed at the beginning of our work,62 we can say now: • If every act is intentional and in its way objectivating, the logical and practical reasons are analogous each other and parallelism can be perfectly symmetric. But, because of the persistence of the ‘instructive’ analogy between logical and practical reason, the symmetry involves a redefinition of pure logical reason following the characteristics of practical reason. Both of them, in fact, are parts of the same subject and are at the basis of analogous sciences. • The ethical science can be founded on a practical reason but this reason becomes a personal reason linked to the world and its intentional capability is often aimed to the construction of personal identity. • The archontische character of the acts explains the coexistence between the two opposed structures of science: Verflecthung and Parallelismus. Every act is independent from its ‘object’, but every ‘position’ (Thesis) needs a complexion of different kinds of acts. Consequently the interlacing between the axiological, logical and practical reason contributes to the physiognomy of the ethical science. La Sapienza University of Rome NOTES 1

See E. Holestein, “Jakobson und Husserl. Ein Beitrag zur Genealogie des Strukturalismus”, History of Linguistic Thought, ed. H. Parret (Berlin-New York, 1976) pp. 772–810 or A. Bonomi, “Sul problema del linguaggio in Husserl”, Aut Aut, 118, 1978, pp. 37–62. 2 The analysis of the Lebenswelt, enlivened in fact, the debate of the first congress of Italian Institute of Phenomenology by the papers of L. Landgrebe, C. Strube, A. T. Tymieniecka, A. Ales Bello; See AA. VV., Filosofia e Impegno Politico, (Milan, 1976). 3 See N. Depraz, “The Phenomenological Reduction as Praxis”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2/3, 1999, pp. 95–110; R. Donnici, Husserl e Hume, per una Fenomenologia della Natura Umana, (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989) R. Donnici, “Husserl sull’Etica di Hume, dalle Lezioni Inedite del 1902”, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 1985, pp. 449–470; M. Sancipriano, Edmund

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Husserl. L’Etica Sociale, (Genova: Tilgher, 1988) Y. Thierry, Conscience et Humanité selon Husserl. Essai sur le Sujet Politique, (Paris: Presses Universitarie de France, 1995). 4 See Alter, 13, 2005; Annales de Phénoménologie, 2004/05; Etudes Phénoménologiques, 35, 2008. 5 In this sense we agree with the thesis hold by G. Soffer, “Husserl and the Question of Relativism”, Phaenomenologica, 122, (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991) p. 151. 6 E. Husserl Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre, 1908–1914, hrsg. von Ulrich Melle, (The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988). Hereafter cited as Hua XXVIII. 7 E. Husserl, Einleitung in die Ethik 1920–1924, hrsg. von Hennig Peucker, (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004). Hereafter cited as Hua XXXVII. 8 We do not cite, for instance, the lectures of 1917 (Fichtes Menscheitsideal. Drei Vorlesungen 1917) in Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1922) hrsg. von T. Nenon e H. R. Sepp. (Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: M. Nijhoff, 1987) or the articles of the Kaizo review, because we do not find there any reference to the ethical project. As for manuscripts (for instance those of group A V 21, 22 and VI 3, B II, 2 or E III, 7, 8, 9) and the other lectures of Hua XXVIII, we choose not to follow these texts because Husserl exposes there its project in a fragmentary way. 9 We used this date of publication of Prolegomena, but it is difficult to define the right year. From the letter of Husserl to Meinong (published in Philosophenbriefe aus der wissenschaftlichen Korrepsondenz von A. v. Meinong, Graz 1965, p. 94) it comes out that the project of Prolegomena starts in 1896, but as Fink writes in the preface of 1939, “these lectures are a resumption of the academicals lessons of 1985 and this explains a certain liveliness and liberty of expression” (“Entwurf einer ‘Vorrede’ zu den ‘Logischen Untersuchunge”’, 1913, in Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 1, February, 1939, pp. 106–122 and 2 May 1939, pp. 319–339; the passage cited is at p. 128). 10 E. Husserl Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. Text der 1. und der 2. Auflage, Halle: 1900, rev. ed. 1913, hrsg. von Elmar Holstein (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975). Hereafter cited as Hua XVIII. 11 E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenlogischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, hrsg. Walter Biemel (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1950). Hereafter cited as Hua III. 12 Hua XXVIII, p. 3. 13 Ibid. 14 Hua XXXVII, p. 31. 15 Hua XXXVIII, pp. 3–4. 16 See E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910) hrsg. von B. Rang. (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979). 17 Hua XXVIII, p. 4. 18 Here we cannot go through the point of the parallelism and the analogy between a mathesis universalis and another discipline. If ethics has to be analogue to logics, has ethics to be a particular kind of mathesis universalis too? About this question is possible to read the article of V. Gérard, “L’Analogie entre l’Ethique Formelle et la Logique Formelle chez Husserl”, in Fenomenologia della Ragione Pratica (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2002) pp. 115–151. 19 Hua XXVIII, pp. 4–5. 20 J. J. Drummond, Moral Objectivity: Husserl’s Sentiment of the Understanding, in Husserl Studies 12, 1995, p. 168. 21 J. Benoist, Autour de Husserl, (Paris: Vrin, 1994) pp. 234–235. 22 Hua XXVIII, p. 63.

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E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911–1921) hrsg. von Thomas Nenon und Hans Rainer Sepp (The Hague, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987) p. 17. Hereafter cited as Hua XXV. 24 See Hua XXVIII, pp. 45, 61 and Hua XIX, p. 272, 230. In these passages you can find the synthesis of the structure of logical science described by Husserl. 25 Hua XVIII, p. 40. 26 Hua XXVIII, p. 6. 27 See Hua XVIII, § 64. 28 Ibid., pp. 43–44. 29 Ibid., p. 46. 30 Ibid., pp. 47–48. 31 Effectively it is only from 1902 that Husserl recognizes the difference between moral and ethics. This last is, following Husserl, more important than the first. Ethics is in fact, the result of the activity of valuing and willing reason (See Hua XXVIII, pp. 33, 418). Thus in Prolegomena it is possible that Husserl does not have still in mind his specific model of ethics. 32 The first description of analogy between logic and ethics and of the ethical project elaborated by Husserl is of 1902 in Vorlesungen über Grundfragen zur Ethik und Wertlehre. It is developed systematically on three occasion: in Vorlesungen über Ethik of 1908–09, 1911 and 1914. About the genesis of this project is possible to look up still Letter of Husserl to Meinong the April 5 1902 (Briefwechsel, hrsg. von Karl Schuhmann, The Hague, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994, Bd. I, p. 145) Idee I, footnote 1, p. 219 and E. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, hrsg. von Paul Janssen (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). footnote 1, p. 142. 33 See J. Benoist, “La Fenomenologia e i Limiti dell’Oggettivazione: il Problema degli Atti non Obiettivanti”, in Fenomenologia della Ragione Pratica, (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2004) pp. 153–174; J. Benoist, “Fenomenologia e Teoria del Significato”, in Leitmotiv, 3, 2003, pp. 133–142; Denise Souche-Dauges, Le Développement de l’Intentionnalité chez Husserl, (Paris: Vrin, 1998). 34 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, in zwei banden. Halle: 1901; rev. ed. 1922, hrsg. Ursula Panzer. (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984) p. 406. Hereafter cited as Hua XIX 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., p. 382. 37 Ibid., p. 404. 38 Ibid., p. 405. 39 Ibid., pp. 409–410. 40 Ibid., p. 418. 41 Ibid., p. 413. 42 Ibid., pp. 425–26. 43 Ibid., p. 430. 44 Ibid., p. 474. 45 Ibid., p. 515. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., p. 519. 48 Hua XIX, p. 407: “It seems showed that sentiments have to be counted partly in intentional Erlebnisse, partly in those non-intentional”. 49 U. Melle, “Objektivierende und nicht-objectivierende Akt” in Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl Forschung, ed. S. Ijsseling (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1990)

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pp. 35–49; “Signitive und signifikative Intentionen”, in Husserl Studies, Vol. 15: 3, 1998/99, pp. 167–181. 50 R. Bernet, La Vie du Sujet, (Paris: Puf, 1995) p. 312. Following Bernet, Husserl considers all the sentiments as intentional objectivating acts because of their aim to recognize to ethical acts a rational justification. Therefore for Husserl, only a form of reason exists that shows itself through Stellungnahme, that can be subjective (theoretical, axiological or practical one). 51 Hua III, pp. 241–242. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., p. 263. 55 Hua XXVIII, p. 72. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Hua XXVIII, pp. 339–40. 59 Hua XXXVII, p. 104. 60 Ibid., p. 117. 61 Ibid., p. 105. 62 See The Parallelism Between Logical and Practical Reason and The Model of Structure of the Science.

LARS PETTER STORM TORJUSSEN

I S N I E T Z S C H E A P H E N O M E N O L O G I S T ? — T O WA R D S A N I E T Z S C H E A N P H E N O M E N O L O G Y O F T H E B O DY

ABSTRACT

This paper will claim that Nietzsche is worthwhile reading for phenomenologists generally, and interpreters of Merleau-Ponty especially. Nietzsche’s focus on the body and how perception, thought, language and reason all arise from the corporeal world fit well with Merleau-Ponty on several points. Although the paper will focus on similarities between the two, like the critique of Cartesian subject-object dualism, it also recognizes dissimilarities, for example Nietzsche’s notion of will to power and his genealogical method versus Merleau Ponty’s more ahistorical approach to the body. A question thus needs to be raised: is some sort of synthesis between the two thinkers possible? There are tendencies to regard Nietzsche as an “existentialist” thinker. There is certainly no doubt that his work has had a tremendous effect on thinkers within the existentialistic and phenomenological tradition. But is he a phenomenologist? In this paper, I shall examine the possibility of using some nietzschean insights in a general phenomenology of the body. Whenever “body” and “phenomenology” occurs in the same sentence, it is natural to think of MerlauPonty. There are interesting parallels between Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty, and the most obvious of them is the fact that they both emphasize the fundamental role of embodiment in their philosophies, and they do have a style of thinking that displays some similarities. In fact, Merleau Ponty would like to include Nietzsche in the phenomenological movement when he states that: [. . .] phenomenology can be practised and identified as a manner or style of thinking, [. . .] it existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. It has been long on the way, and its adherents have discovered it in every quarter, certainly in Hegel and Kierkegaard, but equally in Marx, Nietzsche and Freud (Merleau-Ponty, 2007, p. viii)

But it is only with Husserl that this “manner of thinking” became explicitly aware of itself as a philosophical method. Nietzsche, of course, predates Husserl, who is the founder of phenomenology. And if phenomenology is, as Merleau-Ponty claims, the study of essences, then Nietzsche is, as a notorius 179 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 179–189. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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anti-essentialist, clearly not a phenomenologist. But, on the other hand, his philosophy is indeed based on extensive descriptions of lived experience and a non-objectivistic approach to perception, so all in all we may be justified in calling him a phenomenologist in a broader sense. In this paper, I shall not put too much emphasis on simply labelling Nietzsche; to go off into a debate concerning what phenomenology is and who the real phenomenologists are and who are not. What I’m interested in finding out, is if one may, as a phenomenologist and an interpreter of Merleau-Ponty, profit from reading Nietzsche. I will claim that it is fruitful to incorporate Nietzsche in a Merleau-Pontyan perpetual project of developing a “phenomenology of the body”. Firstly, since there are in general obvious parallels between the thinkers: They both represent a philosophy of embodiment where corporeity exists as a structure that mediates all structures. Thus, they both criticize the Cartesian subject and the traditional mind-body split by claiming that body, perception and language are all intertwined. They share the objection to abstractness, and they both reject a dualistic ontology, and that there can be a disembodied, detached, dispassionately and unsituated mind. The world is moreover not a closed off, dead object of pure exteriority, but a dynamic and changing field which is impossible to grasp in a single act of apprehension; it is “inexhaustible” (Merleau-Ponty), or an “abyss” (Nietzsche). But there are also differences. Nietzsche’s metaphorical view of language and his notion of will to power deprives his body of “foundations”, and, most importantly, Nietzsche stresses the historicity of the body with his genealogical method. For him, the modern subject is shaped through different systems of oppression and blocking of the drives and forces of the body. Our focus in this paper shall be Nietzsche’s view of embodiment through his theory of metaphor and how metaphors relate to the body. At the end of the paper we can hopefully raise the question whether his thoughts can be incorporated into a more general phenomenology of the body. NIETZSCHE’S VIEW OF LANGUAGE

Nietzsche famously held the view that all language is metaphorical. What he called the “drive to metaphor” is a fundamental human drive, and this makes Nietzsche’s occupation with metaphor a lot more than simply a question of rhetoric or poetics, it has significance for his thinking as a whole. The metaphorical nature of language is mainly discussed in his short and unpublished On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. Here Nietzsche asks: “What is a word? The image of a nerve stimulus in sounds”. [. . .] “A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor.

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And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one. [. . .] Let us still give special consideration to the formation of concepts. Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating of what is unequal” (Nietzsche, 1967–1977 Band 1, 878–879 (my translation)).

Nietzsche thinks of the concept as a result or a product of a transfer between different “spheres”. This process starts with an “individualized original experience” (Urerlebnis) which has the character of an image. This image is then transferred to a new sphere, sound (word), and then to yet another sphere, the concept. Thus, the function of metaphor is not simply ornamental, it points to the true nature of language. Nietzsche calls this movement überspringen, übertragen or Übertragung. We can translate this as “transfer” or “transposition”, or if we want to use an image; “to carry over” (which is actually the literal translation). Metaphor has this interesting character that it itself is a metaphor (metapherein from Greek means “carry over”). Since metaphor illustrates a movement, Nietzsche uses a series of metaphors to describe it. He does this in order to prevent his metaphors from stiffening and stand out as privileged, and thereby look like concepts. Nietzsche provides us with no definition of metaphor, simply by the reason that it is impossible to give an accurate description of it. This, it should be added, is symptomatic for the general problem of grasping phenomena with definitions altogether. The concept is the offspring of the metaphor, or to put it in another way: concepts are dead metaphors. Language as such is characterized by having a figurative structure; the trope is the mode of operation of language par excellence. We still make a difference between concept and metaphor in our language, but this difference is not an essential one, it is just the fact that some transfers are common and “conceptual” while others are uncommon and “metaphorical”. Within the concept, what was formerly open, ambigous and individual has gone through a process of fixation, and has been replaced by an interpretation that pretends to be unequivocal and universal. The metaphor thus gets sedimented within the concept, it gets pushed underground. This has the effect that concepts have a more or less hidden history, a history the genealogical “mole-work” of Nietzsche as a “subterranean man” can unveil and draw back into the light. M E TA P H O R A S C O N S T R U C T

Perception is for Nietzsche metaforically structured, which implies that the intellect simply does not mirror or reflect a world that is independently out there, but it has a transformative character through language. The relation

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between the “spheres” is not a causal one, but aesthetic (“ein ästhetisches Verhalten”). This means that the formation of language is more an open game where different forces interpret and are able to name things each in a different way. The constitution of our language is then not something which has developed out of necessity, but is inherited through habits and social practices. The intellect is nothing more than a mean to maintain our species. Its products are therefore necessarily “forgeries” of the world. All of our human classifications, definitions and conceptualisations are therefore arbitrary and illusory. As Nietzsche writes: They [humans] are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eyes glide only over the surface of things and see “forms” [. . .] We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. (Nietzsche, 1967–1977 Band 1, 876).

The nominalism of Nietzsche is radical, and points to a conception of the relation between language and world which is maintained through the whole of his literary work: namely, that the concept of identity and substance lacks reality since nature as such is a perpetual becoming. Being able to formulate a proposition of identity A=A is only possible within an abstract logical space. In the real world there is no self-identity, everything is changing into something else, nothing is, everything is becoming. The problem of language is its inability to express becoming. Language carries its own metaphysics where concepts freeze and split up the world. Even though everything is a flow, the seductions of language and grammar are so deeply rooted in us that the play of forces seems to have stopped in an eternal static order of essences. But language is nevertheless an arena for the will to power (Wille zur Macht). Nietzsche’s notion of will to power is however not a dynamic unity as we find in Schopenhauer, but rather a tangle of different tendencies, an arena of energies or forces who fight for the power to define or get their perspectives on the agenda. Different metaphors or interpretations are therefore attempts to master the world. As an artistic process, the will to power creates “errors” which serves life, because everything we as humans long for: unity, stability, aim and meaning, is missing in the world. But we cannot live without this, so we need to construct it. The metaphorical drive makes us artists in a positive way by creating similarities where there are none (“Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal ”). Here the metaphorical activity is a Gleich-nis, an ability to subsume new and unknown data into established schemas. But we are also artists in a negative sense by the fact that the metaphorical drive demands that we constantly need to simplify the world. Creativity means here an ability to omit or pass over aspects of the infinite complexity of the world in

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order to make our way and live in it as humans. A world that presents itself as being, form, cause and effect is dependent on our unconsciousness. We need to forget our role as metaphysical artists. The world we meet is therefore always and already transformed. We see here that the metaphorical activity is what makes the conscious world intelligible, and this is all in all an instinctual and organic activity. Nietzsche calls this “the metamorphosis of the world in man” (Nietzsche: 1967–1977 Band 1, 883). Metaphor as Übertragung is therefore tied inextricably to our bodily constitution. T H E B O DY

Nietzsche explains metaphorical activity as an activity which starts at the nervous system. His metaphorology is therefore also a physiology. But even though the body plays a crucial role for Nietzsche, his treatment of it cannot be reduced to a traditional materialism or physiology. This is clear when we see the double connection between the body and its metaphors. The many metaphors in his texts are themselves bodily, gymnastic or sensual. But most importantly, the metaphors originate from the body. It is important to note here that “body” does not simply mean the sexual or emotional as “blind” drives in opposition to consciousness or reason, but includes the whole of human existence. Nietzsche does not simply reverse the one-sided fixation of reason posed by philosophy and metaphysics with a one-siden fixation of the body, and contrary to traditional physiology, the body for Nietzsche is a rich, ambigous and diverse field of perspectives. It is impossible to understand Nietzsche’s notion of perspectivism without acknowledging the significance of the body. The perspectival way of percieving is furthermore a natural consequence of the fact that we are always situated in some sort of way, and that things change according to where the beholder stands. That is why all perspectives are individual and final. In this way, perspective becomes a metaphor from the field of art (modelling etc.), and if we consider the etymology of the word, per spectare (“look through”), this implies that the object or thing will look different according to what bodily state the perceiver is in. T H E B O D Y A N D I T S M E TA P H O R S

Because we are always situated in a way, the “concepts” stem from concrete experience, and for Nietzsche, the formation of language therefore involves the body; it is determined by the various lifeforms, socialities and cultural formations of the body. On this point, it’s interesting to compare Nietzsche with the project of Lakoff and Johnson. Their main thought is that we as

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humans need metaphors to quantify the non-quantifiable. We always do this through the extension of our body, through the territoriality of the body, or the fact that our bodies spatially manipulate objects. That is why one can be “in the living room”, because a living room is concieved as a geographically closed unit which is able to contain various things. One can also be “in the forest”. Here, the spatial is transferred to a bit more indistinct and blurry field, because a forest has indefinite limits and is not a container in the way the living room is. Finally, one can be “in trouble”. This is a metaphor (in the traditional sense) because there has been a transference from one area to another. “Trouble” is literally not something spatial one can be in. Metaphors are thus transferences where we understand the abstract from the bodily concrete which surrounds us. There is a striking similarity here with an example given by Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals where he claims that moral and “internal” (abstract) phenomena stem from political and “external” (concrete) phenomena. This can explain why we today understand morality as purity: For the first time the words “pure” and “impure” appear as contrasting marks of one’s social position, and later a “good” and a “bad” also develop with a meaning which no longer refers to social position. Incidentally, people should be warned not to begin by taking these ideas of “pure” and “impure” too seriously, too broadly, or even symbolically. Instead they should understand from the start that all the ideas of ancient humanity, to a degree we can hardly imagine, are much more coarse, crude, superficial, narrow, blunt and, in particular, unsymbolic. The “pure man” is initially simply a man who washes himself, who forbids himself certain foods which produce diseases of the skin, who doesn’t sleep with the dirty women of the lower people, who has a horror of blood—no more, not much more. (Nietzsche, 1967–1977 Band 5, 264–265).1

If this is true, there has obviously been a shift in meaning of the word purity. This can all be explained by the fact that there is a systematic correlation between language/mind and sensory-motor experiences. Our language is in a way bound because we have a body that functions in a pre-given physical environment. To the example above we can state; if humans weren’t exposed to disease or harmful bacterias, we wouldn’t have the need to wash ourselves or to avoid contagion; cleanliness wouldn’t be a problem. These are empirical conditions, but they give meaning to the metaphor which explains morality in terms of purity. The architecture of mind and reason are therefore no “Realm of Freedom” like Kant believes, but is, on the contrary, structured by the body’s ability to respond to its environment, its being-in-the-world. But Nietzsche differs from Lakoff and Johnson in one important aspect, and that is he refuses to accept embodiment or biology in terms of reductionism. Physiology does not point to any foundation or archimedian point of reference in which the metaphors can be reduced or translated to. Interpretation happens within the body, but within this limited economy the number of possible metaphorical transpositions is still infinite, much in the same way as the musical tones we

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are able to hear are limited, but can be combined to infinity. Even if Nietzsche’s “spheres” are given, the process of transference is not. What kind of metaphorical transpositions who gets to see the light of the day, is the result of a power struggle, the fixation of concepts is determined by what kind of force is interpreting, what type of will a body represents. There is thus a mutual relationship between the body and the interpretative activity, or between the body and its metaphors. This is outlined in Tim Murphy’s Nietzsche. Metaphor, Religion: We move from a physiological state to its interpretation, from the effect of interpretation, which is primarily an enhanced sense of power, to a fixed set of beliefs—which in turn acts back on the body. In this sequence, the body is both the agent and the object of interpretive action, action that effects the body, effects states of health [. . .] interpretations are both the cause and the effect of states of health (Murphy, 2001, 79).

Language points to embodiment, and embodiment points to language. We can see a very interesting relationship between semiotics and somatics in Nietzsche. The body is a system of signs that needs to be read, and one’s language is a result of the health of the body. This makes the philosophical enterprise to that of a symptomatology. With the right look it is possible to determine whether the signs in a culture or a society point to life-tired and degenerate forces, or healthy and self-transcending. If we return to Nietzsche’s example of morality as purity, it is important to note here that this shift of meaning is a result of a power struggle. The nobility used to be the “pure” ones (literally speaking) because of their privileged facilities and favourable way of life. What happens next, according to Nietzsche, is that the lower people capture this word. The meaning of purity shifts during time until it finally has nothing to do with actual social positions, but points to something “internal” and thus becomes unassailable. No matter how impotent their life in the social world is, they still triumph because semantics has made them the “pure” ones. This trickery is not evident at the first glance, but needs a special kind of method to be revealed, a genealogical method. In Nietzsche’s semiotics of power, the body is not an easy decipherable and transparent text. In the same way we need to “forge” and simplify the world in order to percieve it, the same counts for how the body presents itself to us. Consciousness is then in a way secondary, and is very often given a decieved part in the play of the body. This is because the body is not an object or substance; it is a process, a forever ongoing creation, an eternal unfinished product of battle. T H E P L U R A L I T Y O F T H E B O DY

We see that the body is hardly a unity, but a diversity of subjects or wills. When we talk of a will, we talk about the most powerful of the body’s forces which

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has submissed the others and has the power to define. Nietzsche very often considers the body via political metaphors or structured as a society where the dominant class has the power to identify itself with the state as a whole. The illusion of the existing regime’s unity and continuity depends on the ability to hide what goes on behind the scenes. In Nietzsche’s thinking we find a movement of interpretation which is not founded in a subject, but a movement which seeks to unveil seemingly stable phenomena such as things, organisms, societies and consciousnesses as systems of signs. The lack of foundation makes it possible to almost freely shift between the different metaphors, because if God truly is dead, every description of reality is through and through metaphorical. Every metaphorical set is being interpreted by another metaphorical set. There is no natural given hierarchy which grounds the play of metaphors in a non-metaphorical point of departure. The limits of “body” and “metaphor” therefore become indefinite, because there is nothing outside the field of interpretation. This is immanence in a more textual sense, because Nietzsche does not operate, as traditional epistemology does, with a bridge or isomorphy between the “internal” and the “external”, where ideas or concepts as inner or mental corresponds with things in the outer world. Will to power is thus characterized by a fundamental reflexivity because it is always already involved in the world. Objective knowledge would then imply an agent who is himself not a part of the world, or to use Nietzsche’s image: an eye which is turned in no particular direction (Nietzsche, 1967–1977 Band 5, 365). Will to power thus means a neverending process of interpretation, a labyrinth without foundation, without an “inside” or “outside”. In the same way nature is, the body is also chaos. Or to be more precise; the body is the chaos of nature. That is the reason why the body needs to be disciplined, organized or cultivated in a way. Man needs to hammer out a stable and public zone of meaning amidst the chaos of nature. As a “species with no essence” man is characterized by a unique and painful openness in its existence. To close this problematic gap, man needs to invent regimes of value production like truth/false, good/evil, right/wrong by the means of systems of law, religion, art, science and so on. This is the perspective of Nietzsche when he studies and evaluates our culture and values. His mode of thinking can serve as a point of departure for a further study where the metaphorical-bodily products can be read as symptoms of the will that created them, whether it is a life ascending og descending, if they represent a master-morality or a slave-morality, ascetic or grand ideals.

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T O WA R D S A P H E N O M E N O L O G Y O F T H E B O D Y: N I E T Z S C H E A N D M E R L E AU - P O N T Y

We have already stated that the philosophies of Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty show similarities, but it would be wrong to attribute the dynamic non-dualism, relationality and metaphor we have seen in Nietzsche to Merleau-Ponty. Nevertheless, we find in Merleau-Ponty that he holds that human experience is a whole, not dual, and as a whole, it unites mind-body-world while maintaining multiplicity and singularity. It dynamically unites traditional dichotomies of mind and body, interiority and exteriority, and subject and object. MerleauPonty’s body has in common with Nietzsche’s body a mix of materiality and immateriality without falling into a Cartesian dualism or a reductive idealism or materialism. But there is a large difference. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is a foundation of experience. As we have seen, the body has for Nietzsche no “foundations”. It is what Kristen Brown calls a “(non)foundational foundation” (Brown, 2006, 148). For Nietzsche, our modern self and our way of percieving the world is something which is created throughout history. Our metaphors have a long history of constellations of power and evaluations and this can be discovered through the method of genealogy (as we have seen in the “morality as cleanliness”-example). Nietzsche would then question Merleau-Ponty’s ahistorical descriptions of the lived body. Even though Merleau-Ponty never gets tired of critizising the objectivistic and mechanistic way of percieving the world, he still only sees this as some sort of neutral “error”. For Nietzsche, since this way of percieving is created, it is a nihilistic or ascetic way of mastering the world. In other words, the scientific drive for unity or metaphysical search for essences is for Nietzsche a sort of weakness. They are strategies to escape the body. What Nietzsche is seeking, is a philosophy which affirms the body without seeking protection against its chaos, flux and becoming. This is a task for phenomenology. This is where Nietzsche as a phenomenologist truly shows his advantage; in his task of exploring the body as lived experience. Hence the writing style of Nietzsche. His philosophy represents a sort of selfformation through language where the biographical, philosophical and stilistic are closely intervowen. Nietzsche’s insights are inextricably connected with their formulations, his thoughts closely tied to personal experiences, which implies that his thinking always balances on the brink of what is communicable. His writing exceeds linear argument, a literary, poetic and playful systematization. Nietzsche’s reflections are more radical than Merleau-Ponty’s, but perhaps too radical. The human body is not a unity, but an incoherent mosaic. The metaphorical nature of language reveals that the web of reality

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has quite a few loose threads, in which signs cross, collide, overlap and melt together. It is a real danger that the philosophy of Nietzsche leads to insanity. Madness enters when the metaphorical makes its entry as a lived experience.2 We can’t follow Nietzsche on this path, not only because it is uncomfortable, but because he is wrong. This abyss is a consequence of his belief that the world is “independently” without structure or meaning. As we have seen, Nietzsche would claim that meaning and value is something we ascribe to the world, in fact, it is the ability to ascribe meaning which separates the master from the slave. I think we may benefit from Merleau-Ponty’s claim that the world is something we find, not something we create. That is, “we are condemned to meaning”. We are indeed born into an already existing intersubjectively world that is already pre-interpreted and meaningful. Any proposal that the “subject” is creating the meaning of the “object” is a misrepresentation of what is actually happening. Even if Nietzsche deconstructs the subject, he does not fully escape a dichotomy where the body as a system or a field is opposed to its world as alien. For Nietzsche, there is no meaning or truth independent of the “subject”, the “subject” considers itself as the only producer of meaning or as the only source of truth.

CONCLUSION

To sum up, an adequate phenomenology of the body needs to entail two things if it is supposed to be a sort of synthesis between Nietzsche and Merlau-Ponty: Firstly, some sort of constructivism where our perceptions are to some extent contingent and dependent of various constellations of power. This needs to include the method of genealogy since our individual experiences always contain a growing sedimentation of reference, a history, which also shapes all future meaning. One cannot percieve without referring back to this pool, and this field structures the manner of the perciever’s lifeworld. It is important to note that by this I mean a genealogy free from the strains of cultural theory which tends to reduce a genealogy of the body simply to cultural conditions, with the danger of ending in some sort of ideational relativism. Secondly, a sort of somatic non-constructivism is needed. The world is not completely devoid of meaning and value and thus wholly dependent on the “subject”. This is a dangerous flirt with idealism. The world as structure is still objectively out there. Only this way can phenomenology be a “rigorous science” which also offers an account of space, time and the world as we “live them”. University of Bergen, Gyldenprisveien 12 D, 5056, Bergen, Norway

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NOTES 1 See also Lakoff and Johnson (1999) pp. 307–308 for a treatment of the Morality is Cleanliness – Metaphor. 2 “If man were aware of living in an originally and fundamentally metaphorical world, he would succumb to Dionysian madness.” Blondel, “Nietzsche: Life as Metaphor”, in Allison (1999) p. 172.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allison David (ed.), The New Nietzsche. Massachusetts, London: The MIT Press Cambridge, 1999. Brown Kristen, Nietzsche and Embodiment. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Lakoff George, Johnson Mark, Philosophy in the flesh. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2007. Murphy Tim, Nietzsche, Metaphor, Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Nietzsche Friedrich, Friedrich Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe in 15 Bänden. ed. Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari, Berlin West/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–1977.

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T H E P RO B L E M O F AU T H E N T I C I T Y A N D E V E RY DAY N E S S I N E X I S T E N T I A L P H I L O S O P H Y

In existential philosophy, the problem of everydayness is considered a serious challenge. In events of everyday life, in routines of human activity there is a danger, which a philosopher, analyzing existence can rarely manage. Why is that? I consider the answer to this question of high relevance. It is in everydayness that the whole world of man, with his culture, activities, phenomena, material and intentional events is enclosed. Many philosophers of culture pointed to everydayness as the source of knowledge about man. Many have also emphasized, that only in everydayness man’s be truly revealed. An analysis of this phenomenon should than be considered our first and fundamental task. However, in the case of existential philosophy this problem develops into a specific ambiguity. The problem of everydayness and the human condition have been developed by Martin Heidegger in his concept of das Man. The translation of this phrase into English points out what is essential in this notion – the English phrase The They (or The One), which is close to the structure of the French phrase il y a, used by Levinas to describe exactly the same phenomenon. Both in English and in French this phenomenon is translated, using the same grammatical structure, referring to a general event, a universal phenomenon, which can take place anywhere and in any conditions. Il y a pelur can occur anywhere and in any circumstances.1 Similarly, There is a table, as well as There is a man, refer to what is obvious. These structures allow us to understand some phenomena related with human reality and natural phenomena. On the same level, characterized by neutrality and impersonality towards the described phenomena, one ´ can speak about a man, a table or rain. The Polish translation Swiat Si˛e introduces a metaphor, evoking, though, the same impersonality there is present in the grammatical structures of English and French. What is most important, in Polish the generality is emphasized – a level of thought, on which uniqueness and personality are lost. This impersonality seems to be of essential importance. The area of das Man, described by Heidegger is above all the space of existence, in which it is difficult to find individuality.2 Everydayness, being the fundamental position of das Man, presents the danger, or conditions the lack of individuality and personality, made visible in that general grammatical structures. For 191 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 191–200. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Heidegger this lack of personality is the most serious problem. The everydayness understood this way is threatened by ambiguity. It is exposed by Heidegger, analyzing the world, in which man has to live. Primarily, man is being inside the world.3 As such, he is in the world – existing in the surrounding reality in an unconditional way. The man is inside the world, which means, he has been “thrown” into the world. Along with birth, education, access to social and cultural structures he has been endowed with reality, which has become his world, his reality. The being inside the world refers to the material as well as the immaterial. The human world is also the world of activities, thought, cultural patterns and relations. It is a world of reality, which not only surrounds man, but also in which and thanks to which the man is alive. As such it is the first and fundamental reality, the primal environment of man; with which he is connected from the first moment of his existence and towards which he develops his being. In this primal understanding of reality its inalienable character is revealed. The man as the being inside the world discovers his rooting in such a world, which reveals who he is. Heidegger, especially from the Sein und Zeit period perceives the man as an existentialist. In such inside-the-world structure of human being he sees ambiguity. On the one hand, as the fundamental, the world gives the man rooting and a possibility to understand who he is. On the other hand though, it introduces a certain model of being, a generality of existential solutions. As such it becomes a confinement. In other words, the man is primarily tied up with the world; referring to it, he becomes rooted in reality. As a philosopher of culture would say, in the process of education he develops the patterns of behavior and enters social institutions. Here, according to Heidegger, lies the danger of stagnation and generality. Stagnation, because by subjecting to the external structures, he becomes dependant on the world in which he lives.4 The man can become a closed being, limited to certain functions and roles. The everydayness, becoming the area of such experience reveals its negative aspect, – it objectifies, leads to the loss of existential action. Generality, because the world in which the man lives provides him with general structures and a general reference system. Individuality becomes subjected to what is imposed upon it. Saying “the man” we don’t see the individual, but a certain, prepared being, res universale, das Man, which stands in its generality above subjectivity and existence. The ambiguity of being-inside-the world is the ambiguity of everydayness. The everydayness is a phenomenon of our existence in reality. In everydayness we can see how the man becomes conditioned and how this conditioning influences human consciousness. Mary Warnock, analyzing Heidegger’s philosophy, has written about authenticity and inauthenticity of human being.

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In such an attitude one can clearly see that inauthenticity is the danger arising from everydayness. The tranquilizing philosophy of Arnold Gehlen, who in everydayness of culture saw the fundament of human existence conditioning the possibility of finding one’s own identity and marking his unique individuality, becomes negated by Heidegger. The main cause of such an attitude lies in Heidegger’s idea that uniqueness and individuality become visible in man’s struggle with existence, in the specific approach to one’s own being, which surpasses the attitude found in everydayness. In other words, for Heidegger, the man, to fully become himself, or, as Warnock would write, to become authentic,5 must surpass the level of everydayness. The very moment of such action, the negation of everydayness is, closely related with the specific approach mood which allows the consciousness to act in a new way. Ambiguity of everydayness also reveals itself in Heidegger’s concept on a different level. Everydayness is not completely rejected or negatively valued by the German philosopher. It can be seen especially in his analysis of convenience. What is convenience? It is the usage of things, a usefulness which can be seen in everyday situations. Here I am, sitting on a balcony, writing these words on a laptop. Neither the balcony, nor the flowers growing on it, nor the computer, creates a problem for me. They simply are, exist and in their presence they do not become an object of any analysis of my consciousness. In the usage of these things, in this activity of sitting and writing I am given the awareness of their presence in a primal way. The everydayness brings within itself the convenience of what becomes used by us. It creates a certain “concern”, by focusing on items which surround me, their “usage”. This way, by writing, I extract the existence of the item, which I use in the act. Similarly, by sitting or watering the flowers I gain the presence of the item I interact with. And even though the consciousness does not function in its proper way, it becomes oriented; it can become aware of the problem by grasping the mere being of the item focused on by my activity. Convenient things are given to us as items, functioning as something, that simply has some uses, and simultaneously they present us their existence. In everydayness, by everyday activity, such an ontic structure becomes an ontological one.6 The man by experiencing his world, working, acting, thinking, experiences initially its existence by opening himself to its problemacy. Even though the consciousness must surpass the level of everydayness to reach its authentic existence, it cannot do it without everydayness. The moment of surpassing the everydayness becomes the first level of human thought. Everydayness must exist to be overcome. As a matter of fact, everydayness starts to reveal more than it conceals. This can be seen, especially when Heidegger brings in his concept of mood.

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One of the mood, described in “Metaphysics”, is boredom. Everydayness, especially in its course of small events, routine tasks and gestures is full of boredom. It can be said that everydayness is the most certain source of boredom. For many, who have experienced it, boredom must be associated with tiredness and stagnation – something uncomfortable and of negative value. For Heidegger, however, boredom is not such a negative phenomenon. On the contrary, it is a turning point, an experience which guides the consciousness towards new tracks of thought.7 For what happens when a man is bored? Reading a boring book, or getting bored during a lecture, the man is in a specific process. At first he tries to fight boredom, and by doing so, he enters the first phase – an attempt to concentrate. It is a desperate effort to focus on the words, focus on one’s body (by trying to sit straight, note, keep eyes open), forcing the thoughts to proper action. Then, slowly, the man stops this fight, and goes on to the second phase. By yielding to the boredom he enters a state of numbness; he disappears. In this moment the man stops thinking about the lecture, he doesn’t focus on words or on the body, not caring whether he sits straight, or whether his head isn’t about to drop. In this state, all contents disappear, internal and external as well, all reality disappears, all everydayness and the man, according to Heidegger, touches the pure existence. For a single moment, boredom reveals the true being, taken outside any categorical, substantial or subjective levels. Everydayness steps asunder, presenting the being itself. Such a concept of boredom shows us that what could be interpreted solely as a negative state of our existence is in fact a moment which can change our thinking.8 Impressions and experiences found in everydayness can lead us beyond it. Similarly to gaps in a wall, they show us reality, hidden on the other side. Angst is a different kind of mood, analyzed profoundly in Sein und Zeit. It begins in our experience of everydayness; arises from the world in which, and through which we are. Angst is an old existential term, and Heidegger must have been aware of this fact. The classic use of this concept was presented by Søren Kierkegaard, in distinction with the notion of fear. Fear was a state beyond existence, referring to the everydayness, as we might say. In Kierkegaard’s understanding, fear referred to a concern about a future social situation. We can fear a meeting with another person, a threat, a visit to the dentist. What is most important, we always know exactly what we fear. We also do know usually, how to deal with or confront the fear, or at least understand its causes. Fear is also temporary – it always moves away as the situation causing it is solved. Angst is different – it transcends everydayness; it cannot be comprehended, understood, dealt with. We don’t know the cause of Angst, what evokes this feeling, which doesn’t go away. This is because Angst appears when we are confronted with divine presence.9 The man, who has experienced

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the existence of God, has, in Kierkegaard’s philosophy, experienced Angst. The fact that we do not know who God is, that he always remains concealed causes the man to experience something transcending his existence, allowing him to touch the biggest of mysteries, that which is for him impossible and incomprehensible.10 Heidegger, as I have mentioned, was aware of this tradition of philosophical thought. He was also aware that in the experience of Angst, there is a fundamental moment of human existence; the experience of something that radically transcends it.11 His decision however, was not to separate this experience from everydayness, to move Angst from the metaphysical to the existential domain. For Heidegger, Angst is a state in which the individual participates when he realizes his own finitude. Man is, above all, a finite, temporal being. Temporality and finitude are experienced in everydayness by observing the passing and temporality of everydayness itself. In everydayness we also do experience death – someone close dies, we receive the news of somebody’s death. In this event, for a moment, like in boredom, a gap appears which shows us the way out of everydayness. By discovering temporality and finitude of our existence we start experiencing Angst of the incomprehensible, from which, according to Heidegger, we cannot escape. At this moment we should refer again to Kierkegaard who points out that Angst is something unique – once it embraces the man, it remains in his existence.12 In Heidegger’s concept, however, Angst is not referred to God (as Tischner writes, Heidegger remains silent on the issue of God), but to death and the temporality of existence. Death experienced in everydayness shows us, above all, the dimension of existential authenticity and consciousness. Having realized mortality, the man acknowledges a banal, yet fundamental and unavoidable truth – that he is to die. There is no escape from this truth, as there is no escape from death. The mood of Angst leads the man to the discovery of being-towards-death, which, according to Heidegger reveals some important issues considering human existence. First of all, the man realizes his uniqueness and individuality. Having discovered his temporality, he realizes, that his life and his death are issues concerning solely himself. Nobody will die instead of him; death is his own matter, which can be experienced by no one else beside him. Secondly, the man realizes, that there is a horizon of death; a perspective, which, being untranscendable, marks the borders of his existence. The horizon, about which Heidegger wrote, is the discovery of the existential perspective of man, a clue which makes us realize that everything that is happening, and everything done by man, always take place within the borders of man’s existence. The horizon allows us to see that it is the man who creates himself, that it depends on his own decisions and actions, how will he reach the unattainable.13 Thirdly,

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the death sets the end of human existence, which, being impossible to understand, becomes an eternal challenge. Being of the man becomes this way a being which has been challenged to become himself. While being, the man must constantly accept challenges to fulfill his own existence. To exist, means to answer this call, to live regardless of the ever appearing and never satisfying. Once again being-towards-death and Angst become the aspects of existence which tear the man off his everydayness, and simultaneously find their sources in it. Existence, to become fulfilled, needs an incessant stimulation. Everydayness in its ambiguous activity can retain the man in stagnation, offering ready forms of activity which can be stated as: this should be done this way, everybody behaves like this. It can, however, stimulate, tune, cause anxiety. Then, the man enters the paths of DaSein, together with their existential search and uncertainty, leaving the realm of Das Man. Another point of view, and a more literary one, is offered by Jean-Paul Sartre. Everydayness is possibly most thoroughly described in La Nausée and in Les Chemins de la liberté. A small town of Bouville in La Nausée introduces possibly the strongest insight of everydayness. The Heideggerian realm of Das Man reveals itself here in its most negative aspect. This everydayness is ruled by laws of the bourgeoisie, not esteemed by Sartre. This should be done this way, everybody behaves like this are the golden rules of everydayness. What is more important, Sartre will try to show here is that the cover of this everydayness, the danger of numbness – a transformation to a closed form of being, is hidden – in other words the danger of losing man’s existence, humanity.14 In his radical ontology Sartre proposed the concept of pour-soi, stressing the openness of man’s being. The man is an open being, which means, he is not fulfilled, not determined. As such, he doesn’t have any essence, unity; not any metaphysical rule can help him understand who he is, or give shape to his actions. Since he is deprived of essence, he continues to search for it constantly creating himself from the beginning by asking who he is and who he would like to be. Everydayness in this perspective is a very unfavorable state, as it offers the state of false being. In giving us the rule: this should be done this way, everybody behaves like this; it doesn’t allows the man to see his need of self realization. For Sartre, man is freedom. He is a being, to whom, ontologically belongs the necessity of self realization. Emphasizing that freedom is the actual state of the human being, Sartre also points out its openness. Everydayness falsifies this image, by proposing ready solutions, and, what is worse, by suggesting, that the man can be brought to a specific state in which he could be given an essence.15 In this state he can feel being a merchant, a clerk, a lecturer. By accepting it, he surrenders to the false belief that what he does is not dependent

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on him, that it can be brought to an institutional, social or cultural interpretation. False belief allows us, on the one hand, to explain easily who we are, by referring to the social and cultural forms. On the other hand though, it falsifies and objectifies, leading existence to one essential principle. The town of Bouvile, described by Sartre can be seen as a metaphor of everydayness, leading to false belief and the spirit of seriousness. Roquentin, the main character of the book, experiences everydayness as the unreal dimension of life. By looking at people, subject to the rule: this should be done this way, everybody behaves like this, he takes on the attitude of an observer-investigator. He is trying to understand the rituals of everydayness, like work, social events, dinner, a walk home and, simultaneously, he is trying to find his place in this reality. Contrary to his teacher (Heidegger) though, Sartre understands everydayness as a reality in which the existing individual is not able to root. Because of that, Roquentin, like Hesse’s Steppenwolf, will cruise around the streets of Bouville. In everydayness he will not experience any tranquility or beauty. As a conscious being he will only see in it more falsification and an escape from true existence. Freedom in Sartre’s concept is a difficult one – the man, sentenced to it, is forced to an incessant search, and a permanent responsibility for his actions and his own life. Without the past possibility of reference to moral values or transcendence, the man is on his own, he must strive to be himself. Freedom provokes us then to an escape, to refer to something external, to accept false belief. Everydayness becomes such an attempt to not accept and challeng freedom. Simultaneously it allows us to believe in a pretence of freedom and responsibility, eagerly accepted by people, rooted in everydayness. Therefore Roquentin must, facing his own existence, leave Bouville, because existence transcends everydayness, it requires from us to go beyond the determined, general and accepted as necessary. Sartre, by separating pour-soi and en-soi, considers one more possibility – man’s permanent desire to be simultaneously pour-soi and en-soi.16 According to the French philosopher, man wants to be free and determined at the same time. This need introduces an incessant tension, because it is oriented towards an impossible being. Pour-soi-en-soi is impossible, it is a being which has an essence, while not having it; it is determined and indeterminate, free and lacking freedom.17 The desire of such contradictory being comes from the necessity of dealing with freedom, which, being a burden is not craved for by man. Regardless of the fact that we are dealing here with a contradictory being, man is trying to realize this task. It is most commonly seen in the realm of everydayness, being, for Sartre, the possibility of hiding man’s freedom; a scene, on which the man feigns a complete, closed and impossible being. Frequently, the man succeeds in living his life without leaving the everydayness even once,

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closing himself from freedom. Such realization of the impossible bring falsity and hypocrisy, it distorts man’s being. The described above false belief should be considered such a distortion of existence and oblivion of human possibilities. Grounded in this radical ontology, Sartre draws one more relation. It is the relation of the pour-soi and another pour-soi. Describing the confrontation of two freedoms, Sartre is consequent. He shows that two freedoms will always confront each other. I in face of The other will feel a threat, a necessity of manifesting itself and defending against the sight of another pour-soi. On the other hand, I will look and objectify. Hence, human relations can never be fulfilled. Confronted with the other, the man starts manifesting his own freedom. In the domain of everydayness, the situation is slightly different. Everydayness, which allows building an artificial construct of one’s own essence, closedness of his being, makes it possible for us to have the same attitude towards the other. Therefore, in everydayness it is easier to objectify the other, treating him as a function, an object, a source of social institution or situation. Everydayness will then make it easier for the impossible meeting to take place; a relation leading to an infinite conflict. Sartre’s vision shows us that existence is a challenge on which the man should focus, striving to achieve the fullness of existence. This task, however, rules out the positive aspects of everydayness making it the domain of negative objectification; the area where a game between existing freedoms is played. Albert Camus presents a more balanced attitude, similarly to Heidegger, who points out the ambiguity or even unobviousness of everydayness. In The myth of Sisyphus, everydayness is, above all, the area with which the man is not only confronted, but into which he is rooted as well, and in relation to which he analyzes his own existence. Sometimes everydayness is an invisible tissue; a substance on which human life goes on.18 And being the unnoticed fundament, it becomes the silent witness, or it draws the frames of the drama, pointing out hidden truths or preserving the man inside it. Above all, for Camus, it is the witness of human life. In everydayness he will not only see the possibility of man’s being himself, but also his reconciliation with the absurd, and the source of absurdity, manifested by the order of everyday life. The three impressions which we can find at the beginning of The myth of Sisyphus, are Camus’ descriptions of everydayness. In the first one, there is a woman, tied to her bed. She is a burden to her family, like a clumsy piece of furniture, constantly lying in the corner of the room. For a guest, she becomes a challenge, anxiety for consciousness, fear of one’s own existence. In the second image, we can see an old man who everydays walks into a cafe, searching for understanding, causing dislike. In the third one, a

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woman appears, who has received an inheritance and builds her own tombstone, taking care of it everyday. The three impressions are linked with the absurd, appearing in everydayness. Everydayness is planned by man, it has its own ritual, certain rules, which accepted, cause us to feel tranquility and certainty. However, this plan of ours must be confronted with events, which we can only superficially control, or understand their logics. How can we have control over death, suffering old ages, say? The characters of Camus’ impressions are constantly confronted with one principal issue: the absurdity of their own life. Loneliness, fear, passing of time cannot be explained by one simple and clear theory. Everydayness so precisely planned turns out impossible to be understood. This is the ambiguity which Camus shows us in everydayness: of our expectations and unpredictable circumstances; an attempt to retain order and rationality of feelings.19 The struggle of man with himself is experienced in everydayness, which brings contradictions together, becoming the scene of absurdity. Everydayness in Camus’s concept is like a scene, allowing individuals to meet. In the philosophy of the author of L’Homme révolté, contrary to Sartre, there is a meeting between human beings; a relation is possible.20 It is, however, a specific kind of relation, a specific meeting. It often occurs in silence, when two people meet at the table, and eat dinner without saying a word. It occurs when a son comes to the bed of his mother and lights a cigarette, without saying a word. Around us, there is always life, neighbors have their flat or go into their apartments. This life passes by silently, they simply are, coexisting, surrendering to the silence and their own existence. For Camus, in these silent situations, a kind of relaxation steals over us. It is not important that man cannot express his emotions or his life with words; what is more important is the core existence – the possibility of being with the other person. Together in tranquility, this possibility is hidden in everydayness. Like the mob of people on the street, so the presence of the other man provokes a meeting, a conversation, or the sharing of a cigarette – these are all elements of everydayness, in which in Camus’ philosophy, not only the absurd, but also the human being with his existence appear. In this sense, everydayness will be a positive phenomenon for this thinker. As we can see, in existential philosophy the problem of everydayness leads to an understanding of “the issue” of our existence. In everydayness or through it we can express ourselves, create our image, search for a solution to the mystery of our existence. In everydayness the danger of stagnation is also hidden, together with the threat of surrendering to cultural and social standards, forgetting in the process, what is most important. The problems of everydayness are

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then, for existentialists, problems related with the man himself and determining where the border between authentic and inauthentic being is. Instytut Filozofii, Grodzka 52, Kraków [email protected] NOTES 1 Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis, Springer, London, 1980. 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York, 1996. 3 Ibid. 4 Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world: a commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, The MIT Press, London, 1990. 5 Mary Warnock, Existentialism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970. 6 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York, 1996. 7 Ibid. 8 Lars Svendsen, A Philosophy of Boredom, Reaktion Books, London, 2005. 9 Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and trembling, Anchor Books, New Yourk, 1954. 10 Luis Mackey, The poetry of inwardnes, New York, 1967, p. 96/97 11 Karsten Harries, The search for meaning, New York, 1967, p. 189. 12 Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and trembling, Anchor Books, New Yourk, 1954. 13 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York, 1996. 14 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, Editions Nagle, Paris, 1965. 15 Mary Warnock, Existentialism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970. 16 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, Editions Nagle, Paris, 1965. 17 Piotr Mróz, Drogi nierzeczywisto´sci, Kraków, 1992. 18 Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Gallimard, Paris, 1942. 19 Albert Camus, ibid. 20 Germain Brée, Camus and Sartre. Crisis and Commitment, A Delta Book, New York, 1972.

S E C T I O N III

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L E V S H E S T OV ’ S P H I L O S O P H Y O F C R I S I S

ABSTRACT

Lev Shestov’s philosophy of crisis can be undrestood in various ways – depending on the research perspective applied. From one point of view it presents the history of the European thought as gradually dropping the principals of Revelation. It could be stated that the works of the author of Sola fide tried to turn away the initiated already at the end of the Middle Ages separation of theology and philosophy. Therefore the crisis in this case would be caused by the philosophy and the European civilisation losing their Christian character. The conservatism of Shestov’s – an extremely Christian thinker – idea is most evident in that. The crisis can also be understood as the crisis of a man dominated by the idea of rationality or rather than – as pointed out by the author of Athens and Jerusalem – enslaved by thinking in categories of ratio and identical with them ananke. Shestov reveals the threats for the human freedom. Reason, instead of liberating, becomes the oppressor. And finaly the crisis is narrowing the prospects of reception of the world. Shestov clearly demonstrates what focusing only and excusively on the centre, on the main stream of given epoque or culture, could lead to. Philosophy, according to Shestov, should be a search and a fight from the explicit, general and obvious. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th abounds with anxieties, tensions, dithering and fears. At the same time the negative reactions of the period are responded to with opposite tendencies i.e. awaiting better life conditions, stabilisation, new hopes. These are the typical occurrences for any turning points, either historical, social, cultural, psychological or spiritual. A turning point can lead to a crisis but more often it results from one. When a crisis lingers, becomes arduous and reaches its heights and the only thing left is either silence or a categorical objection, that is when despair begins and, although it may sound like a paradox, that is when a hope is born. Out of a turning point and crisis arise the works of the Russian thinker, existentialist and religious philosopher, Lev Shestov. The philosophy of this Russian existentialist is an original and profuse theoretical complex which replies to, according to Shestov, existing from the ancient times up until 203 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 203–215. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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today loss of not only faith but also of the correctly understood humanity. Shestov’s ideas are focused on spiritual, social in some sense and historical change of the contemporary human being. He wants to initialise a renewal, a turning point that would finalise lasting many centuries crisis – the times when the purpose of human existence was misunderstood. Shestov’s desire is to show an individual the true face of reality and lead him to its absolute source. The main purpose of this article is to present outlines of Lev Shestov’s philosophy. I would like to outline Shestov’s main ideas regarding the leading European philosophy movements i.e. rationalism critique and their anthropological and ontological consequences. At the same time it will be important to describe one of the possible reactions to subjective experiences of individual life consumed by fears or despair. The issues raised below only aspire to describe merely the situation of a human being in the times of a crisis, of an existence on the verge of silence and revolt, of a human being left on its own in the face of captivating and incomprehensible reality. In Lev Shestov’s philosophy three periods could be distinguished. The first period is characterised by the reflections on the philosophy of tragedy culminating in the work Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche: Philosophy of Tragedy. In the said book Shestov focuses on individuals on the margins of social, historical and cultural life. He is concerned with individuals on the border of a society which, for the rest of the society, do not present any positive value. They are dissenters, outcasts often regarded as nihilists or madmen. The next stage in the development of this Russian existentialist is the problem of the source of rationalism, its development and influence on the Western civilization. This period brings radical critique and depreciation of the idea of logical reason and the source of it – positivism and scientific philosophy. The dissertation introducing readers to those ideas, ideas undermining the positive influence of discursive intellect on moral sense and existential development of a human being, is Athens and Jerusalem. The following period in his work brings the shift of focal points from totally negative approach with respect to rationalistic vision of the world and corresponding philosophical methods to creation of positive and original concept of reality. In this period the inclination towards theistic solutions that present religious faith as a key to the mystery of being also becomes evident. One of the most important works of this period is Sola fide, in which Shestov follows the call of the German reformer Martin Luther – only faith. Reading Lev Shestov’s works, tracking authorities important to him, who inspired him and influenced the direction and crystallization of his views, we come to a conclusion, that we are deal with the concept of rebellion here. Rebellion against something or somebody and always leading towards

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something or somebody else, radical rebellion that puts the Russian thinker in opposition to the intellectual majority of the age, rebellion which at first appeared to be philosophical scandal and nonsense. The choice of authorities, the choice of philosophical and non-philosophical books, finally the scope of intellectual interests indicates undoubtedly not only the content of the man’s ethic but more than anything else about the aspirations of his intellect. When we consider the authors quoted by Shestov, regarded as his predecessors and teachers, we come across the names of such masters of the prose as Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. The horizon of philosophical reflection of the Russian thinker includes also the analysis of the works and biographies of Martin Luther, William Shakespeare, Friedrich Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard. At this point let us pay attention to the distinctive fact that the author of Sola fide treated the biography of writers as an important element of the philosophical background of their ideas. An equally important impulse, which cannot be overstated in the intellectual biography of Shestov is the Old Testament. Shestov’s attention is focused especially on Abraham and Job. All these mentioned persons were accounted by the author of Athens and Jerusalem as thinkers in the strict sense of the term. To say even more, they were regarded as cultivators of the true philosophy. But what the true philosophy should be like? How does it manifest itself, what problems does it deal with and what are its principal aims? In Shestov’s opinion the true love of wisdom starts, let us emphasize that it only starts, with the issue of the condition of the contemporary human being. In connection with this the Russian thinker is focusing above all on the problematic status of the human existence which is a mystery requiring the greatest effort to understand. A text by the French philosopher Jean Wahl is a classic attempt to understand that mystery. His short account of Kierkegaard’s ideas is an invaluable outline of the philosophical assumptions and problems that occupied not only the author of Beginnings and Ends but also other existential philosophers. Anticipating Wahl’s words we may say that existence, single individual, becomes the beginning and, in a way, the end of Lev Shestov’s reflection: The single individual, as defined by Kierkegaard, it is primary a man, for whom the main point of reference is he himself; it is a man, for whom his personality and his destiny are extremely important. Secondly, this single individual is in the process of non-stop happening, he can always see a target in front of him. Appling this idea to Christianity Kierkegaard states that one is not a Christian but one becomes a Christian – it is a result of a continuous effort. Thirdly, the single individual is full of passion. This passion inspires him, he becomes a kind of incorporation of infinite in this, what is complete.1

Shestov is an existential thinker in the full sense of the word. Kierkegaard not only inspired him but was also a philosopher spiritually related to him. The

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above quoted commentary by Jean Wahl introduces us to the atmosphere of the philosophy dealing precisely with human existence. Existence, its destiny, the effort of becoming and fierce passion for being, all these elements are defining existentialism as a separate and original course in the European history of philosophy. The author of A Short History of Existentialism writing about the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard at the very beginning of his book points out the important event connected with this Dutch loner. We all remember that Kierkegaard is commonly associated with the process of distinguishing existentialism as a different way of seeing the human being, its situation and place in the surrounding world. The secluded ideas of the author of Fear and Trembling against extremely rationalistic, systematic, panlogic philosophy of Hegel becomes the fundament for an idea that puts in the centre the unique and not subjected to generalization and objectification human individual – existence. Naturally some elements of existentialism appeared before that as well. Nevertheless it is better to consider the thinkers before the philosophy of the author of Either/Or as pre- existentialists as only some of the characteristics constitutive for fully developed existentialism appear in their works. But the image of philosophy dealing with the human existence is still incomplete, one element is still missing – although it is the most important one, we are mentioning it at the end. According to the author of the book Existentialism: Let us assume that idea linking existential philosophers is, widely speaking, an interest in the problem of the human freedom. All those thinkers were preoccupied with world regarded as a surrounding of the man, and the man alone constituted an exceptional subject of interest due to the ability of choice with regards to modus operandi. [. . .] the problem of freedom was for them in a way a problem of practical nature.2

The freedom is, for existentialists and also for Shestov, extremely important indication of human existence incomparable to nothing outside of the human being itself. It is a centre point to which the whole reflection on the phenomenon of existence continuously returns. Theoretical efforts of Existentialist aim very often for getting out of every human individual the call for conscious managing its own fate. So it is in the philosophy of J.P. Sartre (for whom a human being is an ontologically free being), M. Heidegger or A. Camus. However each one of them emphasises differently various ideas in their theories, which results in considerable differences in the concept of freedom. So it is with Shestov’s theory. Presentation of the main assumptions of the existentialism is very important for better understanding of the methods and philosophical assumptions of the author of Sola fide. Especially a practical aspect recalled by Warnock has great importance in the Russian thinker’s conception. And so the real philosophy has its beginning in reflection on human life and its purpose, on human existence – using Heidegger’s language – thrown into the world which often determines its tragic fate. Shestov

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takes the arduous task of showing the right direction that should lead an individual to the only true beginning – the religious faith, the faith based on reading the Bible and mainly the Old Testimony. Therefore it becomes clear that the author of Beginnings and Ends stands in opposition to the existentialism known as lay3 or atheistic. His idea belongs in the scope of its content and form to the trend of theistic existentialism represented by Marcel, Jaspers, Buber, but the roots we are able to trace already in the ideas of Tertulain. Due to obvious reasons the philosophy of Shestov is at variance with the ideas of atheistic existentialism. However we can trace some ideas common for both, ideas that – as I attempted to present earlier – are regarded as their common foundation or source. The same cannot be said with regards to philosophers described as positivists, extreme rationalists. Those philosophical standpoints constitute critical reference point for positive deliberations of the anti-positivistic, anti-rationalistic philosophy of the Russian thinker. That critical thought brought about the moment and cause for the development of theory showing the history of European ideas as possessed and even contaminated by the pursuit for certainty – the Cartesian claire et distincte. In order to clarify the position of the author of Athens and Jerusalem on the said subject it would be worth our while to outline the assumptions of the widely understood the positivist philosophy, the positivism. And only then to present the philosophy of tragedy and crisis according to the Russian thinker. Quoting the words of Leszek Kołakowski we could say that: Generally speaking, positivism is a set of bans referring to the human wisdom, but trying to reserve the name of “knowledge” for these actions which are possible to observe in the development of the modern natural history. Positivism in particular, throughout its history, had its polemical blade turned against metaphysical discussions of all kind, that is against reflection which cannot rely fully on empirical data or which formulates its judgements in such way, that empirical data can never contradict them.4

And there is the Shestov’s text for comparison: The strength of positivism is in the ability to omit all those problems that appear to be impossible to solve as well as on directing our attention to those aspects of life that do not present us with impossible to resolve contradictions. Our cognition ends where the antinomies begin.5

Shestov, in his critique of positivist philosophy, was focused on its shortcomings which, in his opinion, disqualified it as a philosophy that could manage all challenges and dithers of the human individual existence, existential concretum thrown into reality full of mysteries and contradictions. Shestov’s point of view agrees with the words taken from the collection of essays The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus: “I want everything to be explained to me, or nothing. And the reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart.” It appears to be a motif that constantly returns not only in the philosophy of the aforementioned

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thinkers but also in the works by B. Pascal, F. Kafka or J. P. Sartre. The dissonance between absolute aspiration of the discursive mind and the silence of the existence, as it is possible to assume, it is one of the essential premisses of philosophy, that pronounces for an introduction to the reality description the category of the absurdity. Nevertheless for some of Shestov’s contemporary philosophers the positivist or rationalist position was supposed to be a victory of the reason, the mind, analytical and logical thinking over metaphysical philosophy or such which has – referring to the works of Edmund Husserl Philosophy as Rigorous Science – the character of view of the world. The beginning of philosophy is the natural and gradual breaking away from the ancient Greeks’ “mythological” way of thinking, in which the following opinion, criticised by Parmenides already, opinion prevailed: “It is proper that you should learn all things, both the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true reliance.” [G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, M. Schofield The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p.255 – translator’s note]6 . A belief does not guarantee a true recognition, only a mind is of any importance, it removes superstitions and naive opinions giving certainty in exchange. Socrates also recognizes the reason as the sovereign power for the human soul which lets us penetrate the existence, and not only that of a human being, but also that of the world and deity. The ruling of the reason is hereafter supported by the authority of Plato and Aristotle. From that point onwards the logical mind triumphs claiming larger and larger areas of human reality. In this manner Shestov presents the tradition of the European philosophy from Ancient Greece up until today. The critique of the rational ideology and the negative approach to positivisms of all sorts presents us with an answer – according to Shestov – to the issue of distortion of the true philosophy. One should however ask the questions why the author of Sola fide is rejecting so radically the philosophical core of almost the entire tradition of the European philosophy? Shestov being an researcher of the history of philosophy turned the course of philosophy similarly to Heidegger who “redirected” philosophy to the issues of being. The author of Sein und Zeit calls philosophers to consider once more the forgotten problem of being. Heidegger then collates the thinking in the categories of the existence with reflection over source experience of being, ontologically primary Sein. However Shestov’s turning point was based on bringing to the light the direct relation and the inseparability of the idea of the reason with the necessity. The Russian philosopher is identifying the philosophers’ reason with Ananke, a goddess from ancient Greek beliefs. He claims that although the mythological thinking was replaced by thinking in the categories of ratio, the ghost of Ananke is still accompanying a man yet. The idea

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of a man as a animal rationale captured the culture of the civilized Western world. The author of Athens and Jerusalem reasons as follows. If something is rational, it also is logical and hence necessary. And if something is necessary, then it also is true, therefore indisputable and without any doubts. And other way round, what is true, it is also necessary etc. After Socrates the truth merged in the eyes of people with universal and necessary opinions. Everyone is convinced, that our thought have no right to stop until it comes across the Necessity, putting an end to any inquisitiveness and to further search. At the same time nobody doubts, that the thought, having reached the necessary relations between phenomena, realizes in this manner the ultimate and highest task of philosophy.7

The test case of every system, of every reflection, whether it philosophical or scientific, or in everyday life, was and is the idea of the truth. Philosophy is the love of the wisdom. Whereas the wisdom should serve the truth making it possible to see the things as they truly are. But such wisdom, such truth and such philosophy that is necessary is, according to Shestov, a contradiction and falsification of the essence of being – ens naturale, the reality of human beings and the reality outside of him. Hiding behind rationalism ananke enslaved the Western man and holds him captive and down on his knees. Whereas a human being, according to the quoted fundaments of existentialism, is unique. His existential condition of a human being goes beyond any general opinions and does not fit in the framework of logical definitions. Shestov accuses ratio of totalising, attempting to swallow all that is particular and unique in order to generalise. Rationalism wants to comprehend everything or nothing – and that nothing destroys the claims and aspirations of the reason. In other words it is sentenced to the said everything. Furthermore the necessity, ananke, is a dictatorship of enforcement. If something does not fit within the rules set by the reason, if something is incomprehensible, irrational, it is being removed outside the realm of reason. Shestov’s arguments against reason utilising logic, general opinions and cause and effect thinking could be presented in two items. Firstly, the idea of reason is identical with necessity. Secondly, the idea of ratio utilises totalitarian methods and aspirations. The result of the above is regarding and cultivating philosophy as a science and exaggerated tendency to generalisations and definitions. The aftermath of the above and its perfect explication is between others a philosophy practiced using the more geometrico method – which was regarded by Shestov as a caricature of human thought – and further in the 20th century the positivist philosophy. The author of All Things are Possible (Apotheosis of Groundlessness) stresses the fact of existence in the world – using Heidegger’s terminology – human being. The discursive mind evades or simply is not able to deal with the issue of accidental occurrences. The accidental character of existence and

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surrounding it world is in Shestov’s opinion a characteristic example of reasoning’s failure. For thinkers in Aristotle tradition, tradition admiring reason, accidents either prove the general rule or are thrown away outside of the scope of their interests. But exactly there, outside of the reason, the true face of reality could be found. Shestov’s ideas go in that direction, where he wants to discover the mystery of not only the knowledge but mainly the mystery of being itself. We live surrounded by endless multitude of mysteries. But no matter how enigmatic the mysteries of being could be, the most enigmatic and terrifying of them all is the fact that the mystery exists, that in a way we are definitely and eternally cut of the source and beginnings of life.8

The mystery is a phenomenon of human reality that is foreign to rationalism. The people fascinated by the possibilities and acquisitions of the rational ideas are trying to hide from the world and themselves their fear. This fear is a reaction to the truth about our existence, which in Shestov’s belief is absurd, incomprehensible, not surrendering to rational explanations. In other words the entire European culture is underlined with fear, with Kierkegaard’s illness to death which is carefully concealed under the mask of clear and obvious truths, not leaving any space for exceptions and special cases. In order to get to the mystery, in order to correctly read the signs of the world we live in, we must, as Shestov believes, focus on what is left unsaid, thrown away outside the margins of the said rationalism. The streets distant from the centre do not provide us with the amenities to which inhabitants of the city centre became accustomed. They have neither electric nor gas lamps, not even paraffin lamp posts, they have no roadway. The wanderer must grope his way and find his way around in darkness. If you want fire, you must wait for the lightning or try to strike the spark from a stone in a primitive way of our distant ancestors. In the short flash of the light the outlines of unknown places suddenly appear from darkness. [. . .] What can one see in such light and how it is possible to demand from these people the precision and the brightness of the thinkers whose curiosity (we assume that our curiosity is strong enough) condemned them to wondering on the outskirts of life? And is it possible to compare them with inhabitants of the centre.9

This aphorism, from the work All Things are Possible (Apotheosis of Groundlessness), is an excellent and concise at the same time metaphor of discussed margins, byways, or even wilderness of the human existence. Shestov’s philosophy reached for the often omitted subject of “deviations” of all kinds understood by a human being subjected to ananke as deviations from a generally accepted norm. The Russian existentialist developing his philosophy of tragedy (the first period of his work) analyses such special occurrences in human existence – individuals woken up from existential nap, individuals that noticed a gap in the rational monument of the Western civilization. The perfect examples of such individuals outside of the said centre, away from the main stream of social life are, as in the title of F. Dostoyevsky’s novel, the

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insulted and humiliated – individuals deprived of their dignity, without the right and possibility to defend themselves, condemned blindly by fate, without evidence of being guilty, it they were. In an inevitable way our thoughts wander to “The Trial” of F. Kafka. The works of this writer from Prague are (when considering them as a record of his search for the transcendence) wonderful and coincident in terms of its content and form sign of the separated cothinking and at the same time artistically complementing the ideas of Shestov. Another individual of such type, divine madman – the Russian thinker paid special attention to such individals – is the main character from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. This is a masterpiece of existential literature. Our reflections after reading it are focused around “a man that is sick . . . A man that is bad. And unappealing.”10 Shestov is impelled to introduce a category of biezpoczwiennosti which is from the point of view of existential anthropology methodologically irreplaceable. This term means for the author of In Job’s Balance an experience of the absurdity of existence, of being. We are dealing here with a regular for existential philosophy motif – the motif of awakening.11 Biezpoczwiennost’ means to loose ground under one’s feet, collapse of functioning up until then and in accordance with others view on the world and life. The whole reason, rationalism and philosophy are unable to help an individual who lost, directly and metaphorically speaking, the ground under his feet. Such individual is left only with despair, anger, tears and teeth grinding. The ones in despair and in tears – these are the characters from outside the centre, the wonderers of back alleys distant from the light of reason. There is no answer to the question “why” because in the philosophy of tragedy rules an accident – unexplainable contradiction of cause and effect thinking. And here we are, back to the question of the reasons for Shestov’s critique of rationalism. His critique is sourcing from the individual and unique character of human being experiencing the feeling of loneliness and resignation in the face of the abovementioned, uncompromising and accidental facts of human life. In other words, there are questions left with no answers, some things just happen. We can ask “why” death, despair etc. But the reason is unable to provide us with an answer. Nevertheless experiencing a tragedy introduces a human existence to a new way of thinking. The philosophy of tragedy introduces a human being to – obvious for Shestov – aforementioned terrifying mystery. To consider the being and the human reality on the whole we must apply the category of absurd. Only then a new horizon appears – the correct interpretation of the sense of human existence. An act of absurd faith is needed, an act comparable to the faith of Job or Abraham when he lead his beloved son onto the mountain of Moriah. At this point Shestov’s idea comes close to the Christian ideas of S. Kierkegaard. A human being in despair, on the margins of life, finds his consolation in God. Aand although the God is absurd and

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beyond human’s cognitive abilities, He is, as Shestov believes, the only answer and consolation for an existence calling de profundis. The only answer to the question of human condition is sola fide – only faith. As mentioned before, the key concept of theistic as well as lay existentialism is the concept of freedom. In Shestov philosophy the guarantor of human’s freedom is full of contradiction and, what is more important, accidental God. The author of Kierkegaard and the Existential Philosophy is in this matter an orthodox follower of the Bible. In the Book of Genesis God is shown as the creator of heaven and earth, while people are created in the image of God. An accident, randomness as an essential determinant of reality is therefore of divine origin. For Shestov this is one of the most important points in his philosophy. Human beings as well as the world created by God are marked by contingency which counteracts all that is determined. The world and God full of absurd are guarantors of human freedom and at the same time they are the damnation of a human being condemned to fear in the face of the mystery of irrational being and its creator. The ideas of Lev Shestov from the first dissertation Shakespeare and his critic Brandes were changing in a intriguing manner finally to appear in the form of mature and deliberate theory of human and transcendent being. The changes to the ideas in their theoretical and historical development undoubtedly source from ideas prior to them. Internal dialectics of Shestov’s philosophy is free from shocking and sudden spectacular turning points. It is enough to say that the concept of Russian thinker presents a philosophy developed with purpose and consequence. Following the development of our author’s philosophy one could say that it was cultivated with uniquely systematic approach. And although it could sound as a paradox – and not the only paradox in case of this philosopher – Shestov’s main aim was to create anti-systematic philosophy. A text by the translator, commentator and specialist of Lev Shestov’s works, Cezary Wodzi´nski presents an interesting and full of content commentary on the philosophy, methods and assumptions of the Russian thinker. In the quotation below please note the part on the philosophical desire to be in agreement with the original assumptions that usually prove to be unequalled, unachievable ideal. Wodzi´nski writes as follows: A thought carefully protecting its “irrationality” describes itself also as follows: it wants to be non-system and non-systematic and inconsequent, inconsistent and inconclusive, non-abstract and non-conceptual. Whereas, correlative, it is trying to remain a fragmentary and aphoristic, paradoxical and absurd, contradictory and open, concrete and metaphorical thought. He usually struggles against the versatility for the sake of the individuality, with the objectivism for the sake of the subjectivity, with the necessity for the sake of the freedom, with the universality of deduction for the sake of the uniqueness of an individual experience.12

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In the conceptual structure Shestov’s philosophy is based on continuously implemented decision – it is necessary to search for inconsistencies, falsifications, hidden assumptions in the civilisation and philosophy of the Western world. From the perspective of the already finalized creative process Shestov’s works appear as a precisely planned and scrupulously carried out criticism of the foundations of the European philosophy – idea of reason – and of assumptions paradigms and consequences resulting from it. The said critique is carried out utilising the means of logic typical for the traditionally understood relativism as well as with the use of means reaching beyond the scope and consent of the reason that acknowledges the principle of non-contradiction as a principle that cannot be disputed, that is fundamental i.e. based on the authority of Revelation. Lev Shestov’s philosophy of crisis can be understood in various ways – depending on the research perspective applied. From one point of view it presents the history of the European thought as gradually dropping the principals of Revelation. It could be stated that the works of the author of the Sola fide tried to turn away the initiated already at the end of the Middle Ages separation of theology and philosophy. Therefore the crisis in this case would be caused by the philosophy and the European civilisation losing their Christian character. The conservatism of Shestov’s – an extremely Christian thinker – idea is most evident in that. The crisis can also be understood as the crisis of a man dominated by the idea of rationality or rather than – as pointed out by the author of Athens and Jerusalem – enslaved by thinking in categories of ratio and identical with them ananke. Shestov reveals the threats for the human freedom. Reason, instead of liberating, becomes the oppressor. And finally the crisis is narrowing the prospects of the reception of the world. Shestov clearly demonstrates what focusing only and exclusively on the centre, on the mainstream of given époque or culture, could lead to. Philosophy, according to Shestov, should be a search and a flight from the explicit, general and obvious. Jagiellonian University, Cracow NOTES 1

Jean Wahl, Krótka historia egzystencjalizmu, trans. Aleksander Prokopski (Wroclaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo O´swiatowe 2004), p. 18 2 Mary Warnock, Egzystencjalizm, trans. Monika Michowicz (Warsaw: Prószy´nski i S-ka 2005), p. 9 3 Cf. collectiva work edited by Zbigniew Kuderowicz, Filozofia XX wieku (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna 2002), Vol. I, p. 7 4 Leszek Kołakowski, Filozofia pozytywistyczna (Od Hume’a do Koła Wiede´nskiego), (Warsaw: Pa´nstwowe Wydwnictwo Naukowe 1966), pp. 17–18

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5 Lew Szestow, Dostojewski i Nietzsche: filozofia tragedii, trans. Cezary Wodzi´nski (Warsaw: Czytelnik 1987), p. 197 6 G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, M. Schofield, Filozofia presokratejska, trans. Jacek Lang (Warsaw Poznan: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN 1999), p. 255 7 Lew Szestow, Tylko wiara. Antologia tekstów Lwa Szestowa, trans. Patrycja Wyligała (Cracow: Wydawnnictwo M 2004), pp. 57–58 8 Lew Szestow, Ateny i Jerozolima, trans. Cezary Wodzi´nski (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Znak 1993), p. 92 9 Lew Szestow, Apoteoza nieoczywisto´sci, trans. Nina Krasov, Szymon Szechter (London: Wszechnica Społeczno Polityczna 1983), p. 21 10 Fiodor Dostojewski, Notatki z podziemia, trans. Gabriel Karski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Puls 1992), p. 7 11 Cf. Emmanuel Mounier, Wprowadzenie do egzystencjalizmów oraz wybór innych prac, trans. Ewa Krasnowolska (Cracow: Znak 1964), pp. 224–240 12 Cezary Wodzi´nski, Wiedza a zbawienie. Studium mysli Lwa Szestowa (Warsaw: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii PAN 1991), p. 5

BIBLIOGRAPHY

S H E S T OV ’ S W O R K S Szestow, Lew, Apoteoza nieoczywisto´sci: próba my´slenia adogmatycznego, trans. Nina Karsov, Szymon Szechter (London: Kontra 1983). Szestow, Lew, Ateny I Jerozolima, trans. Cezary Wodzi´nski (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Znak 1993). Shestov, Lev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Nietzsche, trans. Bernard Martin, Spencer Roberts (Ohio University Press 1978). Szestow, Lew, Dostojewski i Nietzsche: filozofia tragedii, trans. Cezary Wodzi´nski (Warsaw: Czytelnik 1987). Szestow, Lew, Kierkegaard I filozofia egzystencjalna, trans. Jacek Aleksander Prokopski (K˛ety: Wydawnictwo Antyk 2003). Szestow, Lew, Na szalach Hioba, trans. Jacek Chmielewski (Warsaw: Fundacja Aletheia 2003). Szestow, Lew, Poczatki ˛ i ko´nce, trans. Jacek Chielewski (K˛ety: Wydawnictwo Antyk 2005). Szestow, Lew, Potestas clavium, trans. Jacek Chielewski (K˛ety: Wydawnictwo Antyk 2005). Szestow, Lew, Sola fide – tylko wiara, trans. Cezary Wodzi´nski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN 1995).

S E C O N DA RY L I T E R AT U R E Camus, Albert, Mit Syzyfa I inne eseje, trans. J. Guze (Warsaw: MUZA S. A., 2004). Dostojewski, Fiodor, Notatki z podziemia, trans. Gabriel Karski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Puls 1992). Kołakowski, Leszek, Filozofia pozytywistyczna (Od Hume’a do Koła Wiede´nskiego), (Warsaw: Pa´nstwowe Wydwnictwo Naukowe 1966). Kossak, Jerzy, Egzystencjalizm w filozofii i literaturze (Warsaw: Ksia˙ ˛zka i Wiedza, 1976). Mounier, Emmanuel Wprowadzenie do egzystencjalizmów oraz wybór innych prac, trans. Ewa Krasnowolska (Cracow: Znak 1964). Mróz, Piotr, Four essays in existentialism (Cracow: Aureus 1997).

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Prokopski Jacek Aleksander, Egzystencja i tragizm. Dialektyka ludzkiej sko´nczono´sci (K˛ety: Wydawnictwo Marek Derewiecki 2007). Geoffrey S, Kirk, John E, Raven, Malcolm, Schofield, Filozofia presokratejska, trans. Jacek Lang (Warsaw Poznan: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN 1999). Safranski, Rüdiger, Zło dramat wolno´sci, trans. I. Kania (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1999). Sawicki, Adam, Absurd Rozum Egzystencjalizm w filozofii Lwa Szestowa (Cracow: Zakład Wydawniczy “NOMOS” 2000). Wahl, Jean, Krótka historia egzystencjalizmu, trans. Aleksander Prokopski (Wroclaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo O´swiatowe 2004). Warnock, Mary, Egzystencjalizm, trans. M. Michowicz (Warsaw: Prószy´nski i S-ka, 2005). Wodzi´nski, Cezary, Wiedza a zbawienie. Studium mysli Lwa Szestowa (Warsaw: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii PAN 1991).

K ATA R Z Y N A S TA R K

T H E I D E A O F G O D - M A N I N N I C O L A S B E R DYA E V ’ S EXISTENTIALISM

ABSTRACT

In Nicolas Berdyaev’s existentialism, the concepts of God-Man and GodDivinity play a prior role. Berdyaev, alongside such representatives of religious philosophy in Russia as Vladimir Soloviov, Sergei Bulgakov, Paul Evdokimov, interprets the idea of God-Man not only within the context of the Orthodox Church, but also as the existential experience of God’s encounter with man, perfectly actualized in the person of Jesus Christ. In the God-Man idea Berdyaev shows that in order to achieve the fully divine life, personal and existential cooperation between God and man is indispensable. This thesis is developed by means of dialectic method. The effect of this standpoint is manifested within the experience of complete existence, which is envisaged in the idea of theosis in the Orthodox tradition. Nicolas Berdyaev, one of the representatives of philosophy of religion in Russia, had begun his philosophical career as a Marxist. However, he abandoned Marxism at an early stage, and sought for the truth in Christianity, similarly to the majority of so-called Legal Marxists in Russia. Furthermore, analyzing Berdyaev’s creative output one can state that he cannot be considered as a supporter of specific Russian Orthodox theology but rather as a philosopher representing free and lay character of Russian religious thought. The synthesizing consciousness of the unity of Christianity induced him to say that his standpoint can be characterized as supra-denominational. All in all, Berdyaev proves to be an original and highly independent thinker, developing his own views on the basis of balanced evaluation of the two types of Christian spirituality: the Eastern and the Western, both in the field of philosophy and religion. Nevertheless, as C. S. Calian emphasizes, “(. . .) for Berdyaev, a philosophical anthropology was really in essence a religious anthropology, for any philosophical consideration of man without a religious basis cannot exist for him.”1 That is why it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish between philosophy and religion, which results in the merging of the philosophical and theological languages. 217 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 217–229. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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In this context, it is worth mentioning that Berdyaev was an exceptional erudite. He had a profound knowledge of his native philosophy and Western philosophy as well. In his synthesizing system he referred both to the Fathers of the Church (especially to Gregory of Nissa) and to such thinkers as Alexei Khomiakov, Vladimir Soloviov, Nicolai Fiodorov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Konstantin Leontiev. In relation to the Western tradition, his approach was close to such thinkers as Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Fredrick Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, C. G. Jung, Emmanuel Mounier, and others. He revered mystics very much, and it seems that the reported mystical experience of Meister Eckhart, Jakob Boehme, Angelus Silesius inspired and affected his philosophy. Berdyaev also disputed creatively with the views of several other thinkers, in the spirit of the existential dialectics of divine-human dramatic relations – to refer to his own words. Berdyaev did not build his philosophy ideal upon abstract assumptions of logical discourse, but preferred the immediate spiritual experience of the subject. Accordingly, philosophy for him appears to be existential human self-knowledge. D. B. Richardson pertinently states that for Berdyaev, “the philosophy is an Existentialism because the human spirit, in knowing the world, other men and God – by symbols – in creating, discovering and knowing himself ”.2 M. Spinka exposes the Christian aspects of Berdyaev’s existentialism: “It is only in the Son that the deepest spiritual levels of divine revelation are riched. But in the end, only when the human spirit meets the Divine Spirit in an existential encounter is there an immediate, intuitive apprehension of God. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. For Berdyaev, such an experience is the only adequate “proof” of the existence of God; hence, along with Kant, he rejects the traditional ontological “proofs” such as those of Thomas Aquinas.”3 Hence, philosophical anthropology is considered as the basic field of philosophy. Yet, as Berdyaev states: “Philosophy is anthropocentric but the philosopher ought to be theocentric.”4 For the author of Spirit and Reality, the true philosophy represents the existential experience of man. The anthropocentrism of this philosophy emerges from the acceptance of concrete human experience which shapes the image of man as person. From this viewpoint, the affirmation of human life in unity with God is far more important than rational theoretical speculations about God. In Berdyaev’s philosophy, Christianity is a religion of God-humanity. Its essence is best expressed by the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas. Berdyaev formulates the religion of God-humanity in accordance with the statement of the Council of Chalcedon alongside its philosophical and theological interpretations that have emerged within the tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church.5 Referring to the Christological dogma, Berdyaev interprets it from the viewpoint of the Orthodox spirituality. The relations of the Russian

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thinker with the Eastern Church are stressed by C. S. Calian, who writes: “(. . .) Berdyaev understood the nature of Christianity as eschatological, and found in Orthodoxy’s mystical approach to faith through its doctrine of theosis, the most satisfying channel through which to express his understanding of Christianity.”6 The true meaning of the dogma in Eastern tradition does not manifest itself as an intellectual theory or doctrine, or as a metaphysical speculation: it is a fact of spiritual life, transmitting the authentic experience of the person. In the view of Orthodox theology, the formation of dogma is a theandric process, in which the essence of divine-human bonds is revealed. The existentialism of the Russian philosopher assumes its unique character owing to the religious assumption that the authentic human existence achieves the completeness of its being when it fulfils the condition of existence as proposed by God-man, that is when it becomes divine-human life. The metaphysical foundation of the God-man idea places Berdyaev within religious experience, particularly the mystical one, which – in his own opinion – constitutes the fullest and most reliable method of knowing God and the truth of divine-human relations. As Berdyaev states: “Any rationalization of the divine – human relationship, any attempt at expressing it in terms of rational philosophy of being, makes nonsense both of that relationship and of that philosophy. It can only be spoken of in symbolic and mythological terms which leave the door open to Mystery.”7 Berdyaev clearly distinguishes between God-the-Absolute and God in the Trinity. In his concept, the Trinitary God does not constitute an ultimate cause of existence, as He emerges out of more primary source – the Primary Divinity, to which – in the absolute sense – no differentiation or relativism can apply. This is that assumption which places Berdyaev’s views within the trend of nonorthodox Christianity.8 The philosopher does not consider God in the Trinity in the categories of static being, but speaks in favor of the dynamic approach to the nature of three divine persons and their relativity which determines intratrinitarian personal relations. The dialectic of intra-trinitarian relations has a dramatic character. As Berdyaev states: “The drama of the relation between God and Man is inwardly trinitarian drama. In its centre is the Son, the eternal Man, and the drama is resolved by the Spirit who proceeds eternally from the Father.”9 In Berdyaev’s theory, God through His relation with man and the world becomes relative. And it is God’s relativity, not His absolutism that constitutes a starting point for the interpretation of both the intra-trinitarian relations and the beginning of the world and its history, including the personal existential bonds between God and man (the creation, paradise, fall, return to God and reunification with God).

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In his description of dynamic relations of the trinitarian process, the Russian existentialist relies upon Kantian antinomies and Hegelian law of dialectics. He also refers to psychoanalysis, although he never compares his concept to the comprehensive psychoanalytical approach. The archetype of Trinity is described exclusively by identification and distinction of subsequent phases of religious consciousness development to which respective symbols of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are attributed. Justifying his approach, Berdyaev relies not only on Carl Gustav Jung’s theory, but also on August Cieszkowski’s or Joachim of Fiore’s. In Berdyaev’s existentialism, God possesses personal and dynamic character. Accordingly, He possesses capability of affections, similarly to man. In order to prove the truthfulness of the concept of divine-human mode of Christ’s existence, the Russian philosopher frequently analyses the experiences that are carriers of such emotions and phenomena as love, suffering, fear, anguish, enslavement, death or experience of hell. Speaking of hell, death and the fact of resurrection based on faith is not a sheer speculation, because for Berdyaev – the existentialist – such states, actually experienced in the life of every human, reveal their full sense and value within the personal existence of God-man. The eternal process of the birth of Holy Trinity implies the revelation therein of both God and man. God does not exist “earlier” than man. Within the theogonic and anthropogonic process, the births of God and man occur simultaneously: “the birth of God in man, and man in God”. If man is rooted in God just as God is rooted in man, so, consequently, the inner life of God is actualized by man and the world. Berdyaev says that man affects not only his own destiny, but also the divine destiny, and because man is indispensable for divine life so that it can be fulfilled, the existence of man is a non-reducible link in the process of becoming of God, and a necessary moment co-creating the essence of the Holy Trinity. “The doctrine of God-manhood presupposes commensurability between God and man, the presence of divine principle in man, and at the same time it does not admit monistic identity.”10 The metaphor of double birth expresses the basic existential fact: through the birth of God in man, human life becomes fulfilled and enriched, gains the highest value and dignity. On the other hand, through the birth of man in God, the divine life becomes extremely enriched with the human dimension of experiences. Berdyaev as an apologetic of freedom devotes a lot of attention to the theme of freedom, considered as one of the crucial existential experiences. As Spinka states: “Berdyaev is the philosopher of freedom par excellence. As a Kantian, he learned from his master that human personality is of the highest value, and he spent a lifetime elaborating that thesis.”11

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In the Russian philosopher’s opinion, in the process of creation God expects that man should contribute to the fullness of divine life and participate in the divine creative act of trans-illumination and imposition of meaning upon the nothingness of meonic freedom. But this relativism suggests also that God Himself needs completion, and man trans-illuminating the Ungrund, simultaneously participates in the trans-illumination of God’s nature. “There is a real and actual drama and history in God because the Ungrund, which does not lie outside God, has to be illuminated; and the dialectic of this doctrine leads to the assertion that God Himself needs to be illuminated. Man shares in illuminating the Ungrund and, consequently, man shares in illuminating God. This is why Berdyaev says that God needs man, and there is a revelation of man to God, as well as a revelation of God to man.”12 To quote Berdyaev’s own words: “Victory over meonic freedom is impossible for God, since that freedom is not created by Him and is rooted in non-being; it is equally impossible for man, since man has become the slave of that dark freedom. It is possible only for the God-man Christ who descends into the abysmal darkness of meonic freedom and is not free in his freedom and in Whom there is perfect union and interaction between the human and the Divine. Christ alone can conquer the horror of hell as a manifestation of the creature’s freedom. Apart from Christ, the tragic antinomy of freedom and necessity is insoluble and in virtue of freedom hell remains a necessity.”13 In the person of God-man, the synergism of divine-human freedom manifests the “freedom of absolute spirituality”, the one that creates the good and confirms the Truth. God-man creates exclusively according to His will, being fully responsible for the created. Inclusion of non-created freedom into the theogonic-anthropogonic process renders it possible to treat human as the author of his own autonomous acts. If freedom were created by God, man would not be able to become an authentic creator. Creativity would ultimately consist in the acts of God alone, and the thesis of divine-human synergism would turn false.14 Berdyaev analyses the concretization of God-man idea on the example of Christ’s Incarnation. The incarnated God restitutes the androgynic image of man, the image of spiritual fulfillment actualized in the New Adam: God-man. The Russian thinker understands Incarnation as the birth of God in man. The history of Christ is presented as a history of God, of His dynamic “becoming” within the human world. Through the Incarnation, God-man unites the two worlds: the heavenly history with the earthly history, assuming simultaneously all limitations resulting from the nature of the phenomenal world. Berdyaev writes: “Christ, the Absolute Man, the Son of both God and man, stands in the center of both celestial and terrestrial history. He is the inner spiritual tie between these two destinies. Without His help the tie between the human and

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the absolute reality, could not exist. In fact, history owes its existence entirely to the presence of Christ at its very heart. He represents the deepest mystical and metaphysical foundation and source of history and of its tragic destiny”.15 In the Russian existentialist’s opinion, the birth of consciousness of the divine sonhood within the history of humanity occurs in Christ’s personal selfknowledge. The development of religious consciousness in all pre-Christianic religions aspired at the emergence of this self-consciousness in the religion of God-man. The philosopher considers the cosmic atmosphere of God-sonhood as maturing in the world for a long time. What, however, absolutely new and original in Christianity is the person of Christ. The students of Berdyaev’s philosophy often insist that: “The central point of history, conceived as a redemptive process of the fallen man, is the coming of Christ. Historically, it had been the principal task of the Christian Church to witness to the fact of the Incarnation of the Word and the consequent possibility of the theandric transformation of man.”16 As M. Spinka further explains: “The unique doctrine of Incarnation reveals the divine plan of salvation of all mankind, if mankind chooses to accept it.”17 Nevertheless it should be stressed that the Incarnation of God is not justified by Berdyaev in terms of negative causes, such as the existence of evil and sin, or God’s reaction to the fall of man; Berdyaev considers it as a link within the life of the Holy Trinity, inherent in the eternal dialectic of its nature. Richardson pertinently remarks that: “The Birth of man in God is a theogonic process, a process within God, because it is the birth of the God-man, Christ, in the birth of the Trinity, not of the primordial depths of God. Eternal Man is the eternal idea of man, Christ, God-manhood. Humanity exists in eternity, in Christ. (...) In Berdyaev’s theory, God historically became man in order to raise him to divinity but not, primarily in order to redeem him morally. Christ is our revelation, not primarily our ransom.”18 In the eternal dialectic activity of the Holy Trinity, Christ is an “Eternal Man”. Richardson writes: “Berdyaev understands ‘eternal idea of man’ in the light of his metaphysics. It is not an idea in which man is created, but an idea in which man eternally exists.”19 In the history of mankind, the “eternal humanity” of Christ is realized as a “new humanity”. As a New Adam, Christ stands in opposition to the old Adam – the man of nature. He fully actualizes spirituality that pertains to the “Eternal Man”, and becomes a precursor of new spiritual humankind. The idea of spiritual man, unknown to the ancient world, is a typically Christian concept, as the Russian existentialist emphasizes. In Christ, there occurs a reconciliation of the divine and historic destiny of man. Christ enters the world and assumes its determining limitations. Within

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the time consciousness, He introduces His own unique history into the universal history, and, accordingly represents entire humanity, being a universal man in space and time. Christ’s self-knowledge is expressed by the statement that He is One with the Father, and simultaneously that the Father is greater than Himself. Within the limits of His consciousness, the Father appears to Him as transcendent being. In the view of psychoanalysis, such type of knowledge emerges within consciousness which remains in opposition and conflict with the subconscious. Achieving prevalence over the conscious contents, the subconscious imposes definite images which are assimilated and transformed in consciousness, and that is why they are treated as external and alien. In Jung’s theory, this state becomes a starting point for overcoming the temptations of being the mana personality, experienced by Christ and overcome through superconsciousness. That which was revealed as transcendent in consciousness, becomes internal contents of superconsciousness. Berdyaev sometimes uses the term “pure consciousness” to describe the state of superconsciousness, and identifies it with achieving the true freedom by the human spirit.20 Free from any determinations, the human spirit is subject to exclusive divine influence. Although essentially the achievement of the superconscious level means overcoming of the “unhappy consciousness” with its subject-object dualism, consciousness itself is not negated. Berdyaev, similarly to Jung, claims that all positive conscious acts are assimilated by superconsciousness. Included in superconsciousness, they enrich its contents. Consequently, it can be said that in the supersconscious state the Son preserves the consciousness of Himself as a Person, but His self-knowledge is extended by the experience of unity and essential identity with the Father. The superconscious state is achieved within the life of the so-called transcendental man.21 He has arrived at the highest level of self-knowledge and symbolizes the ultimate product of consciousness development, fully revealing the sense and grandeur of God’s humanity. The transcendental man – Christ, realizing the idea of man that is present in God, perfectly actualizes the spirituality of man and focuses within Himself the unity and multiplicity of all possible human experiences. The absolute perfection of Christ’s spirit reveals the source of His divinity, being simultaneously the divinity of the Father. The irreducible experience of divinity occurs in the state defined as the state of the Holy Spirit. The divinity of Christ in its absolute fulfillment is not opposed to and does not diminish the power of the acts of His human nature. On the contrary, co-existing with His human nature, Christ’s divinity becomes a factor stimulating the full realization of all its aspects. Such state emerges in result of eliminating the oppositions

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and regaining the inseparable unity of God and Son within the consciousness. It constitutes the effect of the inspiring influence of the Holy Spirit. In the concept of God-man, it is not only God that is born in man – in the person of Christ, but also man is born in God. This means that not only does God descend to man becoming his immanent part, but also man transcending towards God is summoned to be divinized.22 This postulate is expressed by Berdyaev in the following words: “The self – consciousness of Christ, as perfect God and perfect Man, lifts man to a dizzying height, lifts Him to the Holy Trinity. Through Christ, man becomes a participant in the nature of the Holy Trinity, for the second hypostasis of the Holy Trinity in the Absolute Man. Oh, certainly, man is not God, he is the son of God but not in the unique sense that Christ is the Son of God; but man is a participant in the mystery of the nature of the Holy Trinity and is a mediator between God and cosmos.”23 In Berdyaev’s philosophical thought, personality is an essential category defining the authentic existence of man. Personality constitutes the spiritual centre of man, both free and creative. Therefore the sphere of the spirit is concerned with true existence. In Berdyaev’s existentialism, “Spirit is not being, but the existent, that which exists and possesses true existence, and it is not subject to determination by any being at all. Spirit is not a principle, but personality, in other words the highest form of existence.”24 Within the personality, the experience of unity with God takes place, and the theandric structure of human being is revealed. The personality is fulfilled when God’s image and likeness in man are completely revealed, when he has actualized his spiritual nature, which at the starting point of selfrealization, remains potential and unconscious. As the highest realization of spiritual essence: “The personality alone can reveal the pure and original conscience, free from objectification, and sovereign in all matters.”25 To put it in other words, man becomes fully a person when he divinizes his own nature achieving the superconscious – to use the Jungian language – the highest level of actualization of his being. This is a task imposed upon man, as: “Terrestrial man is an image of Absolute Man and therefore is capable of realizing and ought to realize, his Proto-type.”26 As it has been mentioned above, fully realized humanity reveals the image and likeness of God within human nature, and that is why Berdyaev strictly relates the notion of God’s image and likeness to the notion of person. The divine image actualized within the personal dimension opens for everyone a possibility of full participation in the perfection of divine life. Perfection assumed potentially “in the beginning” within the eternal image, turns to be a task given to man, which he is obliged to fulfil in his temporal life, involving all his creative powers and abilities. The perfection of personal

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existence constitutes a challenge, to be answered by man in his enormous effort of creating himself. However, the realization of this postulate is not an easy task. In Berdyaev’s theory, the personality actualizes itself in the conditions of transience and finitude. This paradox is solved when the thesis is accepted about interdependence between the finite and the infinite, where the finite is treated not as a radical opposition to the infinite, but rather its epiphenomenon or modus. Otherwise the realization of the personality would be impossible. As a value-creating noumenon, the personality in its development through successive experiences of good and evil develops from the state of subconsciousness, i.e. unawareness of good and evil, to super-consciousness, in which the dualism of good and evil is overcome. The fact that the existential logic of divine-human birth within the Holy Trinity assumes the co-participation of man in the process of creation constitutes an extremely significant moment for the idea of God-man and God-humanity. Any analysis or interpretation assumes not only God’s activity but man’s activity as well, and consequently their joint responsibility for that which is created by them. God creates within the “theogonic process” whereas man creates within the “anthropogonic” process. Both these moments constitute complementary aspects of creation. C. S. Calian states that: “Thus Berdyaev’s understanding of the creative act calls man into a dynamic divine–human relationship, in which God is waiting upon man to respond to the gift of creativity already given through the Spirit, but which will not be fully realized in this world, subject at it is to objectification. The creative act points to an eschatological context, to an End dimension not yet realized, where it will be successfully completed and realized.”27 If the personality is a spiritual centre of man, not subject to the devastating influence of time, then every creative act of person emerges in existential time, participating in “eternal present”, and confirming eternity.28 Creative acts of the person possess crucial significance as they take place within spirit, and are inspired by the power of spiritual abilities, and accordingly are non-temporal. In ecstatic creative acts completed in existential time, the person transcends the limitations of historic time, and accordingly can create new values in the world of phenomena. Thus creativity has spiritual nature, as it both reflects the development of the person and enriches it. That is why Berdyaev claims that, if all human life were a constant creative process, gaining its power from the spiritual world, man would constantly experience the fullness of existence within “the eternal present”. Then each creative act, transforming the world and establishing the true God-manhood image, would annihilate the objectifying time activity. However, even in the world accepting the temporal passing away, creation possesses a supreme value. Each manifestation of creativity

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that introduces novelty into the phenomenal world, overcomes the effects of annihilation and opens the way for return to the authentic sphere of existence. The archetype of God-man, as Berdyaev states, can be realized in every man. This idea is expressed in the Orthodox idea of theandrism, mutual co-operation between the divine and the human natures of man, with their freedom and creative force. In the process of realization of the theandric idea, Berdyaev emphasizes the creative activity of man and the process of perfecting human nature. Man is obliged to be a creator of his own perfection, and so Berdyaev underlines the significance of creativity in the dynamic process of becoming the personality, as well as the role played by human activity oriented towards the creation of new values in the world. Thus man as homo creaturam creatus not only is summoned to create within the matter of this world but, first of all, constitutes himself in the process of his creativity. Berdyaev emphasizes the role of creative acts of man when he writes: “The path of creativeness is also a path to moral and religious perfection, a way of realizing the fullness of life.”29 The author of The Destiny of Man relates the problem of creativity to a situation called in the theological language, “the eighth day of creation.” Creativity constitutes a continuation of the world creation. Man gains the status of creator on the basis of being image and likeness of God-the Creator. And by means of his creativity man should activate his Christological nature, reveal, within it, “the divine power and glory”. In his vocation to create, the personality actualizes the plans of God who expects man to continue consciously the divine creation effort and to lead the world to pleroma of existence in God. As a demiurg, man not only creates his own personality, but also directs his creative energy towards other people, phenomena and things. The diversity of world’s nature is relevant to various possibilities of expressing creative abilities of man. As God-human synergism embraces all manifestations of life, Berdyaev says that in theurgy – the universal activity, “there encounter all kinds of human creativity.” An idea of the perfect world, present in God’s eternal thoughts, is gradually embodied in the creativity of man, who consciously co-operates with God. This is a testimony that history of God-human existential relationship has not been established once for ever but is revealed in ever new manifestations of creativity. The theurgic process will not cease till the moment of attainment of the world’s perfection, and even later, when this perfection becomes permanent. In the effects of real transfiguration of human life and the world, there emerges beauty which is synonymous to the perfection of being. It is an ideal transcending of all divisions, beyond dualism of good and evil. It is also a pattern introducing harmony, reconciliation of God, humanity and the world.

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In the Kingdom of God-manhood, where “eternity embraces time”, all borderlines vanish between the new earth and the earth we know. All limitations established for the exteriorated state of spirit are overcome. This is there that a return to the beginning takes place, and Christ-Alpha becomes one with Christ-Omega – the divinized universe. Faculty of Humanities, Department of Culture Studies and Philosophy, University of Science and Technology AGH, Cracow, Poland

NOTES 1 Cornegie Samuel Calian, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of Hope. A Contribution to MarxistChristian Dialogue, ed. E. J. Brill, Leiden 1968, p. 79. 2 David Bonner Richardson, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of History. An Existential Theory of Social Creativity and Eschatology, ed. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968, p. 93. 3 Matthew Spinka, Christian Thought from Erasmus to Berdyaev, ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc Englewood Cliffs, New York 1962, p. 221. 4 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Beginning and The End, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. R. M. French, London 1952, p. 40. 5 The dogma of Trinitarian God was formulated in the 4th century at the First Councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinopol (381), while the Christian consciousness of man becoming God and God becoming man, which was initiated in the second half of the 2nd century, found its ultimate expression in the dogma adopted at the Council of Chalcedon (451). The Orthodox tradition fosters this dogma which justifies the possibility of true experience of human nature divinisation. According to this dogma, Jesus is the one Divine Person (prosopon, hypostasis, persona) within the hypostatic union. This means that the two natures: the Divine and the human – are permanently and integrally united in the person of Jesus (though they remain separate and unmingled). The apophatic theology is applied to their description. Diophysitism constitutes the basis of dioteletism: in the person of Jesus there also occur two wills and two acts that correspond to them. They are in total conformity, or – to put it more adequately – human will is subordinated to divine will and act, shared by Jesus with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox theology, which frequently refers to theandrism, is rooted in the assumption of Christ’s divinehuman nature, will and acts which are perfectly united with the Father’s will. This reflects God’s eternal project related to the existence of man. According to the theological concept of divinisation (Greek theosis, Latin deificatio) man becomes permeated with God’s presence and united with Him. For the Orthodox Christians, divinisation constitutes the aim of human life. Christ is the pattern, who in His shining figure and accompanied by Moses and Eliah appeared to his three disciples on Mount Tabor. (The event is described in the three synoptic Evangels: Mark 9:2–8; Matthew 17:1–8; Luke 9:28–36). God reveals Himself to the world in the spiritual, human experience of light which constitutes one of the divine energies. The eternal and non-created light is manifested in the figure of transfigurated Christ, who reveals His human nature permeated with divine energies. Jesus Christ as God-man – owing to His divine nature and by means of light – discloses the incomprehensible essence of divinity. The divine light transfigures man making it possible for him to participate in God’s nature. At the same time, man takes efforts to open himself to that light and remain in close relation with God. According to the Orthodox tradition, the return of man to God, his transformation is interpreted as his divinisation, that is the total

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penetration of his nature with divine energies. In the Eastern tradition, the symbolism of light was present already in the teaching of Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, John of Damascus. In the history of the Orthodox Church, St. Seraphin of Sarov exemplifies such transformation. 6 Cornegie Samuel Calian, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of Hope. A Contribution to MarxistChristian Dialogue, ed. E. J. Brill, Leiden 1968, p. 41. 7 Nicolas Berdyaev, Dream and Reality, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. Katharine Lampert, London 1950, p. 209. 8 The doctrine that is vastly accepted by the Orthodox Church is that authored by St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), according to which the indivisible divine essence comprises three equal Persons – Hypostases. According to Palamas, the essence of divinity is absolutely unknowable. However, as the Holy Trinity – God is revealed to the world and enters the relationship with man. He can be known through non-created energies that constitute the eternal act. The differentiation between the unknowable essence and knowable energies does not result in any split within God’s monolithic unity. Accordingly, we always refer to God’s essence in terms of apophatic theology, and to His acts in the world – in terms of kataphatic theology. 9 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Beginning and The End, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. R. M. French, London 1952, p. 253. 10 Ibid, p. 36. 11 Matthew Spinka, Christian Thought from Erasmus to Berdyaev, ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc Englewood Cliffs, New York 1962, p. 217. 12 David Bonner Richardson, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of History. An Existential Theory of Social Creativity and Eschatology, ed. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968, p. 59. 13 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. Natalie Duddington, London 1954, p. 281. 14 The notion of synergism is applied in relation to man, which in Eastern Christianity defines the perfect harmony of cooperation between human freedom and God’s grace. This harmony opens the way to the divinisation of man’s own nature. 15 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Meaning of History, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. George Reavey, London, 1936, pp. 58–59. 16 Matthew Spinka, Christian Thought from Erasmus to Berdyaev, ed. Prentice-Hall, Inc Englewood Cliffs, New York 1962, p. 223. 17 Ibid, p. 220. 18 David Bonner Richardson, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of History. An Existential Theory of Social Creativity and Eschatology, ed. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968, p. 51. 19 Ibid. p. 51. 20 Berdyaev writes: “In the phenomenon of what may be called pure conscience the soul stands before God and is free from the influences of the world. Pure conscience is precisely what is meant by freedom from the world, which is the true freedom of the human spirit and is prior to freedom in the world (The Destiny of Man, p. 168). 21 Cf. Nicolas Berdyaev, Truth and Revelation, ed. Harper & Brothers, trans. R. M. French, New York 1953, pp. 17–21. 22 In Eastern Christianity, it is emphasised that it is possible for man to know God in this world. However, he must co-operate in this process, suspending his senses and mind and attaining the state of hesychia or calm. Consequently, in his spiritual poverty and emptiness, in his human kenosis, man opens his heart to God’s operation. This purpose is not easily attainable. It is only through life led in accordance with the Evangel that this goal can be reached: through repentance, prayer (especially the Jesus prayer), good deeds, and contemplation.

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23 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Meaning of the Creative Act, ed. Victor Gollancz, trans. Donald A. Lowrie, London 1955, p. 79. 24 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Beginning and The End, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. R. M. French, London 1952, p. 103. 25 Nicolas Berdyaev, Solitude and Society, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. George Reavey, London 1938, p. 177. 26 David Bonner Richardson, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of History. An Existential Theory of Social Creativity and Eschatology, ed. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968, p. 52. 27 Cornegie Samuel Calian, Berdyaev’s Philosophy of Hope. A Contribution to Marxist-Christian Dialogue, ed. E. J. Brill, Leiden 1968, p. 64. 28 The possibility of experiencing the fullness of existence, i.e. the personal development of man, occurs in existential time, understood in Berdyaev’s philosophy as the only unobjectified form of time. Existential time, the “time of the person” where the spiritual development takes place, acts in favour of constant actualization of spirit in the source depths of eternal existence. This kind of time, appearing in the form of real spiritual activity, is the only true time directly experienced by the person. Given in personal subjective experience, existential time establishes the qualities of being within the spiritual world. What is more, it turns to be “a means” used by man for the achievement of designated goal – the fullness of existence. Existential time is not only related to the momental (timeless) revelation of the bases of human existence, but it also possesses ability to model other types of time. According to Berdyaev’s words, the structure of existential time is established by “moments”, in which the deepest intensification of existence and the true, eternal, spiritual noumenal existence is revealed to the subject. “Moments”, representing existential time, constitute the basis for experience of indivisible present, which designates the reality of existence. The actually experienced “moment” of the present “now”, is charged with such intensity of experiences, that it is revealed in the purest form. To state it in other words, the authentic existence creates itself in the momental now. Eternity achieved in “a moment” remains a permanent quality of human life. Thus life in eternity is a life of man who has become person in existential time. However in his worldly itinerary, man returns to time from “the moment of eternity.” 29 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, ed. Geoffrey Bles, trans. Natalie Duddington, London 1954, p. 132.

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U N A M U N O A S “ PAT H O L O G I C A L” P H E N O M E N O L O G I S T: T R AG I C S E N S E A N D B E Y O N D

It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps pathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas. (Unamuno, TSL-3) ABSTRACT

Being widely taken as a representative of the existentialist movement, Miguel de Unamuno has devoted much of his energy to the study of human passions. The “tragic sense of life” as expounded by Unamuno is no doubt the most fundamental challenge to religion as well as to philosophy. In this paper I will try to argue that, in respect of scope and method, Unamuno’s work does bear kinship to, yet is different from and augments to the work of other major representatives of the phenomenological movement. After that, I will try to embark upon the classical phenomenological issue of consciousness so as to illustrate how such an issue can unfold in a Unamunian setting. Then, returning to the basic intent of Unamuno, I will examine what Unamuno means by tragic sense, and show what crisis or “agony” this tragic sense could mean to human existence. Finally, I will try to show what we can learn from Unamuno’s tragic experience, and will conclude with some suggestions for a possible way out of the Unamunian impasse. SCOPE AND METHOD

SCOPE: MAN OF FLESH AND BONE It has often been asked whether or not the scope and objectives of phenomenology can be put under one unified heading. In respect of this question, one safe and “formal” answer would be that phenomenology treats of “things themselves” (Sachen selbst), in the way as they present to us. But what are

Paper presented at the Fourth World Phenomenology Congress, held 17–20 August 2008, at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

231 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 231–252. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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really “things themselves” in concreto? For this question we see that the major phenomenologists have different answers: original experience, transcendental subjectivity, human Dasein, Being as appropriation, or persons and values . . . Despite all the differences, these answers seem to be related to the phenomenon of human life in one way or the other. It is at least in this regard that Unamuno’s work can safely be related to phenomenology in general. Having made such a broad statement, we need to clarify immediately that under phenomenon of man Unamuno does not mean man as an abstract notion, but man in the most concrete and existential sense of the term. In his major work Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples (hereafter TSL),1 Unamuno questions right at the outset all major ideas or characterizations of man known to the West: ζ oν πoλιτικ´oν of Aristotle, the social contractor of Rousseau, homo economicus of the Manchester school, or homo sapiens of Linnaeus, which are for him names devoid of human character, for they are mere ideas, ie. “no-man”.2 For Unamuno, the concrete man is the “man of flesh and bone, the man who is born, suffers and dies”.3 What Unamuno in the first place can not accept is a rational conception of man. He noted that: “[. . .] the merely and exclusively rational man is an aberration and nothing but an aberration.”4 Unamuno emphasizes that instead of being a “rational” or “reasoning animal”, man should be depicted rather as basically an “affective or feeling animal”.5 Overagainst Descartes’ epistemological approach to the discovery of the self, Unamuno proposes “I feel, therefore I am.”6 In making such distinctions and preferences, Unamuno does not overlook the fact that reason still has an important role to play, he is only advocating a kind of primacy of feeling or pathos over reason. For Unamuno, reason and pathos, broadly defined, are involved in perpetual conflicts. And it is the conflicting interplay between these two faculties that constitutes concrete human life. In the TSL and in other writings, this inner tension regarding the human condition has been expressed by Unamuno through a series of conceptual bifurcations: Reason – Life (TSL 89–90, 116 . . .) Head – Heart (TSL 3, 13–14 . . .) Intelligence – Will (TSL 113) Reason – Imagination (TSL . . .) Reason – Feeling (TSL 106) Reason – Faith (TSL 150, 177) Philosophy – Poetry (On Erudition and Criticism)7 Philosophy – Religion (TSL 113–114)

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Looking at this multitude of concepts, we have to admit that they cover areas which normally are considered to be issues in their own right. But for Unamuno, these seemingly disparate concepts can be aligned or juxtaposed in such a way as if they were different manifestations of one and the same ordered pair that reflects the contradictory nature of the human condition. Unamuno used to mix up those items on the left hand side to contrast with items on the right, and he did so freely and purposely.8 This theoretical approach has aroused much criticism, even among Unamuno’s countrymen, for being unsystematic and blurring conceptual differences. But with some understanding, we might say that, by switching freely from one demarcation to the other, Unamuno indeed has shown us that Life and Heart, imagination and faith, poetry and religion etc. are interrelated psychic forces of the existential man which are so often undermined by enlightenment reason and mainstream philosophy. As a result of these multi-faceted contradiction of the human condition, human life, as seen by Unamuno, is a course infiltrated with problems. If we consider the scope of Unamuno’s thought to be the very phenomenon of human life itself, then we have to include into this phenomenon all its internal conflicts, agony, anguish and struggles. Only so will the scope of Unamuno’s thought be fully covered. METHOD Narrative as Method Unamuno never talks about his own method of scholarship, so we have to reconstruct it ourselves. The first thing we can point out is that, the scope and objectives of Unamuno’s thought do have a strong bearing on his method. Having made clear Unamuno’s object of study to be the concrete man of flesh and bone and not abstract humanity, it becomes obvious that a typically phenomenological method like Wesensschau, which aims at essences, would not suit his program. For Unamuno, what has to be shown, what has to be allowed to come to the foreground is the concrete life process of the very person, with all his conflicts and sufferings. To achieve this goal, all major methodological approaches such as transcendental reduction or hermeneutical analysis appear too detached and abstract. Indeed, in phenomenology we have Scheler who puts much emphasis on the “person”, and Heidegger who talks about human Dasein in its Jemeinigkeit (in each case mine). But for Unamuno, even these approaches are still too “formal” and conceptual that they leave questions of the concrete man of flesh and bone unanswered. For Unamuno, the best way to let the concrete man speaks for himself is the narrative, which can take the form of different literary genres, like novels, dramas, poems, or strikingly, and probably for Unamuno only, the form of

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philosophical essays. As a philosopher, Unamuno produced only one major philosophical work, namely his much acclaimed Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples published in the year 1913. But for his devoted readership, for his Spanish countrymen in particular, Unamuno is much more a poet, a dramatist and novelist. In regard to Unamuno’s method, Julián Marías, a leading philosopher of Spain who died just two years ago, has long since proposed the theory of “the novel (or narrative) as a method of knowledge” for Unamuno.9 In his book Miguel de Unamuno, Marías compared Unamuno’s narrative method to Dilthey’s “descriptive and analytical psychology”, Husserl’s essential intuition and Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology all at once. He noted clearly that narrative in Unamuno falls short of systematicity and fails to provide an ontology of human existence. As a mode of knowledge, the narrative remains “deficient and secondary”. But for all its deficiencies, so maintained Marías, the narrative (or the personal and existential novel) is for Unamuno still the only way “to reach the very core of the human drama, [. . .] letting it be just what it is” and “to show human existence in all its truth.”10 It is because of this strength of the narrative method that Marías considered it a necessary “first step” toward any existential analytic or metaphysical-ontological study of human life.11 As to the concrete writing style of the narrative, Unamuno sets forth right at the beginning of TSL the concept of “inner biography”,12 a concept which brings to the foreground the “personal” character of the narrative. For Unamuno, the real historical personality, being always a man of flesh and bone, can only be revealed through “reliving” but not “rethinking.”13 This applies above all to the novels and dramas. In The Agony of Christianity, Unamuno professes: “I have relived with Pascal [. . .] and I have relived with Kierkegaard.”14 Any reader of the TSL will be overwhelmed to see how frequently Unamuno, while reflecting upon various issues, pays tributes to or takes issues with philosophers before him. In quoting other philosophers, what Unamuno intends to do is also to “relive” their conflicts and anxieties concerning the respective issues. For this reason, Marías even claims that “all his works, even that entitled Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, are novels, and consist in ‘pulsating dramatic narratives, intimate and deeply personal realities, without stage settings or realistic details’. . .”15 The Autobiographical Nature of the Narrative: A Detour Via Misch and Ricoeur Another important feature Marías discovered about Unamuno’s narrative work is that Unamuno deliberately and constantly puts on the same plane historical authors (Cervantes, Shakespeare) with their literary protagonists (Don Quixote, Hamlet); and he does the same by mixing up characters of

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his own novels (Augusto Pérez, Abel Sánchez) with he Don Miguel himself.16 If this is true, then Unamuno’s narrative must have transcended mere description and have acquired additional methodological meaning. Unamuno’s work is not merely “inner biography”, but must have become some kind of autobiography. In fact, Margaret Thomas Rudd goes really so far as to propose that many of Unamuno’s novels, such as The Agony of Christianity, The Christ of Velaquez, and even his philosophical magnum opus The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and in People are Unamuno’s “unanecdoted autobiography”.17 I am not a Freudian, but no matter how bizarre this might sound, I can not help to believe that the real-life trauma Unamuno suffered, particularly the congenital illness and subsequent death of his young son Raimundo, must have played an important part in setting the key tone of his philosophy.18 In TSL, Unamuno mentioned at least five times the scenario of parents lamenting over a stricken or dying child, and this same motive recapitulates again and again in his literary works . . . To assess or appreciate Unamuno as a writer of “autobiographies”, let us turn in passing to Georg Misch for some hints. Noticing the academic importance of the topic, Wilhelm Dilthey commissioned his student and son-in-law Georg Misch to launch a detailed study of the history of autobiography, a task which Misch accomplished beautifully in 1907. Before going into detailed historical descriptions, Misch offered us a highly reflective account of the notion of autobiography. Misch defines the object of autobiography as “the revelation of the full content of the life of an individual considered as a characteristic whole.” He considered the autobiographical genre to be the highest manifestation of self-awareness (Selbstbewußtsein). For Misch, autobiography is inevitably emotion arousing, but through the process of Selbstbesinnung, “autobiography is the highest and most instructive form in which the understanding of life comes before us.” This didactic aim or task of the autobiographer, so said Misch, “must, in the course of the development of the human mind, have been disclosed in its full reality and recognized as a supreme object of human effort.”19 And how should we account for the fact that Unamuno is intentionally mixing himself up with others? To this Misch seems to have suggested an answer: “. . . autobiography possesses structure in itself, because it has various inter-associated functions in life; owing to these functions its composite unity has grown and found realization in its relation to ever new awareness and the progressive evaluation of personality in history; and so has been built up the coherence that unites the autobiographical works of the different epochs and nations and individuals into a historically developing generic whole.”20

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While Misch’s treatment as quoted above amounts mainly to a historical explanation of the potential unity of individual works of the autobiographical genre, and thus answers our question only partially, Ricoeur might enlighten us more directly. In explaining the notion of narrative identity, Ricoeur differentiates between identity in the sense of idem or sameness from identity in the sense of ipse or selfhood.21 Whereas the former is used to describe the “what”, the latter refers to the “who” in its “field of action”. Identity in the sense of selfhood, according to Ricoeur, can be applied to various scenarios related to human action including the identification of the agent, moral imputation or narrative mediation (reflection).22 The function of the narrative is like conducting “thought experiments” and it can thus be richly didactic and self enlightening. In the application of literature to life, the appropriation of the identity of the fictional character by the reader is totally imaginable and even allowable as an important means for a deeper self-understanding. At this point we might recall why Aristotle depicts tragic poetry as “more universal” than history.23 Aristotle explains that although tragedy resembles history in giving accounts of “things past”, the “poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could and would happen either probably or inevitably”.24 Here we can elaborate Aristotle’s standpoint to say that, the performance and appreciation of the tragic drama are “more universal” because through empathy, the situation of the tragic hero is meant to be universalizable. From the didactic point of view, tragedy as “the imitation of an action that is ´ serious and having magnitude”25 can exert its cleansing effect (καθαρσιζ) only when the audience substitute themselves in the position of the protagonist and relive what the hero has tragically lived through. ´ Hooking on Aristotle’s concept of καθαρσιζ, Ricoeur depicts the narrative as having “purgative virtue”.26 To exemplify his point, Ricoeur repeated his often quoted passage from Proust’s Time Regained: “But to return to myself, I thought more modestly of my book, and one could not exactly say that I thought of those who would read it, of my readers. Because they would not according to me be my readers, but the real readers of themselves, my book being only like one of those magnifying glasses offered to a customer by the optician at Combray. It was my book, and thanks to it I enable them to read what lay within themselves.”27 Thus explained, the meaning of Unamuno’s narrative method with its autobiographical overtones can be summarized with the following words by Vonèche: “Autobiographies, like any storytelling, allow their writers to locate themselves within the formality of narrative (triumph over adversity; tragic defeat sustained with courage; acute insight into the arcanes of Nature; errors in theorizing) and thus to regain some control over what is happening.”28

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After much detour, we should have made clear in what sense Unamuno’s opus has constituted a “method”, which is a method of autobiographical narrative. By way of the narrative, he finds a way to linger and ponder on his own existential life situations, which are concrete to him as a man of flesh and bone, but at the same are universal to human existence in general. By letting human pathos show itself in its naked form, Unamuno should be granted membership to the circle of phenomenologists!

“TRAGIC S ENSE” IN UNA MUNO

L OV E , D E A T H , A N D T H E B E L OV E D “Tragic sense of life” is no doubt one of the most important themes in Unamuno’s thought. But what is “tragic sense” for Unamuno? If we ask a man in the street what one considers most tragic, the most likely answer we can expect would be “death”. But for Unamuno this answer is only partially true. In TSL, he says: “The most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers of mine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine against death, for it is death’s brother.”29 In this poetically rendered passage, the important message is that “love”, the most important of the human pathos, is taken as the “most tragic” not by itself alone, but in its relation to death. First of all, from a more superficial point of view, love is for most people much more a source of happiness than of tragic sense. Love is “tragic” only because of its relation to death. To fully understand this tragic bondage between love and death, an important missing link is required—the “beloved”, the “loved one”, or the Other, “beginning with those most akin to you”,30 to other members of the family, clan, society and world . . . It is only by following this line of thought that we can understand what Unamuno has exactly in mind when he said love is the most tragic. In TSL, if we read onward from the passage quoted above, we will discover a lengthy and passionately touching reflection on the birth of spiritual love between the parents upon the death of their stricken child, a scenario, as I have noted earlier, is reminiscent of Unamuno’s own family tragedy—the death of his beloved son. In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger has indeed dedicated the whole of § 47 to the discussion of the “death of Others.”31 But rather than treating this as an issue in its own right Heidegger considers the death of others as a “substitution theme” (Ersatzthema)32 which supposedly would facilitate Dasein to better understand its own death or its own possibility of being a whole

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(Ganzseinkönnen). Therefore, the death of Others is for Heidegger only of marginal and “instrumental” importance. In contrast to Heidegger, Marcel and Jaspers showed a totally different emphasis when talking about the death of others. For Marcel, fate had it that he lost his mother at the age of four.33 He belongs to the very few philosophers who have explicitly declared that it is not one’s own death, but the death of one’s loved ones which is more insurmountable.34 And this also applies to Karl Jaspers, who lamented dearly over the death of his life companion. Jaspers devoted a chapter of his seminal 3-volume work Philosophie to “death of a loved one”, which he considered “the deepest incision in phenomenal life”.35 With the inherent bond between love and death thus explained, it becomes obvious why Unamuno’s own family experience has such a strong bearing on his work, which is through and through autobiographical in nature. Just as José Ferrater Mora puts it: “. . . although Unamuno said and wrote many things, all of them can be reduced to a relatively small nucleus of preoccupations that tormented him all his life . . .”36 The difference between Don Miguel and us, who share his anguish and his sufferings, is only that he is much more outspoken.

C O N S C I O U S N E S S A S “ C O M PA S S I O N ” : T H E O R I G I N O F H U M A N PA T H O S “Consciousness” is no doubt one of the most important and difficult problems of philosophy. The notion “consciousness” can be interpreted from so many perspectives and can be treated with so many approaches that it is difficult to argue that Unamuno has proposed anything new or conclusive concerning this problem. What I intend to do is, first to point out how Unamuno’s approach differs from that of mainstream phenomenologists; then I will try to show how the problem of consciousness fits into Unamuno’s basic quest. To make it short: While the classical phenomenological approach to consciousness is centered around the notion of the “subject”, Unamumo’s approach to “consciousness” is a definitively “personalistic” one. Whereas consciousness qua subject takes on a predominantly epistemological orientation, Unamuno’s approach to consciousness and self-consciousness is typically “pathological”, namely, he relates the problem of consciousness to the Self who suffers: “Suffering is the path of consciousness, and by it living beings arrive at the possession of self-consciousness.”37 As is well-known, consciousness is for Husserl always “being conscious of . . .” (Bewußt-sein von . . .), or “directedness at something” (Gerichtet-sein

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auf . . .). Here we can tell immediately, that for Husserl and many other phenomenologists, it is the “-sein” of the “bewußt-”, or the “-ness” of the “conscious” that has become the target of investigation. But right at this point, Unamuno exhibits his genuinely personalistic position by offering us a totally different etymological emphasis: In TSL, Unamuno defines consciousness as follows: “Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is compassion.”38 Here we notice that the whole emphasis shifts from “ness” to “con-”, “com-” or “co-”, which no longer signalizes the “state” of consciousness, but precisely the “togetherness” with a community of persons involved. The most interesting thing about this etymological emphasis of Unamuno is that it singles out precisely that very aspect of consciousness (co-), which is not easily discernable in German, the mother tongue of phenomenology.39 The prefix “Co-” implies a community. And what makes us attach to such a community? Unamuno’s answer remains a very consistent one: In the first place it is love, not only of oneself, but primarily of the other, the beloved, “beginning with those most akin to you [. . .]”.40 Unlike the Kantian-Husserlian tradition, which handles consciousness mainly with a cognitive approach, Unamuno’s approach to consciousness is a markedly “pathological” one. Unamuno explains in TSL: “For all consciousness is consciousness of death and suffering.”41 And accordingly, this suffering is bound up with this love, the “brother” of death. For Unamuno, human suffering results from the illusion and disillusion caused by the yearning for the immortality of oneself and one’s beloved. And these passions become so heavily and unbearably loaded in human consciousness that they constitute its intentionality which is through and through “pathological”. This pathological nature of consciousness is best expressed by Unamuno with the following simile: “. . . man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease.”42 ´ The original Greek concept of παθoζ embodied a wealth of meanings: passivity, affect, passion, emotion, undergoing, but one key meaning of the word is suffering. If we examine the history of philosophy carefully, we see that pathos has never ceased to attract attention of serious philosophical reflections, if not as an independent issue, at least as the counter-issue of reason. In the Western philosophical tradition, major philosophers as Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant have all given the problem of pathos, in adjacent to the problem of reason, some kind of treatment. In the contemporary phenomenological tradition, all major philosophers have addressed the issue of pathos from some angles, but it was Unamuno who has handled the problem of pathos directly as rooted in the conscious compassion of man for his beloved in face of their

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shared sufferings, and for him it is this compassion, these sufferings, which constitute the true root of the pathos. T R A G I C S E N S E A S “ R E L I G I O U S D E S PA I R ” Being aware of this virtually “pathological” nature of consciousness, Unamuno does not stop there to renounce consciousness. In fact, Unamuno considers the continual perpetuation of consciousness or the quest for immortality, or at least the survival of the deceased in the “memory of others and of posterity”43 the “only one burning concern”, indeed the entire purpose of human existence.44 For Unamuno, this “hunger for immortality” paves our way for a strong “desire (conatus)” for the existence of God, a desire which, however, is checked and discouraged by our reason, thus leading to a further conflict in life, namely, to a religious crisis. With this line of thought, it becomes totally understandable why Unamuno in another chapter of TSL literally equates tragic sense of life to “religious despair”: Unamuno says, “. . . this religious despair . . ., which is nothing other than the tragic sense of life itself, is, though more or less hidden, the very foundation of the consciousness of civilized individuals and peoples today . . .”45 To explain why the tragic sense of life can be equated with “religious despair”, we need to know more about Unamuno’s peculiar and tragic stance to Christianity. Although institutionally a Catholic Christian, Unamuno’s religious thoughts are largely very deviant. Ferrater Mora even remarked that, “by all standards of religious or philosophical orthodoxy Unamuno’s idea of God was a ‘heretical’ one”.46 Unamuno refuses to apply conventional Thomist categories like potentiality and act, non-being and being, essence and existence etc. to the discourse on God. When talking about immortality, he prefers the expression “hunger”, which, as Ferrater Mora points out, is no longer a true belief, because it is “beset by doubt”.47 Instead of simply asserting the existence of God, Unamuno suggests that “we believe that God exists by force of wishing that He may exist”.48 Instead of talking about God’s “existentia”, he heretically maintains that we are in fact only talking about our subjective “insistentia”49 of God. When explaining what Heaven, Salvation, union with God and divine felicity mean, he suggested “eternal boredom”.50 All in all, Unamuno cares much more about man’s desire for religion and God than believe for the sake of God. Here, instead of propounding the usual Christian position, what Unamuno advocates is in fact some sort of anthropogenic theism. This position, however, is becoming increasingly tragic for Unamuno the believer-cum-thinker. As with the nature of belief as such, he on the one hand admired Tertullian’s resignative stance (credo quia absurdum) and Kierkegaard’s leap of faith, but on the other, he refuses to remain

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ignorant in matters concerning salvation. In an extremely provocative essay “My Religion” (1907), Unamuno makes the following statement on religion which is incredibly irreligious: . . . my religion is to seek truth in life and life in truth . . . my religion is to fight incessantly and untiringly with the mystery; my religion is to fight with God from the break of dawn until the fall of night, as they say He fought with Jacob. I cannot compromise with that of the Unrecognizable [. . .] nor with that ‘from here thou shalt not pass.’ I reject the eternal ignorabimus. And in every case I want to ascend to the inaccessible. [. . .] Be perfect as thy Father is perfect in the heavens Christ told us and such an idea of perfection is doubtless unattainable. But we consider the unattainable as the goal and aim of our endeavors. [. . .] And I want to fight my struggle without concern for victory. Aren’t there armies and even peoples who march off to a certain defeat? And don’ t we write elegies for those who would let themselves die rather than surrender? Well, that is my religion.51

In a word, for the unlucky Unamuno, “Christianity must be defined agonically and polemically in terms of struggle.”52 This sounds tragically heroic. But is this the whole truth about Unamuno as a religious believer? Not quite so! As can be revealed by his dramas, Unamuno obviously suffers much as a half way believer. In her biography of Unamuno The Lone Heretic, Margaret Thomas Rudd compares Unamuno’s faith to that of his wife Concepción: “The course of Unamuno’s religious faith was tortuous and complicated; not so, Concha’s. Her faith was simple, unquestioning and true, a bulwark indeed for her tortured Miguel.” Rudd also quoted passages from Unamuno’s drama Soledad to emulate scenarios of the spiritual reliance of the heretical and unhappy husband on the pious but consoling wife.53 In face of this stark contradiction, Unamuno cries out by quoting repeatedly the appeal made by a grief stricken father to Christ: “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief!”.54 It becomes for Don Miguel as a man of flesh and bone increasingly questionable if his religious stance really offers a way to handle the tragic sense of life (qua religious despair) or not.

U N A M U N O V E R S U S G R E E K T R A G E DY Before we go on to explain how the problem of “tragic sense” in Unamuno should be handled, let us make a little detour to see how tragic sense in Unamuno differs from tragic sense in classical Greek tragedy. To go straight to my point: Tragic sense in Unamuno differs from Greek tragedy in that it is burdened by the millennia old problem of theodicy, which is not the case for the Greeks. Theodicy is a problem that surfaced since St. Augustine and the issue is: how can evil and misery be reconciled with divine providence and divine love. Here, we have to bear in mind that in Greek antiquity the Olympic gods are generally not considered to be the source of

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justice as in subsequent Christianity or in most other religions. Xenophanes testified this by telling us that “. . . Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.”55 The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt draws our attention to the problem of divine jealousy, and tells us that Greek gods often play the role of dispensers of disasters and seducers to evils.56 Against these backgrounds, Nietzsche made the pinpointing observation that “theodicy has never been a Hellenistic problem.”57 What does all this have to do with Unamuno’s doctrine of tragic sense? We see very clearly that as far as subject matter is concerned, Unamuno concurs with Greek tragedy in that struggles in life contexts are tragic, in the sense that we have to face irrationalities, uncertainties, and mishaps no matter how unbearable they are. But whereas the Greeks never expect the gods to do them any real favour, Unamuno does turn to God, at least subconsciously, for salvation, although not quite through piety and submissiveness, but through passionate wish and vital desire. The most tragic thing for Unamuno is that he keeps asking for explanations from the divine domain, which is not only unexplainable by reason, but also theologically difficult to deal with. From the theological aspect, Unamuno does try to partially solve the problem of theodicy by introducing the idea that God is compassionate for He too suffers with us.58 But he puts this up at one instance only to cast doubt upon it later. Greek tragedians only need to cultivate the greatness of mind to face all odds, Unamuno has but to struggle additionally with his own religious faith. For the Greeks, tragic sense is an irrational, passionate and dynamic version of the Aristotelian μεγαλoψuχ´ια (great soul); for Unamuno, tragic sense is related unluckily to Christianity which requires of its believers total submissiveness (small soul). This is why tragic sense in Unamuno leads unavoidably to “religious despair” par excellence. Then the next tragic thing is that, implicitly disillusioned by religion, Unamuno at times tries to turn back to philosophy so as to extract from it some sort of therapeutic function. With the head and the heart (or reason and faith) in perpetual struggle, so maintained Unamuno, “. . . the most tragic problem of philosophy is to reconcile intellectual necessities with the necessities of the heart and the will.”59 And this again brings about conflicts, struggle, agony, anguish and despair,60 keywords which are defining characteristics of Unamuno’s thought. Why is Unamuno’s turning back to philosophy also a tragedy? This is because, for all the ingenuity and power he possesses, his thoughts contain a feature that prevents him from getting any further with philosophy. I am referring here to the stark distinction he makes between reason and the passions.61 And this distinction is so rigidly made that a genuinely philosophical solution

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of the problem is very difficult. Of course, the distinction between Head and Heart (or similar distinctions) is a very old distinction, traceable back to Plato and Aristotle, and pronounced even by politician like Thomas Jefferson. But indeed no one has made them so irreconcilable as Unamuno, who would go to such extremes as saying: “And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy of life.”62 “Life cheats reason and reason cheats life.”63 Unamuno as an expounder of the tragic sense of life is also a philosopher of religion in a very unlucky sense of the term. Unamuno’s thoughts engendered from the basic human all too human yearnings which we all can share. The most tragic thing about him is that he has expressed these yearnings in a way which is too intellectual and sophisticated for faith on the one hand, and too pathological and unbelievable for reason on the other. This reminds us of what Rousseau said in Émile, which was quoted by Unamuno himself in TSL: “With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he would be a believer.”64

BEYOND “TRAGIC SENSE”

After talking about “tragic sense” for so long, I cannot wait to post the following questions: Should tragic sense remain only within the domain of the pathos, and stuck there in the bottom of our psychic existence? Or should tragic sense eventually lead us to some kind of life wisdom? If so, should this tragic wisdom show us a way out of the conflicts rooted in our pathos? Or, should a therapeutic path be discovered that would lead us out of the pathological impasse in which the man of flesh and bone is too often entangled? Indeed, Unamuno does “mean” to provide a cure. Towards the end of TSL, Unamuno exclaimed that: “Philosophy, therefore, is also the science of the tragedy of life, a reflection upon the tragic sense of it. An essay in this philosophy, with its inevitable internal contradictions and antinomies, is what I have attempted in these essays. And the reader must not overlook the fact that I have been operating upon myself; that this work partakes of the nature of a piece of self-surgery [. . .].”65 But is Unamuno really able to cure himself? Or, is he a good role model for us when we are dealing with problems of our own life? Before we make our judgment, let us take a look at the following remark Unamuno makes on his “cure”: . . . the cure for suffering—which, as we have said, is the collision of consciousness with unconsciousness—is not to be submerged in unconsciousness, but to be raised to consciousness and to suffer more. The evil of suffering is cured by more suffering, by higher suffering. Do not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul’s wound, for when you sleep and no longer feel the suffering, you are not.66

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Superficially, Unamuno advocates here a very heroic attitude towards suffering reminiscent of the tragic hero in Greek drama. But with second thoughts, Unamuno’s solution deserves a more critical scrutiny, especially if one is considering if this Unamunian attitude can be taken as an antidote to combat sufferings in one’s own life context. In the tragic age of the Greeks, tragedy is not just a literary genre as it is for us nowadays. Greek tragedy is for the Greeks in some sense a social necessity. The Greeks need to watch tragedy regularly to maintain a healthy state of mind, because, as Aristotle suggests, tragedy offers its watchers a purgative function, through which all negative feelings such as fears, worries and resentment are cleansed. From this point of view, Unamuno’s tragic sense not only falls short of the Aristotelian requirement, it seems even to be leading us to the opposite direction, namely, to the intensification of and intoxication in the sense of suffering itself. Rather than bringing about a sublimation (Erhabenheit in the sense of Nietzsche), the Unamunian tragic sense drags one deeper and deeper into the “abyss”, causing him greater and greater despair and agony. As a phenomenologist who loves to dwell on suffering, Unamuno is undeniably too “pathological”.

R E A S O N A N D T H E PA T H O S R E C O N S I D E R E D Unamuno may be right in pointing out that man is predominantly an animal of flesh and bone. He may also be right that, being affected, man is basically a diseased animal. But obviously, he did not manage to get out of the bondage of his pathos. In other words, he failed to find a self-cure. What remains open to him and to his readers is to rethink what role reason can play other than as the mere opponent of passion. Marías is correct in pointing out that Unamuno sticks too steadfastly to his basic position that “reason is the enemy of life”.67 And Unamuno overemphasizes this antagonism to the extent that he does not really trust the scenario that reason could change with time and experience and thus become more susceptible to life, a scenario which he himself was not unaware of and indeed once cautiously propounded as follows: And if, as I have said, faith, life, can only sustain itself by leaning upon reason, [. . .] it is none the less true that reason in its turn can only sustain itself by leaning upon faith, upon life [. . .].68 The human reason, in effect, is a reason that is based upon the irrational, upon the total vital consciousness, upon will and feeling; our human reason is not a reason that can prove to us the existence of a Supreme Reason, which in turn would have to be based upon the Universal Consciousness. And the revelation of this Supreme Consciousness in our feeling and imagination, by love, by faith, by the process of personalization, is that which leads us to believe in the living God.69

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According to Unamuno, the basic urge of life is not only to extend and prolong his consciousness as much as possible; this in turn leads to the urge for immortality or afterlife. The problem is, while our will demands such afterlife, our reason discounts it, and we men of flesh and bone are doomed to live in the agony of this conflict. If the Unamunian “resolution” is unacceptable to us, there seems to be a way out of this impasse: a deepened reflexion on the relation of reason to pathos. My basic perception is: Pathos is by nature passive, reason is but an active power. As the most important human pathos, “tragic sense” in the sense of Unamuno is only a passive or indeed “pathological” bewilderment, the indulgence in which will show no exit. If it is our intention to get out of this tragic bewilderment, what we need is “tragic wisdom”, which is only possible if the active role of reason is somehow involved. In the history of philosophy, both Aristotle and St. Augustine consider passions or will as a propelling factor in human action. But it does not follow that we should simply give way to our passions or will without trying to check it with reason. In this point, I take side with Karl Popper who makes the following remark: David Hume [. . .] was led by an unfortunate and mistaken psychological theory (and by a theory of knowledge which taught him to distrust his own very remarkable powers of reason) to the horrifying doctrine, ‘Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.’ I am ready to admit that nothing great has ever been achieved without passion, but I believe in the very opposite of Hume’s statement. The taming of our passions by that limited reasonableness of which we may be capable is, in my view, the only hope of mankind.70

Reason. What can we expect of it? If we understand reason from a merely positivistic and instrumental point of view, it is of course not easy to find a way leading to “tragic wisdom”. Luckily, we learn from the history of philosophy that reason can be understood in many ways, it can assume various nuances of meaning, and can perform various functions. Reason can be positivistic and assertive, but it can also be self-reflective, self-critical, self-limiting and even self-annihilating. Furthermore, reason can also be self-educating, self-transforming and self-elevating. With reference to the problem of pathos, I keep asking myself, why can’t we assume that reason can take our pathos seriously and learn from it (pathe mathe71 )? Through acquaintance with and through learning from pathos, why can’t reason become “sympathetic”, supplying pathos in return with the wisdom it thus gained. It is in this way that Unamunian tragic sense qua bewilderment can have a chance to be transformed into tragic wisdom. In the course of this transformation, the most important thing is that reason must play an active and upbringing role. Regarding this possibility of a radical

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union between reason and passion, we see in Unamuno’s text the following dramatically expressed passage: We have seen that the vital longing for human immortality finds no consolation in reason and that reason leaves us without incentive or consolation in life and life itself without real finality. But here, in the depths of the abyss, the despair of the heart and of the will and the scepticism of reason meet face to face and embrace like brothers.72

This seemingly grotesque scenario can in fact be exemplified, per analogiam, by Kant’s theory of schematism, in which understanding descends to meet intuition to offer the latter the unity it requires.73 All we need to do is to transpose the whole discourse on knowing to the platform of the pathos. Or, to express in Kantian terminology: Among various other uses of reason, what we need to further explore and advocate is its emotional employment (Gebrauch).

PLESSNER’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE TOPIC Besides the quasi-Kantian approach as suggested above, other attempts to resolve the Unamunian enigma are readily made available. One example I can think of is Helmuth Plessner. To be very brief: In his treatment of the human pathos, Plessner singled out laughing and crying (Lachen und Weinen) as two pre-linguistic, turbulent emotions that affect us when we are undergoing emotionally uncontrollable circumstances (positive or negative).74 For Plessner, laughing and crying signify the incapacity (Unvermögen) of the individual and a breach (Bruch) between body and person. To exemplify this point, we can quote a story retold by Unamuno himself in the TSL: “a pedant who beheld Solon weeping for the death of a son said to him, ‘Why do you weep thus, if weeping avails nothing?’ And the sage answered him, ‘Precisely for that reason—because it does not avail.”’75 What a profound indication! In contrast to laughing and crying, Plessner discussed another important emotion: smiling (Lächeln).76 Plessner considers smiling “a way of expression sui generis”.77 It is a kind of “Mimik des Geistes”, and as such it is the “meaning carrier par excellence”. If laughing and crying are turbulent emotions, then smiling is a subtle, fine and enriching one. Although smiling is also an emotion, it is one (unlike laughing and crying) on which human spirituality (Geistigkeit) has left its mark. In what way does smiling have something to do with spirituality? My reckoning is: Is smiling not pathos tamed? Is spirituality not reason emotionally recast and self-transformed?

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Plessner explains further: As an expression of feeling, smiling keeps a certain distance (Abstand, Distanziertheit) to the expression itself. This distance allows the person to handle his/her existential situation with a certain tranquility of mind. Whereas laughing and crying are uncontrollable (unbeherrscht), smiling allows our emotion to keep things at a controllable distance (beherrschter Abstand). Plessner maintains that in existential crisis such as “embarrassment, shame, grievance, bitterness and despair, smiling provides room for [our own] transcendence (Darüberstehen).”78 Plessner’s position seems to me to have embodied tragic wisdom. His concepts of smiling, of distance and of transcendence remind me of Nietzsche’s analysis of tragic sense: Lächerlichkeit (or absurdity in the sense of “laughableness”) which is the key to Erhabenheit (or sublimity).79 In the Zen Buddhist tradition, it was reported that in the last days of the Buddha, he was asked to preach his highest teachings, and in response to this request the Buddha, without saying a word, held up the Kumbhala flower just presented to him, leaving his audience in complete perplexity. And out of the many astounded disciples and followers it was the venerable Mahakasyapa, who alone managed to react by returning a smile in speechlessness. It was because of this smile that Buddha knew his highest teachings were well understood . . .80 EPILOGUE

As a pathological phenomenologist, Unamuno is a man of high sensitivity, but obviously, he shows no way out of the pathological deadlock he found himself trapped in. Unamuno is a downright existential solemnist, which is to certain extent praiseworthy. He takes life very seriously, but it was the over-dosage of this solemnness that has led him into an impasse. Unamuno suffers from what Nietzsche called “stifling of life” (Überwucherung des Lebens).81 As an antidote, it might help should he learn to take life easier . . . As with the dread of death and the hunger for immortality, Unamuno obviously refuses to take the Christian-religious position despite his Catholic backgrounds. His sensitivity as a philosopher prevents him from so doing, and his intellectual honesty as a religious philosopher pushes him bit by bit in the most sharpened fashion into the unresolved riddle of theodicy. This probably is the greatest tragedy of Unamuno. The unlucky thing was that Unamuno, while dissatisfied with the Christian view of death and immortality, seems to have fallen prey totally to its grip and was unaware of other ways to look at the issue. In a manuscript prior to TSL, Unamuno made this point very clear: “Every cultured European of our days is Christian, willingly or not, knowingly or not. Among us one is born Christian and breathes Christianity, and this applies no less to those who most abominate it.”82

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Judging from the tone of this dicey statement, we might conclude that without detriment to the universal importance of the problem of death and immortality for human existence in general, it is doubtful if Unamuno’s resolution of these issues is itself universalizable. First of all, it is commonplace that in religions and cultures other than the West, many attempts have already been made to help the suffering man to find peace, equanimity and resilience in the face of death. In the Western tradition itself, as early as in the Presocratics, we find already signs how the grip of death and desire for immortality can be “rationally” resolved by the notion of “cosmic retribution” and by the advocacy to elevate the human standpoint to the level of cosmic wisdom (hen panta, homologein). In the modern age, even the equally passionate Romanticists could resort to “longing for death” (Sehnsucht nach dem Tode)83 which is much less traumatizing and much more consolatory than Unamuno’s uncompromising “yearning not to die!”84 Finally, in the tradition of theology itself, the conflicts between faith and reason or between theology and philosophy have indeed been thematically reflected upon by theologians and philosophers such as Tertullian and Kierkegaard. Unamuno was of course not unaware of such developments, but while trying to radicalize the problem, he dismissed their insights without providing any constructive alternatives, leaving himself tortured by his own religious anguish. Another limitation of Unamunian thought is the total distrust of reason. In the history of Western philosophy, we witness the rise of counterenlightenment as a check and balance against Enlightenment reason which has often been criticized as over-optimistic. However, skepticism of reason should by no means end up in a total distrust of reason, which could threaten to disorient man’s ability to live his life reasonably, which in the case of Unamuno was unluckily the case. Although Unamuno did conjecture about reason and passion fraternizing with each other, overall he was still too pessimistic about the plasticity of reason so as to be able to come to any self rescue. In this regard, a somewhat Plessnerian shift might have been helpful to Unamuno. When I was reading Unamuno’s TSL, I felt so close to the author. I turned many pages literally in tears. I have a great empathy for the author’s yearnings and sufferings, which are existentially so unbearable yet sentimentally so endearing. Reading Unamuno is compassionately a fruitful journey, but all the way through it Unamuno shows no way out of the anguish and suffering he sets forth to face. Unamuno’s TSL ends up with the following word: “And forgive me if I have troubled you more than was needful and inevitable, more than I intended to do when I took up my pen proposing to distract you for a while from your distractions. And may God deny you peace, but give you glory!”85 As is well-known, Hegel described his phenomenology as a “highway

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of despair” (Weg der Verzweiflung),86 but while Hegel could at least anticipate reconciliation and peace at the end, Unamuno was deprived even of this final consolation. Unamuno escorts us through a tragic and heroic journey, but instead of bringing about any kind of transcendence, he sank deeper and deeper in his sufferings, failing to find peace with his own mind. As a “pathological” phenomenologist, namely, as one who makes human sufferings explicit, Unamuno is radically existential. With his peculiar “method” of narrative, he reaches into the deepest abyss of the human condition. Unamuno is himself a tragic phenomenon. As one of the most dynamic writers in the history of Spain and as a politically uncompromising intellectual he is also a highly esteemed personality. In this regard he gained the respect of fellow Spanish philosophers like Ortega and Marías, who however, held his philosophy at arm’s length. The philosophical attempt of Unamuno ends up so to speak in a glorious failure, but it teaches us an extremely precious lesson: The tragic sense of life as expounded by Unamuno is no doubt the most fundamental challenge to humanity, to religion, and to philosophy. But instead of staying with Unamuno within the bounds of the tragic sense of life, we need to find some way out, for this is our only hope, if real peace and freedom are what we are looking for, if our life, despite its vulnerability to all sorts of existential crisis, is still to have a meaning. To achieve this goal, we might need some new approaches to the core issues of a phenomenology of pathos, may be some new philosophies, in which the conflict between reason and passion will be taken seriously but not rigidly. Instead of insisting upon their irreconcilability, we might need to reassess the roles of reason and passion, which I believe are both human capacities in the making, in the sense that they have to learn from each other, and that ultimately existential issues can have a chance of solution not by either of these two faculties in their separation, but only in respect of their mutual acceptance and reciprocal embodiment. Philosophy Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

NOTES 1 See Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life (hereafter abbreviated as TSL), (transl.) J. E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Dover, 1954). 2 Unamuno, TSL, p. 1. 3 Unamuno, TSL, p. 1. 4 Unamuno, TSL, p. 101. 5 Unamuno, TSL, p. 3. 6 Unamuno, TSL, p. 36.

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7 Quoted from Julián Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, (transl.) Frances M. López-Morillas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 3. 8 In an only recently published manuscript of Unamuno, we find the following enigmatic juxtaposition of four terms in one line: “science—philosophy—poetry—religion”. See Unamuno, Treatise on Love of God (ed./transl.) Nelson R. Orringer (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), p.67. 9 See Julián Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, op. cit., p. 57ff. See also Marías’ Philosophy as Dramatic Theory, (transl.) James Parsons (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), pp.121ff, 135. 10 Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 61f. 11 Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 67. 12 Unamuno, TSL, p. 2. 13 Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 28. 14 Unamuno, The Agony of Christianity. In Selected Works of Unamuno, Vol. 5 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 16. Quotation follows Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 28. 15 Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 60, quoting Unamuno’s prologue-epilogue to the second edition (1934) of Amor y pedagogía. 16 Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 21. 17 Margaret Thomas Rudd, The Lone heretic. A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Hugo (New York: Gordian Press, 1976), pp. 151–152. 18 Unamuno’s son Raimundo suffered from hydrocephalus plus meningitis. The poor child grew up retarded and died at the age of six. See Rudd, Ibid., pp.85–87. 19 See Georg Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. Translated in collaboration with the author by E. W. Dickes (London: Routledge, 1950, reprint 1998), Part I, pp. 7f, 65f. The author is grateful to Otto Pöggeler for drawing his attention to the importance of Misch some thirty years ago. 20 Georg Misch, Ibid., pp. 13–14. 21 Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Identity”, in: David Wood (ed.) On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 118f. 22 Ricoeur, Ibid., p.191. 23 Aristotle, Poetica, 1451b. 24 Aristotle, Poetica, 1451a. 25 Aristotle, Poetica, 1449b pp. 24–29. 26 Ricoeur, Ibid., p.198f. 27 Ricoeur, Ibid., quoting from Marcel Proust, A la recherché du temps perdu (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1946/47), vol. III, p.1033 ; (transl.) David Wood. Italics are mine. 28 Jacques Vonèche, “Identity and narrative in Piaget’s autobiographies”, in Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh (ed.), Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and Culture (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2001), pp.219–245. 29 Unamuno, TSL, p. 132. 30 Unamuno, TSL, p. 138. 31 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 238. In this section, Heidegger referred to the death of Others as capable of bringing about “their mourning and commemoration” or a sense of “respectful solicitude.” 32 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 239. 33 See Claude Mauriac, “Gabriel Marcel et l’invisible”, Le Figaro, 24 Juillet 1976. Cited from Rev. Bosco Lu, Marcel (Taipei: Dongda, 1992), pp. 281–292, especially p. 281. Reportedly, Marcel remarked in 1937 in a gathering in commemoration of Descartes that regarding the

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problem of death, it is not death as such, but death of the loved ones which is the authentic issue. Again reportedly, Marcel reiterated this point even six weeks before his own death with the following wordings: What I care about is the death of loved ones, not my own death, which I am not afraid of at all. See Mauriac, Ibid., paraphrased from Lu’s Chinese quotation. 34 Regarding the problem of “death of others” and “death of loved ones”, I am deeply indebted to Prof. Rev. Bosco Lu for his enlightening treatise on Marcel. See Lu, “Death and death of Others in Marcel’s Philosophy”, Marcel (Taipei: Dongda, 1992), pp. 281–292. 35 Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, Vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 194. 36 José Ferrater Mora, Unamuno. A Philosophy of Tragedy, (transl.) Philip Silver (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), p. vi. 37 Unamuno, TSL, p. 140. 38 Unamuno, TSL, p. 139 39 In the big family of German phenomenology, Scheler does try to relate Bewußtsein to ¯ “con-scientia”, but Scheler understands con-scientia mainly as “Wissen des Wissens” rather than as “co-feeling” as did Unamuno. See Max Scheler, “Philosophische Weltanschauung”, and “Idealismus—Realismus”, Späte Schriften, Gesammelt Werke, Band 9 (Bern/München: Francke Verlag, 1976), pp. 112, 185. Heidegger in Sein und Zeit also touches upon conscientia, but he does so only marginally, relating it to Descartes’ “cogito me cogitare rem”, see Sein und Zeit, p. 433. 40 Unamuno, TSL, p. 138. 41 Unamuno, TSL, p. 139. 42 Unamuno, TSL, p. 18. 43 Unamuno, TSL, p. 52. 44 See Unamuno, “El secreto de la vida”, in Ensayos, I, p.830. Quoted from Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 11. 45 Unamuno, TSL, p. 125. 46 Ferrater Mora, Ibid., p.45. While Ferrater Mora and many other academics spoke of Unamuno as “ heretical” from a somewhat positive attitude, many people from the religious sector made the same remark from a strongly negative point of view. Even years after Unamuno’s death, the bishop of Salamanca Antonio de Pildáin still tried to publicly denounce Unamuno’s books while decreeing Unamuno as “ the greatest heretic and teacher of heresies”. See Rudd, op cit., pp. 319–321. 47 Ferrater Mora, Ibid., p.46. 48 Unamuno, TSL, p. 150. 49 Unamuno, TSL, p. 182. 50 Unamuno, TSL, pp. 228–229. 51 Unamuno, “My Religion”, in Perplexities and Paradoxes, pp. 2–3., See also The Agony of Christianity and Essays on Faith, in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 211. 52 Unamuno, “What is Christianity”, The Agony of Christianity, in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 14. 53 Margaret Thomas Rudd, The Lone Heretic. A Biography of Miguel de Unamuno y Hugo, op cit., see p. 76f. 54 Gospel of Mark, quoted in Unamuno, TSL, pp. 14, 120. 55 Diels/Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. See Translation by Kathleen Freeman, in Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), p. 22. 56 Jakob Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, Band 2 (München: dtv, 1982), p.97. “Der Tatbestand im Epos aber ist, daß die Götter über die Menschen neben vielen Guten alles mögliche Unheil kommen lassen, selbst bei geringen Gelegenheiten, außerdem aber auch sehr oft zum

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Bösen anreizen.” Furthermore, Burckhardt also mentioned about divine jealousy (Götterneid) being a main feature of divine character. 57 Nietzsche: “Die dionysische Weltanschauung”, from: Nachgelassene Schriften 1870–1873, in: Sämtliche Werke, Band 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), p. 560. 58 Unamuno, TSL, pp. 139–140. This attitude of Unamuno must have influenced subsequent theologians dealing with the same issue. See for example, the works of Jürgen Moltmann. 59 Unamuno, TSL, p. 15. 60 Unamuno, TSL, p. 33. 61 In fact, both Marías and Solomon pointed out that Unamuno has probably overstated the conflict between the Head and the Heart. See Robert Solomon, Joy of Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 2003), p.116. 62 Unamuno, TSL, pp. 89–90. 63 Unamuno, TSL, p. 116. 64 Unamuno, TSL, p. 53. 65 Unamuno, TSL, p. 320. 66 Unamuno, TSL, p. 283. 67 Julián Marías, Miguel de Unamuno, p. 19. 68 Unamuno, TSL, p. 113. 69 Unamuno, TSL, p. 177. 70 Karl Popper, “How I see Philosophy?” Shanker, S.G. (ed.). Philosophy in Britain Today (London/Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 200. 71 I learned this beautiful Greek proverb from Steven Crowell in a conference in 1998. 72 Unamuno, TSL, p. 106. 73 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A137/B176 ff. 74 See Helmuth Plessner, Lachen und Weinen. 3. Auflage (Bern: Francke, 1961); See also Plessner, Die Frage nach der Conditio Humana (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), pp. 70–74. 75 Unamuno, TSL, p. 17. 76 Helmuth Plessner, “Das Lächeln”, in: Zwischen Philosophie und Gesellschaft (Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1979), pp. 220–232. 77 Ibid., p. 228. 78 Ibid., pp. 228–232. 79 Nietzsche, Geburt der Tragödie . . . 80 See « », ascribed to Asanga, but transmitted only in Chinese translation, Xuzangjing v. 1, n. 26, pp. 418c14–21, URL: http://w3.cbeta.org/result/normal/X01/ 0026_001.htm 81 Nietzsche, “Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben,” Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen. Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden, hrsg. G. Colli und M. Montinari (München/Berlin: dtv/de Gruyter, 1981), Band 1, p. 250. 82 See Unamuno, Treatise on Love of God, Ibid., chapter on “Christianity”, p. 68. 83 See Novalis’ sixth “Hymne an die Nacht”. 84 See Unamuno, Treatise on Love of God, Ibid., chapter on “Religion”, p. 66. In TSL, Unamuno used the word “(longing/willing) not to die” eight times, see TSL, pp. v, 7, 36, 71, 130, 144, 190, 192. 85 Unamuno, TSL, p. 330. 86 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Werke-Suhrkamp, Band 3, p. 72.

CLARA MANDOLINI

BLONDEL AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

La philosophie [. . .] commence seulement lorsque [. . .] elle comprend et pratique le devoir d’épeler lettre par lettre le livre de vie qui s’écrit en nous, d’en dégager les idées directrices, d’en atteindre et d’en assimiler les réalités composantes, de prévoir et de préparer le dénouement. Blondel ABSTRACT

The paper discusses the possibility and the statute of the philosophy of life, analysing the problematic relation between conscience and life. This theme, indirectly approached through the theoretical contribution of Blondel, thus focuses on one of the main theoretical topics of French philosophy, shared by Personalism, Existentialism, and Phenomenology of life. From the considerations contained in Le point de depart de la recherche philosophique about the different kinds of knowledge in relation to the human active dimension (prospection and reflection), Blondel reflects on the moral stake and the epistemological essence of philosophy, by considering the alternative interpretations of the relation between life and thought, questioning the possible adaptation of knowledge to the peculiar dynamism of existence. So, the gnosiological issue debouches into a conception of existential auto-conformation, and it shifts the problem of the relation between conscience and life, essential in the light of a definition of the philosophy of life, to the conditions of a lived adequation to truth, thus justifying the affirmation by Jean Lacroix that all “philosophers of existence” implicitly have been Blondel’s continuers. INTRODUCTION: BLONDEL AS A PRECURSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXISTENCE

In What Is Existenz Philosophy? Hannah Arendt1 poses, at the starting point of the “philosophy of existence”, the idea of the impossibility of the identity of thought and being, as a consequence firstly of the Cartesian lack of faith in their natural harmony, and secondly of the Kantian separation of thought and knowledge.2 The breakdown of the “sympathy” between thought and reality inaugurates a deeper task for reflection as a clarification of existence, like in 253 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 253–273. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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the line of Jaspers, in its irreducible tension in relation to thought. However, the centrality of existence in reflection is differently shared by two philosophical approaches, between which it is necessary to make a distinction: existentialism and philosophy of existence. While the first one identifies existence with its mere “act”, with its immediate fact, the second one, in a more complete gnosiological attitude, considers the constitutive openness of existence to a transcendental horizon of sense, to be disclosed by its demand of authenticity.3 This distinction is useful here to establish the correct ground of the issues to be discussed. The article focuses in fact on the Blondelian conception of the relation between thought and life, thus pointing at his role in the increasing philosophical interest in the essence of philosophy and its possible intrinsic link to life.4 The central body of this brief study consists in examining some of the main features of the Blondelian conception of the essence of philosophy of life, thus highlighting an idea of knowledge in terms of lived “adjustment” to truth. In order to do this, the article will follow three main steps: first, the emergence of the question about the reciprocal correspondence of thought and life; secondly, the reformulation of the statute of knowledge in connection with the dynamics of existence; third, the exigency of the idea of personal self-adjustment, as a criterium of truth. These steps highlight respectively the essential features of the problem, the method and the solution to the question about the essence of philosophy, as they emerge in the Blondelian perspective. THE PROBLEM: HARMONISING THOUGHT AND EXISTENCE

In the Blondelian point of view, the two problems of the relation thought-life on one hand, and the relation human conscience-existence on the other, are part of a larger problem, that is the object and the possible scientific claim of philosophy. The exigency of clarification of the essence and the aim of philosophy implies two different consequences: the examination of the object of philosophical thought and the elucidation of the method to be assumed in order to empower its coherence. As a preliminary step, this question requires us to weigh up the pretension of philosophical knowledge, that is to evaluate the condition of the possibility of thought and its “adherence” to the “world”, in other words to the “genetic” horizon of the phenomenon. Let us consider Blondel’s ideas as they are exposed in Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique (1906).5 The central question is put by Blondel on the source of philosophy, its “starting point”. According to a first interpretation, philosophy seems to spring from the need to catch the intrinsic features of the world data. According to another interpretation, philosophy seems structured as result of the application to the conscience of a specific method. Blondel’s solution consists in the attempt

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to connect both sides of the problem, joining the two interpretations into a whole conception of the “scientific” and “vital” nature of philosophy, to restore the solidarity of both the ontological and gnosiological orders of the relation between thought and life, the object and the method. Philosophy shares two “formal characteristics” that make it at the same time a specific and a general form of knowledge, to develop with technical requirements and procedures, but respecting its beginning in a « work of life »,6 and a « common effort » of humanity. For Blondel, while the form of philosophy is the system (or the plurality of the different systems of thought), its matter is the general movement of life of humanity; for this reason, the success of philosophy as a knowledge is thought to depend not only on the technical precision of the systematic conception, but also on the sincerity of the vital effort, which distinguishes true philosophy of life from a closed ideology.7 In this way, Blondel connects the final task of the philosophical attempt with its intermediate formal passages, given by the discursive procedures of the method, thus affirming the necessity, inside a common human effort of vital fulfilment, of a technical procedure, of a method which could guarantee not only the constant gnosiological “safety” of the reflective activity, but also the final “health” and efficaciousness of the essential human effort. As a condition, Blondel poses the nature of philosophy at a crossing point between an existential “work” and a science. This double-sided characteristic expresses an essential interlacement between life (its essential active explication) and the organisational effort of conscience (its intention). While Blondel characterises the object of the philosophical attempt pointing at its human universal matter, he denotes the technical process of thinking as the systematic structure and form of a philosophy; doing this, he inverts the terms of the equations between subjective universal and formal characteristics on one hand, and specificity and objective matter on the other. The main task of thought seems then to connect – both materially and formally (hence in both gnosiological and ontological aspects) – the aim and the methodological form of philosophy, so as to configure « a doctrine in which the human or even universal matter, and the specific form of philosophy would correspond one to the other, so as to be respectively, since their beginning point, completely technical in their method and detached from any other sort of knowledge by an absolutely clear line of demarcation ».8 The philosophical research should then be developed « in a perfect continuity with the natural movement of life, or, even better, it would be this same life ».9 Indeed, there is not just the declaration of the specific regard on reality attributed to the philosophical sight in relation to the other various branches of knowledge, but also the declaration of the opportunity of a reorientation of philosophy toward life itself, according to a “perfect continuity with the

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movement of life”, and, precisely, with the moral dialectics of existence, configured by the unavoidability of action. Such a formulation of the procedural and moral task of philosophy (its form and matter) is not limited to simply affirming the traditional “auxiliary” or “consolatory” existential value of philosophy: it contains a definite methodological assumption. The point is to look for a re-conjunction of the technical démarche of the philosophical reflection with the material source of it, life. In this light, philosophy should be intrinsically understood as a “philosophy of life”, not just as the particular regard of a living being on the nature of life (like in a sort of “philosophical biology”), but as reflective auto-comprehension and implementation of life. This is the real sense of the expression, that Blondel uses in his work of 1893 of a “science of life”.10 Therefore, philosophy is not just a branch of culture, but the form of reflection through which the heuristic aspect of reflective movement contained in life subtends the material effective dialectics of life. Philosophy should then try to integrate, in a synthesis of all human cognitive efforts, the dynamics of life, the production of sense about its destiny, with a non-restrictive peculiar technical process of inquiry, in turn necessary to guide and discursively articulate this research. The artificial statute of reflection is not radically detached from a “natural” source; rather it installs itself on a common root to life and thought. Through this double-bonded “law of formation”, philosophy is defined as a reflective progressive passage of knowledge to existence, thus as a gnosiological and moral effort, a work which involves, as a result, a progressive improvement of conscience and a conscious empowerment of life.11 Being a combined “work of life” (œuvre de vie), philosophy is not radically different to or separated from the existential living source of thought, even if it cannot be identified with the simple vital movement, common to all living beings. The starting point of philosophy is given by the assumption that spirit and life are both familiar with and united to each other, but not coincident.12 Rather than a reduction of thought to practical activity, or of philosophy to a form of pragmatism, there is the exigency of an integration, of a solidarisation13 of life with the form and methodological path of thought, in the real opposite direction to the Hegelian dialectics.14 In this conceptual “crossroads” – the trans-intersection of the notions of life, existence, action, activity and thought – one can see, as it were, the “work in progress”, the laboratory of different approaches to a reflection which tries to inaugurate a new integration between conscience, its object, and its subject’s vital peculiarities. Being a comprehension of its radication in life itself, philosophy needs to be restructured as a vital-speculative dialectic.15 This point requires us to reconsider the necessity of an inversion of the primacy of theory and practise, not so differently from the Marxian revolution. The device of this inversion

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is linked in Blondel’s work to the respectively distinctive features of the two “directions” of human knowledge, that he calls, also in Le point de depart de la recherché philosophique, “reflection” and “prospection”: this is what we will examine in the next pages.

T H E M E T H O D : A T H E O RY O F K N OW L E D G E C RO S S I N G THE DIRECTIONS OF EXISTENCE

The importance of the distinction between the two directions of thought, comes to light if we reconsider carefully the consequence of the centrality attributed to the notion of life, as connected to that of action. The attempt to reintegrate in thought the peculiar movement, and the effective nature of existence – not just the idea of the living but the living “movement” itself – can be justified by attributing to thought a “closeness” to life, an essential solidarity with the nature of life, an original familiarity. This means evaluating seriously the foundation of the paradox that consists in the possible contradictory nature of existence and thought. The osmosis of thought and practice founds, at the primary level, the condition of possibility for philosophy of life to install itself on the common ground of speculation and action, of theory and praxis. However, what should be verified is the specific kind of thought that can be called philosophy, also considering the plurality of the active-speculative and relational nature of human existence. The paradox of the auto-exclusion of system and existence, of conscience and life, has to be solved not just out of the conscience, nor just inside the conscience (that is to say not only according to idealism nor to immanent realism). The necessity of reconsidering the suitability of conscience to existence, the condition and possibility to realise a certain “adequation” (adæquatio) between the reflective process and the dynamic vital process in its complexity, leads Blondel to see if in the same statute of the conscience there can be the mark of a radical intrinsic openness to the “world of life”. This is for him the synonym of the natural and human active-passive dynamism, which founds any formulation of sense. The way for the solution of the problem is committed to the analysis of the nature of human knowledge. In the same article Blondel considers knowledge as a two-folded activity of thought: on one hand (first for what concerns the progressive formation of the living human being), the cognitive activity of man is prospection; on the other hand (and with a further but inverted step in the subjective development of the conscience), human knowledge appears to be reflection. Let us examine in detail these two kinds of knowledge and their connection, so as to show how they configure a field of intersection between the unknown domain of

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“living life” and the conscious one of the “lived life”. Prospection is « a first knowledge that, perfect in its genre, is direct, at the service of our real and actual projects, linked to our total life, turned toward the future that it anticipates so as to grasp at it, already in previewing and evoking it, being able to grow in clarity and precision without losing anything of its synthetic and practical characteristic ».16 It is a « knowledge ad usum that – descending the course of action that it prepares, accompanies and always surpasses – maintains the restlessness and makes us live always ahead of the point where we are, in the waiting for and in the realisation of a further equilibrium, so that in and through it the problem of life is solved » (=connaissance ad usum qui, descendant le cours de l’action qu’elle prépare, qu’elle accompagne, et qu’elle dépasse sans cesse, entretient l’inquiétude et nous fait vivre toujours au delà du point où nous sommes, dans l’attente et la réalisation d’un équilibre ultérieur : en sorte que c’est en elle et par elle que se résout le problème suprême de la vie).17

Prospection is intrinsically linked to total life, being essentially addressed to the future, instrumental to the living and free project of the subject;18 it is the conscious prothesis (in the sense of an anticipative integrative device) of the configuration of existence through action. We could think that prospection, more than a specific acquired knowledge, is the anticipatory attitude of the subject to the world that surrounds him. Prospection is defined as an attitude of direct knowledge in existence; however, it should not be intended merely as a pragmatic attitude. This point must be carefully noticed: pragmatic empiric knowledge is already a form of reflection, while prospection highlights more an “existential” conscious attitude linked to the same vital effort. Prospection seems then to be the primary radical constitutive property of the living being: it possesses life, being dynamically and originally involved in it as a first form of interiority. Prospection has not to be confused with a simple empiric instrumental form of thought; in Blondel’s words, it manifests the essential and primary aspect of life: it means life itself in its endless capacity not to repeat itself, but to be creatively opened on itself, to surpass itself continuously through its utilitarian openness. This essential being rooted in the life of prospection is clearly affirmed by Blondel : reflection is not opposed only to spontaneity, but to any kind of knowledge which is not able to realise a retrospective movement of analysis on the data of consciential processes and results.19 While prospection is originally included in an “immediate” appearance, reflection is the consciential opening to the phenomenon, to “what appears”. While prospection is a direction movement of the living being, reflection seems rather a reversion movement, which is the return attitude of the living to the definition and closure of its same openness. Reflection may be defined as an evaluation movement of the living being, in as much as it

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is not directly addressed to the modification of anything. While prospection is concretely structured (being considered “concreteness” the actual closeness to the movement of life), reflection is the abstractive analysis of a realised process of consciential and practical opening to the world. Reflection is a “coming-again”, a “return” to the vital active movement through the conscience. Despite their difference, prospection and reflection, however, share a final common task. The question can be expressed in this regard: how does knowledge, in its twofold direction, manifest its solidarity with life’s essence? Blondel often seems to identify life (l’élan directe de la vie) with action, according to a terminological ambiguity that has been widely noticed, especially in his work of 1893. Considering this relative juxtaposition of the notions of life and action, the two directions of knowledge become a unique but twofold expression of life: reflection is “not less natural than” prospection, it is a sort of return of life on itself, through attention and memory, so that reflection is not radically heterogeneous to action, as the main expression of life. The important point, here, is that reflection and prospection are both seen as the cognitive “movements” of the human being, the ways in which he relates to the stream of life, through a different modulation of his matter-spirit dynamism.20 Reflection and prospection differ one from the other; but their respective natures both spring from the original impulse of life. This original link, in the human case, founds the vital reason of a twofold modality to approach the phenomenon as a philosophical object. If this interpretation is correct, then, the Blondelian distinction between prospection and reflection configures a good path to rethinking the relation between the technical aspect of rational speculative activity and the exigency of existential fulfilment, thus specifying the idea of philosophy of life, conceived as the simultaneous existential-speculative effort, thought to be connatural to the human living being.21 Therefore, just because thought is already life (at least in its “genetic” essence), because reflection and its organisational procedure and systematic effort is already and originally an explication of life, so in prospection there appears the first form of subjective active presence in the world; then, for this original solidarity, philosophy can really aim at connecting, in a “formal” and “material” way (that is to say a gnosiological and moral way) the two opposite sides of the “paradox” of phenomenon: existence and conscience, life and system, the two aspects later mentioned by Lacroix and Marcel, science and life.22 Assuming, with Blondel, that prospection and reflection are addressed respectively to the advancement dynamics and purposes of life, philosophy has to be defined as their reciprocal integration, like a dialectic between science

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and life. To this polar definition of thought and philosophy, there seems to correspond implicitly a two-sided dialectic definition of phenomenon, whose constitutive characteristics can be put either on experience or on existence.23 We can now follow and understand more easily the two definitions of philosophy, seen from the two points of view of prospection and reflection. It is important to notice that these two definitions are not just two opposite or antithetic modalities of philosophy, but two elements, two complementary directions of it with regard to the conscious experience, of a “something” that appears, phenomenon. In this light, philosophy is seen as an empowerment of the constitutive direction of reflection and its re-including prospection in itself. Starting from a criticism of intuitionism, which recalls the more general criticism to the approach of Bergson,24 Blondel tries to inaugurate a comprehensive vision of philosophy, whose task is to make itself progressively adequate to the endlessly wider movement of life; philosophy is said to be an “extract” of life, a representative extract of life. It should contain both the spectacle of life and its real ontological enhancement through Logos, by looking for the « adequation of knowledge and existence, and developing simultaneously the reality of our being among the beings and the truth of the beings in us ».25 He concludes that « the consideration of the speculative aspect then leads us to the truth of the practical aspect; the consideration of the practical aspect will make us see the truth of the speculative aspect and the substantial value of thought ».26 Blondel explicitly connects the problem of the relation between the two kinds of knowledge to the question about the essence of philosophy of life, by reconsidering the relation between theory and practise, as a preliminary step for a combined reformulation of the notion of praxis in the direction of a criticism of intellectualism and idealism in philosophy.27 Hence, the truly philosophical effort, consists in trying to realise the synthesis of those two series of knowledge: intellectual and practical knowledge.28 It is interesting to point out some elements. Above all, the impossibility of building philosophy as a simple extrinsic assemblage of two opposite methodological movements of knowledge, united in their origin, and arbitrarily put into contact like in a posterior synthesis; in this light, practical and intellectual knowledge appear cofactors of the traditional dichotomy at the basis of the apparent contradiction between realism and idealism: « There are here two errors to eliminate: the first one is the conception according to which to know would be a simple transferring and a sort of surplus reproduction of the being, a luxury curiosity; and the second one, symmetric to the first, is the conception according to which science and action would be connected one to the other only by the extrinsic relation of the idea with its object, of the application with its principle ».29

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The affirmation of the primacy of effective existence, effectuated through the use of the word “action”, cannot be articulated in terms of a merely abstract assertion of the primacy of action; this would simply mean to transfer the dichotomy to the level of the relation between action and the idea of action, rather than to integrate concretely in the definition of philosophy the prospective and the reflective movement of the human existence. Moreover, the same terminology based on the notion of action has to be surpassed in the name of that life to which the same word “action” seems to be the less inadequate. The light and only evoked criticism of a too strict use of the term “action”, due to the interest for a philosophical adherence to the complexity of life, is then part of a larger criticism of intellectualism and of the conception of the primacy of the idea. When Blondel criticises intellectualism for reducing life to the only abstract dimension and to the limited horizon of the idea, at the same time he addresses another more subtle form of intellectualism, derived from a presumed primacy of action, which is based on the abstract notion of action and praxis. In other words, Blondel seems to think of a sort of intellectualism, that could even be called an “intellectualism of action”, centred on the supposed abstract primacy of the notion of action (instead of action and life themselves in the process of philosophical and reflective research), and in some way parallel to the respective opposite “absolutisation” of reflection and prospection as unique legitimate forms of knowledge and experience. This negative form of “intellectualism of the action” would be the content of what Blondel later calls the “practical agnosticism of thought”,30 as the opposite side of the idealistic belief in the primacy of the idea and in the reduction of the totality of reality to the phenomenon.31 By reaffirming the necessity to maintain together the two aspects of the creativity of life and the clarity of thought, Blondel also criticises the supposed primacy of intuition and, on the opposite side, of a mere analytical démarche. The solution to the dichotomous alternation of idealism and realism consists then in « reintegrating, in the abstract thought, the two terms with the characteristic of spontaneity, of necessity and of solidarity, that they have in the lived thought »,32 to reconnect them in the right, as they are in fact. Idealism and realism, as two interpretations of the thought-phenomenon relationship, denote the two dialectical sides of the philosophical interest, mentioned at the beginning of this study, as the terms of the possible definition of the essence of philosophy. Thus, the two fundamental questions of philosophy (who is?, and what is the being ?) – that is the same as to say the existence and the nature of the being – are irreducible one to the other, but also inter-connected and reciprocally implicated.33

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The alternative between philosophy conceived as an inquiry on what is, and centred on the question of what is the being, is in fact not heterogeneous to the opposite conception of the investigation on the nature of phenomenon: on the one hand, the phenomenon can be analysed in its numerous aspects, qualities, connections, according to a research on its nature, its objective characterisation; on the other hand, it can be seen just as a manifestation of the Being, thus in its existence, that is in what is analogue to other phenomena. But, we could ask after Blondel, are nature and existence – and their main articulations, realism and idealism, but also existentialism and phenomenology – two radically divergent aims for philosophy?34 T H E S O L U T I O N : T H E R E I N T E G R AT I O N O F T H O U G H T I N T O T H E DY NA M I C S O F L I V I N G E X I S T E N C E

We have seen that the Blondelian approach to the problem of knowledge resides in his attempt to think the task of philosophy without a reduction of life to the idea of life, thus making reflection adequate to the real dynamics of human existence. This is the reason why the pure gnosiological problem of the relation between system and life, and the correlated necessity of definition of the conscience (of its possibility to grasp the effective nature of life), becomes in his work an ontological, but also existential and moral problem.35 The lived teleology of the conscience, which contains for Blondel not only the power of abstraction but also, and more importantly, the practical capacity to orient man in life through the decisional and evaluating capacity, discloses the domain of a different conception of the phenomenon itself; let us see why. If it is conceived as the pure representational content of the conscience, in turn understood as the analytical dimension of the Cogito, the phenomenon inevitably is regarded only as a representational object, dialectically but inevitably related to the noumenon; in this light, a phenomenon would manifest an aporethic characteristic: it would be the object that constitutes the content of the conscience and the matter of any scientific analysis or reflection, but, at the same time, it would lack – partially – in expressing reality and its real qualities of reality: « The matter is not to think, in a subjectivist sense, that conscience does not make us go out of conscience itself, nor to affirm, in a sort of phenomenist ontologism, that our internal states are not anything else but our internal states; the matter is simply to know what in fact is conscience ».36 Blondel’s question can be further explained. He asks: what is inside the conscience? What does conscience contain, as a real object? The first possible answer to this question would consist in thinking that the activity of conscience draws on conscience itself, in other words that conscience cannot manifest anything from a true exterior non-consciential reality. But this

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solution would close, not simply the representation of the conscience like a closed room, deprived of any window or door on the worlds, but also the idea of human life, strictly connected to the conscience, to its effective presence in the world, which constitutes the reality of its life. This hypothesis would derive from the prejudicial detachment of the problem of the representation from life. In fact, while a phenomenist ontologism is thought to reduce the being to what appears in the phenomenon (thus leaving to the transcendental analysis of the conscience the task of describing the characteristics of the consciential objects), the alternative solution would consist in thinking that inside conscience there is a prolongation of life itself, which is the same as to affirm that conscience and consciential acts and objects are results of the movement and dynamic explication of reality. In this light, we should take again into consideration the relation between prospection and reflection, as two distinct but one-source directions of thought and conscience. According to the Blondelian point of view, philosophy should not be diffident towards the precise analysis of the conscience, provided that this is not expected to be limited to abstract contents. The task of thought is to catch just inside the data, and not behind it, the richness of reality which points directly at the problem of the Being.37 The real point, then, is to understand that conscience is a horizon which derives, discloses and partially auto-represents the need of life: in this light, according to Blondel’s reflection, conscience should be understood as the meeting-place between the interior dynamics of life and the subjective instances of reflection, evaluation, comprehension. In other words, there should a theoretical shift from the question about the effective reality of the phenomenon, to the question of the vital adequation of the consciencial world to the “total phenomenon” of life, conceived to be progressively caught by reflection and guided to phenomenic adequation through action. In this way, the analysis of the definition of truth and the solution of the alternative idealism and realism is translated, by Blondel, into a dialectic of real adequation – as a process of making the ideal instance adequate to the real spring – of life to life’s tendency and “desire”. The theoretical shift from a pure gnosiological level of the discussion to the practical-moral one corresponds, therefore, to the resolution of the alternative about the idealistic-realistic interpretation of phenomenon through a connection to the dynamics of the vital existential resolution of the man.38 This existential definition of adequation is called adéquation (adjustment, conformation) of life in man: the gnosiological problem, which questions the truth of phenomenon, is not eliminated, but included in a more comprehensive problematic domain, where the problem of knowledge is seen as a part of the problem of existence and of the implications of sense of action. Conscience becomes in this way the intermediate ground in which the interior spring to

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personal flourishing transforms itself in the question about its same conditions. This is the same as the increasing dynamics through which a vital unconscious tendency, just in order to better fulfil itself, acquires a conscious clarification and a moral expansion. The central philosophical question, after this moral-gnosiological translation of the problematic terms, becomes the research – not just theoretical, ideal or abstract, but concrete, active, even laborious – of a creative and never mechanical adaptation of the true living being to the total exigency of life which is assumed reflectively in the very essence of philosophy. In man, as it should be clear now, this movement of vital adaptation reunites two essential ways: a concrete and vital adaptation through action to the exigency of the fulfilment of life’s essence, and the gnosiological adaptation of conscience to the totality of reality, to the existence of beings.39 In Blondel’s work, this idea seems to spring from the same analysis of the nature of conscience; in other words, he would assume that the same phenomenological analysis of the data of the conscience can disclose an essential existential disproportion, pertinent to the peculiar becoming of life. The analysis of the conscience, of its internal processes and dynamism (its “internal determinism”), leads us to reconsider the practical exigencies and the principles of judgement as expressions of a transcendental disproportion which moves the process of progressive adequation of thought with action through the form of the will. This existential disproportion, thus, founds for Blondel not only the essence of the relation between Cogito and existence, but also and more deeply the movement of research of the truth of philosophy, as well as the postulates of its moral methodology.40 Therefore, the radical constitutive disproportion of the living being, eminently the human being, is “the most essential law of life” and, consequently, the “first truth of philosophy”, namely of a “philosophy of life” and, we could comment here not illegitimately, the actual content of an “integral” phenomenology, as an inquiry on the nature of phenomenon: Truth to conquer is not an external abstract, but an internal concrete (=La vérité à conquérir n’est pas un abstrait externe, mais un concret interne).41 Posing the problem of the interior adequation, at one time philosophy poses the problem of the universal reality, in the form in which it can be solved. From the apparent self to the integral self there is an infinite to go through, to fill. In order to adequate myself and possess me, I have the universe and God to put into this need of being, of eternity, of happiness, that constitutes me (=En posant le problème de l’équation intérieure, la philosophie pose du même coup le problème de l’universelle réalité, sous la seule forme où il peut être résolu. Du moi apparent au moi intégral il y a en effet un infini à franchir, à remplir. Pour m’égaler et me posséder, j’ai l’univers et Dieu à mettre dans ce besoin d’être, d’éternité, de bonheur qui me constitue).42

The equation that knowledge should realise not intuitively but progressively, is not only an intellectual adequation, but also at the same time an active and

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vital transformation. In this sense philosophy of action, conceived as a “moral phenomenology of life”, aims at discovering the link between the ontological truth and the moral condition to accomplish an ontological genesis, so to say an onto-genetics. Knowledge then requires, in the Blondelian perspective, not only a complete method, but also the radical, personal, “existential” effort of the single man, his initiative, his creativity, his lived engagement in the adequation to Being realising truth. In this intuition of the intertwining of existence, the exigency of personal achievement, the vital source of cognitive and practical aspects of the conscience, there is a strict analogy, more than with Husserlian phenomenology, with some other main philosophies which have largely founded the reflection in the last century, such as personalism and philosophy of existence. A brief summary consideration on this point will be the last step of the present study.

C O N C L U S I O N : T H E D I A L E C T I C S O F A D Æ Q U A T I O R E A L I S: T H E COMMON SOURCE OF PERSONALISM AND EXISTENTIALISM

In Blondel’s words, the stress on the centrality of existential concreteness does not coincide with any kind of subjectivism nor individualism, conceived as related terms of an exaggerated form of existentialism, deprived of all transcendental instance, in turn not capable of justifying the effective interior dialectics of fulfilment and inadequacy of the human being. In effect, such a criticism of existentialism has been expressed by Lacroix, by making reference to the work of Blondel: « The peculiarity of atheist existentialism is to multiply the transcendences, that is the movements of overcoming, but by remaining always in the world: its transcendence is inside the immanence. And it is impossible to understand how a philosophy which defines man by his “overcoming” does not see in him anything but a natural being ».43 Lacroix considers in his work Marxisme, Existentialism, Personnalisme the peculiarity of the Blondelian contribution to the elaboration of a dialectical philosophy on the relation between thought and existence.44 Anything but a closed existentialism is more distant to the real dynamics of existence and life; on the contrary, Blondel’s dialectics of gnosiology and morals realises a synthesis of the different legitimate exigencies of thought, just by placing itself at their common starting point according to an “integral” philosophy of existence. The attempt to find the starting point of philosophy, then, coincides for Blondel with the criticism of a philosophy conceived as a pure abstract discipline or a theoretical exercise, deprived of any real engagement of the whole humanity of the being.45 The illusion of most of the philosophical systems consists in believing that the problem of phenomenon can be solved just in a

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speculative way, that is without involving a real lived acquisition of the truth. That is why philosophy is not just an autonomous dialectic of reflection or a speculative effort; on the contrary it involves the reality which is at the end (and originally at the beginning) of its logical effort. This seems to us the sense of the affirmation that « the effectuated action is an integrant condition of the philosophical knowledge »,46 and that « in spite of the words of Descartes, the action and the idea of action are not at all the same ; that the aim of speculation is just to move into this interval, without ever presuming to fulfil it only by itself, and that, in a word, the more technical effort philosophy makes in order to define itself, the more deeply it inserts itself into life ».47 The salutary dialectics between system and existence, as it is claimed generally by personalist thinkers, coincides with what Lacroix calls, probably after the lesson of Blondel, an acting system, as a really lived system of organised thoughts and reflections.48 In conclusion, through the “revolution” of perspective about the essence of philosophy and of truth, Blondel seems to open philosophy to a careful inquiry about the link between thought and life and the moral engagement of everyday life. University of Macerata, Italy NOTES 1

Hannah Arendt, What is Existenz Philosophy? (New York: Literary Trust of Hannah ArendtBlücher), it. transl. by Sante Maletta, Che cos’è la filosofia dell’esistenza? (Milano: Jaca Book, 1998). 2 Ivi, chap. II.; cf. Sante Maletta, Hannah Arendt: una filosofia della cultura, in Arendt, Che cos’è la filosofia dell’esistenza?, op. cit., pp. 10–11. 3 Maletta, Hannah Arendt: una filosofia della cultura, op. cit., p. 17. 4 Jean Lacroix clearly affirms this continuity : « Je pense qu’entre les “idéalistes” et les “existentialistes” ceux qui cherchent à appliquer la méthode réflexive, la “réflexion” à l’existence par exemple – un Amédée Ponceau – sont, qu’ils le sachent ou non, les véritables continuateurs de Blondel » (Jean Lacroix Discussion, in Claude Troisfontaines (éd.), Centre d’Archives Blondel. Journées d’inauguration, 30–31 mars 1973. Textes des interventions (Louvain : Éditions de l’Institut supérieur de Philosophie, 1974), p. 51). Looking from this point of view, Maurice Blondel’s reflection, matured in the critical tradition of Cartesian tradition and nourished with the study of Kantian criticism, is important for two reasons: first, because his main early work, L’Action (1893), has introduced into the debate, nourished by thinkers like Brunschvicg, Boutroux, Delbos, Lalande, Parodi, Ollé-Laprune, Bergson, a critical attitude toward intellectualism, a transcendental form of “integral pragmatism”, and a new philosophical possibility based on active anthropology and action’s primacy; secondly, because he has inspired, often only implicitly, the second generation of French philosophers of the Twentieth Century, especially the catholic personalist thinkers, like Gabriel Marcel, Mounier, Maritain, Lacroix, Vialatoux, and lately Paul Ricoeur and Michel Henry. Considering this “interlaced” position at the crossing point

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between spiritualism, intuitionism, criticism, existentialism, personalism, and even psychological experimental studies, Blondel can be assumed as an interesting field of analysis for us, mainly for his attention to this central issue: the link between thought and life, in the light of a reformulation of his centrality for the possibility, the nature, the methodological shape of a new and more coherent philosophy. 5 Maurice Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” in Œuvres complètes. Tome II. 1888–1913 : La philosophie de l’action et la crise moderniste (Paris: PUF, 1997), pp. 527–569 (my own translation). The text is composed of two articles, which both first appeared in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne (t. 151, January 1906, pp. 337–360 and t. 152, June 1906, pp. 225–249). About thirty years later, Blondel will recollect and integrate those considerations in his work La Pensée (excursus 20 “Prospection”). The central theme of the important article of 1906 is the role of philosophy in the light of an attempt to conjugate the exigencies of reflection and those of a lived “engagement”, the possibility to become a work of science and life at the same time (cf. Claude Troisfontaines, Notice, in Maurice Blondel, Œuvres complètes. Tome II, pp. 527–528). The first part of the article (the former first article) exposes the distinction between a direct knowledge, prospection (which “accompanies” action) and an inverse knowledge, réflexion (which interrogates the means and the results of action). With this distinction, Blondel aims at showing that philosophy must not disjoin these two forms of knowledge, rather it has to be their synthesis. The second part of the article (previously the second article) goes deeper into this point, and affirms that reflection is an “integral synthesis” of prospection, in the context of the whole dynamism of man. This element prepares and founds the logical conception of the adequation of spirit and life (real adequation), necessary for Blondel to integrate and complete the one of adequation of the idea to the object (speculative adequation). The integral synthesis, therefore, has to be revealed on a wider and deeper field than the mere intellectual one, in order to be situated in a concept of logical-ontological-moral development of the human, hence in the effective existential tension. The idea exposed in the article of 1906 has been lately re-elaborated in an important work, La Pensée (t. 1–2, Paris: PUF, 1934). 6 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 529. 7 Ivi, p. 530. While noticing that Hegelian dialectics is based on an ideal notion of phenomenon, Blondel elucidates his critical position by explicating the necessity of a new notion of the relation between theory and practise, thought to be correspondent to the theoretical couple thoughtexistence. But, rather to be an usual aspect of philosophy, this link is its “regulative ideal”, the ideal form of its nature based on the synergy between its form and matter; while the form of the philosophical method is given by a defined attitude to the phenomenon, centred upon the systematic principle of reflection, the matter of the philosophical thought should not be different from the total quality of life itself. In this light, Blondel seems to incorporate the descendant tradition of the philosophies by Augustine and Pascal for what concerns the interest in connecting the reflection to the lived dimension of the questioning, and Descartes and Kant for what concerns the awareness of the critical necessity of formal guarantee of the reflective process. 8 Ivi, p. 530. 9 Ivi. 10 The italian intellectual Enrico Castelli postulated a coincidence between the Blondelian expression of “science of life” and a “doctrine of the human perfectionnement” (Enrico Castelli, Filosofia della vita. Saggio di una critica dell’attualismo e di una teoria della pratica (Rome: Signorelli, 1924), p. 16). 11 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., pp. 545–546 : « Aussi la réflexion, si elle est un artifice, est-elle un artifice naturel et même indispensable. Ce qui est artificiel et décevant, ce n’est donc pas de l’employer, selon le vœu de la nature, au service du

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travail solidaire de la pensée et de l’action ; c’est de prétendre ou bien user exclusivement ou bien se passer totalement des résultats de ses analyses, pour constituer spéculativement une philosophie de la connaissance et de l’existence ». 12 Cf. Maurice Blondel, “The inconsistency of Jean Paul Sartre’s Logic”, The Thomist, vol. X, october 1947, n. 4, pp. 393–397: « Certainly, philosophy must raise the question of the meaning of human existence, and all reflection should take into account the destiny of man himself. Philosophy is not only a scheme of ideas; it is the establishment of a position with regard to the Absolute and each one of us, at every moment, irrevocably stakes infinite values. But we must not allow the abuse of deadening abstractions to throw us into the sticky subjectivity of the hard existent [. . .]. When, with regard to action’s internal springs, I try to describe the interlocking links of action, I never do it as if analysis were insufficient of itself, or as if description could be gratuitous. There are over-all structures, supra-individual standards, organics wholes, and intelligible syntheses » (p. 395); and: « If phenomenology continues to develop contradictory dialectics, it is because the modern phenomenologists have revived the divorce between the individual and the universal. They start by making sacrosanct one point of perspective, chosen arbitrarily, and then try to bring all the facets and values of existence into this perspective, cost what it may. This is the worst of all abstractions: to seek to reduce to an identical norm – arbitrarily conceived – the diverse reactions and needs of human beings which can be integrated only in a hierarchy of principles and values. If Sartrianism is only true for M. Sartre, we may say that it is no longer true, even for him; truth and universality are one » (Ivi). 13 This idea of an original solidarity, inside the nature of philosophy, between knowledge and existence, highlights a possible paradox, pointed out mainly by Gabriel Marcel, through its criticism of the notion of system. This criticism has been considered by Jean Lacroix in a chapter of his work about marxism, personalism and existentialism, dedicated to the relation between the notions of system and existence. Assuming the “system”, after Gabriel Marcel, as an “effort to make one’s own postulates explicit”, Lacroix asks what can this explication of the postulates be, unless a rational attempt to found their non-contradiction, their necessary link, to define their relations with what they let understand and organise in a whole ensemble of truths. Lacroix writes: « Il y a une protestation perpétuelle de l’existant contre le systématisé ; mais dès que l’existent veut philosopher, que fait-il sinon systématiser, fût-ce l’existence ? Telle est sans doute l’origine dialectique de la philosophie : en deçà de toute construction particulière elle est dialogue du système et de l’existence. Ce qui signifie que philosopher c’est faire dialoguer le temps et l’éternité. Le système et l’existence sont les deux limites de la philosophie : le pur systématique comme le simple existant sont en dehors d’elle, mais elle ne vit que de leur opposition toujours renaissante » (Jean Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme. Présence de l’éternité dans le temps (Paris: PUF, 1971), p. 51). Lacroix sees the dialectic source of philosophy in the correspondence between time and eternity; this conceptual couple is the symbol of the dialectics between conceptual system and lived existence, situated at the basis of philosophy. Lacroix rightly speaks about a dialectics because of the presence, in these two sides of the problem, of an apparent alternative statute. While system is the conceptual domain of thought (of what has been thought and, hence, fixed in an abstract and unreal conceptual form), the existence relates to the living actual experience, which constantly contradicts the static truth of what has been fixed. 14 Maurice Blondel, “Une des sources de la pensée moderne. L’évolution du spinozisme,” in Œuvres complètes. Tome II. 1888–1913 : La philosophie de l’action et la crise moderniste (Paris: PUF, 1997), p. 83 : « Du moment que l’on posait en principe que “la connaissance de la vérité absolue, étant l’unité de la science et de la vie, est éminemment la science de la vie”, cette conséquence était forcée, et c’est Hegel qui la met en pleine lumière : “La pensée, dit-il, est la plus haute, et, vue de plus près, la seule forme sous laquelle l’Être éternel et absolu puisse être

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saisi”. Et quoique destituée de son caractère métaphysique, cette même prétention reste le fond du phénoménisme. Pour Taine, “c’est la science qui pose et c’est la science qui doit résoudre le problème morale, absorbant pour notre plus grand bien toute notre vitalité intellectuelle et pratique : la vérité morale ne peut être poursuivie qu’à travers la vérité scientifique ; elle en est la conséquence ou le but”. Pourquoi cette substitution de la pensée à la pratique effective ? et d’où naît cette usurpation de l’une sur l’autre ? Le voici, ce semble. Ce qui fait le fond de toute l’entreprise, c’est le désir, c’est le besoin de voir le problème de la vie absolument résolu par le seul effort de l’homme. Or, de ce qui ne nous appartient pas, de ce qui ne dépend pas de nous, il semble que la pensée, et la pensée seule, nous donne une représentation qui, elle, nous appartient. Si donc il faut que le problème soit résolu par le seul effort de l’homme, il faut aussi que ce soit par le seul effort de la pensée, par la libre pensée ». 15 Castelli, even if he sketches an over-simplified resume of Blondelian conception, points out a central element, which will constitute the real issue of our following pages, as an element which needs to be fully developed in order to verify and catch the possibility of such a “philosophy of life”, conceived as an integration between concept and vital dynamism or, with the words of Lacroix, as the coming of the spirit back to experience: the problem of the nature of knowledge itself, of its characteristics in relation to the human vital dynamism, conceived as the existential horizon from which the knowledge effort starts up (cf. also Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 53). 16 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 532. 17 Ivi. 18 The essential role of freedom in knowledge comes clear in the nature and the role of belief, that, for this reason, has to be included among the important experiences to be understood philosophically (cf. Léon Ollé-Laprune, De la certitude morale). The connection between the activity of freedom and the existential role of belief appears, at least generically, the connection between the speculative and the moral aspect of philosophy. In a chapter (“La signification du doute cartésien”) of one of his books, Lacroix also stressed this double characteristic of belief, in this case interpreting the Cartesian conception of certitude in terms of a defined suspension of the judgement: « Le doute apparaît ainsi comme l’expression la plus profonde de la liberté de l’esprit » (Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 86). « Le vertige c’est l’affirmation immédiate, le doute c’est le pouvoir de négativité de l’esprsit qui permet une affirmation médiate et réfléchie, c’est-à-dire personnelle. C’est donc dans la résistance même à ma crédulité à l’égard du donné sensible ou de la pression sociale que je prends conscience de moi et me crée en tant qu’esprit pensant : le doute c’est la prise de conscience de la personne. Le Cogito n’est donc pas un second moment de la dialectique cartésienne, il n’est pas postérieur au doute, il est esprit se saisissant luimême en tant que spiritualité pure dans l’ascèse du doute » (Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 88). 19 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 533 : « Aussi est-ce à tort que d’ordinaire l’on désigne par l’unique mot de “réflexion”, en l’opposant seulement à la spontanéité, deux démarches de la pensée aussi radicalement différentes, et même divergentes, que la connaissance attentive à l’œuvre toujours concrète vers laquelle nous tendons, et que la connaissance tournée vers les résultats obtenus ou les procédés employés, tels que par abstraction on les analyse rétrospectivement. C’est seulement cette dernière sorte de pensée qui mérite le nome de réflexion ». 20 Ivi, pp. 533–534. 21 Ivi, p. 535 : « Ceux deux sortes de connaissance sont si vraiment différentes qu’on peut pour ainsi dire nier de l’une tout ce qu’on affirme de l’autre, pour peu du moins qu’on les considère du point de vue où nous sommes placés en ce moment, du point de vue de la réflexion qui les

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traites comme choses constituées, in esse, non comme progrès qui s’accomplissent, in fieri. – La première, en effet, ne peut être immobilisée sous le regard intérieur de l’analyse, sans être au moins paralysée par l’attention qui la fixe et comme tuée par l’analyse qui la décompose : elle est toute au service des vues toujours individuelles et concrètes qui forment l’enjeu de la vie pour chacun de nous ; par ce qu’il y a d’unique et d’ineffable dans chaque personnalité, elle échappe aux catégories logiques et aux classifications scientifiques ; elle résume toutes les expériences passées dans une anticipation qui est la cause implicite mais réelle et toujours singulière de son développement actuel ; elle est donc capable de devenir de plus en plus claire à mesure qu’elle devient de plus en plus synthétique ; et, pour elle, la nature entière des choses n’est que la série des moyens qu’elle subordonne à ses fins. – La seconde, en revanche, fractionne cette unité vitale ; elle abstrait, compare, généralise ; aux raisons vraiment décisives et singulières de l’acte qu’elle étudie se substituent les analyses qui morcellent le fait en objets susceptibles d’être connus et réalisés isolément ; elle les examine, ces objets, en ce qu’ils ont de générique, comme s’ils étaient des absolus, nécessairement juxtaposés et extérieurs les uns aux autres. Et dès lors leur cause, leur être paraît non plus tenir à ce qu’ils ont de propre ou d’unique dans leur relation avec la réalité singulière dont la réflexion les a extraits, mais résider en une idée générique qui leur serait commune, idée de cause substituée à la finalité toute singulière qui mettait en branle mon action. Tandis que la prospection s’oriente vers l’individuum ineffabile, la réflexion tend vers l’ens generalissimum ». 22 Ivi, p. 536: « Au regard de l’historien il semble incontestable que la philosophie a longtemps vécu de la confusion de ces deux sortes de connaissance. D’une part elle s’est toujours préoccupée des “fins” de l’homme; elle s’alimente à l’inquiétude des âmes penchées sur les profondeurs de leur nature ou vers les mystères de leur avenir. D’autre part, instinctivement réfléchissante, elle s’est toujours tournée vers “les causes”, vers les “conditions”, vers les “idées” [. . .]. D’où l’impression équivoque qu’elle laisse ; elle n’est à proprement parler ni science, ni vie, quoiqu’elle soit un peu de l’une et un peu de l’autre, tantôt se bornant à offrir dans le miroir de la spéculation “l’image” ou “l’explication” de ce qui est, tantôt prétendant à produire de la vérité et de la vie en contribuant à réaliser ce qui n’est pas encore, “ce qui doit être” ». 23 Maurice Blondel, Sur Berger et l’empirique et le transcendant. Brouillon de la communication à la Société marseillaise de philosophie, Centre d’Archives Blondel: « Le mots expérience et existence semblent définis par lui d’une manière exclusive, qui préjuge un peu trop arbitrairement l’énoncé même du problème à dégager de la confusion où il demeure pour la plupart de nos contemporaines : oui ou non, la vérification sensible et la science positive seraient-elles la mesure unique du réel ; et l’existence n’est-ce que ce qui est palpable, contrôlable, utilisable, dans l’ordre des faits physiquement imposables et exploitables [. . .] ? L’idéalisme a le tort de ne pas concevoir l’existence sous une forme et selon un type d’après lesquels l’être ne pourrait être. Mais la pensée ne saurait les affirmer qu’en subsumant d’autres réalités, unitives et réalisatrices sans lesquelles l’expérimenté, l’existentiel ne serait pas convenable ni substantifiable. Conclusions de la spéculation moderne : le donné ne peut être renié, ni se suffire. En revanche, s’il se restreint trop . . ., il étend abusivement le sens du mot surnaturel, métempirique . . . comme s’il n’y avait au-delà de ce qui est brut rien de subsistant ». 24 Philosophical knowledge should not be pure intuition, nor pure construction ; rather, according to an expression by Joseph Vialatoux, it should be a “progressively intuitive knowledge” (cited in Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 66). 25 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., pp. 549–550. 26 Ivi. 27 Through the primacy of the concept of praxis, Marx stresses the importance of a redressing of philosophy as a transformative activity: the important is not abstract speculation, but concrete transformation of the world. We could try to read such an exigency also in the Blondelian text, like

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in the following text, extracted from the article L’illusion idéaliste: « Nous ne pouvons donc rester, nous ne pouvons devenir nous-mêmes qu’en nous dépassant, perpétuellement ; mais, en cette sujétion, il n’y a rien que de conforme à notre vœu. Car nous ne cherchons rien en nous qui n’y soit déjà en germe, et nous n’y trouvons rien qui ne soit mis en évidence et en valeur par le travail de la réflexion. Nous n’apportons rien à la connaissance qui ne surgisse des intimités de la vie, et nous ne rendons rien à la vie qui ne soit conquête de l’activité spirituelle. Rentrer vraiment en soi, c’est forcement se transformer » (Maurice Blondel, “L’illusion idéaliste,” in Œuvres complètes. Tome II. 1888–1913 : La philosophie de l’action et la crise moderniste (Paris: PUF, 1997), p. 209). The moral aim in the approaches, the Blondelian and the Marxian, is analogue: the matter is to return to man his own mastery on himself, his own plenty of existence, capacities and creativity; however, while Marx accentuates the importance of the social and exterior transformation, linked to the possession of the means of productivity, Blondel articulates his theory on the level of personal life, rather than on the structure of collective relations. And also, while in Marx the primacy of the concept of praxis corresponds to the absolute criticism to any speculative attitude, Blondel maintains or tries to maintain the complementarities of the two, thought and action. « Il est vrai de dire que tout système obstiné à placer l’être au bout d’une recherche spéculative échouera finalement dans ses affirmations. Car la plénitude de l’être réside justement dans ce qui sépare l’idée abstraite, de l’acte où elle est issue, et de l’acte où elle a pour unique mission de nous orienter : s’attacher, comme si c’était le réel, au résidu, au pensé, c’est donc prendre le cadavre du père pour la vie du fils » (Blondel, “L’illusion idéaliste,” op. cit., p. 212). « Finding in the act the necessary commentary of the speculation » (Blondel, “L’illusion idéaliste,” op. cit., p. 213) is the task of knowledge. 28 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 546; Maurice Blondel, Carnets intimes, tome II. 1894–1949, Paris: Cerf, pp. 207–208: « 26 novembre 1917: Ce qui fait être et ce que fait être la philosophie. La philosophie moins qu’aucune autre discipline échappe à ce besoin de se définir en se constituant; la vie personnelle et spirituelle étant ce qui se fait, intus et in aeternum . . . Sed contra: Elle est in via, et nous conduit du terminus a quo au terminus ad quem par un itinéraire qui n’est pas seulement un inventaire, mais une conquête, une promotion, une réalisation: non pas qu’elle procure effectivement toute la solution; elle nous libère des fausses solutions déficientes, empêche de nous arrêter trop tôt, met en demeure de passer outre, aide à reconnaître l’exigence réelle, l’ultimatum prononcé en nous, éclaire sur nos responsabilités et anticipe la révélation finale . . . Elle contribue donc à notre évolution créatrice (ontogénie et phylogénie) non pas au sens positiviste, immanentiste ou pragmatiste, mais au sens d’une transposition et d’un rattachement de tout le devenir et de tout le relatif à l’absolu et à l’être. Elle est action en ce sens qu’elle intègre dans la vie unitive et contemplative tout le mouvement de la nature, de la conscience, de l’humanité . . . ». 29 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 552. 30 Ivi, p. 547. 31 Cf. also Blondel, “L’illusion idéaliste,” op. cit., p. 197. 32 Ivi, pp. 197–198. 33 Ivi, p. 200. 34 Ivi, p. 202. 35 However, it is necessary to specify that in Blondelian work we can talk about an ‘existential’ problem in the general sense of an inquiry on the total sense of existence, even of its opening to transcendent exigencies, so with a radically different meaning referring to Sartre’s existentialism or absolute humanism, against which Blondel addresses an explicit criticism. So, there are two correlative tasks for philosophy, respectively correspondent to the two directions of thought (the prospective and the reflective one): on one hand, and preliminarily, it is necessary to understand

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the nature, the vital source, the infra-structures of the conscience, its practical intentionality; on another hand, it is necessary to grasp the teleology of the consciential movement, its moral and reflective contribution to the same movement of life which has generated it. All this must be done from the point of view and with the peculiar scientific interest of the human being, since this is the one legitimate subject of the question about the sense of the destiny of his own life. 36 Ivi, p. 206 (my italics). 37 Ivi, pp. 552–553. 38 Blondel, “L’illusion idéaliste,” op. cit., p. 207: « Qu’il y ait à ainsi à accomplir, pour savoir ce qu’on pense authentiquement et pour s’expliciter soi-même, une première tâche nécessaire autant qu’oubliée ; qu’il faille substituer à la question de l’accord de la pensée avec la réalité ou à celle de la valeur objective du subjectif le problème équivalent et tout différent de l’adéquation immanente de nous-mêmes avec nous-mêmes, et que, pour résoudre la difficulté ainsi précisée et replacée en nous, une méthode nouvelle, aussi étrangère au subjectivisme qu’à l’objectivisme, s’impose naturellement, c’est peut-être ce qui paraîtrait tout simple sans l’obstacle d’habitudes d’esprit hostiles ». 39 Once again, Lacroix offers a pertinent explanation of this essential aspect of the Blondelian philosophy : « La connaissance de soi chez l’homme est conscience de soi. Or la conscience n’est pas autre chose que le sentiment d’une certaine distance de soi-même à soi-même en même temps que l’effort pour se rapprocher de soi : elle n’est jamais pleine possession de l’être par lui-même, mais conquête progressive, création continue. La conscience, si l’on veut, est connaissance en mouvement d’un sujet qui toujours s’affirme et poursuit de s’affirmer, parce que jamais il ne se possède immobile. Ainsi la médiation continue est le substitut nécessaire d’une impossible immédiation. Pour aller de soi-même à soi-même, pour égaler sa connaissance à ce que l’on est, il n’y a point de voie directe : jamais nous ne possédons sans intermédiaire la plénitude de notre être. C’est que, comme dit Blondel, “si nous avons l’être, nous ne sommes pas absolument notre être” » (Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 67). 40 Blondel, “L’illusion idéaliste,” op. cit., p. 209. 41 Ivi, p. 208. 42 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 558. 43 Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 73. 44 Ivi, p. 74: « La pensée humaine se caractérise à la fois : (1) Par une capacité de construire, par un besoin de systématiser, par un pouvoir, si l’on peut dire, de déborder indéfiniment le donné par le construit – et c’est la grandeur du moi constructeur, si bien analysé par Kant : on peut sans doute aller au-delà du criticisme, mais on ne saurait en aucun cas revenir en deçà ; (2) Par un certain sentiment de l’insuffisance de tous les systèmes et de toutes les constructions, par une remise continue en chantier de tous les édifices précédemment élevés, par une réponse à un appel qui retentit sans cesse ». Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., pp. 557–558: « Mais, dira-t-on, une recherche ainsi entendue ne nous emprisonne-t-elle pas dans “le sujet” ? ne discrédite-t-elle point le travail objectif de la réflexion ? ne restreint-elle pas la philosophie au seul problème moral, ou même à un aspect unique du problème moral, à l’individualisme le plus autocentrique, pour ne pas dire au solipsisme ? – Non ; car elle ne connaît d’abord ni “dehors” ni “dedans” ; et elle n’implique pas moins comment la vie personnelle se dégage peu à peu des choses où elle est immergée, qu’elle ne montre comment nous résumons en nous la nature entière pour la faire servir à nos fins ». 45 Blondel, Carnets Intimes, tome II. 1894–1949, op. cit., p. 180: « La philosophie est une intégration technique de tous les efforts hiérarchisés de la pensée, de la science et de la vie. Elle manifeste l’unité de l’effort humain, le compose, le prolonge. La philosophie n’est pas une image, un projet de la vie elle est la conscience aussi savante et aussi compréhensive que possible

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de l’unde-qua. La philosophie n’a pas un objet, elle a une tâche et son objet c’est la vie à la fin possédée et comprise dans la révélation finale ». 46 Blondel, “Le point de départ de la recherche philosophique,” op. cit., p. 560. 47 Ivi, p. 560. 48 Lacroix, Marxisme, existentialisme, personnalisme, op. cit., p. 75 : « Entre le connaître et l’exister le dialogue est sans fin et notre vocation propre est d’être ce système agissant qui se dépasse toujours lui-même, non en cessant d’être soi, mais en s’ouvrant toujours plus à cet au-delà de toute connaissance et de toute existence par lequel seul nous connaissons et nous sommes. Ainsi se dégagent les grande lignes d’un personnalisme qui intégrerait toutes les acquisitions de l’existentialisme et surtout du marxisme tout en les dépassant ».

S E C T I O N IV

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

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

TO

T H E M AT T E R O F D E AT H

ABSTRACT

I would like to propose a new regard on the philosophical hermeneutics as the archeology of happening. So, hermeneutics here will be the method, worked out in the frame of the phenomenological tradition. This method could be helpful for the contemporary human being, standing before the task to understand the essence of states of things constellations, which are always unexpected . . . The human being is here the consciousness meditating over the world in order to grasp the sense of the world’s occurrences. Thus, the event’s archeology (the archeology of happening) will be applied to study occurrences, which are indispensable to express the human existence in the proper way, such as: death, in the context of erotism, love, otherness, suicide, human freedom. To consider these interesting aspects, wreathing the life and death mystery I would like to consider some statements of: Georges Bataille, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and Vladimir Jankelevitch. In this paper is it presented that death, love, and erotism are the experiences of the deepest going into the own human immanence, the experience, by which the human being is able to participate into existence in its fullness and freedom. Especially death could be treated as a life tread out from the immanence, as a disperse corporality, as a transformation in the circle of existence. So, death as if measure off the madness of an abbyssymal openness of human being, of an human expose on the life, the life in a climate of the unpredictable future . . . L I F E I N F R O N T O F T H E M Y S T E R Y O F D E AT H

When we daily go into the vibrating movement of a road, we can expect of any moment our soft body, consisting mostly of water, can be torn by steel, can brutally collide with hard asphalt, so that we can lose our life. But how the feeling of existence increases when we are successful in crossing the road and without injury to reach the other side of the street. As if to have had the 277 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 277–293. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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experience of the possibility of death brings on the effect of a sort of holiday, by which existence manifests its force . . . Thinkers from the European philosophical tradition discern the human way of experiencing the world as occurring in a sphere, a sphere of distance, which frees the human being from the pressures of an eternally changing reality. Since Heraclitean times, we, the people of Europe have been astonished at the pendulum of life and death in the river of reality, which was later named the dialectic of the entity. However, the death of the human being is special, because it is not only the ordinary end of life, but it means that human life is exceptional. I would like to consider some interesting and intertwining aspects of the mystery of death, taking into account statements from G. Bataille, M. Heidegger. E. Levinas, E. Cioran and V. Jankelevitch. A FEW WORDS ABOUT METHOD

Who among us does not stand before the task of having to interpret happenings occurring in life? However, not many people are interested in the methodological constitution of interpreting such activity. In our culture we use language formed in philosophical disputations about the riddle of relationships: the human being-the world, also of philosophical considerations trying to solve the problem of an undoubting knowledge. Therefore, of interest to us is the zone of human learning which embraces these epistemological, named transcendental, trends, which have developed in the modern period of European philosophy. When we look at our philosophical tradition, we can say that Descartes has encouraged us to a meditational route to learning. On the one hand Descartes grasped reality as based on two, irreducible to one another, elements of reality: res extensa, and res cogitans. On the other hand, he noticed that the sphere of ego cogito is the spring of evidence and truth. However it is to Kant’s merit that he noticed that authentic learning acts and processes cannot be grasped out of human sensuality. The transcendental motif of philosophical reflection promoted by Descartes and Kant, was continued by Husserl, and Descartes’ accent on meditation brings as a result phenomenological meditation, which is crucial for contemporary philosophy. In the frame of phenomenological activity, the learning subject rises to the rank of consciousness, giving total sense to the world. Husserlian considerations are the base from which to speak about events, from which archeology escapes the phenomenological method. It is this kind of archeology that E. Levinas wants to reach in order to consider the mystery of time. He notices that to enter the question: what time as time is?, it is necessary to move outside of phenomenology.1

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It may be well to pay attention to a new kind of philosophical narration, irrespective of whether we consider the possibility of the realization of Levinas’ task to be outside of phenomenology. Namely, the European epistemological tradition is enriched by Levinas moral reflection. The transcendental ability of the learning consciousness the French philosopher treats as a kind of transformation, as a given from the world “wound”, into a rational game of The Same. Among French thinkers, G. Bataille also accents the corporal side of human existence, revealing it as pain, suffering, delight, decay, putrefaction, and so on. On the other hand, it may be well to notice that analysis of the world’s occurrences happens in the frame of a learning model of the possibilities of human learning. In such a case, every expression, as a result of the human sensibility of the world, finds its place in description within epistemological borders. Thus, one can assert that the transcendental reflection, starting with Descartes’ philosophy, developing in Kant’s critic analysis, and culminating in Husserlian phenomenology, describes, in substance, the frame of the learning power of the human being. On the one hand, one can not transcend this frame, but on the other, it guarantees, theoretically infinite interpretations of events, which humans can meet in the world. In the above context we can introduce a new view on the hermeneutical interpretative attempt as a kind of an archeology of happening. This kind of hermeneutics, developed from a phenomenological background, gives to the astonished human being a hint of how to understand the essence of state of affairs which are revealed on the path of human existence. The human being, as the meditating power over the world of consciousness, tries to grasp the sense of that which is happening in the world. And the world is here, as the Heraclitean logos (Logos), drawing into conversation the searching sense of the human being. Let us notice that Gadamer’s project, which grasps philosophy as a kind of notions history, is a kind of meditating entry into the meanings of notions, and can be named a notions archeology. So, in this outline, we use hermeneutics as the archeology of happening, to consider the crucial characteristics of human existence, such as: death, eroticism, love, sovereignty. T H E T R A N S C E N D E N TA L I A N D S O V E R E I G N T Y

In the frame of epistemological analysis it is revealed that the transcendental I is the source of the world, and to be more specific, of that profile of the world to which the learning human is sensitive. It turns out that the power of learning at the same time is limited to that part of reality revealed, which is

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grasped by this power. To realize this state of affairs means to be on the level of critical consciousness (after Kant). As H. Arendt says (The Life of the Mind), the human being in the activity of thinking reaches a judge’s position, by means of distance, given by this activity of thinking. In the phenomenology context, meditative distance, as a result of a phenomenological reduction, could also be treated as the space of human freedom. This being because of this meditative distance the human being can brake free from murderous universal change, can, as it where taste his independence. It seems that independence, freedom or sovereignty, as one of the real features of humanity follows on from the kind of human condition described in the frame of transcendental philosophy (Kant, Husserl), as the consciousness of distance. The critical consciousness is grasped in classic hermeneutics (Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur), as the human ability to speak about the world, so, it is only through language, that the human being can only really have the world. Or, (after Merleau-Ponty) it is through language, which is a subtle kind of corporality (la chair), that humanity is freed from all conditions in the situation where humanity itself cannot get rid of them, so that it guarantees a sort of relative freedom. The transcendental I can also be read as a kind of solid feature of human existence, but it must be applied to a concrete humanity (also to those people who recognize the situation of the transcendental I). This situation reveals that the aspect of the meeting of the human and the world is dynamic, and is the source of the human attempt at expression. But this attempt gives humanity a relative distance to the changes that occur in reality, which can be recognized as the source of human sovereignty (liberty, freedom). THE MONAD, FREEDOM, ECONOMY

It seems that the monadic solitude of human existence follows on from a statement of fact: that birth and, especially, death, we experience alone. As Levinas noticed, existence is something we cannot exchange between us. This conclusion follows on from phenomenological meditation, which can be experienced by a person on their own account, but the result can certainly be transmitted by language to other people. Something which can, quite rightly, be stated about a shared world, experienced by different profiles, accessed by the endowment of human learning. It also seems to be correct to speak about one model of human contact with reality. Because, every human being, as if shocked by the diversity of the world, stands in front of reality, with a sensual-rational sensitiveness. However, within the frame of this sensitivity many events happen, which mark humanity by its lonely, monadic entry into existence. To realize here the human position in the world, is to realize the possibilities and limits connected with the human condition, recognizing them in such a way as to

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introduce the human being into the world’s profiles, which can revealed by sensitivity to learning, and at the same time, the profiles which arise out of this sensitivity to learning. Human sensitivity to the world is put in the context of a generally mysterious world, and assumes a state of transcendence a kind of a fundamental inexpressible entity. The human being here, with the essential desire to tear from this entity what is inexpressible, “its” secret, becomes the lonely monad, as if dancing on the borders of existence a kind of dance created by the power of his own expression. So, the human monad, acts with in the frame of ontology, which assumes mystery, and disposes of a kind of freedom in creating a particular way of life. This way of life will be individual, if the human being will fight for his sovereignty, and if he tries to measure swords with suffering. Following on from this however, is the responsibility for his own life, also for the lives of Other (Levinas). According to Levinas, the loneliness of existence is aristocratic, proud, lofty, sovereign. While, sovereignty, according to Bataille, is connected with a different kinds of erotic behavior, “But eroticism . . . Now in this case we are dealing with something sovereign, which cannot be used for anything”.2 As Bataille adds, to consider the essence of sovereignty it would need a special study, but it is also noticeable that, according to Bataille, the characteristic that follows on from eroticism is that it does not serve anything multiple. On the other hand, it does however serve something which can be named as the elemental acceptance of existence, life. Here, it is worth noticing that, in Levinas’ philosophy the face to face relation, in which the human being stands before Transcendence, is revealed something which is Unequal, in which no one can serve in an economic way, and which can be named love. It is unlimited, opposed to all limits, in spite of its own existence: so that there is here, a kind of belief in the mystery of its own existence. One can notice here some aspects of the ancient Greek’s grasp of love: as a realization of eros in the activity of thinking; love revealing here the wisdom of the sage-teacher, Socrates, in his ethical attitude. From the above context it follows that sovereignty and freedom are here synonymous categories meaning the expression of human existence, which does not respect the goals of every day life, but tries to tear away the mystery of existence, even at the cost of pain and suffering, leaving a deadly anxiety . . . THE MONAD IN FRONT OF COMPLETE DIFFERENCE

One can notice that considering here the monadic character of human existence is at the same time a consideration of its transcendental character. About the human being who undertakes the attempt to philosophize, we can say that

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by this activity he confirms the dynamic feature of existence – expressiveness. Thus, philosophical attitudes, participating in an “eruption of existential dynamics”, offer profiles of the world which are anchored in the concrete, lonely monad, searching for the sense of existence. In the same way, transcendental epistemology released reflection over the power and limits of human learning, and revealing the border – like character of the human endowment of learning, signalized the possibility of the spread of that, which is different, that which is, but in an essential way different. The Heraclitean sentence: Nature likes to hide, could be interpreted as meaning that everything to which the human being is sensitive (including also learning), indicates that which is mutable, absolutely different and inexpressible. It only discreetly announces itself to the human being, in the context of such a situation. Do not forget that the Heraclitean logos (Logos) was a conversation, a discourse, which comes across occurrences, and that the human being from the very beginning was involved in such language. The dynamics of existence determines the expressive character of the world-language (logos), which introduces the human being into a kind of exchange-conversation, and we can name it here: the archeology of happening. Thereby the human monad is introduced into an area of forces, which is revealed by the interpretation of the concrete affairs of the world. It is worth emphasising that when we speak about the logos (Logos) it is as an absolute, uniting principle, which is satisfied by multiplicity, rather than contact with the cardinal dualism of the entity. As for the concealment of nature, its essential invisibility provokes an attempt at expression, an attempt to name, which, as it were, is an attack on the borders of that which is inexpressive. T R A N S C E N D E N TA L I T Y A S A N O N T I C T R A N S G R E S S I O N

A lot of Heraclitean pronouncements emphasize the logos as the dark zone of the entity-speech. A darkness and a light connected to each other in what is an essential bond, which stresses every human attempt to solve the riddle of existence. Communication with that which is revealed, is as if being in a line of indirect communication with that which is covered, and which (according to Merleau-Ponty) is in line with that which is concealed. Heidegger also writes about unconcealment, which is the other side of concealment. With this kind of approach one can talk about epistemic moments of entity: namely, the concealment (the darkness) and the unconcealment (the light), which characterize the dynamic expression of the human being, who, after Heidegger, can be named a constrained being. It seems that every annex by humanity, every such “space” of existence, by making some of its fragments domains of human freedom, can occur against

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the background of the ontological situation, recognized by Heidegger, as violence to Dasein. Analyzing the nature of Dasein the author of Einführung in die Metaphysik, notices: “(. . .) the omnipotence of being violent (literary) Dasein, in order to make man the place of its revelation, reigns through this place and keeps it in being (. . .). (. . .) in the frame of the question of being, the human being ought to be comprehended substantiate – according a concealed indication of being – as a place, that being choosen and constrained in order to that it can be opened.” 3 In terms of the question of the relationship between the human and the world-logos H.-G. Gadamer also speaks in Truth and Method, in terms of analysis of the speculative essence of language, with Hegel’s dialectic. It is worth to remembering here that the ancient comprehension of dialectic assumes the Heraclitean version of logos, experienced by the human being by the form of question-answer. This structure is revealed when the human being tries to name the murmuring logos (Logos) by the essential, poetic word. So, in this context, the human, as Gadamer stresses, is a kind of realization of the infinite logos, and the logos can only be expressed by this realization. In other words, the human, as the realization of the infinite logos, appears as someone indispensable for the logos, in order to be the expression of this divine, cosmic power. So, the human being also transfers the divinity of the logos. However, Gadamer’s description is not as radical as the Heideggerian expression. Interpreting Sophocles’ Antigon, Heidegger recognizes the ancient grasp of the power of the human being as following on from the fact that being human is strange, “because it hides inside itself a beginning which explodes from excess as the master of the overpower”.4 Dasein constrained by being, by means of its creativity, gives violence to that “which is powerful and overpowering” 5 – it retreats and reveals the power of existence. From the very beginning human existence is marked by an eruption of excess, is illustrated by an eruption into the power of the abyss, of the ocean and might of the earth. In such a case, human existence is at bottom transgressive, because it is a continuous eruption over the limit. Considering the Heraclitean aphorism in light of the above interpretation, and the Heideggerian interpretation of Dasein, we can treat transcendentality as an ontic transgression. D E AT H A S A C A R R I E R O F S E N S E

The Heideggerian interpretation of the first choral song from Sophocles’ Antigon, describes the situation of the human desperado fighting with the overpowering might of the elements of existence, as a situation which has no way out, or rather an entry into death. The human being – that strange

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entity – brings on this strangeness himself. Death is present in our daily lives, and it has power to establish that, which is alive. At the same time, we are dealing with a kind of ontic dualism of reality. Heraclitus says: The Sun is every day a new Sun, and, it seems here, he was thinking about reality as a burning fire, where an archetypal ontic connection, or differentiation, takes place, namely, the relation between life and death. One can say that fire is living when burning. Death is beyond human power, it is an occurrence, which cuts short human activity, and is the source of human impotence, its inertness and suffering (Levinas). It is worth noticing also that if death is fundamental to human life, it is also the carrier of the sense of human life. Let us, once again, call forth a fragment of Heideggerian interpretation: “Violence, firstly creating tracks, is not essential in itself, chaotic multidirectional, which is in essence a lack of entry to such a degree that it loses entry, relying on the thinking over of vexing appearance.” 6 So, the human being, overpowering the attacking forces of existence, can exit any chaotic situation only when he is thinking, when he is able to meditate, in order to grasp the truth and reject appearance. If he does not do this, the human being will be exposed to “non-essential, chaotic directions”, following on from earlier stable roads. This being the case one ought to control attempts to think over, from the very beginning, the problem of that which is only appearance, and that which is the truth. Otherwise, it is necessary all the time to grapple with the immensity of the universe, with unknown roads, and at each moment to experience the madness of that deepest open wound, access to an unexpected future, to death . . . T H E S AV I N G A N D R U I N E D S U I C I D E

The occurrence of suicide can be considered from the perspective of the analysis of time. Let us pay attention to two approaches: of E. Cioran and of E. Levinas. According to Cionran’s Meeting with suicide7 we are in front of the world, where to the human being sometimes it “is written to kill himself ”.8 Where thoughts about suicide can introduce the human being to “the space of possibilities leading out of time”.9 Cioran writes about “beautiful suicide”, notice “that epithet deserve only those suicides follow on from nothing, without a distinct motive, without reason – the pure suicide”.10 Though, in that way comprehended, with the pure suicide the human being, according to Cioran, humiliates God, “Providence, even Lot himself”.11 Likewise in the context of time, E. Levinas considers the occurrence of suicide, but his conclusions do not match Cioran’s evaluation of suicide. First of all, Levinas notices that “death is never now”.12 Secondly, Levinas confirms

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that “the heroism of the subject is not able to be bravery or heroism in relation to death”,13 which is in the unpredictable zone of the future. Thirdly, in Levinas’ opinion, “nonentity is impossible”.14 So, man is not able to tear himself from existence with the highest form of his reign, which suicide might be. The well-known sentence from Hamlet is for Levinas the “realization that by the human being self-annihilation is impossible”.15 However, it is necessary to remember that the idea of suicide, not the suicide itself is for Cioran “the passion of self-annihilation”, which distinguishes some people from the crowd, for whom existence is not a carrier, the fame of one’s name or accumulating material wealth are not important, but, on the contrary, suicide is the way, in which the human being can redeem his existence.16 But Cioran also talks about “bad suicide”, which arises from sadness, from the conviction that by “killing myself I kill nobody” 17 In relation to this than next to the idea of “pure suicide”, which is “the highest spasm of existence”,18 when the human being is in the front of the liberating abyss, Cioran says “bad” suicide is the stigma of the fall, the sign of the constraining abyss, and of the misery and impotence of human existence. And this conclusion seems to concur with Levinas’ and his convictions. On the other hand, we can look at Levinas’ reflections on the trials to overcome death by humanity. Levinas asks: “how can I (. . .) take death, if I am not able to do anything in front of death”,19 and he notices that the human being can accept death and keep it in existence “in which approach is the occurrence of freedom reached by hypostasis. This situation can be named the attempt to conquer death, which at the same time there are occurrences which the subject does not accept as an object, but is open to that which will happen”.20 This provokes the question: if we have to deal with the idea that we have to be open to death, and that this openness saves our freedom, is it the human way of conquering death? If we are right, this is a similar to Cioran’s conviction, that human freedom can be realized by “close contact” with death. E R O T I C I S M A N D D E AT H

When Bataille in L’Histoire de l’erotisme thinks over the phenomenon of eroticism, he interprets it as fascinating us by its idea of loss, by something which is not useful (which here means disinterestedness as a carrier of sovereignty, in the frame of which one can place luxury). It also fascinates by its dangerous loss, the loss of our forces of existence until the end, so, fascination by death, which, as Bataille says is the “infections power” which attracts the human being. “The essence of loss is this intensive waste, which dangerous and fascinating, announces death, and in the end attracts us more and more.” 21 Revealed by eroticism life’s desire also seems to contain a grain of fascination with

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death, which becomes something which attracts by its “infectious” end of all waste. But the formula of eroticism, as a symptom of sovereignty as “the luxury, which does not serve anything” (here: useful), gives eroticism a symbolic meaning, that of existence itself, that which for Heraclitus was symbolized by fire, which, as we noticed earlier, is alive because it is burning. Bataille also considers some of the dangerous aspects of eroticism, he talks about a special kind of sadist’s logic, which however can help normal human being understand themselves, because it helps them to “modify the condition of all understanding”.22 Thus, it is helpful if every consideration about death, love, eroticism, pain, causes a better understanding of the human condition in the world, taking into account the archeology of the ontic human situation, described in the Heideggerian interpretation, concerning Sophocles’ poetry. As we noticed earlier, every reasoning related to our questions must assume a kind of dialectical relation between opposite states (e.g. sovereignty and degradation), which in general, are embraced by an aura of sense. In the above context let us pay attention to Bataille’s statement: “To be truthful is a rare thing when degradation of the human has gone so far (. . .) The most essential thing is that it does not move forward to disturb the sphere of sense, which is the human domain. From this it follows, how important it is not to omit either limits nor possibilities.” 23 One ought to say that both: desire and abomination, may be revealed in the frame of the limit of human possibilities, and yet the overpowering of this frame by the human being distinguishes his existence as one proceeding to meet mystery. It is not my intention to present the whole of Bataille’s philosophical production, rather I would like to pay attention to some of his statements, important according to the point of view thus far presented. Special meaning, in my opinion, have his pronouncements about love, which is for him the quintessence of existence. Let us look at the following: “a beloved being is in love always and with the universe” and “So, the object of love contains the universe not only to himself but to the subject, whom he fills up and by whom he is filled up.” 24 A connection with Plato’s searching for each other half is obvious, in spite of Bataille’s declared distance to Plato’s philosophy. But it is not clear to me, why the author of L’Histoire de l’erotisme distinguishes eroticism from love, if, on the one hand he writes about love, as above, and about eroticism as an expression of “the human will to melt into the universe”.25 On the other hand he notices that “the object of eroticism” and the loved person “can melt into the unity (object – AP), just when the loved person emerges from the depths of death, where he was revealed by eroticism, while at the same time the subject loses the power to enter into the whole entity”.26 It suggests, and is as if the power to “enter the whole entity” can happen without love, and eroticism without love can have this power. But, as it

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seems, this power relates the human with the whole entity, with nonentity, with life emerging from the abyss of death, and must follow on from the situation when somebody bets his life. Which would seem to correspond to the situation where there is a relationship between things which are not equal, and this is named love. It also is not clear to me why Bataille contrasts “the silence of transgression” of eroticism with “the talkativeness” of “pure” love, and asserts as abominable the parts of the world from “prosaic reality”. He has forgotten at the same time that this passion and abomination could refer both to the prosaic world and to that estimated as the higher sphere, and that silence would not be as important to the human being if there was not speech. Let us note here that the universal entity, grasped as two-poles, cannot be experienced at all, without first experiencing of the limits. So, it is not right to name every day life as abominable, or miserable, because only through it are we able to touch the whole entity, which we can experience, as Bataille says, by eroticism. The silence of transgression, described by the author of L’Histoire de l’erotisme seems to be those “depths of death”, from which emerges the loving person. So, eroticism is here a form of contact of the human with death, where “the corporal connection indicates not only the Other, but also the lack of limits and bottom of the universe”.27 That universe, I want to add, in the frame of which we experience dirt, misery and abominable reality . . . Let us recapitulate, eroticism is as interesting as the essential determinants of the human condition, such as: death, love, or the limits of human learning, and its transcendence. Let us also stress that Bataille’s distinction between eroticism and sex, in spite of the sovereignty of eroticism is comprehensible, but his approach to love seems to be misty. E RO S , L OV E , M Y S T E RY

The experiences of the Second World War instruct us that the European nations were too careless in relation to the connections between love and good. Levinas emphasizes this situation and establishes ethics as the first philosophy. His ethics is based on a non-reflexive relation face to face with the Other. In this relation he reveals a special kind of responsibility for the other human being, a responsibility until expiation. The social relations of people must be regulated by this relation, with the accents on love without eros, but Levinas also considers an eros relation, in the context of absolute difference, which cannot be reduced to a possession relation. In the erotic relation we are dealing with a unique contact with mystery, with something, which is withdrawn into the sphere of darkness, and which, in Levinas opinion, is the cardinal feature of womanhood, as escaping out of the region of light, which characterizes

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the authentic future, the future of death. The contact with this othernesswomanhood, is not a reflective relation, and Levinas says about it: “this relation is neither the fight, nor the unite, or learning. This relation is with darkness, with mystery, which means with the future, with that in the world, which is not here-by, because it is not now. This relation is not with such an entity, which actually is not here, but with the real dimension of otherness”.28 As it seems, love here is written as an erotic relation, and that love has to rescue the duality of being, has to secure the otherness of the Other, but not destroy it, to constrain, to reduce to “talkativeness”, or “a prosaic impotence to enter the whole entity”, as Bataille noticed. Levins also says: “a profanation is not a negation of the mystery, but is one of possible relations with it”.29 So, love can be considered on the horizon of the whole of entity, as a kind of exposition of abysmal otherness, on the authentic future, where lurks death. “Love is not one of the possibilities, it is not generated by our initiation, it rather is without any reason, it masters us and pain, however the I (le je) stays in it.” 30 Levinas’ grasp of love seems to be essential, whereas Bataille’s analysis describes a kind of “yeomen’s settlement”, if we can use here Witkacy’s definition. On the contrary, love presented as the expression of a non-reflective face to face relation, which represents the being in front of the darkness of death (the otherness also constituting an erotic relation, when the guarantee is sovereignty), seems to be the kind of philosophy, which battles with existence on its own ground.

THE INACCESSIBILITY OF SENSE THE SOURCE OF A CARESS

The relation with the Other, treated as the mystery of the future of death, advertised by a kind of absence of the possessive power and the power of light, would be, in Levinas opinion, outside of phenomenology. However, it seems, Levinas’ method can be described here as the archeology of happening, with a phenomenological provenience, which Levinas practiced, and which is practiced in this text. Namely, we try to grasp the essential happenings such as mysterious death, with all its connections, in order to reveal the constituent determinant of the human condition created by the human proper attitude to death. So, the difference of the final dimension of death is absolute otherness, revealed in the Other’s face, obliging to the responsibility of the Other, moved to its very end. So, let us repeat: it is not a dialogical situation, but rather a relation with something unequal, which is a kind of ontic transgression to contact, and as Levinas named it, Transcendentality.

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In addition to this V. Jankelevitch warns of the myths of symmetry, when we try to speak about death. In his conversation with D. Din, Jankelevitch says: “Human existence begins with birth and ends with death. These two moments are not simultaneous. They do not take place at the same time, they are not embraced by the experience of unite. If we want to compare these phenomena, we come to the conclusion that they are not comprehensible.” 31 The statement that life and death are incomprehensible, and at the same time are essentially connected, leads to the conclusion that any consideration about death does not have any sense. But Jankelevitch reasons out the matter of death and tries to explain that in spite of the fact that death is an incomprehensible stigma of human existence it gives a sort of sense, even if it is “a sense of nonsense”. Especially interesting in this matter is the answer that Jankelevitch gave to the question of G.V. Hout: “Considering the matter of death how does it give sense to one’s life?”; let us notice that this question contains a logical paradox. And here Jankelevitch’s answer transcends the logical algorisms and suggests the fundamental change in the attitude to existence. He states that human existence leads to nowhere, so he proposes; “One can look at it in another way. Exactly this, that which I know about my life is that it leads nowhere, so that this life seems to me extremely valuable, miraculous, mysterious”, and he adds further: “This description is not very rationalistic, I agree, however I think that one can talk about the sense of nonsense, about the lack of sense.” 32 It leads us to the Heraclitean river, which the human being does not enter. Also it does not bring to the light the otherness of darkness (the darkness of death). It leads us also to womanhood, which is a kind of joy, following from the mysterious, miraculous life . . . On the other hand, Jankelevitch’s suggestion to realize the nonsense of one’s existence inclines us to change our attitude in front of the lack of existential sense, a kind of affirmation of something, which slides away from our power of logic. This affirmation can be a point of departure for moves contact with “something” untouchable, disrupts our power of logic, a kind of caressing contact with “something” inaccessible. So that, we might name this type of affirmation a caress, as Levinas does. “The caress is a kind of subject being, when the subject makes contact with the other, transcends this contact. If the contact is sensation, it is part of the world of light. However, that which is caressed is not touchable in the proper sense. (. . .) The most essential thing here is that ‘I do not know’ that cardinal being from any direction. It is as if it is a game with something, which slips away, and this game is without any project or plan. It is a game with that which cannot be ours, or us, but with something always different, always out of reach, always only approached. The

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caress is an expectation of that pure, empty future”.33 The sense of the nonsense of existence, and the Other, with its mysterious inaccessibility, are of the same dimension, that contemporary man must learn to live with.

F O L L OW I N G O N F RO M E ROT I C I S M J OY I S T H E J OY O F L I F E , O N T H E V E R G E O F D E AT H

Bataille’s considerations about death are more anthropological-ethnological than in the strict sense philosophical, however, some of them can be interpreted in the philosophical sense. On the one hand, it is not sufficient to grasp death only by categories such as: decay, abomination, aversion. On the other hand, it is not suitable to assign to the human “the acquaintance of death”, which differs man from the animals. Bataille writes: “That which is so cruel, that stigmatizes us, is the acquaintance of death, which animals are afraid of, but they do not know it.” 34 Perhaps it would be better to talk about a consciousness of death, and not about knowledge, because in front of death the insufficiency of our endowment of learning is so painful. Perhaps it is not worth talking about the human as abomination and the animal only as fear, but about consciousness of the fact of the end of life, which can give to the human being distance from the pressure of universal change, creating a dimension which is the source of the human sovereignty. If we look at Bataille’s recapitulations about the connections between death and decay, one can interpret this, in my opinion, controversial, thesis, referring only to man‘s, abomination before death, in a way related to the Heideggerian analysis of Dasein, as being towards death. Bataille’s conclusion is: “Meanwhile the abomination before death, having a direct negative object, is, first of all, the consciousness of the positive suitable object, namely life, or, to be more specific, myself; it is easy to understand that consciousness of death is, in essence, consciousness of myself, and that – on the contrary – the condition of myself is to be conscious of death.” 35 Realizing the essential differences between Heidegger’s and Bataille’s narrations, we can admit that the intuitions of meaning that we are led to by both thinkers, are similar in revealing the crucial relation to that which is inevitable – death. Because in both narratives we take into consideration the situation of the end, of the finiteness of human existence, which is indispensable for a proper description of the human condition. And now, if we want to look at the plot of human access to the happening of death, it is necessary to refer to Jankelevitch’s considerations. He admits that a privilege in this case is the experience of death of someone close, someone “in the second person”. At the same time he eliminates from this

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philosophical meditation any anonymous death in the third person, from the area of medicine, or as a demographic phenomenon, or also one’s own death, about which nobody can philosophize. Jankelevitch says: “The other human dies, so I can survive him. I can see him dead. He is someone who is not me, but his death touches me directly. (. . .) When someone close dies it is the philosophy on death itself.” 36 It is worth reflecting on the case of direct experience of something which is indirect, causing such mad pain. This pain can hurl the human who experiences it in such a way, into the abyss, into the pretence of nonexistence, or go to the other extreme of the full impetus the existence, to a taste of its essential fullness, to when the human being is always on the verge of death. Jankelevitch describes this situation: “Death determines existence. Those, who say that death gives sense to life are right, but death, at the same time, makes existence absurd. (. . .) It is better to live even for one evening, like ephemera. Because what is long and what is short are here both equal. I have known the taste of existence. Even if I must die, to which I have been sentenced, I can only say that I have tasted life.” 37 To taste existence in a mature and full way means to directly measure oneself against death, in the experience of death of someone close to us. The existence of a pain and suffering so deep, so as to shock the foundations of life, contains a special kind of joy. It seems that we can properly compare it with joy, that which Bataille describes as following on from eroticism. “When we speak about eroticism we will commit an unpardonable error if we do not say at the beginning, that its stake is joy.” 38 So, joy follows from for example, the measuring of swords with death in eroticism, which is clarified by Bataille as that special thing, the soul, which transcends every knowable border. And finally, it is worth noticing one can say about eroticism what one can say about human experience, “radiating ethics”, as Levinas suggests. T H E R E C A P I T U L AT I O N S

In the above sketch a method has been proposed, generated by phenomenological-hermeneutic narratives, named the archeology of happening, and which refers to the delicate tissue of life, spinning over clefts between the human and the world. The tissue of the revelation of existence, by suffering and delight, abomination, decay and desire or eroticism, is accessible to the human being by these transcendental categories, which generate a distance, saving human sovereignty. It can be seen that death, love and eroticism are experiences of the deepest kind, moving the human being towards his own immanence, experiences which make human existence free and full. About death we can say especially that it is a kind of catharsis of existence, a mixture of pain and delight, generated by that

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which is transcendental and other, which is always out of limits. . . . So, death can be treated as life torn from immanence, as the spread of corporality, as a change in the circle of existence, which as if measures the depth of experienced life. Measures the madness of the precipitous openness of our exposition to existence, in the climate of an unexpected future . . . Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Journalism, Hermeneutics Research Center in Gda´nsk, University of Gda´nsk

NOTES 1

See E. Levinas, Le temps et l‘autre, PUF, 1998. G. Bataille, L’Histoire de l’erotisme, Paris, 1976, [ our translation is after the Polish translation by I. Kania, G. Bataiile, Historia erotyzmu, Kraków 1992, s.10. 3 M. Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, Tübingen 1987, [our translation is after the Polish translation by R. Marszalek, Wprowadzenie do metafizyki, Warszawa 2000, p. 165, 187. 4 Ibid., p. 145. 5 Ibid., p. 140. 6 Ibid., s. 147. 7 See E. Cioran, Le Mauvais demiurge, 1969, 1989. 8 Ibid., our translation is after the Polish translation by M. Kaniowa, Zly demiurg, Kraków 1995, p. 43. 9 Ibid., p. 44. 10 Ibid., p. 49. 11 Ibidem. 12 E. Levinas, Le temps et l‘autre, our translation is after the Polish translation by J. Migasi´nski, Czas i to, co inne, Warszawa 1999, p. 72. 13 Ibid., p.72/73. 14 Ibid., p. 75. 15 Ibid., p. 76. 16 See: E. Cioran, Le Mauvais . . ., p. 75. 17 Ibid., p. 57. 18 Ibid., p. 46. 19 E. Levinas, Le Temps . . ., p. 82. 20 Ibid., p. 83. 21 G. Bataille, L‘Histoire de . . ., p. 121. 22 Ibid., p. 5. 23 Ibid., p. 115. 24 Ibid., p. 136/137. 25 Ibid., p. 142. 26 Ibid., p. 143. 27 Ibidem. 28 E. Levinas, Le temps et . . ., p. 100/101. 29 Ibid., p. 97/98. 30 Ibid., p. 101. 2

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V. Jankeletch, Penser la Mort?, 1994, our translation is after the Polish translation by M. Kwaterko, To, co nieuchronne. Rozmowy o s´mierci, Warszawa 2005, p. 17. 32 Ibid., p. 42. 33 Ibid., p. 101/102. 34 G. Bataille, L‘Histoire de . . ., p. 68. 35 Ibid., p. 69. 36 V. Jankelevitch, Penser la . . ., p. 16. 37 Ibid., p. 35. 38 G. Bataille, L‘Histoire de . . ., p. 87.

J.C. COUCEIRO-BUENO

T H E P H E N O M E N O L O G Y O F PA I N : A N E X P E R I E N C E OF LIFE

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to address the polyhedric aspect of pain from a phenomenological perspective, taking as a strating point Husserlian Lebenswelt and Aristotle’s definition of education in Nicomachean Ethics, in which he states that education consists of being educated in pleasure and pain. Pain must be situated at the core of the history of mankind. Our mere existence necessarily implies pain and pleasure. We will try to show how pain is such an intrinsic part of the world that any attempts to suppress it could lead to the elimination of the world itself. We are unquestionably a part of the Lebenswelt that sustains us. Indeed, this is the first lesson of life: finding a sense and direction for life and accepting our conditioning and determinations. A conditioning that can and should be transformed and metamorphosised from three basic and limiting life experiences that will radically alter our public and private ego: illness, love and the experience of art (anthologically emblematized in tragedy). A person in pain is “another being”. These three experiences share the substratum of pain and inevitable suffering and are capable of transforming our personality. In situations such as these, and, in true phrominos tradition (Aristotle), the most intelligent option is to draw some form of benefit from tragic and heart-rending experiences. The object is to consider the prehistory and archaeology of pain; the relationship between philosophy and pain; the aesthetic and artistic experience in situations of pain; religion and pain, etc. The paper concludes with global reflections on pain in an obsessively individualistic and hedonistic society: the futile attempt to rid the world of pain. Indeed, the consequence of this aspiration is that the pain that inevitably forms an intrinsic part of our existence erupts into our lives as a traumatic and devastating event, due to our inability to understand the educational aspects 295 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 295–307. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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of pain and its possible transformation into aesthetic pleasure through the experience of art and religion.

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this paper is to make a phenomenological analysis of the polyhedral field of pain and suffering in basic experiences of life (art, love, disease), taking as the horizon for the senses Husserlian Lebenswelt and the educational proposal made by Aristotle, on reminding us that one must be educated in pleasure and pain (Eth. Nic., 1172a). Pain, about which little is known, must be situated at the centre of the history of mankind. It should be said that existence necessarily includes pain and pleasure. The world has a pain component that is so intrinsic, that if we try to eliminate it, we might just as well eliminate the world itself. We are a part of the Lebenswelt that supports us. This is the first thing we learn in our lives: how to make sense of the living world and learning to accept our determinations. Knowledge that must be transformed and metamorphosed from the three basic experiences in our lives that radically transform our public and private ego: disease, love and the experience of contemplating art. All these experiences in particular share a common factor: their ability to make us different (in the sense that our responses and narrative configurations are no longer the same as those that previously existed). Broadly speaking, what types of pain or suffering are there? Taking for granted that pain caused or inflicted on “others” is the most radical expression of evil, we will describe the basic pains suffered in life: a) Physical pain: this is a warning issued by nature and is fundamental for us to survive. It acts as an alarm, forcing us to face some kind of imbalance in the body. At this point, the world disappears and our body becomes the centre of our attention. b) Moral pain: this is the type of pain caused by becoming aware of a painful episode belonging to the past. It is the ritornello of pain, caused by some earlier painful event. It is the pain of failure in the face of an event, the pain of feeling guilty about some contingency of life. Moral pain is a pain intrinsic to the act of living, an inevitable pain caused by an abnormal heightening of our sensitivity. A pain that dominates us, vague and imprecise, but undeniable. Sometimes we should point out that the greater the pain suffered, the better one understands “others”. c) Linguistic pain: this is pain expressed and provoked by language and is a universal experience. How we express ourselves through language will

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depend on the increase or reduction in that suffering or pain. The rhetorical forces of languages often fill us with pain that is not physically present, but which is relentlessly unleashed upon our present (sometimes as a purging substance) through the opening of the universe that constitutes language. Through the language of “others” we are in a position to feel “pain” caused by the pain of others. We make the pain of others our own. This is, without doubt, the most supreme act of participation and friendship between two persons. d) Ontological pain: this is basically the pain and anguish of feeling the existence of human finiteness. It is the anticipation of the end of our lives.1 Our thoughts are continuously besieged by the temporary nature of our existence. This type of pain is the one that precedes our fears, forebodings, etc. The pain of existing; a pain that seeks a meaning to life; a pain that always raises a question in the presence of a threat and the void that opens up before us through the knowledge that our lives may lack meaning. Pain can also be broken down into two different periods of time: 1) Being aware of the pain: for the person experiencing the pain, only the present exists, the here and now. The past is transformed into an empty shell, something without meaning and the future is suspended for as long as the suffering lasts. The sufferer is flooded with the present and experiences nothing but the pain. A person in pain is only interested in stopping that pain. Nothing else matters. All his plans and memories are subordinate to overcoming the pain: we are witnesses to the start of an obsessive process of self-observation in our painful bodies, which is what characterising pain. 2) Being aware of the awareness of pain: this is pain for things past. An invisible pain, in which we suffer for things we cannot see. This type of pain has no justification: there is no physical threat to our bodies or in the outside world. It is suffering caused by failure, fear, anxiety, desperation, etc. It is the true pain of existence. The pain of past events is a pain that we need to straighten out our lives and obtain sufficient phrónesis (knowledge that guides people in their actions) to develop practical wisdom that will enable us to avoid painful episodes in other circumstances. Phrónesis is the common sense (and skill) we develop to avoid suffering and become aware of our vulnerable nature. As Aristotle would say, all this teaches us to live like phrónimos (people who know how to control their lives). In all cases, as the Stagirite affirms, only wise men are able to withstand the misfortunes and suffering of life and use them to their advantage (Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1100b). Pain should not be understood as a technical/scientific fact that can be diagnosed and treated. It must be dealt with as an experience of life, a Lebenswelt

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that supports us. Pain cannot be measured. It is outside the scope of technical or scientific measuring, since suffering is non-transferable and belongs exclusively to the person suffering or enduring it. Suffering cannot be understood merely from an idividual perspective. It must always be related to that “life-world” (Lebenswelt) that precedes both perspectives (personal and technical). The great challenge of pain is the opportunity it denies us of learning from perturbations in our health. All suffering is an invitation to recover the natural balance that was lost and use its teachings for our own vital interests. Pain, suffering and love all have something in common in ontological terms: not only are our bodies presented to us as such, but we stop being what we are to be “different”. And this is without doubt, the genuine aesthetic experience. It is thus a question of taking a look at prehistory, archaeology and types of pain; the relations between philosophy and pain; the association between the aesthetic and artistic experience and pain; the relations between love, religion and pain; health and disease, etc. We shall end this study with a few global reflections on pain in an obsessively hedonistic society: the idea of the vain pretension that suffering must be banished from our lives. All this will lead to the inevitable pain that forms part of our lives being unleashed, at some time, in the form of a “traumatic, devastating experience”, due to the fact that we are unable to perceive the educational side of pain, and its potential transformation into aesthetic joy through the experience of art, love and religion. I

In Phaedon, Plato reminds us that pain has the virtue of making us aware of our bodies. Pain forces us to face up to the true value of existence, in order to avoid inertia and vital abandonment. For Aristotle, it is clear that the fundaments of all education are pleasure and pain. In this respect, he says: “(. . .) for that reason educators use pleasure and pain to steer us through childhood” (Nic. Eth. X, 1, 1172a). I have always been impressed by the importance of these affirmations made by the Greek philosopher. As I see it, the correct education of a person consists of the right perception of what is pleasurable and what is painful. Pain arises from comparing it with pleasure and that is the source of education for Aristotle. The Stagirite goes on to describe the importance of pleasure and pain in ethics and politics, in order to obtain the appropriate criteria for enabling us to take the right decision. Put another way, pleasure and pain constitute the necessary stimulus for winning virtue and a good life.

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Likewise, with respect to the subject of pain, the foregoing concept of phrónesis should be mentioned, which designates the calculating, deliberative part of the soul as a dianoetic virtue. This enables us to extract consequences that are positive for our lives from painful, unfortunate experiences. The Lebenswelt is the pre-established place from which the world of pain must be understood, since pain occurs in a pre-donated world, aside from all human intervention. In this sense, the possibility of comprehending (Verstehen) pain would, for Husserl,2 be a transcendental condition of the person comprehending it. And this is true on postulating intersubjectivity as a process of appropriation/nonappropriation that constitutes what is near and what is far. Thus, in empathic processes, a person will learn to know him/herself as a person that exists in the world and to use his/her own ego as a second person through the gaze of others. In this way, pain will be experienced as something that is alien to our lives, but to which we fully relate. In Hegel3 we find the invocation that pain forms a part of our Christian tradition. For the German philosopher, the spirit can only succeed in existing for-itself from a negative perspective (pain and death). Pain itself is the condition of possibility for the specific materialisation of the concept. Life is always understood as a potential source of satisfaction, but at the same time, of suffering and death. Following this line of thought, he affirms that self-consciousness always goes back to physical temporality and that we are permanently in a position to understand the concept of immortality that emanates from the concept and the original reality that we are that overtakes us. Thus, the essence of the spirit is formally freedom; the capacity to withstand abstract universality, absolute negativity, infinite pain, in the very affirmation of self and its identity. The spirit is only able to reach the truth when it is able to find itself through total suffering and pain. Schopenhauer4 expresses his well-known general thesis that life is essentially pain: prior to all experience; although he is aware that the capacity to withstand pain increases in the same measure as intelligence. In this respect, he sustains that directly accepting pain will lead us to suppress it. From a different perspective, Nietzsche5 understands that pain and suffering is always a challenge that must be overcome. Pain pushes us towards what is tragic, understood as a fervent desire for terrible, painful and complicated solutions. For the German philosopher, saying yes to pain is not celebrating its presence, as what is important is not pain in itself, but our attitude to pain. Thus,

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pain is a true test bench for our lives. He understands that not understanding pain always ends by turning against life. In this way, life is envisaged as conquering life itself, through pain. What he finds really unbearable is not accepting pain that is necessary and unavoidable. G. Vattimo6 reflects on the well-known motif of tragic wisdom, páthei mathós –learning by suffering–. In this respect he reminds us that evaluating pain positively is not an exclusively Christian issue, as is commonly believed. Our attention is also drawn to how someone who has suffered much is deserving of greater respect than one who has enjoyed much. A phrase by Cioran7 says “it is not worthwhile talking with one who has not suffered”. II

Health perturbations and pain are warnings given by nature. They are intended to remind us that we must immediately restore the lost balance or help nature itself to restore it. Balance (health) and perturbations (imbalance/disease/pain) form a part of the essence of life. Pain is always a symptom of nature that is trying to transmit a message to the sick person. Therefore, we must learn to listen to Mother Nature and dare to communicate with her. The truth is that the nature of health is unknown. Little is also known of pain (in fact, even when we feel pain, we are imprecise, even in pinpointing the pain). What is health? Forgetting about oneself (as occurs, too, with the meaning of the concept of theory: spectators forget about themselves and give themselves up entirely to participating in what they are watching). This is a time when our bodies disappear for us. Indeed, wanting to be healthy means forgetting about the fact that one is. In all cases, health is a balance between pleasure and pain. What is disease? A time when our bodies remind us they exist. Corporeity now occupies all our thoughts. We are removed from all that is going on around us. The sick person stops being what he/she once was (as in aesthetic experience and romantic love). It is a loss of balance with respect to which the sick person puts all his/her effort into remedying that perturbation. On many occasions, the disease transfers us to a state of lucidness, due to the exhaustive self-observation process it arouses in us. Disease always affects the holón (the whole being –oulomelés–). What is alive implies a whole, an entire being which only disease is able to break up.

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Disease manifests itself when our body is no longer a balanced, harmonious whole. It is a time when our bodies lack beauty –to kalón– (it is striking how in Greek, the verb to be evokes the concept of beauty, as what is whole and balanced is always beautiful). In purity, disease arises when, due to a natural process of aging, a genetic imbalance or influences in our environment, one of the organs in our body becomes separate from the rest and no longer forms a part of the balance and harmony of our whole being. In addition, with disease comes an intense awareness of finitude. It is the awareness of our limitations. A finitude that is legitimately understood when it no longer exists, as the final moment of our vital experience, in which our entire content has already been defined. A finitude that is final; although we must be aware that the end of our lives brings meaning to it. A full life only has meaning based on the principle of necessarily having an end, which is precisely what gives meaning to that principle. Health is only perceived when we lose it. In this respect, the emergence of the psychodrugs that flood our modern world represents a deep alteration of the physis, an alteration of nature itself which prevents it from communicating with us (there is no doubt that this alteration in nature is also the most accurate definition of science and technique). Being healthy means forgetting about one’s body as a body. Disease, on the other hand, consists of the body suddenly taking us over completely, claiming all our attention. As long as the disease exists, we are unable to restore our imbalanced nature, our ability to “forget our bodies”, which is what health means, i.e., when we are in good health, our bodily integrity, our physical balance, cause us to do without biological materialism and concentrate on what is outside us, and on relations with “others”. The fact is that pain exists due to the extreme sensitivity (linked, based on philosophical criteria, to the concept of the aesthesis: cognitio sensitiva) of which we are made. Indeed, pain is always a subjective issue. Serious, responsible medicine is aware that pain cannot be measured. It is beyond the scope of technical and scientific measurement, since it belongs exclusively to the person experiencing it. It should be added that pain always contains an emotional, sensitive component based on self-love that must be used to one’s own advantage. The aim is to redirect pain, disease, suffering towards spheres of true knowledge taken as self-knowledge, which also involves developing as a person and an expansion of oneself. There is no doubt that pain, in the first instance, de-structures our being, but it is also true that once redirected, it transports us to moments of unusual

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lucidness, perhaps in a heart-rending way, but in all cases, it always creates an opportunity for self-knowledge. III

Anthologically-speaking, pain, disease and love as aesthetic experiences all have something in common: we cease to be what we are, and are converted into something different. The aesthesis (sensitive perception which is cognitio sensitiva -Baumgarten-)8 is characteristic of animals and always leads to exacerbated sensitivity. It is always the awareness of something and is in relation to the full constitution of the organism (oulomelés). Its plenitude coincides with the plenitude of a person’s psyche. The aesthesis is a sensitive perception which, without transition, is also intellectual. Whenever we perceive something we immediately record it or identify it as something. It is the unexpected aspect of perceiving, of sensitive perception in which there is no distance between “perceiving something” and “realising something”. In other words, it is the inseparable nature of what we “perceive” and what is “perceived”. We have this capacity for immediate perception not only with respect to present things but also to absent things. It is the affirmation that absent things have a “presence” and that this presence may be painful. With respect to experience with art, we will now focus on experience with music as a reference for all artistic experiences. Above all, I consider it relevant to reconsider one of the greatest and most enigmatic questions that can be formulated: what is music? Music is defined in educational centres as follows: “The art of ordering sounds in time”. This definition is clearly quite unsatisfactory. It is clear that no theoretician or philosopher can feel happy with that definition. Not just because it is obvious that there are sound experiences that are not musical and comply with the basics of that definition, but also because paradoxically, I believe that professional musicians are not in a privileged position to define music (no-one can describe a system from within that system itself ), since, based on my opinion, the “essence of music is not music”. It is an internal need of man to sense, through beauty, that it is possible the world does not exist by chance and that it has integrity and full meaning. In fact, the structural foundation on which the need for music is based is shared with religion. With this background, I will now venture the following definition of music, in keeping with my theoretic assumptions in the present study: Music, based on the very rhythmic foundation of our bodies, is an aesthetic liberation which, due to the promise and hope it transmits to us, relieves us from our

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intrinsic existential pain, through the intensity, apprehension and emotion arising from the beautiful experience of sound, which has always offered us the ontofictional possibility of a world that makes complete sense. It is a common experience that when listening to music, we have the persistent sensation that we are living in “another” world. Everything seems more intense, even apprehension, which we transform into “joyful pain”. From the aesthetic perspective, music provokes a true “resurrection of the dead”, that transforms all the existential pain of man. Music, in all cases, is a creative or poietic power (in many cases, musical forms are like genuine philosophic dissertations that do not help one to develop as a person) which relieves us from our apprehensive fears. Musical experience is a cry; an aesthetic rebellion against the threat that one is meaningless. Music always ultimately confronts us with the meaning of human existence that cannot be expressed in ordinary words, but sung, also through words, albeit full words that “re-vive” us from our profound vital afflictions. It should not be forgotten that the origin of western music lies in the Gregorian chants that were sung in monasteries to solemnise religious acts. This music was based on an exclusively improvised, oral tradition, the result of the collective ecstasy expressed by those attending and participating through expressions as heartrending as they were sublime. The Gregorian chant is yet another example to show that pain, love, music, religiousness form a whole (holón) comprised of diffuse barriers that, through extreme aesthetic experiences, convert us into different “persons” and lead us to hope that the factual world may be like the one we have dreamed of: a whole world that is rich in meaning. We also need to reformulate another of the important questions posed by mankind: What is love? What is an amorous experience? It is a basic aesthetic experience among humans that involves developing an intense romantic attachment towards a person (in fact, if one is really in love, no-one can love two persons at the same time). All the pain that this emotional attachment may entail is converted, through that same passionate intensity, into something sublime and unrepeatable. The pain and heartbreak of love never disappears, but is converted into the amorous ecstasy itself: it involves a radical metamorphosis of our inner and outer experience. If we take a look at universal literature, we see that the more intense the love, the greater the desire to prolong that amorous experience. There is no doubt that falling in love is a painful experience that is transformed into a fervently desired experience. With the peculiarity, in my proposal, that the “ego” reaches a higher plane of experience, and it could be said that the same physical person is converted into a different person, in social and private terms. The world

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(the outside) changes and the psyche takes on unknown dimensions. All this is an example of how pain can be altered and experienced as joy, but while still suffering. These experiences of pain can be classified as “desired and chosen”, provided the person is aware of the aesthetic transformation (aesthesis: sensitive perception) in the world, the “others” and him or herself. And that all this involves an extension of self-knowledge in the world. Put another way: people in love live what they thought was fiction as something “real” (religion, literature, myths, etc.). People in love experience “literaturised factuality”. A fictional reality that is perceived as more real than reality itself. The “reality” of play, play in the work of art (Gadamer).9 People in love live their “reality” as a player does: passionately and with great concentration, whilst knowing full well that while they live it, it will be their most complete “truth”. They know that it is not a factual truth, but its depth is much greater than those provided by living real everyday experiences. It is the truth of the myth (that of aesthetic experience, love, religion, which is unattainable to the logos and carries its own certainty that needs no methodological verification. Furthermore, mythical narration is characterised by introducing the listener into a complete world where nothing is missing). It is clear that from the standpoint of the aesthesis, romantic love has a religious structure (we could say that it is a truly amorous monotheism): we worship the loved person and suspend our ordinary sense of existence in space and time. It is also striking that love/pain is experienced as a necessity. We can find this in the conversation held by Socrates and Diotima in The Banquet, on invoking the God of Love: “Love always lives in a state of need”. A need that often grows with negative love or a lack of love. Let us again hear what Sapho has to say: “Mother, I cannot continue weaving;/ My fingers ache, my lips are dry;/ ¡‘Oh, if you could only feel the pain I feel!/ But, who has felt it as intensely as I?”. Rejection by the loved person, as is well known, causes true devastation. It means enormous suffering and pain, but is also an opportunity to make a lucid judgement about oneself and others. Without forgetting that a person overcome by the pain of unrequited love is a person who will never again choose the situation that has led to their immense desolation. Religious experience is also a need, like art, love, pain, music, etc. What is religion?: a spiritual protection against undesired suffering by means of symbolic and metaphoric transformation of factuality that gives rise to having experiences of potential worlds that project us towards a reality that is higher than effective reality (Wirklichkeit).

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Religion is always a higher form of adapting to the world with the aim of understanding the suffering caused and not chosen in a metaphorical, symbolic and spiritual sense. Religion is aware of man’s need for metaphors and symbols, so that he can be a creature that is able to find meaning and congruent actions in his life, due to the apprehension and uncertainty produced by events and phenomena he is unable to understand. It is thus a question of embracing what cannot be explained, with what is potentially comprehensible. All this is achieved through metaphoric processes that can shape a world into sufficient congruity to withstand all the misfortunes that inexorably form a part of life. Thus, religion is projected both as an attempt to understand the senselessness of misfortunes and to attach meaning to them for our lives. It is therefore a question of overcoming pain and suffering in life through metaphors and symbols, in order to both find an ethical congruity in misfortune and transfer certain the suffering chosen in to an ulterior perception of joy. In religion the pain one has chosen is lived as the necessary counterpart for being able to rise to another dimension above reality, to obtain a different type of joyful reward, in this case, spiritual. Religion always has an ascetic basis that means accepting pain as a way to achieve purification and enter a higher existence. It is a test that many people take, often in order to discover the spiritual values of life. In parallel, separation from the loved one also causes intense pain, but its counterpart is to know the aesthetic and ontological intensity of love (and as the necessary learning process for educating our emotions). There is no doubt that religion is a similar phenomenon to love: when one is in love, one cannot stop talking, thinking and suffering for that love. Likewise, when one is in a state of spiritual and religious plenitude, one cannot stop imploring a divine being, which, like love, is a being that is willing to give the best of its life for us. All this takes us back to the myth that takes on greater force through the experience of art which, along with pain and love, has a power to transform our lives: we enter in one state and leave in another; “a different way of being” that lifts us up to a world where nothing is missing and which has an ontological component that is similar to factuality itself. FINAL THOUGHTS

The historic moment we are living is characterised by attempting to exclude pain and suffering from our lives. It is an attempt to eliminate all pain, which, paradoxically, is to despise life itself, since life, too, is nurtured by chosen

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suffering, which enables the greatness of joyful, intense moments to be projected and enjoyed. The pain/pleasure dialectic is decisive in the life of all humans. If we obsessively ban pain from our lives, our body is not prepared to understand finitude; there are even people who try to live so far away from pain and suffering that they think they will never die. At all events, the capacity to suffer is an essential condition for living experiences of ecstasy and greatness. Or, put as a question: is there anything worthwhile in life that does not involve a certain amount of suffering and voluntary discipline? The answer is no, because our existence in the world is highly dependent on knowledge, taking advantage of suffering, frustration, etc. to improve our lives. Without forgetting that the line between pleasure and pain is usually diffuse, as there are many human experiences that, while causing a certain amount of suffering, are also extremely pleasurable. Painful or joyful situations in themselves have no value per se. It is for the people who are in those situations to assess them. Neither can it be said that they are anti-ethical situations (pleasure/pain). One leads to the other, with hardly any transition. Assuming pleasure means being willing to accept pain. All of us have at some time experienced moments of apparent pleasure, beneath which there is much suffering, and vice versa. What does seem to be true is that what we call the “good life” includes moments of suffering, risk, effort, tension, etc. Indeed, one can only enjoy life in the contrast between pleasure and pain. It is not possible to live in only one of these two states. It would not be a full life. The idea is to be great in the midst of misfortunes and think and act as one should (phrónesis). It is important to underline that, throughout this text, we have attempted to express the fact that humans suffer transformations in their “ego” due to three basic experiences: a) Physical pain (disease). b) Love. c) The experience of art. They all share a capacity to transform and metamorphosise our character, and in all of them, in keeping with aesthetic experience, “we enter in one state” and “leave in another”. Aesthetic experience is the primordial source for overcoming risks and pain. In the same measure as health, for example is a way of forgetting about the body and focusing on the outside world and our relations with “others”. In this respect, it should be remembered that art, religion and literature have an undeniably ontological nature.10 They unfold as “potential, complete

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worlds” in which their total “ reality“ is unquestionable. To consider that reality consists of only certain sensorial experiences that take place in factuality is to adopt a reductionist, scientificist approach. Literature, music and myth have an enormous effect on our lives, in order to make our lives worth living. There is a “factual truth” in solving daily problems (most of which are now automated), and there is an “aesthetic and mythical truth” that always tries to bring the hope of a complete world, albeit through certain suffering and pain. A mythical truth that necessarily refers us to art, the experience of art as that field in which the most profound human truth is expressed, that of our lives, which will help us to lift the painful, heartbreaking side, which undoubtedly, also forms a part of our human condition. All this is what comprises the basic experiences of life, based on original pain and suffering. University of Coruña, Spain NOTES 1

M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Halle, 1927). E. Husserl, Die Crisis der Europasichen Wissenschaft un die transzendentale Phänomenologie (Martines Den Nijhoff, Haag, 1962). 3 G. W. Hegel, Werke (Suhrkamp, Francfort, 1970). 4 A. Schopenhauer, El mundo como voluntad y representación III vol. (Aguilar: Buenos Aires, 1960). 5 F. Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke. (Verlag, Berlín, 1980). 6 Gianni Vattimo, Creer que se cree (Barcelona: Paidós, 2007). 7 E. Cioran., Cuadernos 1957–1972 (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2004). 8 A. G. Baungartem, Aesthetica, (Frankfurt: II vol. 1750–1758). 9 H. G. Gadamer., Wharheit und Method. 10 J. C. Couceiro-Bueno. “Ontofiction: the altered comprehension of the world” In Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, vol. LXVIII. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academia Publishers, 1999). 2

MARIA ZOWISŁO

T H E E X I S T E N T I A L OV E R C O M I N G O F PHENOMENOLOGY IN HANS BLUMENBERG’S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE AND MYTH

ABSTRACT

The paper presents selected aspects of philosophy of Hans Blumenberg, contemporary meta-philosopher, hermeneutist and phenomenologist of modern age. A point of departure for the presentation is demonstrating the philosopher’s polemic attitude towards Husserl’s phenomenological tradition. A basis for this critical attitude is the existential defence of the life-world as well as individual importance that are disregarded in eidetic analyses of phenomenology. Blumenberg continues and develops in a creative manner the Existenz philosophy, which has its sources in Schellingian positive philosophy. Another essential motive of the criticism of phenomenology is his revision of such notions like evidence and truth, which according to Blumenberg are boundary ideas of philosophy, unavailable for man on account of human contingent and finite existence. The reasonable formula of cognition and action are then principles of the practical reason: rhetoric and techne. Their legitimacy, provisional but operative, is verified by the history. The history verifies value of its institutions according to the rule of pragmatism. One of the forms of historical and pragmatic reason is myth. The logos of myth reveals its operative power in overcoming the absolutism of reality, which is an archaic experience, but stable in culture. The paper presents Blumenberg’s understanding of the absolutism of reality as well as the essence and functions of the mythical process and its power to neutralize existential anxiety. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology has been inspiration for numerous contemporary philosophers. Using its assumptions, methods and achievements, philosophers like Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur have perceived though its limitations in the context of the life-world (Lebenswelt) research, existential significance and historical determinants of understanding. Husserl initially, in his polemics with Dilthey, described research of that kind as a “world-view philosophy” (Weltanschauungsphilosophie), contaminated by “historical scepticism” and relativism. As its counterbalance, he put forward 309 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 309–321. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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phenomenology as a rigorous science (strenge Wissenschaft), based on principles of pure experience, a priori intuition and eidetic insight.1 The late Husserl turned himself in his “return to the things in themselves” towards the issues of “the life-world” and historicity, perceiving the latter in temporal perspective of reason teleology and of data sedimentation proceeding in the course of transcendental constitution. What Husserl has merely outlined as the next important task of human reason, has subsequently been taken up in polemics with phenomenology by existential as well as hermeneutic philosophers. An important comment in the discussion regarding “the life-world”, historical basis of human understanding, human condition and its existential senses is Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy – the contemporary German thinker, historian of ideas, phenomenologist of modern age, hermeneutist of metaphors and myths present in intellectual and spiritual history of the West. CRITICISM OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Polemics with assumptions and conclusions of Husserl’s phenomenology is a permanent leading motif of Blumenbergian philosophy. Blumenberg expressed his critical attitude to the phenomenological reduction for the first time in his postdoctoral thesis “Die ontologische Distanz. Eine Untersuchung über die Krisis der Phänomenologie Husserls” (1950). In his opinion, the reduction is unjustified and invalid questioning of the world existence in favour of eidetic investigations. He located Husserl’s philosophy within the European metaphysical tradition, whose beginnings and framework has been marked by the Platonian noesis of ideas. Metaphysics of ideas imposes investigations into the essence at the expense of the existence.2 Defence of existential investigations taken by Blumenberg has its significant predecessor in F. W. J. Schelling and might be perceived as continuation of his “positive philosophy”, developed by the German idealist in his late achievements. Schellingian “positive philosophy” was a critical response to abstract speculations of “negative philosophy”, pure thought priority. Pure thought is directed merely towards the universal, i.e. towards beings, universals, postponing the concretum of the existence. The eidetic insights are incapable of explaining human longings and human despair, because these are always experienced in an individual manner, out of generalisation.3 Hannah Arendt has called Schelling a predecessor of the contemporary Existenz philosophy, at the same time admitting that despite of his “return to the things themselves” and struggle against “mere speculations”, Husserl has not contributed anything concrete and valuable to the Existenz philosophy.4 Blumenberg’s arguments against the transcendental and phenomenological tradition assume different threads, but Schellingian apology of the Existenz concretum is present here all the time.

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Next stages of Blumenberg’s discussion with phenomenology are outlined by the following works and books: “Lebenswelt und Technisierung unter Aspekten der Phänomenologie” (lecture from 1959, issued in 1963), “Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie” (1960), “Arbeit am Mythos” (1979) as well as “Lebenszeit und Weltzeit” (1986). In his discussions he continues the existential thread, but he extends his criticism, including the issues of truth, language, rhetoric, existential significance (Bedeutung), human condition (conceived in the Herder’s, Scheler’s, Gehlen’s and Plessner’s way as Mangelwesen) as well as human anxiety towards the absolutism of reality along with its metaphoric overcoming of mythical creations. These threads are apparently of the nature of hermeneutic reflection. A historical-hermeneutic epic of the spiritual history of the West that emerges from books by Hans Blumenberg is situated between the areas of Toposforschung and Begriffsgeschichte, methods and researches being developed at a crossing of history of ideas and historical semantics. Blumenberg has made a significant methodological revision of these fields, on one hand supporting himself on Hans Robert Jauss’ Rezeptionsästhetik and indirectly on Gadamer’s hermeneutics, and on his own original project of metaphorology on the other. He was a co-author, apart from Jauss as well as among others Wolfgang Iser, Poetik und Hermeneutik editorial series, which has been published since 1963 and developed hermeneutic investigation on the phenomenon of reception. The authors of the series emphasized transformative and creative character of reception noticing its adding new values, meanings and forms to motifs present in art and culture. They argued against the “Platonian” way of understanding history according to which it should repeat in its course the timeless topoi, the permanent, invariable patterns or archetypes (as they have been seen by e.g. Ernst Robert Curtius or Carl Gustav Jung). These issues are present in the subsequent works by Blumenberg, especially the ones that are devoted to the problems of the legitimacy of modern age as well as myth philosophy. Like in his criticism of the assumptions of phenomenology, the permanent motif of struggle against universals and reductionism that makes impossible perceiving the genuine novelty in history appears here. The hermeneutic background of Blumenberg’s polemics with the metaphysics of being and history as well as transcendental-phenomenological programme of philosophy may be placed within a wider horizon of the philosophy of life, the 20th century German anthropology, symbolism, and linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy (Wittgenstein and Gadamer). It seems that the issue of truth is a common basis for those multi-thread analyses. Blumenberg referred to different ideas of truth in the history of philosophy and reinterpreted a notion of truth in the way of rhetoric-pragmatic scepticism and relativism. He espoused the principle of unevidence and its provisional means

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of implicit articulation as metaphors and myths. He exposed the existential value of logos of metaphors and myths. Overcoming the philosophy of evidence, i.e. Husserl’s phenomenology, has been made by Blumenberg in his metaphorology and philosophy of myth, by exposing existential and operative aspects of the language of symbols. The subsequent analyses in the paper will follow this way. T H E T R U T H O F A M E TA P H O R

The considerations regarding truth have been taken by Blumenberg in his metaphorology project (Paradigms for a metaphorology). The project falls within the field of metaphilosophy, being a kind of reflection on the philosophy itself, i.e. its tradition and theoretical condition, critical consciousness of its own methodological possibilities and cognitive limits as well as its differential themes and problems. The history of philosophy in the perspective of metaphorology appears as a history of different stories, great images, working at the base of many systems, theories, ideas. The Platonian metaphor of a cave (great polysemic myth of exiting the dark onto the light), the images of the world as a book, machine, polis, theatre or e.g. the German idealism that could be perceived as a story on gaining autonomy by the Self, all these were examples of such a secret operation of images and narration in philosophy. In Paradigmen . . . Blumenberg analyzed some philosophical notions arising out of metaphors and followed historical dynamics of language images (sprachliche Bilder), being interested in their development and evolution. He considered metaphorology as a necessary completion for the history of notions. He has made a critique of creating hypostasis, i.e. a trend towards identifying metaphorical speech with real objects. At the same time in this study Blumenberg discovered unquestionable cognitive and existential value of metaphors, which might play a part of human self-understanding instrument in pragmatic and rhetoric dimensions of reason. It is important for the metaphors not to be understood literally – they may then play a positive part in human understanding and acting. In the subsequent essay “Ausblick auf eine Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit”, the philosopher has put even more stress on the fundamental work of metaphors in constituting the human world of life.5 In “Anthropologische Annäherung on die Aktualität der Rhetorik” Blumenberg stressed that philosophical efforts to achieve rigorous lingual precision in definitions is naive and unfeasible. He approved the value of the project for exactitude and evidence, present at Socratic-Platonian, Cartesian and phenomenological tradition, but he presented it as a boundary and unreachable idea in philosophy. Man and his cognition remain in provisional state of ultimate contingency (Kontingenz) and this temporary measure has nothing

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in common with the categorical nature of the absolute truth. Blumenberg emphasized that philosophical demands for the rigorous lingual “conceptuality” invalidate historicity, making it a reservoir of relics close to Bacon’s idols, survivals (Restbestände) on the way of progress from myth to logos, from unclearness and prejudice to exactness and truth. Blumenberg has taken up the issue of prejudices, formulated by Descartes, but he values it in different way, transgressing beyond the Cartesian-phenomenological tradition of philosophy as source knowledge rooted in the absolute starting point, deprived of doubtful assumptions. In “Paradigmen . . .” he emphasized the importance of man’s “courage” to precede himself/herself in images, the “courage of the guess” (Mut zur Vermutung), which could be the sound basis for human sensible, practical orientation in the world.6 The philosopher called later his project of metaphorology “a theory of nonconceptuality”, distinctly opposing metaphors to notions and definitions. Metaphor is “a preferred element of rhetoric as a way of reaching agreement in cases of unattained or unattainable univocity”.7 According to Blumenberg, rhetoric is a proper tool of cognition and there are well-grounded epistemological and anthropological arguments supporting this statement. The basic premise of “rhetorical reason” applying metaphors is lack of evidence, expressed by Blumenberg in contrast to Leibniz as “the principle of insufficient reason” (principium rationis insufficientis).8 Rhetoric is a form of a provisional and revocable rationality, a reasonable form of human thinking and acting in the face of theoretical unevidence, impossibility to fulfil the ideal of the absolute truth. When thinking loses its consolidation in obvious intuitions, the only measure of its legitimacy is argumentation, dialectic dispute, leading to consent, unity and allowance of temporal truths. Dialectics like this has been taught by the Sophists, as well as Aristotle. Blumenberg defends this tradition, appealing at the same time against considering rhetoric tools as the mere decorum, stylistic ornament. Sophistics has introduced separation between technology and theory, espousing techne as a form of controlling the world without knowing its essence. Phenomenology followed Platonian contempt for Sophistics in its efforts for embracing the whole – not the fragments, striving for theory – not technology. Theory is a holistic view. Intentional consciousness is oriented towards full presentation of its objects, but such synthesis is an infinite process. Husserl wrote on the widest horizon of all horizons as on “an infinite task”. According to Blumenberg this is a source of the antinomian character of phenomenology. Phenomenology invalidates what has been already understood pre-theoretically and given primarily in the universum of the life-world, at the same time making us take up the effort of independent theoretical understanding. But the theoretical task is infinite, therefore it is not in accordance with “the capacity of human existence”, which is finite.9 Hence

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rhetoric with its defence of technological and pragmatic action against pure theoretical insight has anthropological justification. Finitude, passing by and deficiency of man, who is a biological and instinctive misfit towards nature, are anthropologic determinants of rhetoric. Human attitude towards reality is selective and delayed in time. Metaphor is a tool of mediatisation of this attitude, a verbal measure, a substitute of physical reflexes. The rhetoric reason is pragmatic, makes life and culture survive. Metaphors express the world of life, omitted by description in science, the language of notions and definitions. Blumenberg emphasizes, when discussing theses of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “[. . .] the class of the ineffable, too, is not empty” and “[. . .] there could be no relationship of grounding between the life-world and the world of theoretical facts”.10 Metaphorical understanding occurs in the context of existential meaning, incompatible with requirements of scientific objective and factual description. Science reaches the “naked truth”, which is axiologically neutral. “The ‘naked truth’ is not what life can live with; for, let us not forget, this life is the result of a long history of complete congruence between [man’s] environment and ‘signification’ – congruence that is only shattered in its most recent phase”.11 With use of the category of significance (Bedeutsamkeit) Blumenberg consciously referred to the tradition of the philosophy of life as well as philosophical hermeneutics and existential ontology. The most important influence however, was Erich Rothaker’s “the principle of significance” (Satz der Bedeutsamkeit).12 According to Rothaker, the theoretical subject is not the same as the individual, concrete subject. The former develops forms of cognitive integration in the open temporal horizon, the latter is condemned to finitude. The significance is absent in natural sciences that are neutral and indifferent to values. It reveals only in the understanding attitude of social sciences which do not omit historicity and finiteness of human condition.13 Naked and exact scientific truth is therefore a “desert of significance”. It opens a horizon of the universe impassive for human fate, becoming in this way a factor that makes archaic experience of the absolutism of reality return. This is especially painful in man’s subjective experience of the life-time (Lebenszeit), which occurs a short episode in relation to the objective worl-time (Weltzeit). Human finite time and the world-time – huge but determined by the end of entropy, described by science, diverge like open scissors, increasing the feeling of anxiety and the absurd of human existence.14 Such experiences do not take place in the niche of the life-world. The lifeworld is irreflective, based upon experiences of the every day existence, upon institutions of customs, habits, regulations, tradition that are consolidated by the very course of life. They make us feel secure, depriving the burden of the absolutism of reality, covering the universe’s rudimentary indifference to

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human fate. The life-world yields no theoretical questions, no doubts, is understandable by itself, is familiar and reliable.15 At present however, science with its model of the objective world, deprived of significance and existential values, pervades more and more the life-world, arising experiences of nonsense, bringing anxiety in front of the absolutism of reality. One of unsuccessful attempts to overcome the absolutism of reality was Husserl’s phenomenological epoché. Blumenberg demonstrated that phenomenological overcoming is quite different to this fulfilled in the life-world. Lebenswelt is the area of trustful existing in familiarity of every day life, whilst the phenomenological, speculative and artificial suspending of the world’s existence is “an act of violence” (Gewaltakt), which is counterbalanced by “the whole weight of the existing world”.16 At present like once in archaic ages man still lives under the pressure of the absolutism of reality. “Man is always already on this side of the absolutism of reality, but he never entirely attains the certainty that he has reached the turning point in his history at which the relative predominance of reality over his consciousness and his fate has turned into the supremacy of the subject”.17 ABSOLUTISM OF REALITY

What does the experience of primordial and durable absolutism of reality mean? It is constituted by the most archaic feeling of the overwhelming power of the world (Übermächtigkeit), which precedes culture and by Blumenberg is connected with anthropogenesis. Blumenbergian anthropology can be situated in the tradition of the classical 20th century German anthropology, confronting the tradition of philosophy with the results of empirical sciences (physical anthropology, biology, ethology), aiming at exposing the essence of human beings, their “specific position in cosmos” in contrast with the nature of animals. In this way Ernst Cassirer, Max Scheler, Helmut Plessner, Arnold Gehlen constructed their philosophies of man. Blumenberg has explicitly but in a creative way referred to Cassirer and Gehlen, borrowing from the former the concept of human as the animal symbolicum, from the latter the category of institution. Like Scheler and Gehlen, Blumenberg emphasized human’s instinctive “dilettantism” in nature, which is an impulse to spiritual (Scheler) and cultural (Gehlen) transpositions of life, like Cassirer and Plessner, exposed basically “artificial” human attitude towards reality.18 According to Blumenberg, human position in the world is “specifically inconvenient” – man is Mangelwesen (as Gehlen described it), “poor being”, “creature marked with a lack”. Animals are highly specialized beings, reacting spontaneously and adequately to environment impulses thanks to their instincts. Their existence in nature is immanent, demonstrates full adaptation,

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being totally adjacent to the world. Humans emerged from the “closed” animal biotope, left once the primeval shelter of forest and entered “the open space of savannah”.19 This was a “situational leap”, opening new space for living, full of new possibilities (e.g. avoiding the pressure of selection leading to irreversible specialization), but also new fundamental threats. Broadening the hominid’s possibilities of perception was parallel to defencelessness towards his own perceivability. In the closed space of forest animals have got possibility to release the fear by movement, escape, taking cover. The open horizon, the new human world has not given such possibility any more, it required new tools and they were developed by creating the ability of anticipation. The infinite horizon in which at any time danger might have emerged, has been the source of extreme tension, insecurity, the state of permanent alert. Ambivalence and indefiniteness, unpredictability of the open space were the sources of primordial existential anxiety (Lebensangst). The absolutism of reality refers to exactly this type of experience. “What it means is that man came close to not having control of the conditions of his existence and, what is more important, believed that he simply lacked control of them. It may have been earlier or later that he interpreted this circumstance of the superior power [Übermächtigkeit] of what is (in each case) other [i.e. not himself ] by assuming the existence of superior powers [Übermächt, en]”.20 THE LOGOS OF MYTH

The situation of the permanent suspension and insecurity against all danger, the state of the overwhelming domination of the different, the strange, the unpredictable over the creature that may rely only upon itself, so fragile in such new circumstances, the state of experiencing the absolutism of reality, could not persist for a long period. Blumenberg describes it as a “boundary situation”, emphasizing at the same time not just its archaic character, pre-cultural initiality, but first of all extreme horror. This means that “anxiety must again and again be rationalized into fear, both in the history of mankind and in that of the individual”.21 Rationalization of anxiety (Angst) into fear (Furcht) has been the beginning of culture, this “artificial nature” of humans Blumenberg and his predecessors has been writing about. This “rationalization” is made by language, which when calling things, giving names to what is indefinite and strange, has been able to grasp the internal dynamics of the strange and to focus the dispersed around the centres of meaning, condensed images, figures, to eventually embrace the whole of reality, full of tensions, into a story. The story is being spun by man, therefore his predominance over the power of the world exposes primarily in mythical stories. What is named and told by human, loses not just a feature of being strange but also a feature of violence. Myth was

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a primitive man’s perfect invention, thanks to which he defended his right to survive, avoiding at the same time the pressure of biological mechanisms of evolution. It became to some extent a “substitute human body”. “The organic system resulting from the mechanism of evolution becomes ‘man’ by evading the pressure of that mechanism by setting against it something like a phantom body. This is the sphere of his culture, his institutions – and also his myths”.22 The initial act of constitution the human world i.e. culture, is the act of mythical schematization of the world of nature, in which the violence of the power of nature, the unrecognized being – and for this reason chaotic and threatening – becomes reduced by speech i.e., naming and spinning a story. At that time, chaos becomes cosmos and a “book”. When the world becomes “legible” (an important idea in Blumenberg’s philosophy, it yielded a treatise on legibility of the world23 ), the horror vanishes. Mythical schematization rationalizes what is irrational. The indefinite anxiety is rationalized into fear and this substitution allows actions like magical spelling or religious ritual appealing. What creates “rationality of myth”? What is the essence of “the logos of myth”? The answers to these questions are the main motif in Blumenbergian Arbeit am Mythos. In the face of unpredictable space of savannah, being unable just to escape, in physical sense, from horror and danger, primitive man had recourse to the other, started by him as answer to extremity of this pre-situation, substitute way to preserve harmony and life: he made the essential transfer, Übertragung, of unobjectified power of Übermächtigkeit, pleromatic, indifferentiated higher power onto multiplicity of more exact Übermächten, higher forces. In this process of transfer, translation, he made use of language – the proper medium for such activity. Along with lingual structuralization of what is primarily diffusive, chaotic, indifferentiated, reduction of the absolutism of reality, transformation of anxiety, this “intentionality with no object” followed, reduction into more tolerable fear, intentionality with more exact object of reference. Fear is a rationalized anxiety. This rationalization consists in changing the unfamiliar into familiar. The unpredictable reality becomes domesticated and assimilated by splitting it into multiplicity of objects and giving them names. Along with “the name’s breaking into the chaos of the unnamed”, the absolutism of reality at the same time relieves, being reduced (abgebaut). This is what the great success of the logos of myth consists in, hence language at its base is of mythical character, its elements, names are referred to mythological shapes, forms of differentiated reality. “Rationality of myth” lies in its effectiveness to cope with the world in the extreme pre-situation. The access to the foreign power is possible thanks to the “mythical process” (mythischer Prozess) of distinguishing within the undifferentiated a variety of directions, objects, qualities, functions, which not only acquired names,

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but also act on each other in the neutralizing, limiting, weakening way. “The technique of weakening operates through the division of power; the exclusion of omnipotence; rivalry and entanglement in affairs; the mutual jealousy and envy of the powers; their precinct and department mentality; the complication of their genealogies and successions; and the god’s defined weaknesses and capacities for distraction”.24 The power predominating over human beings gets curbed by language, but also by division, pluralisation. N a m i n g (Namengebung) and divi- sion o f p o w e r (Gewaltenteilung), are two basic strategies of the mentioned “mythical process”. Thanks to them, inside the overwhelming reality, inevitable dynamics is brought into play – and this is a source of stories. Stories begin their plots where something happens, where there are tensions, frictions, conflicts, where pathos of relation reveals. When talking about gods, monsters, demons, man gains preponderance over the reality patterned into pantheon of those figures. Even the most monstrous mythical figure is now just a trace of the primeval process of overcoming, whilst the fact that it is a figure having a form, shape, name, function, limited area of influence, is in itself a witness of being curbed by human lingual potential. The initial myth is a polytheistic one, a story of differentiated, plural powers, which being equipped with names and forms, become objects of magical and ritual practices. There can be noticed a clear evolution of mythical stories: initially full of teriomorphic, animal figures, turn gradually into the milder, humanized ones, to eventually assume the monotheistic form, as in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Under the veil of monotheism, there is still the sense of polytheism. It becomes apparent e.g. in the idea of Jahveh Covenant with humans or Christ’s kenosis, the dogma of the Trinitarian God however denies this sense.25 This dogma is the most abstractive formula of the speculative theological reason and it excludes freedom to spin mythical stories. Christianity on account of its struggle against Gnostic heresy dogmatized itself and became religion of “truth” and “law” as well as metaphysical God, affiliated to the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover. The Gospel truth has been deprived of its essential, mythological – included in the idea of Incarnation – overtone, by fusion of Christianity with the scholastic premises of medieval metaphysics and theology. This dogma, staying in contradiction with the freedom of myth, is a form of the truth absolutism, i.e. fundamental orthodoxy. It gives authority again to one power, and at the same time constrains human autonomy. And yet it is man who is supposed to be a beneficiary of myth, it is man who tells mythological stories for his own profit, to preserve the balance of his existence. This balance is achieved by neutralizing the primordial power, what is possible thanks to its decomposition, even though it occurs on the metaphorical plane, in a figurative sense, by lingual substitution, spinning stories.

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The logos of myth is totally different from the logos of science, it is not etiologic, it makes no use of reasons and arguments, but makes use of narration, and this is it what more efficiently deprives of the existential burden of the absolutism of reality. Blumenbergian conceiving of anxiety as “intentionality of consciousness without an object” (Intentionalität des Bewusstseins ohne Gegenstand) is on some account affiliate to other philosophical concepts of experiencing the objectless anxiety, present in Kierkegaard’s, Heidegger’s, Ricoeur’s reflection. These philosophers differentiated anxiety from common fear, oriented to identifiable definite phenomenon or object. They emphasized the positive impact of experiencing anxiety for human condition; hence without it, life would be superficial, deprived of self-knowledge, affirmation and freedom, although at the same time they admitted that such state is a rare and difficult experience. In the same way also existentialists: Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich, Jean-Paul Sarte, Albert Camus expressed their opinions on existential anxiety and fear. For Blumenberg however n o t t o s t a y o p e n, but t o o v e r, c o m e anxiety is a real base of affirmation, of both biological and cultural human existence. Even when Blumenberg explicitly refers to Martin Heidegger, he emphasizes not “the naked truth”, but the benevolent m e a n i n g, which veils anxiety. Blumenberg defends the existential value of depriving the burden of anxiety – the more that it is of culture-forming character, and its sense is confirmed by history: if forms of depriving the burden survive, they prove then its efficiency and being indispensable in human life. The philosopher remarks man’s authenticity and dignity in actions capable of resisting the violence of anxiety and it is in them where he reads the basic metaphor of humanity: the idea of humane Selbstbehauptung, human self-assertion. Existential authenticity does not lie in anamnesis of anxiety experience meant as counterbalance towards every day hustle and bustle. Blumenberg considers that straight co-existence with anxiety is a paralysing and destructive experience. Because however we always are “on this side of the absolutism of reality” and anxiety returns, reliable measures to eliminate the numinotic experiences of fear, inherited form tradition, should be maintained and cared about. We should stress here that the author of “Arbeit am Mythos” has made not only just the existential overcoming of Husserl’s phenomenology by presenting the significance of the life-world, but also reinterpreted and attenuated the existential dogma of the value of experiencing anxiety for authenticity and creativity of life. Such revisions seem to be original accomplishments of Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy of life and myth. Hans Blumenberg’s central philosophical issue was absolutism and its overcoming. Absolute metaphors were supposed to neutralize the absolutism of metaphysical ideas and exact notions of science and philosophy. Modern age theoretical curiosity that has generated science and technology development,

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has made the same with the theological absolutism. The image of the Earth as human asylum amongst the indifferent universe neutralizes the absolutism of reality. Also myths, the motif of the world as a book, the life-world and institutions of culture have the same function. Each of these solutions is a peculiar consolation, though not a salvation. In their lack of strive to absoluteness, in their ultimate openness and unfulfilability they offer both hope and bitterness, remaining the signs of conatus essendi, human efforts to maintain life. Blumenberg’s well-tried intellectual consolation was taking up discussion with the heritage of philosophy and questioning its premises, conclusions, ideas, metaphors, images, arguments, systems along with their significance and validity. This was like reading and writing the book of human mind and spirit. Myths in this book have achieved their separate and significant chapter. Its content is very original in the background of the rich tradition of the philosophy of myth. Blumenbergian originality in re-thinking this tradition consists in the functional conception of myth as a lingual medium of Entlastung the absolutism of reality, in defence of its rationality against vom Mythos zum Logos pattern, in presenting the metaphorical and rhetoric basis of the logos of myth, in revealing the permanent presence of myth in history, in hermeneutic feedback of “the work of myth” with “the work on myth”, in exposing myth to the infinite transformative reception and translation, in contrasting the freedom of myth with the absolutism of dogmas, canons and literal interpretation. At the same time the particular feature of his philosophy of myth is desacralization of the myth’s contents, which is the methodological consequence of the thinker’s religious agnosticism. Myth is not expression of the eternal revelation, is not the God’s speech, but human language. When acting against Enlightenment devaluation of myth as irrational prejudice, Blumenberg has also put into question the romantic elevation of myth as archetype of wisdom. Not poetic wisdom but numinous anxiety stays behind mythical images. Blumenberg, when defending the logos of myth, situates himself in the current of remitologization, but when showing the inherent, earthly, human roots of myth, he simultaneously demythologizes them, re-interprets in accordance with contemporary renouncing of metaphysics and transcendent archai. To fulfil its rudimentary function of releasing from absolutism, myth has to be free from absolutistic intentions in itself. Polytheism and pluralism are the best guarantee for such work. In the name of human, gods fight with each other in mythical stories, neutralizing omnipotence of the overwhelming power of reality. In the name of his own freedom, man multiplies these stories and subjects their liberating motifs to the process of permanent re-reading. Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy of myth has achieved an original and significant position in the tradition of the German philosophy taking up the issue of myth. This tradition was created by many thinkers, among others:

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J. G. Herder, F. W. J. Schelling, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Michel, Ernst Cassirer. At present, Odo Marquard, Manfred Frank and Kurt Hübner pursue studies on myth and they refer to Blumenberg. All the mentioned authors have in common the conviction, expressed in different ways, that myth is a symbolic logos and valuable medium of expressing the existential truth of human life and human self-knowledge. Academy of Physical Education, Cracow NOTES 1

Edmund Husserl, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, “Logos”, Bd. I, 1911, p. 289–341. Franz J. Wetz, Hans Blumenberg zur Einführung, Junius, Hamburg 1993, p. 126. 3 Paul Tillich, The Construction of Religion in Schelling’s Positive Philosophy. Its Presuppositions and Principles, transl. V. Nuovo, Associated University Press, Inc., Cranbury, New Jersey, and London, England 1974. 4 Hannah Arendt, “What is Existenz philosophy?,” Partisan Review, 1 (1946). 5 Blumenberg, “Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality” in idem, Shipwreck with Spectator. Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence, trans. Steven Rendall, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 1997), pp. 81–102. 6 Blumenberg, “Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 6 (1960), p. 11. 7 Ibid., pp. 86–87. 8 Blumenberg, “Anthropologische Annäherung on die Aktualität der Rhetorik” in idem, Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1981), p. 124. 9 Blumenberg, “Lebenswelt und Technisierung unter Aspekten der Phänomenologie” in idem, Wirklichkeiten in denen wir leben, op. cit., pp. 7–54. 10 Blumenberg, “Prospekt for a Theory of Nonconceptuality”, op. cit., pp. 89, 90. 11 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, transl. Robert M. Wallace, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 1990), p. 110. 12 Erich Rothaker, Zur Genealogie des menschlichen Bewusstseins, (Bonn: Bouvier, 1966), p. 44. 13 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, op. cit., p. 67. 14 Blumenberg, Lebenszeit und Weltzeit, (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1986), p. 73. 15 Ibid., pp. 85–86. 16 Ibid., p. 357. 17 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, op. cit., p. 9. 18 Wayne Hudson, “After Blumenberg: historicism and philosophical anthropology,” History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 6, No 4 (1993), pp. 110–111. 19 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, op. cit., p. 3–4. 20 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 21 Ibid. p. 5. 22 Ibid. p. 165. 23 Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981). 24 Blumenberg, Work on Myth, op. cit., p. 125. 25 Ibid. p. 260. 2

SECTION V

MOBEEN SHAHID

T E M P O R A L I T Y A N D PA S S I V I T Y I N E D M U N D H U S S E R L’ S A N A LY S E S

Time as an extremely familiar thing appears to us through the succession of events in the existing world. Phenomenologicaly we get closer to the “original temporal field” in the flow of consciousness where the objective and subjective time can be distinguished but our main interest is to reflect over the immanent time of the flow of consciousness and not the time of the experienced world which may be of interest for the natural sciences. Edmund Husserl’s Ideen I,1 published in 1913, where the turn to transcendental phenomenology is founded, synthetically mentions the problem of time-consciousness in § 81 “Phenomenological Time and Consciousness of Time”: “By means of the phenomenological reduction consciousness has not only lost its apperceptive ‘attachment’ (which, of course, is a metaphor) to material reality and its incorporation into space, even though this is secondary, but also its place in cosmic time. That time which, by virtue of its essence belongs to the mental process2 as mental process, with its modes of givenness of Now, Before, After with their modally determined simultaneity and recession, etc., is not measured nor to be measured by any position of the sun, by any clock, by any physical means”.3 In a footnote of the same paragraph Husserl affirms that he has essentially dealt with and reached the conclusions of this problem already in 1905 lecture course which was given in the winter semester of 1904/05 where the fourth part of this course is entitled “On the Phenomenology of Time”.4 Whereas Husserl never abandoned the problem of consciousness of time seen that the L-manuscripts (1917–1918) and the C-manuscripts (from the late 1920s to the early 1930s), both the collections of Husserl’s works, show that he never concluded his analysis of time-consciousness just in 1905. Husserl considers St. Augustine’s Chapters 14–28 of book XI of the Confessions as the best reflection ever made on this problem and he affirms in this regard: “. . . We may still say today with Augustine: si nemo a me quaerat, scio, si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio”.5 Such a familiar thing as time is very difficult to be explained especially when we have to put objective and subjective time-consciousness into the proper relationship. We get confused, face contradictions and other difficulties. In English language several important contributions have discussed the problem of time from Husserlian perspective such as Phenomenology of time: 325 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 325–346. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of Time-Consciousness by Toine Kortooms6 who makes a detailed analysis of phenomenological consciousness of time in Husserl’s manuscripts starting from the Winter Semester course of 1904–1905 till the C-Manuscripts (1920s–1930s). Anna Teresa Tymieniecka has edited Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life7 where important contributions on the subject have been collected also to give space not only to a better understanding of phenomenological consciousness of time but also to describe the concept of time in the Islamic philosophy. As far as my personal contribution is concerned I will basically investigate into the temporal character of the objects of perception, memory and expectation as they are given in Husserl’s “Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic”8 and see its connection with his writings “On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time”.9 My latest text Gnoseology and Anthropology: transcendental and realistic phenomenology; Edmund Husserl & Josef Seifert10 under the guidance of Angela Ales Bello delineates the phenomenological consciousness of the transcendental subjectivity. Some cognitive acts, including that of reflection, are acts of consciousness on the objectively given to us. This very activity of reflection on the objects, a rigorously systematic movement of cognitive acts, helps us to establish a scientific phenomenological method which would penetrate into the essential structure of the phainomenon, the object which manifests itself to us. Only a systematic inquiry of the perceived reality will expose to us the fundamental structures or essences of the truth about the things in themselves. We would also need to face some basic questions, e.g., What can define the systematic structure of conscious acts? How can this system lead us to a false or true judgement? Through the phenomenological reduction, the cognitive acts do perceive reality, and when this perception of reality is expressed in any kind of language we only have the description of reality, but at the same time this knowledge of the real adumbrations of a given reality is one possible path to get to know reality itself, which remains in front of us to be discovered differently, because of the different dispositions of the subject perceiving and looking for it. In this case a spontaneous question in reference to Husserl emerges: What is the genesis of the cognitive structures which are peculiar to the analyses of the passive synthesis? Husserl in his “Analysis Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis” mentions different aspects of the same object which can be perceived: “. . . Let us begin with any external perception. If we observe an unchanging object at rest, for example, a tree standing before us, we pass over it with our eyes, now we step closer to it, now back away from it, now here, now there, we see it now from this, now from that side. During this process the object is constantly given to us as unchanged, as the same; we see it as such; and yet

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a slight turn of our attention teaches us that the so-called perceptual images, the modes of appearances, the aspects of the object constantly change. In a constant variation of modes of appearance, perspectives, that is, during a constant variation in the actual lived experience of perception, we have a consciousness that runs through them and connects them up, a consciousness of the one and the same object. This variation is given to consciousness, and yet it is hidden in a certain way; in the normal attitude, the natural attitude that is turned outward toward things, we do not consciously notice the variation”.11

Genetically we are a structural unity, and the cognitive subject has its own structures12 which cannot be reduced to the structures of the object. “Looking at the individual subject penetrating the deeper levels of the realities of the consciousness, whose depth is without any bottom,”13 one feels like asking, “To what extent can we reach science that is true knowledge?” What is science? Husserl, according to Ales Bello, affirms at the end that we do not know everything with evident knowledge of the thing. “This certain knowledge is the cognitive ideal, and if we knew all we would be God.”14 “Things are known in their objectivity (reality) only through the human struggle of knowledge, which is limited.”15 Transcendental phenomenology is the main point where Husserl reached after a lifelong research which now belongs to the history of this subject. Husserl, while working with mathematics, asks himself, “What is number?” He begins his research by disagreeing with the Euclidean definition of number, according to which it is a multiplicity of unity, even if it is necessary to explain what is meant by the unity of multiplicities; according to Ales Bello, “for this reason he focuses his attention on the concept of Inbegriff (the notion of aggregate), which is proposed by Weierstrass and substantially corresponds to that of Menge which appears in Cantor, and underlines that its genesis has to be found in kollektive Verbindung’ of the psychic acts.”16 This question induces him to study psychology with Franz Brentano at Vienna, where he discovers the sphere of lived experiences in human consciousness. Lived experiences are registered in our consciousness and can be distinguished in different acts, e.g., the act of reflection permits us to consider other acts and analyse them. Reconsidering the meaning of number, one asks if number is a psychological concept17 and if arithmetic can be configured as a branch of psychology. Ales Bello replies that “it is necessary to observe if each Gegebenheit is configured as a subjective Erlebnisse—and for this aspect each consciousness is an Erlebnisse and in as much as it is psychic Erlebnisse, it belongs to psychology—what is known (Erkannte) is the object of a different investigation which cannot avoid being of logic.”18 While he reaches the problem of subjectivity and of lived experiences of subjectivity, he finds another important problem to discuss, the problem of temporality. He goes from psychology and logic to the Erkenntnistheorie of the subject which is phenomenology,

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in 1907 The Idea of Phenomenology and in 1913 Ideen I are published, and in 1905 he takes into consideration the problem of temporality; in the same year he moves from subjectivity to inter-subjectivity. While writing the Logical Investigations, in his analysis of the acts of consciousness he finds that logical analysis is a study of the acts of thought, but at the same time he questions what these acts are, if they are related to each other and what their meaning is. In the first volume of Logical Investigations, Husserl also analyses pure phenomenology in general and deals with the problem of philosophy of knowledge. At this point, Formal and Transcendental Logic makes quite clear that one cannot speak of logic without Erkenntnistheorie, given that logic is not only formal, which deals with the exterior aspect, but also transcendental,19 which deals with interiority and helps us understand where the thought comes from. From the mathematical perspective Husserl enters into the psychological one, which lets him elaborate an independent perspective because it is fruitful theoretically to open a path to develop the phenomenological method starting immediately from logical positions. “But Husserl does not want to rule out either the psychological foundation of logic as a methodology or the descriptive-psychological description (Aufklärung) of the origin of the logical concepts.”20 From 1925 to 1926 “Husserl’s mode of association in his Analysis concerning the Passive Synthesis goes down to the thing in itself. First of all, he describes the visual field: the process which generates the field is rather always “limited,” and any “Ausdehnung” is an idealization, which does not have any necessity in itself. However, it would not make any sense to consider the direct ones as closed lines. This way also the homogeneity of the field is an idealization, which offers the different possibility in respect to the visual real field.”21 The first three logical works of Husserl, Logical Investigations, Formal and Transcendental Logic, and Experience and Judgement, not only deal with logical problems but also pave the way for phenomenological Erkenntnistheorie. In the Prolegomena of the Logical Investigations we find that the essential ethical foundations of the logical technique cannot be found in a psychological knowledge, and even if it could be present there, pure logic has to be distinguished in this consideration. Pure logic is reaching the foundations of all the sciences, and reaching these ultimate foundations is its task. In this way it is clear that in phenomenology one takes into consideration also the act of thought, its essence. After Husserl explains the hierarchical structure of the essence, which is present also in defining the specific objects, we find that the manner of the “Analysis of the passive synthesis” is also necessary to formulate a theory of an object.22

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Consciousness or knowledge is a phenomenological concept, and it can be proposed in “three different manners, 1. Ich Erlebniss, as a unity of Ego and of the lived experiences (Erlebnisse), 2. Interior perception,23 3. Interior intention or the psychic act. Consciousness, basically for Husserl, is a phenomenological unity of Ego and of the Erlebnisse where it is an aspect of consciousness that is the ability of human beings to distinguish. Husserl is indebted to Franz Brentano for the theme of intentionality which has been proposed in a new perspective in which he describes the psychic act, but at the same time Husserl, after having borrowed from descriptive psychology, proposes a theoretical alternative, which is his transcendental phenomenology. At this point he brings forward a genetic theoretical science. But the so called ‘idealists’ of that epoch did not find any transcendental construction in him but important analysis of lived experiences, acts, intentions, and fulfilments, and for this reason he was accused of psychologism. It should be clear that Husserl borrowed from psychology and through the gnoseological analysis reaches the ‘theory of the theories,’ i.e., transcendental logic, which is the basic structure of scientificness of the sciences.”24 In knowing the object through the categories, the Sixth Investigation of Husserl’s Logical Investigations brings forward the problem of the intuitively perceived sense (categorical intuition). He is always interested in perceiving the object genetically, in the sense that what is, is born from, and not only in its static beingness.25 Here we will take into consideration the concept of logical ontology beginning with Husserlian phenomenology. The relationship between the formal and the transcendental deals with the problem of subjectivity through passive and active analysis, where subjectivity is analyzed through a stratification of the interiority. Husserl asks about the genesis of the cognitive structures which are particular to the passive synthesis. The subject has its own structures which cannot be reduced to those of the object, and during these analyses we find that logic is a necessary instrument for knowing the profound formation of consciousness. The passage from the formal to the transcendental logic in consciousness is an instrument to re-activate the sense and function of sciences and in this way “the authentic sense of a logic is in being a theory of science.”26 In his critique of the positivists, Husserl never denied the existence of factually existing objects and of exact science, but he mainly questioned them to ask what one is doing while one is dealing with logic, which is even vaster than mathematics, even if it is the strongest example of formalization which implies that truth can be ignored with respect to the authenticity of the state of things. Passive synthesis is that of receptivity (affectivity) which is a passage between the active and the passive, e.g., the black-on-white of a thing in

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its similitude and distinction; the thing impresses on my affectivity and then reaches perception where I situate the thing in my consciousness in reflection about the thing. Being conscious (Consciousness) is when we give an object to somebody without thinking about the action, and we reflect when we have to explain to somebody how that object is formed. We can make this reflection at the level where we can reflect about the thing because these reflections are lived and this terrain of reflection is present at the transcendental level. We can be conscious of the essential structure of lived experiences through eidetic and transcendental reduction, which clarifies that my essential structure is the fundamental point from which to think about the essential structure of objects. Through reflection, which belongs to our spiritual sphere, we become conscious of how we are made, i.e., body, psyche and spirit, but we cannot be sure of what we have in front of us if we do not use our reflection, because it has to pass through judgement,27 which belongs to discernment. We can note that according to Husserl there are currents of human consciousness which take us towards God because among these lived experiences there is the dimension of an openness towards the Absolute. This dimension of sense is hyletic, which reveals this interior and exterior sense, e.g., if I am in a place where there is light I feel safe and secure. For Husserl, according to Ales Bello, a true theory of knowledge clarifies the logical concepts, those of transcendental logic.28 Bringing forward the transcendental subjectivity, Husserl wants to reflect on the lived experience and not on the existence or non-existence of the objects which are in front of him. Transcendental subjectivity regards the whole human being, and this very attitude allows us to be detached from things, from others and from ourselves, because the human being is a paradox, being both subject and object in himself. Human beings, wherever they are from or whatever they look like, have an essential structure of beingness which belongs to them equally and indistinctively, and one can be conscious of it through empathy. In the same way that we have the same essential structure we, as human beings, have consciousness as a sphere which belongs to all, and when different acts, e.g., cognitive ones, “reflect on” them, we have essentially the same stimulus or imprint on our consciousness; but it can be different according to our perception of the object which is in front of us or even within us if our own subjectivity has been objectified, e.g., if I see and touch a paper and think of it and say “I see a sheet of paper,” it is a cogitatio which belongs to consciousness. Saying “a sheet of paper” is a judgement, and when I am thinking of the paper I am judging, knowing (noesis) and reaching a judgement (Noema). The paper is transcendent to me as it is outside me, but is immanent as it is perceived, and this act which gives a paper immanence is called Noema; but can we talk of a finite and infinite consciousness of such a relationship because the

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paper is present to my consciousness as what has been seen and perceived of it but not as piece of paper? Through looking at the paper we realize that it has a colour and an ideality and a sense which correspond to the being of the paper in itself. In order to say that it is paper I have to make a passive analysis, i.e., a pre-perceptive analysis. We know that there is a piece of paper which has been already perceived, but there are other perceptions which determine the perception of the paper. According to Ales Bello, here Husserl does not speak in a Kantian way, but says that the object of which I can speak is at an upper level and I am not conscious of what happens underneath. To delve more deeply into the analysis of the cosciential experience, Ales Bello uses two images to explain what its analysis can be like: (i) a path which moves from upwards to downwards and vice-versa; or (ii) one which begins from a central point and opens out into different rays.29 In her “The Language of our Living Body,”30 Ales Bello, together with remembering, imagination and thought, in particular takes perception to be an act which places us in direct and immediate contact with the external world because it is the lived experience from which one has to move in order to commence an inquiry that subsequently leads to examining the vast range of the other lived experiences. This very act can be, in turn, subjected to analysis, and at this point we realize that we perform this act by means of sensitivity, and it is this point which the theme of corporeity makes explicit. Where the human intellect can be conscious of cognitive acts, there it, in its body, exteriorizes the interior state of being, those of a psychic and spiritual nature. Ales Bello uses different expressions which are proper to different states of physical being, i.e., made-up or disguised body, masked body, a reciting body, a gripped body and a transparent body. This very body which is a means of communication with others derives its transparency from the fact that its expressions are evidence of the person’s interiority, but its submission is also due to the fact that it can be used by the psychic and uncontrolled affective reactions, by the decisions taken with deliberation, which include in themselves also the will which gives a way to the theme of value and duty in an ethical sense. The body is the mirror of the interiority of a human being, but we need to enter further into the consciential experiences of the human being which are consequences of a certain way of its beingness of ego. Husserl makes “two distinctions which we would need to analyze in their different steps: 1. modal modifications of passive doxa, of passive intentions of expectation, their inhibitions passively accruing to them, and the like; 2. responsively taking a position that is peculiar to making a decision, doing so actively, as proceeding from the ego.”31 In order to reach a judicative32 (firm) decision one has to go through a multi-layered striving (questioning) which can be explained as two

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kinds:33 The first kind of multi-layered striving, a “straightforward questioning,” belongs to the general process of striving which takes us to a judicative decision, and even a doubting in the developed consciousness belongs to the possible judgements.34 In Husserl’s words “of course, questioning belongs to the sphere of judgement and knowledge, indeed, it belongs to them inseparably; and it belongs inextricably and necessarily to logic as the science of knowing and of the known, more precisely, as the science of cognitive reason and its formations. But it does this only because the judicative life, even the rational judicative life, is a medium for a peculiar wishing, striving, willing, acting, whose goals are precisely judgements, and judgements of a special form. All reason is at the same time practical reason, and this also holds for logical reason. . . . Questioning is a mode of comportment that is related in practice to judging. I find myself disagreeably frustrated when I pose a question and do not reach a decision; this may also frustrate me in other decisions relating to my practical life. Accordingly, I wish for a decision.”35 The second kind of multi-layered striving consists in explaining what has been alluded to in the first kind, even though one has to distinguish between the higher and lower levels of the judicative acts, and we need to make a fundamental distinction, as Husserl says, “that the cognitive life, the life of logos, indeed like life in general, runs its course in a fundamental stratification.”36 We would further need to enter, as Ales Bello also specifies, into this pre-categorical sphere which belongs to the passive level of the subjective consciousness which is present in the human being as a transparent sheet of glass where all the objects which are transcendent to it reflect and are registered on it. In the manuscripts of group C, Husserl brings together the constitution of objects starting from the first levels of the form of flow (Form der Strömung). In Ales Bello’s words, while “knowing the object” one enters here the hyletic level that lets us understand the presence of homogeneity and heterogeneity which is realized through various sensorial fields; this datum can be united, and one discovers how an associative totality can be constituted.37 If it were only the egological intentionality that defines the constitution of an object, the represented object, after having lost all sensible contacts with the factually existing reality, would be only a “thought” by human subjectivity. Perception is “when an object is given to consciousness in its originaliter” in “the present and in the flesh.”38 It is an “original apprehension of the self of its object.” An object is perceived through our senses (for example, a sheet of paper which I touch or a flower which I see) and this perception is basically what I receive or have the retention of through what from the external world reflects on my consciousness, and the adumbrations of the object perceived become the intentional representations.

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After an object is perceived by human subjectivity, the process through which the human consciousness elaborates its judgement about the object in front of it, according to Husserl’s Passive Synthesis and Active Synthesis, is as follows: 1. Affection All that is received in a perception, in Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of this sphere, is preceded by affection, and the “primordial source of all affection lies and can only lie in the primordial impression and its own greater and lesser affectivity. The lines of affective awakening, or again, the lines of the maintenance or propagation of affectivity proceed from there.”39 “Affection does not end in grasping, either in its single or multi-radiating forms.”40 All that is perceived and registered thanks to the sensibility occurs because of the affection, in its passivity, and is recognized, actively, and through the hyletic datum takes its body, is present in the temporality in its passive constitution which generates the objectivity. Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of the constitution of an object, even if it begins with “the phenomenon of affection,” is nicely articulated into three principal moments: “modalization,”41 “evidence,”42 and “association.”43 Modalization, as Husserl sees it, in its different modes looks at the object from different perspectives and brings forward a new aspect of the object itself because “instead of the acquired knowledge being preserved and enriched further, it can be placed in question, annulled. In short, there is something like the difference between the modalized consciousness of being in distinction to the originally non-modalized consciousness of being, and we are now in a position of gaining deeper insights into the structure of the modalities of being and their constitution, and noetically speaking, insights into the structure of perceptual belief and its modifications such as ‘doubt,’ ‘supposition,’ ‘negation,’ etc.”44 By modalization is meant different modalities which belong to perceptive belief and which give way to the perceptive sphere in the modes of negation, doubt and possibility and in the mode of judgement where the passive modalization is overcome because the “I” “decides” and confirms something, excluding the multiple possibilities until it reaches two possibilities which are contrary to one another. After the “modalized consciousness,” true fulfillment, “evidence of representation,” can follow which is “certainly a bringing to intuition: confirming an intending, that is, meaning an object but not having the object itself intuitively, or having it intuitively, but still meaning beyond what is already intuitively given, and now passing over to the intuition of what is not yet given. . . . this characterization would not work, for not every process of bringing to intuition, that is, not every fulfilment is confirming.”45

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The last step of the passive synthesis is association which carries forward as a “comparative analysis” of “how a consciousness of explicit particulars becomes possible as a consciousness of a multiplicity and a consciousness of wholeness.”46 “Association,” as Husserl defines it, “characterizes for us a form and a lawful regularity of immanent genesis that constantly belongs to consciousness in general,”47 and “when we speak of ‘association,’ we usually have in mind the unities of different levels that are already constituted. Sensual data recall other sensual data, but even objects of external experience recall other objects of experience.”48 “In association basically that synthesis is presupposed which is continually accomplished in original time-consciousness.”49 Husserl, with this synthesis, proposes a “universal, formal framework, in a synthetically constituted form in which all other possible syntheses must participate” because in the “concretely full, streaming living present” in its inherent intentional contents, the way in which the subjectivity becomes conscious, would be incomplete if no awakening occurred; for this reason Husserl takes into consideration the subjective synthesis which enable the things of nature to appear in general and proposes the “problem of the inner, the purely immanent object-like formation and the constitution, as it were, of the inner world, that is, precisely the constitution of the subject’s stream of lived experience as being for itself, as the field of all being proper to it as its very own.”50 For this reason, according to Husserl, the fulfilled synthesis of the temporal consciousness derives from the dynamic processes of (receptivity of) experience and is passive. In the associative synthesis the associations are present according to homogeneity, where the relationship between the objects is that of similitude, and the associations of heterogeneity, where the relationships between the objects are characterized by their dissimilitude. 2. Receptivity Ales Bello, explaining the different levels of the formation of the object, affirms regarding receptivity that “it is motivated by the affection and grounds the apprehension of an object, which, even if it is motivated, passively allows an activity of consciousness to intervene.”51 In receptivity a “sensible result” is obtained, in giving a form to the originary contents, in the beginning of the constitution: “Essentially, and understood from a priori laws of genesis, living, streaming consciousness contains a realm of true being that gets continually richer. But in accordance with the primordial institution in constant identity with itself, it becomes an abiding realm of true being, a realm of object-like formations in themselves that are pre-given, available for the active ego and its active apprehension, identification, verification, and invalidation; not only available in a current experience, but rather as a lasting and an enduring initself; in a certain respect, the actual process of experience is incidental to this

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in-itself. To be sure, this in-itself of the stream of consciousness is on another level of being by virtue of the fact that its future is not likewise in itself.”52 3. Retention What belongs to the human consciousness affectively belongs to the retentional process which, as Husserl defines it, is “the process of a peculiar, continuous modification of the primordial impression. What is given in the mode of original intuitability, of having a self in the flesh, givenness in the flesh, undergoes the modal transformation of the ‘more and more past.”’53 A main distinction has to be made between the consciousness of what is modalized and what originally is not modalized. What is given to the original intuitability in its modal sense is continuously the same, even if it is pushed back further and further into the past. This process of affection regarding the primordial impressions passes continuously into a retentional expanse which can be described as the expanse of the fresh retention; according to Husserl “such an intuitability loses more and more richness as it approaches the past, to the point of the nil of intuitability”54 because “the expanse of fresh retention, then continuously passes over into an expanse of empty retention.”55 In the affective perspective of the coalescing past where the diversely articulated impressional present moves and which is always less articulated, the retentional streaming56 loses its objects because they are always less and less affective. “There is no affection coming from the diverse objects” and “these diverse objects have slipped into sheer nightfall, in a special sense, they have slipped into the unconscious.”57 The just-past which has become unconscious is the original forgetfulness, is one kind, and “the other kind of the unconscious is that which is already unclear from the beginning even though it is intuitive, the perceptual sphere, and already the primordially impressional sphere—which is lacking the force of its own affection.”58 4. Awakening Husserl here introduces “awakening,”59 a new mode which does not create a new lived experience but rather brings the progressively changing retentional transformation to the form of affectivity in the retentional mode that exists precisely in the change. It is through motivations60 that the person awakens what belongs to his unconscious because he forgot it even if it belongs to the fresh past. In order to have any type of apprehension one should have something already given to the intrinsically given contents which makes the forms of awakening possible; in fact Husserl affirms: “We can only catch sight of associations, and only of direct ones, by having particular objects given to us phenomenologicaly or by having in consciousness closely consolidated multiplicities forming unities for themselves or by having articulated wholes; in short, if we have unitary, prominent object-like formations which, as such unities, recall other unities as past ones; naturally, recalling them as past for us.

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Remaining within the phenomenological reduction, the associative relation concerns exclusively the given (bewüssten) objects as such in their respective noematic mode, that is, correlatively it concerns the corresponding modes of consciousness. We are not saying that we see this ‘recalling something’ everywhere, but only that we see it in certain cases, that is, that we have grasped it in originary prehension.”61 Affectivity of the awakening constitutes an important passage in passivity where that which is perceived is present in the flow and is awakened in the consciousness; it manifests in its ante-predicative originality which is without any categorical structure, as Nicoletta Ghigi62 states “the discovery of this norm ‘which is contained securely within me.”’ 5. Apperception The ultimate state of perception and of the synthetic cognitive process are apperceptions which are “intentional lived experiences . . . which transcend their immanent content.”63 “Apperception,” according to Husserl, “is a concept that encompasses every self-giving, thus every intuitive consciousness.”64 In apperception the successive is the process of active objectivation which has interest as the “initial stimuli” which articulate also the whole process. Even if it is the object which awakens our attention, but the interior lived experience is the interest which is the “feeling of the I” and for this reason it can be “the impulsive force of active objectification and of knowledge;” it is that force which pushes the will of the ego to determine and constitute the being of an object, e.g., “If an a arouses a special interest – a ‘pebble’ turns out to be a piece of a fossil bone, other similar things immediately come to the fore, [and they do so] in special syntheses that favour a similar apprehension.”65 It is through the sensible nature that the human subjectivity perceives in its “receptivity” because it captures66 something which “affects” our receptivity and in this way this “something,” which does not belong to the structure of our ego and transcends it, belonging to the hyletic sphere, acts on us stimulating an interest. In the end, we penetrate into different spheres of the passive levels of our consciousness to discover the cognitive structures which belong to the subjective-ego that objectifies. Here it seems necessary to conclude with Husserl’s words: “It is the accomplishment of passivity, and as the lowest level within passivity, the accomplishment of hyletic passivity, that fashions a constant field of pre-given object-like formations for the ego, and subsequently, potentially a field of object-like formations given to the ego. What is constituted is constituted for the ego, and ultimately, an environing-world that is completely actual is to be constituted in which the ego lives, acts, and which on the other hand constantly motivates the ego. What is constituted for consciousness exists for the ego only insofar as it affects me, the ego. Any kind

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of constituted sense is pre-given insofar as it exercises an affective allure, it is given insofar as the ego complies with the allure and has turned toward it attentively, laying hold of it. These are fundamental forms of the way in which something becomes an object (Vergegenständlichung).”67 Michael F. Andrews, in this regards, affirms that “. . . the living-Now is a process, a pure flux that constitutes the co-relation between what is immediately past (retention) and what is immediately to come (protention) . . . This essential unity of retention and protention constitutes a melting, or blending, f part into part. Consequently, each retention contains something of a retention . . . of a retention . . . of a retention . . ., etc., just as each protention anticipates or apprehends a fringe of what is not-yet but what is about-to-be. What is about-to-be and what-just-was form a cohesive unity of experience that constitutes the living stream of inner experience”.68 In order to reflect over the “objectively constituted thing” we will take into consideration Husserl’s Analyses Concerning Active Synthesis.69 The physically existing object which is perceived through the sensible perception is received after being looked at from different perspectives and now belongs to our memory, where through associations it can be represented as something; but this thing cannot yet be defined as an “objectively constituted” object, because it still misses the dimension of sense and the logical reference which can be attributed to it only through an active “I.” Husserl explains this relation between the activity and passivity which belong to Ego: “Let us now turn, then, to the transcendental consideration of the accomplishments of activity. We said repeatedly that a consciousness of the object is actually and genuinely carried out only first in egoic acts; an object—an object as object—is only first there for the active ego. All the concepts that refer back to the concept of the object: ‘identical sense,’ ‘being’ and ‘modalities of being,’ ‘true being’ and ‘verification’- all of these get their genuine character only first within the framework of activity.”70 The passage from the active sphere to the passive sphere and vice-versa consists in attentiveness because “all genuine activity is carried out in the scope of attentiveness”71 and “every accomplishment of activity itself in turn sinks in a regulated manner into passivity, and is sedimented in the accomplishments of original passivity, which once more demands successive processes of purification.”72 In Husserlian analysis of the synthesis, “attentiveness within passivity is called affection,”73 which in turn begins the passive synthesis, given that it affects receptivity and “in this way provokes attention when the object in front stimulates the senses and when the attention is related to what stimulates an interest in us, attentiveness is the passage from the passivity to the activity of Ego.”74 “Theoretical interest,” as Husserl explains in § 52, Active Objectivation, Cognitive Interest and Striving for Knowledge, because it motivates

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active objectivation, “is a feeling and a positive feeling, but only apparently is this feeling a sense of well-being with respect to the object.”75 The personal Ego, after it becomes interested in the object perceived, feels the desire to constitute the object objectivating through memory and presentification and finds out that the “object in the complete and genuine sense is identical with itself and is originally constituted as the thematic object for an ego in identifying activity. There are as many fundamental formations of identification that we have for a theme as there are modes and, as it were, sides of objectivation.”76 This very act of cognition as “every act is a striving that proceeds from the ego, more or less freely at work or inhibited. By the striving being completely or less completely at work advancing or advancing less, breaking off, it always and necessarily effects something.”77 The presentified object can be remembered completely or unclearly, but in the very act of reactivating the memory it can be also remembered again, and for this reason it is possible to “determine it once again in its intuitiveness, likewise with respect to an explication of an object that is somehow apprehended.”78 In the conclusions I would say that the flow of the constitutive consciousness shows itself at a pre-reflexive level in the form of the consciousness of the objects. In this act the subject does not stop only after knowing the transcendent object but reflecting on the cognitive act penetrates the pre-reflexive structure of the interiority with its levels which precede the distinction of subject-object. In the interiority of these levels the genesis of temporality appears. The results of this analyses show that how to understand the temporality itself even a deeper excavation into the passive dimension, which is highlighted by the transcendental phenomenological analyses, is necessary. Pontifical Universita Laterano, Rome NOTES 1

Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, in Husserliana Band III/1, Den Haag, Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, pp. 181–182. English translation by F. Kersten, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982, pp. 192–195. (from henceforth “Ideen I”). 2 We will further use lived-experience as English translation for Erlebnisse. 3 Ideen I, p. 192. 4 Only the third and fourth parts of this lecture course have been published in E. Husserl, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1895–1925) in Husserliana Band XXIII, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1980 and in E. Husserl Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917). The fourth part of this lecture course has been produced in volume X of the Husserliana series in the form that came out after its thorough reworking by Edith Stein who was Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg in the years 1916–1918.

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Augustine, Confessions, lib. XI, cap. 14. Toine Kortooms, Phenomenology of Time: Edmund Husserl’s Analysis of TimeConsciousness, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. 7 A-T. Tymieniecka (editor), Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life, Dordrecht, Springer, 2007. 8 Edmund Husserl, Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis: lectures on transcendental logic, translated by Anthony J. Steinbock, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. (from henceforth: Analyses). 9 Edmund Husserl, On the phenomenology of the consciousness of the internal time (1893–1917), translated by John Barnett Brough, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. (from henceforth: Internal time). 10 Mobeen Shahid, Gnoseology and Anthropology: transcendental and realistic phenomenology; Edmund Husserl & Josef Seifert, Siena, Cantagalli, 2007. 11 Edmund Husserl, Analyses, p. 34. Husserl continues further on: “It is beyond doubt that perception possesses in itself what appears to it as such, possesses its perceptually meant object, and that several perceptions with different perceptual contents accord within it in an evident manner and according to an evident identity. We can also put it in this way: Perception is an intentional lived experience and has immanently, within itself, an intentional object as an inseparable sense. If we make a judgement about this sense, we thus judge something that is demonstrable in an evident manner and therefore has being, but immanent being, even if it also turns out later to be that the perception was a deceptive one. By conceptually shifting our way of speaking, one speaks of the perceptual object only where one makes the claim to judge reality, like in all normal perceptual judgements about the surrounding things, and ‘not’ merely about purely immanent objects, for example, about the perceived tree as such. No one would disagree ‘in this case’ that nothing in reality corresponds to this tree that I see before me, for instance, in a dream as actually there and in the flesh.” pp. 35–36. 12 We shall present the cognitive structures of the human subjectivity as developed by Husserl in Analysis concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. 13 Angela Ales Bello, “Piacere Gioia Beatitudine, La felicità tra tempo ed eternità,” in Alla Ricerca della Felicità, edited by Santino Cavaciuti and Antonio De Luca, Foggia, Bastogi Editrice Italiana, 2002, p. 15–19. 14 See Husserl, Ideen I, §57, §58. 15 Ales Bello, Husserl, Sul problema di Dio, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1985 16 Ales Bello, Husserl e le scienze, Rome, La Goliardica editrice, 1980, p. 21. 17 In Ms. trans. F I 25, p. 44 Husserl underlines that also “the ideal objects have their existence and non-existence and for this reason their truth and falseness, even if they cannot be confused with those real ones, e.g., a triangle with three right angles does not exist where one triangle with two right angles exists. We feel like questioning that if what exists is true and what does not exist is not true but it is also true that what does not exist is not true. Saying so do we mean that there exists the possibility that an ideally existent object can also not exist and for this reason it is false? Mathematics also has numbers at its disposition which are not a factual reality but they exist so are they false or are only ideal/theoretical realities?” 18 Ales Bello, Husserl e le Scienze, p. 60–61. “Si risponde che è necessario osservare che se ogni Gegebenheit si configura come un Erlebnis soggettivo – e per questo aspetto ogni conoscenza è un Erlebnis e quindi in quanto Erlebnis psichico appartiene alla psicologia – ciò che è conosciuto (Erkannte) è oggetto di un’indagine diversa anche non può che essere quella logica.” Another paragraph is important as well because Ales Bello explains that for Husserl psychology is a natural science which consists of real facts, whereas logic is a doctrine of meaning and as mathematics 6

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or pure arithmetic it has ideal objects and is not connected with real facts at all. “La distinzione si fonda espressamente sul fatto che la psicologia è una Naturwissenschaft che ha a che fare con fatti reali, mentre la logica è una dottrina di significati. A sua volta la matematica pura, come pura aritmetica, fondatasi sul numero, non ha a che fare con realtà di fatti, ma con oggettività ideali e non è in alcun modo legata all’esperienza né ha bisogno di alcuna verifica. a + I = I + a non proviene da un procedimento induttivo, né deve essere verificata, ma è posta dal matematico immediatamente in una consapevolezza e validità incondizionata. Così quando si stabilisce come la precedente costituisce un puro assioma, possedendo una evidenza immediata. La stessa evidenza caratterizza tutte le proposizioni nel procedimento deduttivo, evidenza che non è posseduta da nessuna legge delle scienze della natura.” 19 The term transcendental seems to create a relationship between Husserl and Kant, but analysis of the territory called “transcendental” leads to two different results. 20 Ales Bello, Husserl e le scienze, p. 59. 21 Ibid. p. 100. 22 Ales Bello in her lectures on Husserl’s Logic in the first semester of 2002–2003 at the Pontifical Lateran University affirms that “Husserl è interessato all’empirismo perché questo ci propone un’analisi genetica di fronte ai razionalisti perché come Hume e Locke Husserl mette insieme empirismo, razionalismo, Kant e anche specialmente Cartesio. Nelle Crisi delle scienze europee si procede ad analizzare come fanno sottolineare l’importanza di Hume che ha cercato di comprendere il processo conoscitivo.” 23 Hua. vol. XVII, Formale und transzendentale Logik, Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, edited by Paul Janssen, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff,1974, § 59. 24 Husserl, “ The Introduction to the Logical Investigations.” 25 Toine Kortooms, 2002, p. 176. “Static phenomenology starts from the assumption of already constituted objects or classes of objects. The constituted object functions as a clue for the phenomenological analysis of the process of constitution. How is the object constituted in consciousness, how can the object come to appear to consciousness? Genetic phenomenology, in contrast, investigates the history of this process of constitution. A process of constitution is not something that stands on its own, but something that has a history. Hence, in genetic phenomenology, attention is paid to the manner in which earlier experiences can have an influence on present experiences. Husserl uses the term ‘motivation’ in this context. Earlier experiences provide a motive for present experiences.” 26 See: Hua. vol., XVII, Formale und Transzendentale Logik, Husserl’s Introduction. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, edited by Paul Janssen, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. p. 13. This is the page number of the Italian translation by Guido Davide Neri, Bari, Laterza, 1966. 27 See ibid., § 38–§39. 28 Ales Bello, Husserl’s Logic, (2002–2003), “La vera teoria della conoscenza è chiarimento dei concetti logici che è la logica trascendentale.” 29 Ales Bello, L’universo nella coscienza, introduzione alla fenomenologia di Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2003, p. 30, “Per comprendere l’andamento delle ricerche di Husserl è, forse, possibile considerare due movimenti descrivibili attraverso l’immagine di due traiettorie, l’una che si percorre dal basso verso l’alto e viceversa, l’altra che muove da un punto centrale e si apre a raggiera.” 30 Ales Bello, “The Language of our living body,” in Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LXXXIX, Dordrecht, Springer, 2006, pp. 3–14. 31 Husserl, Analyses, § 14, p. 92. 32 Ibid. § 62, The Distinction between State-of-affairs and Judicative Proposition, p. 336; Husserl makes two basic distinctions of the word “Meinung” with the intent of a judgement: “We make the following distinction: 1. a first sense of the word ‘Meinung’ in which these categorical objectlike formations and above all, the complete states-of-affairs make up the ‘intended meaning’

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in a judgement, and 2. the second sense of the word ‘Meinung’ as the judgement itself [understood] ‘as the intending’ of the one judging. Intends or means, is now the judicative proposition as the complete unity of significance that harbours all logical significances of the corresponding judging.” 33 Ibid. § 15, p. 100. 34 Ibid. “Questioning has its intentional correlate in the question just as judging has its correlate in the judgement. Perhaps it is clearer when I say that the ego-actus of judging as the process of passing a judgement is to be distinguished, naturally, from the judgement that is passed in the judging.” 35 Ibid., pp. 102–103. 36 Ibid., p. 105, “(1) Passivity and receptivity. We can include receptivity in this first level, namely, as that primordial function of the active ego that merely consists in making patent, regarding and attentively grasping what is constituted in passivity itself as formations of its own intentionality. (2) That spontaneous activity of the ego (the activity of intellectus agens) that puts into play the peculiar accomplishments of the ego, as was the case with judicative decisions.” In appendix 4, of the Passive Active Analysis, in the above mentioned edition, pp. 439–440, Husserl gives the conscientially analytical definitions of question, answer and a doubt: “Question (is) a practical intention toward an answer. An answer always remains: the transformation of the respective problematic disjunction of problematic possibilities speaking against one another into an unproblematic conjunction of actualities that accord with one another and speak in favour of one another; running parallel to this in the sphere of egoic comportment: the transformation of doubt, which is disagreeable and frustrating practically, into the comportment of the ego, which is uninhibited and satisfied, at ease, into a judicative decision for one of the possibilities; connected to this, at least implicit, is a negative rejecting judicative decision against the other possibilities.” 37 Ales Bello, L’Universo nella Coscienza, p. 70. Ales Bello presents Husserlian analyses concerning the formation of the object masterfully in a synthetic manner through his Analyses concerning Passive Synthesis and Experience and Judgement:, pp. 70–71: “Per quanto riguarda la formazione dell’oggetto si possono indicare quattro livelli del percorso genetico, due indicati nelle Analisi della Sintesi Passiva: 1. la sintesi d’unità associativa o pre-affettiva che avviene sulla base di tre principi, quello di somiglianza o omogeneità, quello del contrasto e quello della contiguità per cui già si configura una formazione unitaria; 2. l’affezione che opera nel presente fluente e produce il ridestamento nella ritenzione e nella protezione; a questi si possono aggiungere altri due livelli esaminati in Esperienza e giudizio e costituiti da: 3. la ricettività che è motivata dall’affezione e fonda l’apprensione di un oggetto, la quale, pur essendo motivata passivamente consente, tuttavia, che subentri un’attività della coscienza; 4. a sua volta la ricettività permette la formazione di un oggetto e la sua comprensione ed esplicazione, aprendo la strada all’appercezione.” 38 Husserl, Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis, Related Essays, p. 591: “Perception is that consciousness which, so to speak, seizes a present with both hands by its shock of hair; it is a consciousness that makes present originaliter.” 39 See ibid., § 35, p. 217. See also: Edmund Husserl, internal time, 1991, § 7– §10. 40 Ibid., Appendix 21: Sensible, Multi-Radiating Affection. Sensible Group-Genuine Collective Objectlike Formation, p. 523. In the following page Husserl writes; “The group is grasped as group, it is apperceived as set. A unitary intention toward an object, direct toward the ensemble, toward the ensemble of these objects that are implicitly included in a unitary manner in the groupintention- and toward all of them. But is a unique constitution of the thought of totality required here? Prior to the apperceptive intention that already bears on the particular objects, I do not yet have a group; I only have it when I first have a unity of the apperceptive intention that is fulfilled

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in the particular graspings and positings of objects, not in the particular ones however, but rather in the unity that is collectively synoptic, the unity of synthetic intending.” 41 Ibid., §5–§15. 42 Ibid., §16–§25. 43 Ibid., §26–§41. 44 Ibid., p. 64. 45 See ibid., §16, pp. 108–109: “This happens, for example, when we perceive a tree from the front, and wanting to know it better, draw nearer to it and now perceive it in new perceptions; by determining the tree more closely, we also have a fulfilling confirmation. Meanwhile, every external perception harbours its inner and outer horizons, regardless of the extent to which perception has the character of self-giving; this is to say, it is a consciousness that simultaneously points beyond its own content. In its fullness it simultaneously points into an emptiness that would only now convey a new perception. The self-givenness of a spatial thing is the self-givenness of a perspectival appearing object that is given as the same in the fulfilling synthesis of appearances intertwining and devolving upon one another. But it is the same object that itself appears now this time in one way, now another time in another way, appearing in other perspectives, always pointing from a perspective to ever new perspectives in which the same object that is exhibited is continually determined more closely, and yet is never determined definitively. For we always expect appearances of newly opened, empty horizons. Thus, where there is no horizon, where there are no empty intentions, there is likewise no [synthesis of] fulfilment. A datum that is given in immanent perception, i.e., that is adequately given in each Now does not therefore admit of any further confirmation with respect to this Now. Still, it does occur as a fulfilment insofar as the preceding perceptual phase already points to what is to come. This fulfilment is a fulfilment of an anticipation and is a definitive, absolute fulfilment, or evidence.” 46 Ibid., § 26, p. 165, “But it is precisely the analysis of associative phenomena that draws our attention to the fact that consciousness must not necessarily be a consciousness of a single object for itself, and accordingly, we touch on a new problem here: how a consciousness of something particular and how a consciousness of explicit particulars becomes possible as a consciousness of a multiplicity and a consciousness of wholeness; namely, a comparative analysis also shows the opposing possibility of many [elements], indeed, a multiplicity being continually fused into a unity within one consciousness, implicit, such that consciousness is not a consciousness of a multiplicity, a consciousness that becomes aware of separated particulars in a unitary and yet separate manner.” 47 See Ibid., p. 162. 48 Ibid., Appendix 11: (to §26) The concept of Associative Causality, p. 478. 49 Ibid., § 27, p. 170, “In the concretely full, streaming living present (Lebensgegenwart) we have present, past, and future already united in a certain mode of givenness.” 50 Ibid., p. 171. 51 Ales Bello, L’Universo nella coscienza, p. 71, and pp. 101–104, “è motivata dall’affezione e fonda l’apprensione di un oggetto, la quale, pur essendo motivata passivamente consente, tuttavia, che subentri un’attività della coscienza.” 52 Husserl, Analyses, § 45, p. 259. 53 Ibid., p. 217. See also Edmund Husserl, internal time, 1991, § 13–§ 18 and § 24, § 30–§ 33. 54 Ibid., p. 218. 55 Ibid. The paragraph continues as follows: “One can characterize this as the genetic primordial form of empty presentations. The empty retention remains a sphere of maintaining the objectlike formation that has its original sphere of institution in the primordial impression. What is the same in its very sense is still given to consciousness, this is still given to consciousness in the

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special sense, namely, as affective. But this affective force goes back inexorably, the objective sense becomes inexorably poorer with respect to internal differentiations, thus emptying itself in a certain way. The end is an empty presentation that presents its presented object in a completely undifferentiated manner; its presented object has lost the entire wealth of internally prominent features that that primordial impression had instituted. What is left over? This empty presentation is still a presentation, this portion, this end is still an end of the continuous retentional procession that has streamed out from the primordial impression and that is being constantly fed anew by the primordial impression that is ever new and synthetically attached.” 56 Husserl, internal time, 1991, § 34–§38. 57 Husserl, Analyses, p. 220–221. 58 Ibid., Appendix 22: The Empty Horizon and the Knowledge of it, probably of 1922, p. 525. Other proposed texts could be: Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, ed. Martin Heidegger, trans. James S. Churchill, intro. Calvin O. Schrag, 4th printing, Bloomington and London, Indiana University Press, 1971; Don Ferrari, “Retention – Memory: Perception and The Cognition of Enduring Objects,” in Aletheia II, 1981, pp. 65–123; and Don Ferrari, Consciousness, Time, and Intuition. A Study of Retention, in Philosophie und Realistische Phänomenologie, Studien der Internationalen Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum Liechtenstein/Philosophy and Realist Phenomenology. Studies of the International Academy for Philosophy in the Principality Liechtenstein, edited by Rocco Buttiglione and Josef Seifert, 1999. 59 Ibid., p. 526. 60 Ibid., Appendix 24: Effect and Cause of Awakening, written probably between 1920 and 1926, “awakening . . . (is) breaking through the fog—a metaphor?” On p. 533 Husserl writes: “Where awakening is concerned, however, it is a matter of a special mode of synthesis as one that is causally becoming, and in this case it is a matter of a new accomplishment, namely, pointing from an a to b, that is, together with b being awakened by a. The a in the ‘present,’ the a that is first salient, must have a peculiar feature so that it functions as awakening, and does so in various degrees of intensity; and so that it awakens precisely this b, this must also, in turn, be somehow grounded in this a itself. To be sure, experiments are useful here. They supply us with examples, and therefore possibilities; through intentional analysis we can then see what can come into consideration here and to what extent essential laws are in play here, [and we can see] what in the final analysis must be the case. They are motivations.” 61 See Ibid., § 26, p. 166, Husserl continues in the following by one example: “For example, if winding down a path we catch sight of a cirque, we are reminded of another cirque, one that emerges reproductively. We can note that the reproduced one is not only altogether reproduced, and is not only an altogether reproduced, similar object, but that there exists a certain relation between both beyond the mere relation of similarity. Something present recalls something reproductively presentified, which is to say, there is a tendency that is directed from the former to the latter and a tendency that is fulfilled by intuitive reproduction. It follows from this that we, as attentive egos, look from this to that by being referred from the one to the other; and we can also say: The one points to the other – even though there is still not an actual relation of indication by signs and designation. Further, the phenomenon gives itself as a genesis, with the one term as awakening, the other as awakened. The reproduction of the latter gives itself as aroused through the awakening.” 62 Nicoletta Ghigi, “La sensibilità a fondamento delle sintesi passive ed attive. Una riflessione sulla fenomenologia genetica di Husserl,” in Segni e Comprensione, vol. 61, January–April, Lecce, Manni, 2007: “La scoperta di questo ‘elaborato,’ di questa norma (che si trova saldamente richiusa in me) e che consiste, mediante le associazioni, nella capacità di ridestare ‘di rimemorazione in rimemorazione’ la ‘realtà vera’ è il risultato dell’analisi genetica delle sintesi passive e consiste

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precisamente nell’essere l’indiscusso presupposto per ogni attività (intenzionale) della coscienza e, in generale, per la sua vita.” See also Nicola Zippel, Tempo e metodo; il problema del soggetto nella fenomenologia di Edmund Husserl, Nuova Editrice Universitaria, Roma, 2007. 63 Husserl, Analyses, p. 336. 64 Ibid., here we take the English translation of the Passive Synthesis, which includes at the end of the edition the translation from Hua. vol. XI, On Static and Genetic Phenomenological Method. p. 625. Herewith is cited also the footnote of the above cited quotation: “Consider how the concept of apperception is to be circumscribed. Apperception: a consciousness that is a consciousness of something individual that is not self-given in it (self-given does not mean being contained in perception in an intimately inherent manner); and it is called apperception to the extent that it has this trait, even if it has something in addition that is self-given in it. Namely, a consciousness can be apperceptively conscious of something, and that same something can also still be self-given in the same consciousness that extends even further than this apperceiving. For example, if in this way we call a consciousness of a sign an apperception, then the signified can also be self-given along with the consciousness of a sign in the unity of one consciousness. Or in the unity of a perception of a hexagon there appears a hexagonal plane and at the same time another; but one of them appears with reference to the other one, and the other one is itself appearing. This holds in general with respect to the components of self-givenness peculiar to external appearing phenomena.” On p. 627 Husserl gives another definition in parenthesis: “Could we not also define apperception in the following way: a consciousness that is not only conscious of something within itself in general, but at the same time intends this something as a motivation for a consciousness of something else; thus, a consciousness that is not merely conscious of something, and then still something else that it does not include, but rather, a consciousness that points to this other one as one that belongs to it, as what is motivated through it.” See also The Interconnection between Expressing and Signifying as the Unity of an Egoic Act and Theme, Interest, Indication on p. 22–27. 65 Ibid., p. 534. Husserl further explains this “interest” in an a : “The present object that is to function as awakening, one could say, has a special interest, and not everything that is similar, but rather, something that is similar in the relation and that would correspond to a similar interest is at issue. The interest in an a depends upon its type in accordance with the complex of features (α,ß,γ ). What is uniform or similar or even identical to a with respect to (α,’ß,’γ ’) gets privileged. Certainly, it is not merely inner features that come into consideration; rather, the interest belongs, for instance, to a in its situation, in its nexus (figurative synthesis). A nexus originally yields quality-like characters prior to explication and prior to the formation of relational predication. This yields external features for the a , which features also come into consideration. And, perhaps, even in a very significant manner. And so it is also the case within an impressional present.” 66 Ibid., p. 577. Related Essays: A. Perception and its Process of Self-Giving; “First of all, it makes a most fundamental difference whether we consider objectlike formations that can only be experienced by the experiencing subject because the subject has spontaneously generated them in its thematic egoic acts-as, for example, numbers are only there for us originally as objects in acts of counting, or theories in acts of theorizing. [Or] by contrast, [whether] we have an entirely different original mode of givenness, an entirely different mode of experience, if objects are pregiven to the experiencing subject passively in experience, and are only experienceable through pre-givennes in such a way that the subject merely exercises acts of receptivity, acts of grasping and then acts of explicating something that is already there, something that already appears. Since this latter realm of objects must precede all activity in general, and since, for example, cognitive objects, objects of theory, are only possible as intellectual formations by having other objects pregiven through receptivity, then naturally the primary phenomena for all phenomenological investigations, and particularly for investigations that are distinguished noematically, are the phenomena of passively

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given objects. Normally, experience and perception only mean the experience and perception of such ‘sensible’ objects, as it is said—a limitation to which we would not want to be confined, and for good reasons.” 67 Ibid., § 34, p. 210. 68 Michael F. Andrews, “Edmund Husserl: The Genesis and Origin of Time”, in Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life, edited by A-T. Tymieniecka, Dordrecht, Springer, 2007, p. 125 69 Hua. vol. XXXI, Aktive Synthesen: aus der Vorlesung “Transzendentale Logik,” 1920–1921, edited by R. Breeur, op. cit. We use the English translation of the text which, with several Beilage, is published in Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis. Lectures on transcendental logic, English translation by Anthony J. Steinbock, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. 70 Ibid., § 49, English translation: p. 275, German version in Hua. vol. XXXI, p. 3. 71 Ibid., p. 276 (from now on the page numbers refer to the English edition). “Passivity is what is in itself first because all activity essentially presupposes a foundation of passivity as well as an objectlike formation that is already pre-constituted in it. Thus, this also holds for the spontaneous accomplishments of genuine logos. In general, we can say: The investigation into the active accomplishments of the ego, through which the formations of the genuine logos come about, operate in the medium of an attentive turning toward and its derivatives. Turning our attention toward is, as it were, the bridge to activity, or the bridge is the beginning or missing scene of activity, and it is the constant way in which consciousness is carried out for activity to progress: All genuine activity is carried out in the scope of attentiveness.” 72 Ibid., p. 275–276. 73 Ibid. 74 Nicoletta Ghigi, op. cit.: “Quindi, in altri termini, nel momento in cui l’attenzione non è intesa in senso passivo, ovvero non è soltanto una risposta passiva ad una sollecitazione (ad es. il sentire un rumore), ma diviene una ‘conversione attenta’ a ciò che ha colpito il nostro interesse, (ad es. il rumore come rumore di un dato x), allora si ha il passaggio dalla passività all’attività dell’io.” p. 9. 75 Husserl, Analyses concerning active synthesis, part 3, p. 289–290. One can be interested in an object for different reasons, e.g., because one is interested in the object which is the object of our perception or also because it is “repugnant” to us and the interest which Husserl deals with is “a feeling, but one that is directed in a very peculiar manner. Namely, even if an object motivates our turning toward it through a value that we feel in it, the sense-content of the object is necessarily enriched as soon as we grasp it, in part, by its merely intuitive persistence in perception, in part, by the ensuing awakening of its obscure horizons: for instance through our involuntary eye movements and head movements, and through which ever new appearances of the object make ever new sides of it intuitive. Here, the object given to consciousness is the same, but its sense is enriched in the varying mode of the manner of givenness, and at the same time this process now bears with it a constant open horizon, related to possibilities and expectations for ever new enrichments of this sort. Connected to this is a distinctive feeling, the joy in this enrichment, and in relation to this horizon of expanding and increasing enrichment, a striving to get ‘close and closer’ to the object, to appropriate the self [of the object] ever more completely. This striving can of course also take knowledge in higher, and then intelligible levels. The interest that we have described is the motive of active objectivation, of ‘knowledge or cognition’ and is therefore called ‘cognitive interest.’ And accordingly the striving toward knowledge that is also usually meant under the concept of cognitive interest is also a peculiarly directed striving that is not to be confused with a ‘desiring-the-known-object’.”

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Ibid., p. 298. Ibid., Appendices to Part 3, Appendix 30: (to § 54) Determining as Cognitive Act, p. 549. Still further distinctions have to be made between the objects perceived: “ 1. the mere interpretation of the object that is already determined in its determinations. What is implicitly known is made explicit once more, thus, brought to a re-actualized knowledge (reactivation as re-execution of previous act-divisions). 2. or by being joined to what is already known it is something new, new knowledge, new ‘determination’ (feature), a determining process that fashions” p. 550. 78 Ibid., p. 551. 77

SEMIHA AKINCI

O N E X I S T E N C E , AC T UA L I T Y A N D P O S S I B I L I T Y

ABSTRACT

If one admits possibility in ones conceptual vocabulary, one cannot maintain that both “existence” and “inexistence” are simple, directly contrasting predicates, such that “existence” is the ultimate predicate, the sumnum genus, so to say. This is because possibility makes sense only when contrasted with actuality, so that one has two sorts of existence straight off. A futile dodge is to argue that possibility is not a mode of existence; for this makes it a mode of inexistence, and then one has two modes of inexistence, possibility and outright non-existence, refuting the claim that “inexistence” is a simple predicate. In either case this makes the pair of predicates in question similar to the pair “yellow-not yellow”, where either member of the pair admit of legion subdivisions, and dissimilar to the pair “alive-death”, in which case satisfaction of either member of the pair is a yes-or-no affair, “yes” answer for either one implying a “no” answer for the other. If one admits possibility in ones conceptual vocabulary, one cannot maintain that both “existence” and “inexistence” are simple, directly contrasting predicates, such that “existence” is the ultimate predicate, the sumnum genus, so to say. This is because possibility makes sense only when contrasted with actuality, so that one has two sorts of existence straight off. A futile dodge is to argue that possibility is not a mode of existence; for this makes it a mode of inexistence, and then one has two modes of inexistence, possibility and outright non-existence, refuting the claim that “inexistence” is a simple predicate. In either case this makes the pair of predicates in question similar to the pair “yellow-not yellow”, where either member of the pair admit of legion subdivisions, and dissimilar to the pair “alive-death”, in which case satisfaction of either member of the pair is a yes-or-no affair, “yes” answer for either one implying a “no” answer for the other. A pair of predicates contrast directly, in this usage, if an assertion that a subject does not satisfy one of them does not invite the further question, for the subject in consideration, “Well, what is it then?”, this for either one of the pair. For example, saying of something that it is not yellow does invite such a question, while saying it is not dead does not. The second member of such a pair need not be the explicit negative of the first member: if wine is not dry, it’s 347 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 347–357. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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sweet, and if soup is not hot, it’s cold. My point is that in an intellectual schema which harbors possibility, at least one of the assertions “a exists” and “a does not exist” invites further question, since a negation of either one does not imply an assertion of the other. The obvious question implied by the positive assertion is “How does a exist, actually or possibly?”: the corresponding question invited by the negative assertion admits of three different answers: actual inexistence, or possible inexistence or impossible inexistence may be implied, examples for the first case are deceased persons and dead languages, for the second case the Eighth Brandenburg Concerto and Hercule Poirot, for the third case the perennial square circle and the largest prime. Sets, even those generated by usual, mundane predicates, have an odd ontological status: they admit members from each of the ontological subdivisions mentioned above. Semiha’s present pet Miska, the Cheshire Cat of Wonderland, and the immortal cat on Poseidon’s raft are all members of the set of cats. -What sets could be simpler, more pedestrian?- If one grants that sets themselves do not have the same ontological status as their members, one has the whole gargantuan class of the cone of sets at ones doorstep. Leaving aside such sophistications, however, what are we to say of the ontological status common to all members of the set of cats, say? Whatever contrived predicate is elected for the purpose, we are obliged to rule that its negative shall be undefined, devoid of all meaning, for entities from all walks of the ontic realm, including the modes of inexistence, must satisfy this oddity. My contention is that the square circle is a bona fide member of the set of circles: it surely satisfies the predicate “circular” -unless satisfaction is confused with instantiation- and if that does not entitle it to full membership, I need to be told why. In fact, entities described by inconsistent descriptions, so having the status of impossible inexistents, are members of every set, since they are ruled to be members of the null set, and the null set is a subset of every set. This is proof that every set harbours members of the realm of impossible. For other kinds of inexistents such proof would draw on self-evidence: for any predicate p, a possibly inexisting p would be individuated by the predicates it satisfies, including p, and so would be a member of the set generated by p; ditto for actual in-existents: deceased persons, e.g., are surely members of the set of persons, timelessly. I find it very difficult to concur with arguments concluding that only existents satisfy predicates: square circles of course satisfy predicates such as “has no actual or possible instances,” “is the intentional topic of an inconsistent description”, “is often mentioned in twentieth century philosophy of a certain turn”, etc., so the ruling that it does not satisfy the predicate “circular” -because there is nothing there to be the subject of predication- is highly arbitrary. Of course one can prove that something which does not satisfy both of a pair of predicates does not satisfy either one, but this is because the domain

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of contemporary logic is restricted to existents, certainly excluding whatever is described by inconsistent descriptions, as evinced by the method of reduction to absurdity. If I am right in urging that the domain of inexistence also deserves to be taken into consideration in philosophy, then this only shows that the received logic is inadequate for ontological inquiry. If there were no need to talk about inexistent, negations of assertions of existence would be meaningless, which they are not. If the largest prime lacked all ontic status, saying it was not one of the natural numbers would be entirely pointless. The expedient of restricting ones domain of existents does not preclude talking about consistently described inexistent entities, such as Pegasus, say; only impossible entities are thereby excluded, and this is easily remedied deficiency, as witness Lambert’s free logic. Another question which arises in contexts in which both actuality and possibility are countenanced is whether possible objects have their characteristics actually or possibly. It makes sense to say of actual objects that they possibly could have had this or those characteristics; does this hold of possible objects as well? An object is possible because it does not have all of its characteristics actually, the inactuality of some of its characteristics is built into the possibility of the object, but we need to distinguish between its inactual characteristics and the other, essential ones, through which a denizens of possible world is identified as a modified counterpart of an actual objects. Motzart could have been the only child of a wealthy merchant and he could have lived to be seventy, but he could not possibly have failed to be a composer; the composer of all the works in the Kosher catalogue. Similarly, Benjamin Franklin will be an American, the publisher of the Almanac and the inventor of bifocals, in any possible world, although he could have been an accomplished Latinist and a life-long bachelor. No possible world denizen who did not compose Eive Kleine Nachtmusik could be identified as the counterpart, in that world, of our Motzart. Denizens of possible worlds have to be sufficiently like denizens of the actual world to be recognizable, in their possible worlds, as the object which they represent a possible modification of. In this sense there will be, for every object, some characteristics which it has in every possible world; the conjunctions of such characteristics are what determine its identity and ensure that the object will retain that identity through possible worlds. Such characteristics are not, however, necessary characteristics of the object, in at least one fundamental sense of being necessary: no contradiction follows from the assumption that the object in question has not the given characteristic, taken together with all the other granted propositions. No contradiction follows from the assumption that Mozart, our Mozart, lived and died as a modest Salzburg perfume merchant, this is not logically impossible; and yet given that the actual world has de facto been, no perfume merchant in any possible

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world have a legitimate claim to being a possible counterpart of our Mozart. Though it has entirely possible, even some time after his birth, that our Mozart would be a perfume merchant, it turned out that he become a composer, and this characterized him so emphatically that in any possible world possible relative to our actual one he cannot fail to be a composer. One could say there is some possible world, say Wi, such that it is possible, in worlds possible relative to Wi, for Mozart not to be a composer, where Wi is itself possible relative to the present actual one; Wi is not the present actual world, however, and so not all worlds possible w.r.t. Wi will be possible w.r.t. the actual one. A seventy-year-old Mozart is a direct possibility, in this sense, whereas Mozart the perfume merchant is a complex, remote possibility. I propose to call characteristics objects have in all directly possible worlds their “traits”. Note that in the course of quite brief discussion we have been obliged to distinguish two sorts of possibility, neither of which is barely logical possibility. Now how do possible object posses their traits? Those of their characteristics which are not their traits they posses only possibly, one might consent to say, overlooking the oddity of the notion of having characteristics only possiblyMozart, the Heidelberg professor of music, had a sister only possibly-but how to make the required distinction, do they posses their traits? Not necessarily, as pointed out, nor yet actually only in the actual world. The feat is not incessantly to introduce new nomenclature. The philosophically relevant accomplishment consists of showing the conceptual need to make distinctions; nomenclature for expressing these distinctions turns up as a by-product. In this vein, the foregoing discussion also discloses the need for distinguishing between direct and remote possibility: a state of affairs is directly possible if the objects it involves are recognizable counterparts of objects in the actual world: worlds whose domains have some members which figure only in remotely possible states-of-affairs, it is remotely possible if the objects it involves are not recognizable counterparts of the actual world, but would have been recognizable from some world possible w.r.t. the actual one. Mozart’s being a perfume merchant was a direct possibility in the actual world of 1756, which is, of course, a world possible w.r.t. the actual one-but is no longer actual, is it? -And here we have grounds for another distinction: a possible world is in toto directly possible if all the objects in its domain are recognizable from the actual one-such as past “worlds”- i.e., posses all of their traits; are only remotely possible. Then there are possible worlds of which we are confident that they will never be actual: a world in which I. Kant is a proud father of three daughters, for example. Such a world is -all else being favorabledirectly possible, but is unlike a past world in never being actual, having no -further- chance of actualization; in a sense such worlds are proximately imaginary, whereas worlds such as the one in which possible Mozart is a perfume

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merchant are only remotely imaginary.1 Again there are worlds which have, as members of their domain, objects which are not recognizable counterparts of any object in any directly or remotely possible world, such as a world involving Sherlock Holmes. One could say they were only fictively possible worlds; they are inaccessible from the actual world, even via a chain of intervening possible worlds. This is to say, some objects in their domain are not the counterparts of any objects in the actual one, even when a chain of counterpart relations is involved. In view of all these legion classifications of possible worlds which suggest themselves at very short notice, I am inclined to conjecture that the received notion of possible world was initially conceived only as a value for a variable of quantification, with little heed for intrinsic differences, which I would hold to be of considerable philosophical importance. Considerations urged above for individuals apply to natural kinds as well; instead of traits natural kinds have essential characteristics, or essences. Members of any natural kind in any possible world would have to flesh-andblood animals in order for that kind to be plausible counterpart of tiger-kind in the actual world. Conversely a possible world in which members of tigerkind were carnivorous animals of the Felix family would be a directly possible world. Granting that there was no period in the worlds history at or after which Tiger-kind could have developed as a species of mechanical robots, worlds in which members of Tiger-kind were robots are not even remotely possible patrician worlds, they are only remotely imaginary. But imaginary worlds are as genuinely possible as any other, logically; they harbor no contradiction. If the Frege’an doctrine of sense and reference, according to which names refer through their sense, the identifying characteristics of what they name, were correct only directly possible worlds would be comprehensible, we could not recognize things, in other possible worlds where they did not bear the characteristics that are determined by their sense, as still being counterparts of things in this actual world. That this can be done bears out the claims of the partisans of the Direct Reference Theory, which stipulates that names go on referring to the counterparts, in any possible world, of whether they refer to in the actual world, no matter how different these counterparts may be from their originals as concerns their characteristics. If names had no such direct reference Mozart the perfume merchant would not be our Mozart living in another world; the chap living there would only coincidentally be called “Mozart”, with no way of connecting him with our enfant prodigy. While this shows that the Fregean construal is insufficient for a semantics of language adequate for talking about possible worlds in all due generality, I would hesitate to assert that it shows that construal is unconditionally

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erroneous. Frege says names refer to whether it is that the complex of characteristics constituting the sense of that name applies to; in the context of possible worlds talk, however, the proviso “in the actual world” must be included at all requisite junctures, since Frege was talking about language only as it applied to the actual world; to Frege possible worlds talk was an anachronism of at least fifty years. Still, however, an important kernel of truth may be salvaged from Frege’s doctrine for the case of language adequate for talking about possible worlds. When we need to say which individual it is, at a certain possible world, that is the counterpart of , say, Mozart in the actual world, we have to resort to a description, to mention a complex of characteristics, which serves to pick out the counterpart of Mozart in that world, to fix the reference of “Mozart” in that world. Although we know, in our inter-worlds salience, as it were, which member of the domain this name will refer to in any particular possible world, in order to bring this information down into the possible world in question, we still need to mention a complex of identifying characteristics to connect the name to its referent in that world. Thus we need to talk about inter-worlds reference and to distinguish it from in-world reference. Inter-worlds reference cannot be dependent upon any complex of characteristics, since, for any characteristic one cares to choose, there will be some possible world such that the counterpart, in that world, of what the name in question refers to in the actual one will not posses that characteristic. This is why the Fregean doctrine is inadequate as an account of inter-worlds reference; if it were adopted as the accepted account one could legitimately talk only about directly possible worlds, in which every member of the domain possesses all the identifying characteristics its original does in the actual world.2 I have urged that directly possible worlds are only a small subset of all legitimate ones. In any particular world, however, one still needs to mention a complex of identifying characteristics in order to pick out the referent of any name; saying it is that member of the domain which is the counterpart of ao in the actual world will not do, since cross-worlds reference would not work within a given possible world. Let ao be the referent of the name N in the actual world, and let ai be the counterpart, in possible world PWi, of ao. From the actual we can pick out ai as the counterpart of ao, once we pick out ao by means of an identifying description. We cannot pick out ai this way in PWi; we would first need to pick out ao as the actual counterpart of ai, and to do this we would need to pick out ai from among the domain members of PWi. So it would appear that the Fregean account of fixing reference through sense is still a plausible account of in-world reference, a mode of reference which must precede the inter-worlds mode.

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To admit as much is not to hold that it is the only plausible account, however, as Frege himself apparently did think. Partisans of the Theory of Direct Reference have urged a mechanism of reference-determination according to which a name is conferred upon its referent initially by social fiat, and subsequently is learned as the name of that object from users who are taken to use it correctly. While quite plausible as an alternative account of how names are given to actual things, it may be germane to point out that this baptismal account is certainly no better off then its rival as an account of inter-worlds reference. In fact, it is worse off, since it cannot account for reference across directly possible worlds either. Initial acts of baptismal, and the subsequent passing on of referent-determination, are all carried out in the actual world, and are about actual objects. No possible-world counterpart of any object in any possible world has been baptized in our actual world; if baptismal-and-users-chains were the only way of determining reference, reference would work only in the actual world. To my mind it makes no sense to avow that the very person father Leopold named Wolfgang Amadeus has two elder sisters in some possible world; that person had only one sister, and he, ipse, never inhabited any possible world, -other than the actual one of course-. The whole point in possible worlds discourse is to explain what it means to say, for example, that Mozart could have had two sisters. The explanation offered by the possible worlds approach is to effect that somebody in some possible world does have all the characteristics W.A. Mozart has in the actual one, except for having two sisters instead of one. To say Mozart ipse could have populated a possible world in which he had two sisters is to deprive this explanation off all explanatory force, owing to the circular use of the modal modifier.3 It makes even less sense to hold that possible worlds are populated by actual objects, that all possible worlds share the domain of the actual one. This construal, I submit, cannot account for the possible world in which the composer Wolfgang Amadeus has a twin, Werner Armand, who is a perfume merchant. This possible world does not share the domain of the actual one either.4 The construal of reference most recently suggested as being superior to the Fregean account as a theory of inter-worlds reference has the notion of direct reference as its chief intuition. According to this notion a name N is a rigid designator on the following condition: If N denotes ao in the actual world, then N denotes that very same object ao in any possible world in which N denotes anything at all. Non-essentialism, the thesis that objects have none of their characteristics essentially, appears to follow as a corollary: for any characteristic c ao has in the actual world, a possible world in which ao fails to have c is quite conceivable, hence legitimate as a possible world. So none of the characteristics ao has in the actual world are its essential, identifying characteristics; the identity of ao is fixed only as being the denotatum of N.

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Partisians of direct reference hold that all names are rigid designators, and that this is what enables us to trace objects across possible worlds. -Of course, this goes for only those denizens of possible worlds which inhabit the actual world as well; others remain unaccounted for. This leaves room for several differing interpretations concerning how the domains of possible worlds are constituted. More on this shortly.- Partisians of direct reference hold that kind names are rigid designators as well, so that there is no characteristic which all specimens of a kind must have in order to quantify as a member of that kind; specimens turn out to be a kind only because they are called by the same kind name. -This is an obvious restatement of radical nominalism, of course.If all the names are rigid designators, than any possible world in which a name used5 in the actual world (and so certainly denoting something in the actual world, according to the direct theory construal) has in its domain an object which inhabits the actual world. There may be worlds in which no such names-at least of individuals, if not of kinds-are used. Possible worlds depicted in fiction, imaginary possible worlds, are examples of such worlds. So not all possible worlds have domains intersecting the domain of the actual world. These are one sort of possible world to which rigid designation does not apply. Possible worlds in which it can hold may also involve genuine-denoting-names not used in the world,6 and so have domains which have more or fewer items than there are in the actual worlds domain. The world in which Mozart has two sisters is an example of the first kind of world; that in which he is an only child is an example of the second kind. I am of the opinion that there are possible worlds for which rigid designation does not hold. Consider firstly the possible world PWj, defined as follows: i- No denizen of PWj is also a denizen of the actual world: ii- Every name used in the actual world is a denoting name of PWj- so that the actual worlds directory is a subset of PWj’s directory-. Is this a legitimate definition of a possible world? I cannot see why it shouldn’t be, yes it is a counter-example to the thesis that all names are rigid designators: by condition (ii), every name in the actual world denotes something in PWj, yet by condition (i) none of these names denote something which is also a denizen of the actual world. If PWj is legitimately defined, the notion of reference which depends on rigid designation fails as an account of inter-worlds reference: it cannot account for the identification of named individuals in PWj7 The thesis that every name is a rigid designator may be taken as asserting that no name names, in any possible world, an object other than what it names in the actual world, providing it does name some object in the actual world. In possible worlds language this is to say no denoting name could have named anything else. Surely this is too stringent a restriction on what is possible. Proper names do not denote anything other than their unique referents in the

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actual world, but why could they not have done so? Surely I could have named my elder sister, rather than my younger one, “Selma”; nothing seems within easier reach of possibility. Yet in that world, say PWz, “Selma” would refer to something other than what it refers to in the actual world; it would refer instead to-the counterpart of-my elder sister. So PWz is a second example of a possible world in which rigid designation fails. Those who object to PWj on grounds that it is a concocted example might feel better with the warm cosines of PWz. These examples persuade me that inter-worlds reference depending on rigid designation does not work for all possible worlds, so that the counterparts account is preferable, because it has a wider scope of applicability, works across a wider range of possible worlds. While counterparts cannot always be defined in terms of rigid designation, rigid designation can be defined in terms of the counterpart relation: a possible world PWi is rigidly accessible from the actual one if, for every name in the intersection of the directories of PWi and the actual world, the relation between its reference in the actual world and that items’ counterpart in PWi is identity proper. Call rigidly accessible worlds “familiar”; is the set of directly possible worlds a subset of the set of familiar possible worlds, or vice-versa? Neither: PWj and PWz, as described above, are examples of directly possible worlds which are not familiar, whereas a familiar world in which tigers are robots, say, is not directly possible. So these turn out to be different bases of classification. In the context of this study, the more important result is that familiar worlds constitute a proper subset of the set of possible worlds: rigid designation does not provide cross-worlds reference to all possible worlds. If, as the foregoing suggests, rigid designation stands no better a chance than Frege’s account of reference as a plausible construal of inter-worlds reference, than another thesis dear to some exponents of The Direct Theory of Reference must also fall, namely the thesis that some propositions are necessarily true but nevertheless learnt by experience. If rigid designation accounted for reference across all possible worlds, so that the names “The Sun” and “The Earth” referred to our planet and our Sun in every possible world, it would turn out that the assertion “The Sun is four light minutes distant to the Earth” is a necessary truth. In all such cases, however, a suitable adaptation of the twin Earth argument is available. Imagine a possible world, PWt, in which there is simulacrum of our solar system, in some galaxy whose “time cone” will never reach our solar system. In that system intelligent creatures speaking English inhabit the four planets from their central star, and call their planet “Earth”, and their central star “The Sun”. For all we know, that there is such a PWt is a physical, so fortiori a logical, possibility. The Twin Earth strategy provides, for each familiar possible world, one which is not familiar, but is nevertheless

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physically possible; one just steps abroad to another galaxy. If this way of fabricated non-familiar possible worlds is legitimate, rigid designation works for at most half of legitimate possible worlds; it follows that rigid designation does not breed necessary truths.8 A very credible way of squiring out of the predicament posed by the Twin Earth argument pattern is to say one takes the actual world to constitute all there is to the physical universe, from initial bang to final crunch. Talking about such cosmological models is bound to remind one of Linde’s models, however, in which the bang-to-crunch process is an unending cyclical affair, making for large numbers of universes each going on in its private set of dimensions: these remain as candidates for physical representatives of possible worlds if, that is, one need to have candidates for physical representatives of logically possible worlds at all. Evidently there cannot be physical representatives for all possible worlds, since there will be worlds logically possible but not physically possible; but I can see no reason that there should be such physical representatives: it is the notion of logical possibility, and the connected one of logical necessity, which is relevant in philosophical enquiry. Faculty of Communication Sciences, Anadolu University, Eskisehir-Turkey

NOTES 1 Imaginary worlds are those which can never be actual, given the present actual one. The contrast is with patrician possible worlds, which have been or will be actual.- Thus Temporal Logic is that branch of modal logic which is concerned only with patrician possible worlds.- Of course which worlds these are is determined w.r.t. the present actual world, and never fully determined at that. An imaginary but proximate possible world is populated by objects which bear all their traits, those of their characteristics with which they are identified in the actual world; some objects populating remote imaginary worlds do not bear all of their traits. 2 In this usage, an original is the inverse of a counterpart: if ai is the counterpart, in possible world Pwi, of ao in the actual world, then ao is the original of ai. 3 All that this expedient achieves is to replace the modal modifier operating on predicates with the one operating on whole sentences. I do not see how this can be taken to explain anything. 4 It may be insisted that in any possible world whose domain called for a Mozart, that Mozart will be Mozart himself. Again for the thought experiment: without going any place as esoteric as a possible world, imagine inscriptions were found in some church near Kiel, to the effect that Wolfgang Leopold Mozart, a well-to-do perfume merchant, had given away his younger daughter Constanze in Holy Wedlock, on April 13, 1609. Would we say, pending further information that our Mozart had indeed lived to be fifty-three at least? If not, even on the face of actual evidence, why should we be expected to do just that for some possible world? The notion may not be logically inconsistent, but it is intrinsically so incredible as to be philosophically unviable. And in the world in which Mozart has two sisters, which is the one in the actual world? Must it be one or the other?

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5 One could call the list of names used in a possible world the directory for that world. The direct reference theory implies that any possible world which has it and its directory common with the actual worlds directory will have members of its domain common with members of the actual worlds domain. 6 The notion of rigid designation does not imply, in its received wording that names which do not denote in the actual world may not denote in any possible world. To hold that the denoting expression ‘One hundredth President of the United States’ will never have reference appears to be an indefensible position. 7 Whereas the counterparts account can: the counterpart in PWj of αo in the actual world is that denizen of PWj which has, in PWj, all but finitely many of the characteristics αo has in the actual world, providing there is such a unique denizen of PWj. (The remaining characteristics of the counterpart will be given in saying how it differs from αo .) Otherwise αo has no counterpart in PWj; the name of αo names something entirely alien in PWj. 8 It may be noted with some interest that versions of the Twin Earths strategy were initially employed to repudiate the Fregean account of reference as a candidate for inter-worlds reference. It works against the Theory of Direct Reference at least as effectively.

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

T H E C O N S C I O U S N E S S O F T I M E I N L I F E T H RO U G H PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM

ABSTRACT

This topic examines the phenomenology and existentialism relative to the internal question of the consciousness from a methodological point of view. In particular, in the context of 20th century philosophies, the contribution of revival that philosophies of existence and phenomenology provide in respect to the traditional philosophical conceptions of modern times will be outlined. Our attention will be focused on the lived experience of the consciousness in the double versant of the public world, external, and in the private world, internal. Regarding these problems time is analyzed in its phenomenological structure divided into moments of the past, present and future. Therefore time represents the support of the interior becoming of consciousness, in the double representation of the world of nature and the world of culture. The final part of the whole essay is focused on underlining the complementarity of the two perspectives of the existential philosophies and of the phenomenology, relative to the question of the consciousness of time. The philosophies of the 20th century are based on three elements such as: (a) the change from philosophy to philosophies; (b) the emergency of the analytical dimension; (c) linguistic supremacy in philosophy. These questions, which are mostly methodological, allow us to determine the privileged routes that establish a certain continuity of investigation between different positions and outlooks. One of these routes is specifically represented by the existing relationships among the existential philosophies, phenomenology and the hermeneutic philosophies. In this study we will limit our investigation to the relationship between existentialism and phenomenology, regarding the consciousness of time. Phenomenology and existentialism correspond in an analytic methodology, which is particularly suitable for illustrating the facts of the consciousness. This implies the clarification of a central philosophical problem, relative to the 359 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 359–368. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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structure and configuration of the human consciousness in its essence. This clarification derives from the close relationship between time and consciousness. In fact the representation of the world is achieved in the consciousness through single images, arranged in succession. This kind of configuration determines the structure, within consciousness, that distributes the representations in a series of frames, put into an irreversible sequence. In this case, the activity of the intentional consciousness of the subject is achieved by concentrating on a single frame of the sequence from time to time. The consciousness presents a double character as it is directed towards the exterior and directed towards a lived interior. These two dimensions are complementary and indicate respectively: the public horizon and the private horizon of the events represented by the consciousness. Therefore time presents itself as kronos and kairos. This is due to the fact that time is a process that gradually unfolds but it is also a unique moment. This second significatum is usually illustrated by two expressions: the time of grace and the opportune time. Thus we have a panorama of the structures that characterize the transcendental consciousness, in its universality. These structures are destined to be present in every single consciousness of each man who, on the other hand, is a unique and unrepeatable being. Faced by this situation phenomenology tries to describe the essence of the lived experience. On the other hand existentialism favours the awareness of the effects that acts of knowledge and moods may have in the personal interiority of the subject. Therefore a philosophical itinerary is established where time represents, a subjective representation of the instances present in the world of life in the images of the consciousness. At this point in time with its representations in the outside world and within the human consciousness, establishes a significant bond with the person and the world of life in which he/she lives. In fact the person indicates the centre of inter-subjective relationships and the world of life represents the environmental context in which they are verified. Therefore the human subject, collocated in time and space, expresses the centre of reference of history in its totality. This personal nucleus, through thought as an account, unites the subjectivity of biography with the objectivity of properly related history. In this situation time represents the way through which the finished subject opens up to the world. The opening to which we referred is double as it involves the horizon of nature and the horizon of culture. Thus, consciousness gives rise to the representations of the world, distinct in the images of knowledge and in the remembrance of narrations. In fact the world of representation is double, as it

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reflects the lived experience and relates happenings remembered and imagined by every human subject. In this perspective the human consciousness is intentionally opened to the natural world and to inter-subjective relations. Thus the close examination of time, in its different aspects of time and of time of the soul, is facilitated by two philosophical perspectives: the phenomenological and the existential perspective. What we have said is not new as it re-expresses, in different terms, some philosophic problems which have already been clarified through the tradition of the Western way of thinking. In fact the time of nature reminds us of Aristotle’s position and the time of the soul evokes Augustine’s position. The difference of our phenomenological and existential position consists in considering nature and the soul as two polarities towards which one orientates, prospectively, the personal consciousness of man. It is evident that in this case we do not consider man as one of many individuals, but as a thinking being exercising his own interiority. Therefore the two perspectives, phenomenological and existential, indicate the point of view of man who opens up to the world, in which the supremacy of the consciousness emerges. Our perspective can be clarified in a more adequate way by referring to the supremacy of interiority and personal lived experience. In our analysis the dynamic essence of the facts of consciousness is determined over time. But time itself presents its own interior dynamic that characterizes and differentiates it. Therefore the two perspectives, phenomenological and existential, two points of view open to the world of life, are particularly suitable for supplying a complementary explanation that is richer than the facts of consciousness, which is the object of our representation. Our starting point concerns methods and consists in the belief that the philosophies of phenomenology and existentialism are suitable for resolving the semantics of this concept. In particular, in reference to time, we can express two significant dimensions, which are distinguishable through two philosophical conceptions. With the phenomenological perspective one tries to reach the cognitive essence of time; on the other hand with the existential perspective the consciousness is concentrated on its lived experience in order to emphasize the meaning of time for the subject. Therefore in the situation of time we are in front of an example that allows two quite different philosophies to work together to produce a mutual result. This corresponds perfectly to contemporary philosophy that passes from philosophy to philosophies. This is a dialogical pluralism of our culture which separates today’s philosophy from traditional philosophy. In fact the entire Western way of thinking

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moves with the illusion of being able to obtain a unique truth, in an image of unified universal culture. In short the combined utilization of phenomenology and existential philosophies leads to an opening, through the problem of time, to the complexity of the consciousness in its different aspects. A further question, which allows us to examine the matter more deeply, is the transition from reductionism to holism. As everyone knows, this transition takes place at the end of modernity. In fact today we are witnessing a mutation of paradigm that privileges synthesis rather than analysis. This consists in substituting the event in its abstraction with the system of events in its complexity. This is the perspective that places the researcher in a view point of everything, rather than as one.In fact the two perspectives, reductionistic and holistic are actually complementary. However today we become aware of the radical transformation that the latter represents compared to the former. For this reason we tend to accentuate the contrast of the two perspectives, rather than their complementarities. From a philosophical point of view, our digression concerning the holistic theories which are complex and systemic, allows us to understand the importance of using several philosophies together to solve the same problem. In our case the question involves phenomenology and existentialism but it could extend to structuralism and hermeneutics. The human consciousness is in fact a complex reality and creates a psychic system of considerable extension. We must not forget that in the creation of the universe, man is a late product on an evolutional level. Therefore in the human being we find a genetic patrimony sedimented for a long time which becomes even more complicated if we consider the framework that culture superimposes on nature. The Humanistic and Renaissance philosophers had already sensed that the human psyche is a microcosm. This expression evokes the concentration of the whole universe in the spiritual interiority of the individual. G. W. Leibniz is even more explicit and speaks of a monad that, without doors and windows contains the entire universe. These traditional, philosophical ideas work on interpretations that are usually the fruit of human imagination. The matter is well explained by M. Heidegger, when he interprets the modern age as the age of the visions of the world which is destined to change radically from a gnosiological point of view, when new epistemological paradigms are introduced like in today’s culture. The question becomes clearer if we consider that our way of examining these matters depends on the close relationship that exists between philosophical and scientific research. In fact in the paradigm of systemic complexity we realize that the human consciousness is a complex reality. This implicates the presence of parts that

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interact to form a whole; which dissolve into in a living and thinking organism which contains an added value in respect to his origins. In this context time is the supporting structure of all the dynamics regarding the facts of the consciousness. The above explanation is not only valid concerning the representation of the world in nature but above all it is so in the human world in which interior states of mind and lived experience of the consciousness intervene. In this case the facts of the consciousness are related in order to be represented. In particular narration possesses a double reference, as we address others by transmitting information through narration and we address ourselves by reflecting on the account which arouses in us further feelings and states of mind. In a narrative perspective biography and history cannot be left out of the consciousness in a situation where time is certainly not secondary. The unifying example of biography and history is particularly important for explaining the primary role that thought and language play on personal consciousness. The topic under examination allows us to reach the essence of the consciousness by starting from the phenomenal elements that cover it. In fact thought and language, lived experience and representations are many elements that justify the presence of a unifying consciousness. The solution does not change if, from a psychoanalytical point of view, we involve the unconscious as it also represents a way for moods to reach consciousness. In this case we witness an enrichment of the psychic complexity of the human individual. If we view consciousness in analogy to the Sun in our planetary system, we realize that external and internal stimulation and conscious and unconscious messages, are only the planets in the system. Therefore the psychic world possesses an interior complexity within itself. In this respect time is a supporting structure for psychic images. Therefore we are in a situation in which consciousness creates an interior world of moods as if it were watching a play in which it is a spectator and an actor at the same time. This situation explains the nature of the interior complexity of the human psyche, in which time exercises its transcendental function as an organizational and structural law regarding the relationship between the interior images and the lived experience of the subject. The problem of philosophy is, in all cases ontological and gnosiological, even if the categories of reference concerning the two perspectives under examination are transformed. In order to understand the question better we must consider some consequences regarding methods. Firstly, phenomenology tells us that the task of philosophy goes beyond the task of science, according to a natural attitude. The latter (science) in fact, remains on the surface and moves by observation, as well as by experiment.

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On the other hand the former (philosophy) tends towards the essence of phenomena, placing all lived experience that accompanies the phenomena in brackets. Another element to be taken into consideration concerns the methodological revival introduced by existential philosophies. These philosophies come from the supremacy of existence in respect to essence. This supremacy involves the lived experience of the subject as elements of inexorable reference. In addition we must not forget that the supremacy of existence over essence, as claimed by J.P. Sartre, indicates a philosophical concentration on existence which sets the questions raised in this essay apart so that they are no longer interpretable from a traditional ontological and gnosiological point of view, since existence is a lived situation that involves the human subject in its totality, determining his primary character in his unavoidable relationship with his opening to the world. This opening is however an appurtenance as man himself does not place himself out of the world. In every case the situation becomes more complicated because the consciousness, with its lived experience, opens the space of the transcendence of the subject who feels qualitatively different to the reality to which he belongs. Existential lived experience usually focuses on the positive and negative elements of illusions and suffering but it also takes into account the creative outbursts of the projects of life. In this sense existential lived experience privileges the moods and questions of sense that belong to ethical-religious horizons. It is clear that, in a double perspective, that is to say phenomenological and existential, the consciousness assumes a very particular meaning. We are so far from the philosophical perspective in which the problem of the consciousness was outlined in the post-renaissance philosophies of modernity. This is because the philosophies of the XIX and XX centuries also felt the influence of the studies belonging to the human sciences which are mainly: anthropology, psychology and sociology. In fact, consciousness is an interior world of its own in which consciousness itself must be distinguished from the consciousness of relationships with objects and people. In this case the images of the facts of consciousness multiply and differentiate and time represents a fundamental structure in this organization. Therefore time, in its moments indicated by the phenomenology of the past, present and future which are structural pauses of the becoming, finds its scansions and determination. These are the so-called temporal ecstasies that make stops in time which favour the representation of the becoming. In fact the image of temporality in its flow reflects the usual relationship between image and background peculiar to every representation in the human psyche. It is easy to see how phenomenology by determining the essence of the flow of time finds its integration in the existential perspective that permits the meaning of time to emerge in the world of life which consists in mankind’s

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existential lived experience. A specific example of the integration of the existential moment with the phenomenological moment can be understood from E. Cioran’s reflections, who very effectively dramatizes time as the destiny of man suspended between two dangers that worry him: the fall in time and the fall from time. In the Romanian philosopher’s reflections this points out the suffering that accompanies human life, lacerated by the two situations represented by the awareness of the inconvenience of being born and of its opposite the temptation of existing. On the other hand in modern tradition we must remember that in the period between the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the conscience was placed between two hypotheses made by Cartesian and English empiricism. The two models of reference in this perspective are that of res cogitans and the one that makes interior experience coincide with es est percepit. The indicated perspectives put the consciousness to good use as a recipient which collects and elaborates cognitive images. The development of these conceptions manages to universalize the conscience. Reducing it to a structural functioning form of psychic subjectivity. As we know this occurs in the Kantian interpretation in which the ego/I think expresses the transcendental consciousness of human rationality. It is clear that this modern conception only characterizes two aspects: the ontological and gnosiological aspects. Existentialism and phenomenology do not forget the development of modern philosophy but they integrate it by carefully examining the questions concerning the interiority of human subjectivity. After all a traditional source of an examination of this kind is given by that perennial existentialism that, from Socrates through Augustine and B. Pascal, leads to the philosophical-religious synthesis by S. Kierkegaard. The two perspectives, both phenomenological and existential of today’s culture pass through the adaptation of a universal subject to a single subject, carried out by S. Kierkegaard but at the same time they lead consciousness back to the complex interiority of man as regards to others and the world, which occurs through E. Husserl’s phenomenology to which we must add M. Heidegger’s and J. P. Sartre’s existential development. Therefore today the consciousness expresses a complex structure of man’s psychic reality, composed of several parts and characterized by relationships with external realities. In this perspective it is without doubt justifiable to speak of the world of consciousness and refer to a plurality of properties, as well as characteristics. If it is true that the consciousness represents the essential nucleus of subjectivity, which needs some co-ordinates of time and space, it is also true that the consciousness does not dissolve in the isolation of the subject but it specifies itself in its relation to other.

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This is the framework in which man’s conscience expresses its existence, or rather its existence in the world on the base of its co-ordinates of time and space. Therefore the human consciousness emerges in a Sartre-like sense pour soi, rather than en soi. In this case the consciousness refers to the opacity of the being in which it is in danger of being shipwrecked. In other words we can say that the ego through its consciousness is lead to the coordinates of here and now. But we can also say that the ego in relation to the world of life becomes aware of its existential limits through consciousness; meaning being born and having to die. If these characteristics essentially depend on an existential characterization of the human consciousness, phenomenology adds others which are just as important. In particular Husserl in his V meditation of Cartesian Meditations, points out the impossibility of the separation of man from the world and of the ego from the other subjects, as the intentional conscience, according to the phenomenological intuition, is open to others due to the presence of consciousness in born in us. Furthermore on the same phenomenological level we can see from Husserl’s lessons in The Internal Conscience of Time, the importance of the awareness of time in order to understand the internal structure of the personal consciousness of the subject. Yet the phenomenological way of reasoning in Husserl’s work goes far beyond being a simple characterization of the interior structures of human subjectivity. In fact in his later works, he discusses the world of life (Lebenswelt) as a given fact. And as a future project for tomorrow’s philosophers. On these speculations Husserl discusses the sense of human rationality together with the ethical theologies that emerge from the historical process of civilization. In this philosophical theory the role of the individual consciousness ends up coinciding with the universal historical consciousness of humanity. The latter, according to which Husserl the philosopher represents the functionary of reason, expresses itself through the examination of the consciousness of the theoretical and ethical telos guides human civilisation. This telos emerges positively as an ethical opening to liberty but it can also negatively fall into the mechanism of the technological process due to the collective consciousness of humanity. It is therefore easy to see that from a phenomenological point of view, consciousness is not exhausted on the personal individual level of the single man, as it extends to include the collective responsibility of all humanity. In short Husserl attempted to make a summary of modernity in order to conciliate the time and space of the consciousness, the two instances of individuality and universality in contrast with each other. This is how consciousness on a phenomenological level abandons the Cartesian horizon of the thinking individual, in order to open up to a universality that does not coincide with the abstractness of reason, as it involves the rooting of mankind into the world of life.

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In this essay I have attempted to point out two philosophical questions which should be debated at this congress. The first concerns the existential image of the consciousness as a corrective relative to the traditional, ontological and gnosiological configuration of the consciousness. On the other hand the second concerns the emergence of complexities, inside the categorical description of the consciousness, which makes us aware of the explicit and implicit components present in this category. The third question which has already been outlined concerns the complementarities of the two visions – existential and phenomenological – of consciousness which creates a new image which is able to express a meaningful development in philosophical research. In conclusion to this essay we must underline how we can philosophically reap meaningful fruits from a consciousness which represents a fragment of reality in its whole, and that does not allow us to lose track of reality as a whole and whose structures correspond to the holistic and systemic principles of the theories of complexity. It is not by chance that today’s scientific theories, defined as anthropical theories, speak directly of a complexity-consciousness in order to translate the results of the evolutionary process from its primordial origin to the present day in a unitary concept. The matter examined offers an example of methodological productivity of a way of philosophizing that finds its reason in a perspective in which the understanding of reality carried out by man must come from the fragment. Even if we are faced with a fragment of particular importance which is consciousness in the structural and physiological economy of the human psyche. This concept, in its double existential and phenomenological perspective draws our attention to the hermeneutics of limitedness, because the whole culture of man is placed in an indefinite progress of knowledge where the methodological lesson of limitedness consists in avoiding the risks and illusions of the terrestrial absolutes. In today’s culture perfection represents the starting point of the understanding of philosophical consciousness concerning the opening of man to the world, but the same limitedness specifies itself in a concept of perspectivity this means that every philosophical theme is inevitably subject to the situational point of view of its author. The indicated situation depends on the understanding of existential consciousness of the role exercised by the single consciocesness of every man. This awareness is then characterized deeply from a gnosiological point of view, through phenomenological meditation on the essence of human subjectivity. It is therefore clear that the two points of view related to existentialism and phenomenology end up assuming the image

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of consciousness which is further examined when treating the topic of the problematic of time in its specific characteristics. University of Perugia, Italy Home address: Via Col Di Lana 5, Viterbo, Italy

S E C T I O N VI

WILLIAM FRANKE

E X I S T E N T I A L I S M : A N AT H E I S T I C O R A C H R I S T I A N PHILOSOPHY?

ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH

Existentialism can lead to an intense focus on the immanence of earthly existence and a denial of all presumed metaphysical worlds beyond, notably those of the Christian afterlife, and this was the polemical posture of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus; or it can lead to a valorization of existence as an absolute that knows no confines and is not essentially bound to the earth, but opens into a dimension of infinity that is best interpreted by theological discourse. There is a tradition of existentialism in this latter style, with ancient precursors like Saint Paul and Tertullian and modern proponents from Kierkegaard through Gabriel Marcel to the Italian philosopher of religion, Luigi Paryeson. In either case, existence is “absurd,” in the sense of exceeding rational reduction and comprehension. The apprehension of existence in its concreteness and as free from conceptual abstraction is crucial to the fundamentally existentialist approach to life and knowledge underlying Christian and atheist philosophies alike. ABSTRACT IN FRENCH

Les racines religieuses de la tradition existentialiste sont repérables chez Saint Augustin, Thomas d’Aquin, Shakespeare, Pascal et Kierkegaard. Mais les formes les plus reconnues de cette pensée élaborée par Jean-Paul Sartre et Albert Camus se réclament de l’athéisme. Voilà la question : qu’est-ce qu’on peut dégager comme noyau de sens qui vaut pour tous en ce terme « existentialisme » dans des approches si contradictoires ? Il s’agit d’une philosophie qui émerge de l’expérience concrète de la vie plutôt que des raisonnements abstraits menés par l’intellect. La philosophie existentialiste est avant tout une pensée vécue. C’est pourquoi elle s’exprime autant dans des œuvres littéraires d’imagination, de narration, et de poésie, que dans des essais ou traités philosophiques. L’existentialisme a été déterminant pour la vie intellectuelle française et européenne dès le milieu du vingtième siècle. Dans son rayonnement dans 371 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 371–394. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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la tradition des sciences humaines et ses manifestations en littérature, en art, en philosophie et en d’autres domaines de la culture occidentale, cette pensée interroge encore notre époque. L’actualité de l’existentialisme dans un âge postmoderne, où l’imitation et le simulacre dominent entièrement le champ de l’expérience possible, consiste en ce qu’il indique une ouverture vers l’authenticité d’une réalité qui est uniquement la mienne—celle de l’individu particulier. Devenu invisible dans la reproduction forcenée qui caractérise la culture contemporaine, cette réalité singulière, authentique, inaliénable n’en est pas moins puissante et omniprésente. Il nous manque seulement les moyens conceptuels de la saisir sinon comme l’insaisissable. La pensée existentialiste a été et est toujours un instrument qui ouvre et nous permet de découvrir la réalité du vécu dans toute sa concrétude. PREAMBLE

Existentialism can be understood generically and ahistorically as philosophical thinking that is grounded in the unique, personal point of view and passion of the thinking individual. Such thinking validates itself as true and meaningful for me, in terms of my own life—rather than as a general, abstract, or theoretical proposition. Its validation is to be found directly in life experience. In introducing a recent anthology of classic founding texts of existentialist philosophy, Gordon Marino concludes, “In short, existentialism works at the level of personal meaning in contrast to general theory.”1 This orientation could be rephrased as an appeal to irreducible subjectivity. “Truth is subjectivity” was a crucial thesis of Soren Kierkegaard in his rebellion against the Hegelian systematization of philosophy as an objective science (Wissenschaft der Philosophie). For Kierkegaard personally, one of the most crucial, even if difficult and elusive, concepts of existential thinking was that of faith. He pursued it not only in philosophical reflections but also in Christian-inspired edifying discourses. This definition of existentialism manifests its proximity to the irreducibly personal witness of religious faith. Existentialism, however, can also be conceived of as fundamentally contrary to religious belief. Another approach to defining existentialist philosophy insists on its utter estrangement from all belief in transcendent grounds for value. It stresses the unconditioned freedom of the individual in choosing and creating the only values that can possibly matter. This approach emphasizes that the search of the human being for meaning is without support from outside itself, without relation to anything given as objectively valuable prior to the subject’s own choice. Religious doctrines and metaphysical philosophies affirming values fixed in the nature of things are seen by existentialists of this

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kind as having collapsed in the course of a history that gave the lie to them all. The human being finds itself alone and unauthorized in the universe, and thus as having to establish value for itself without any antecedent givens to stand on. We simply exist; that is all we are given, and on that basis we have to construct values and elaborate meaningful lives for ourselves, if we are going to have meaning and value at all. This attitude is characteristic of atheistic existentialism as represented particularly by French writers in the decades following World War II, most notably Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus. It agrees with Christian existentialism to the extent that Kierkegaard’s faith requires a leap: such faith is not based on something proven or assured. There is an abyss between the eternal values affirmed by religious belief and the decision of the single individual to embrace or to seek them out of a will that is his or her own and is unsupported by generally valid reasons or objectively given grounds. There is something absurd and irreducibly individual, not generally “justifiable,” in making the decision to leap in faith. Thus the Christian and the atheist approaches to existentialist philosophy converge in emphasizing an irreducibly personal dimension as crucial to grounding philosophical convictions as lived beliefs. But whether this lived belief can be invested in something “transcendent” is disputed. Whether belief in transcendent values and otherworldly powers is compatible with this subjective approach to knowing divides those commonly recognized as having the most legitimate claim to the title of “existentialist.” For some, such an appeal to transcendence seems flatly to contradict the responsibility of the individuals for all assignments whatever of meaning to anything in the universe. Others— the religious existentialists—out of their most intimate, personal convictions, affirm just such a transcendence of anything the finite individual can know or do as a necessary postulate precisely for the free establishment of any authentic meaning or value. In either case, values and meaning are not objectively given as facts the same for all, nor can they be rationally demonstrated. Such values and meanings are made, or at least recognized and appropriated, humanly; they emerge in and through the process of human existence. The question is whether this reduction of the reality that counts philosophically to the personal or the lived draws a circle around human existence and requires us to deal with it on its own terms, or whether this apparent reduction opens up human existence from within to a deeper reality that transcends it. Is it a reduction to the core of an undeniable experiential given, a phenomenological fundament, or does the reduction dissolve this core, expose its insubstantiality, and break human existence open to relation with something beyond the human? The former alternative results in a resolutely humanistic existentialism, while the latter results in a transcendental

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or religious form of existentialism. The reduction of philosophical knowledge to the truth of personally lived experience can lead in either of these two diametrically opposed directions. Is our existence open fundamentally to a reality beyond itself? Or is human existence itself ultimate? The question is whether we understand ourselves best simply in only human terms or as more deeply a relation to a beyond, to something beyond the human that calls to be dealt with by the kinds of consciousness and praxis cultivated typically (though not exclusively) in a variety of religions. The Christian religion is particularly apt to be configured as existentialist in this latter sense because of its emphasis on a unique historical event and a free individual act of belief as decisive in determining the outcome of human existence. Christianity can be seen as a great innovation in the history of religions that breaks out of the circle of eternal return—the mythic unchanging eternity of repetition of the same that preserves the gods untouched by time—and places salvation in a unique historical event centering on the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. Nevertheless, it is also possible to speak of Buddhist and even Islamic existentialism and to find similar motives in other religions as well.2 To answer the question concerning its deep-seated ambiguity as atheist or religious and especially Christian, I propose to define existentialism as an historical phenomenon and then to deal with its conceptual possibilities.

HISTORICAL EMERGENCE OF EXISTENTIALISM

Surrealism burst on the scene after the First World War as a reminder of unconscious, irrational, monstrous forces within humans that were not to be denied; they had not been made obsolete even by all the astounding advancements of science and technology. After a century of positivism and progress in the direction of industrial mass societies and consumer markets had led to the unconscionable butchery of the Great War, the material reduction of reality to humanly manipulable elements for social engineering was no longer credible as a formula for human fulfillment. Hence the fantastic regions of nightmare discovered by surrealism. In similar fashion, existentialism can be understood as the inevitable result of the next cataclysm in European history. After the Second World War, the horror of capitulation and connivance with the evil of the Nazi concentration camps could not be overlooked. Existentialism as a philosophy of inescapable freedom, even in the midst of the most sinister and constraining conditions, emerged as the philosophy of the moment. It was a reaction most directly to the abdication of freedom that had permitted the Holocaust. This

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historical moment and its dominant motivations are captured and expressed emblematically by Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Republic of Silence.”3 Thus existentialism as a historical phenomenon or specific movement emerges after the Second World War in a manner not unlike the emergence of surrealism after the First World War. It is the philosophy of this time and expresses some of the new sensibilities of a world that had been radically transformed in 1945. Its passing from this status of primary relevance can be dated precisely as well. The advent of structuralism as a new general outlook for French intellectuals in the 1960s is marked by Michel Foucault’s posing the question in 1966 of the death of man.4 As one passes into the postmodern phase of culture, existentialism is no longer the reigning paradigm. At least in its timely, Sartrean formulation, it is essentially a modern philosophy. As is suggested by the title of the journal Sartre edited and published for many years—Les temps modernes—existentialism in its post-World War II formulation is a quintessentially modern philosophy, inextricably bound to the postulate of a free and unconditionally autonomous subject. This essentially Cartesian principle collapses in the postmodern era. Historically, then, existentialism as a particular movement can be bracketed within two decades (roughly 1946–1966). Existential philosophy, however, can also be considered as a perennial type of thinking that recurs in myriad different guises throughout the course of Western intellectual history. The emphasis on concrete lived experience that implicates an individual subject as being prior to objective facts and prior to all systematic knowledge belongs to the dialectic of philosophical thinking in its movement from age to age. There are movements throughout the history of thought that are analogous to and anticipate—or may strongly contradict—the existentialist movement of postwar France. In various ways they all take the fact—or the phenomenon—of the unconditional freedom of existence as their starting point. They are sometimes accurately labeled, moreover, as philosophies of existence. The broader purport of existentialist thought, accordingly, is to be sifted and analyzed in relation to this vaster tradition. The sense of isolation of a subject in an alien universe—one of the hallmarks of existentialist thinking—is an especially modern sentiment. Of course, there is ancient Manichaeism, which postulates the soul’s alienation from the material universe. But the orientation for human life, nevertheless, was still supposed to come from beyond it, from a transcendent divinity beyond the demiurgic Creator of the present evil world. Human existence was to be escaped rather than lived out unconditionally. We can take existentialism, then, to be an essentially modern philosophy; it arises from the extreme isolation of the human individual that has characterized the modern era. The equally pronounced autonomy of the individual, who is free to act without restriction for

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the sake of his or her own self-realization, is also part of the peculiarly modern predicament that is assumed by existentialism. This suggests again how existentialism might emerge as the quintessentially modern philosophy. Modernity is defined especially by the revolution in intellectual history which places the human subject at the center of the universe. However, this anthropocentrism can also be reversed by modern and especially postmodern philosophies and theologies, and in this manner forms of existentialism that turn toward a grounding of existence beyond the human subject are produced. Precisely the groundlessness or the “thrownness” of the subject opens it from within towards some reality outside itself. For Heidegger, this reality is Being; for Christian existentialists like Gabriel Marcel and Etienne Gilson this reality exterior to the human subject can be recognized more adequately and completely as God. There was never exactly a school of existentialism. The loose association between Sartre and Camus immediately after the Second World War quickly came undone over their divergence with respect to communism, particularly in the form it took in the Soviet Union, which Sartre embraced and Camus eschewed. The divorce became public with the publication of L’Homme révolté by Camus in 1951. Thus existentialism is best understood as a perennial tendency of thought. It insists that thought must be validated in terms of concrete existence rather than of abstract ideas—its truth is the lived fact rather than the objective form. Its truth resides not in pure and perfect forms or essences but in what becomes manifest in existence—which means in time and history or, in other words, in the lived reality of human beings. In any of its variations, existentialism counts as a way of living the absolute in the concrete forms of human existence. The great challenge of knowing, especially in an existentialist perspective, is that it become concrete, that it induce to union with what is known rather than to distance and alienation. The limitation endemic to knowing in general is that it gives only a formal schema and misses the intrinsic reality of what is known. Existentialism aspires to know otherwise, to know the lived truth of the world and of the self—and perhaps also of the transcendent or divine mystery that underlies both. Beyond the technique of phenomenological reduction as a method of penetrating to the concrete core of consciousness, there are the more expansive and varied techniques of poetic and literary reflection for exploring experience, for example, through metaphorical elaboration. It is, therefore, not surprising that so much existentialist philosophy has been produced in the form of literature (Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Beckett, etc.). In these authors and in many more, literary modes of thought have proven themselves to be peculiarly apt to convey existentialist philosophy.

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EXISTENTIALISM AS A PERENNIAL MODE OF THINKING

Existentialism is not just a philosophy focused on human existence as its proper domain or subject matter. It is a manner of thinking in and through and from existence as it is humanly experienced. Thought is itself a mode of existence, and the various existentialisms emphasize this recognition as the key to valid and valuable thinking. The characteristic accents of existentialist thought, falling on authenticity and subjectivity and concreteness, all have this root. For existentialism, thinking is not abstract and impersonal, but always rooted in the existence of individuals and their particular conditions, social and physical. Also their inalienable freedom is a primary existential given. Knowledge of this sort cannot authenticate itself by abstract standards or by universal reason: it requires the witness and commitment of an individual. Seen existentially, therefore all knowledge has an element of faith. To adhere to a belief existentially rather than only intellectually through a detached conviction is like religious belief. Existentialism, as a mode of thinking through existence, is broader and more important than the specifically defined philosophy that takes the existence of the individual as its theme. As such a mode of thinking, existentialism is pervasive. It is sometimes traced from Socrates, from Socratic humanism, which turned theoretical attention to human being and life and its insuperable questionability. But also theological forms of philosophical thinking such as Neoplatonism work from a broad conception of thought as embedded in existence and the cosmos, and as such philosophical truth is existentially grounded5 . This is manifestly so when the universality of the logos cedes to the singularity of the individual soul as well as of the ineffable Transcendent. The perennial question is how philosophical inquiry can be informed by and can communicate with existence, with the truth of a human being existing here and now. Our life and being are the truths that concern us before all theoretical abstractions. Valid philosophical responses must respond on this basis of existence to our predicament. We must learn to think in and with and through our existence rather than past it or in abstraction from it. Only so will philosophical reflection become truly relevant for our lives. Numerous philosophies have attempted in diverse ways to make this contact with human existence and to bring it to the light of reflection. Phenomenology pivots on reducing our ideas and consciousness to what is directly given to us in experience in order to adhere to this existing reality. This is a philosophy that is organically connected with existentialism in its historical emergence as a celebrated trend in postwar France. However, it is a philosophy that initially focuses nevertheless on essences, in its formulation by Husserl, until it is turned in existentialist directions by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as well as by Sartre.

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There are great nineteenth century precursors for both theistic and atheistic existentialism. Kierkegaard develops the key themes of anxiety and the abyss of freedom and unconditioned subjectivity through a relation in faith, or subjective knowing as grounded on belief. Nietzsche, in contrast, discovers and valorizes existence through attacking all metaphysical superstructures that void existence in this world of its own meaning and value. In either case, existence itself in its unsoundable depth becomes the source of a revelation of our authentic nature. The question remains of whether this existence exists alone or in relation to an Other. This can be viewed as a matter of different faiths. Is theology about an essential realm apart from our existence or is it rather an interpretation in other-worldly or ultra-worldly terms of this existence here and now as consisting in a relatedness to others and an Other? In any case, religion can tend to foreground existence in its concreteness and plenitude more effectively than philosophy, with its abstractions, does. For religion puts into play a total relation of the human being to Being—even without conceptual control, for example, in the groping of love. Themes of absurdity and of the anguish of existence unite theistic and atheistic existentialists. They go back to Augustine and Tertullian (“credo quia absurdum”) and Saint Paul, I Corinthians 1: 23: Christ crucified is a stumbling block for the Jews and folly for the Greeks. Christianity has a key role in overturning the logic of the world and opening the breach of the absurd as the ultimate truth. It declares the absolute paradox of God become man and even being crucified unto death. This subversion of the order of existence as previously known in all authoritative or classical tradition is the revolution that Kierkegaard shapes into an existentialist philosophy. He discovers a new truth here through appeal to the faith of the individual to believe in the impossible, in the absolute paradox of the Incarnation, the God-man. Any other truth imposed from above cannot really transform my existence: what is subjectively true for me is the truth that ultimately matters. It alone changes my life. In this respect existentialism shows itself again to be acutely modern—the apotheosis of philosophy based on the modern subjective self. Kierkegaard discovers a freedom that cannot be rationally dictated but is rather a choice of passion for the infinite. Real existence, as he understands it, thus escapes reason. Living deeply the paradox of existence in the immanence of the modern, the secularized world can break us open to the Transcendent in the immanence of our historical existence. Existentialism thus finds a deeper dimension to being, an “ontological mystery,” in the terms of Gabriel Marcel. Beyond all that can be comprehended by reason and its essences, the existentialist discovers an inexhaustible enigma of existence that points beyond the realm of the known, towards transcendence.

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In this case, as represented eminently by Kierkegaard, but also by Pascal and Augustine, existentialism leads towards a search for some kind of transcendent grounding through faith beyond the contingent and shifting conditions of human existence which cannot be rationally mastered. This ground, since it cannot be grasped conceptually, is also an ungrounding—an ungrunt, as Meister Eckhart puts it. To grasp how existentialism can embrace atheistic and theistic thought at once, it is helpful to distinguish four different senses of “existence”: 1. Ontological. Simply being-there. To be an entity among others. 2. Historical. To have a history. The dimension of time is added to simple existence. 3. Human (or Hermeneutic). The existence of humans is not only given and evolving, but also chosen. Humans are free to choose their existence: they must make free choices that determine the content and quality of their existence. They do so in relation to other beings and even to Being in general. As Heidegger suggests, the human is a being for whom Being is an issue. We choose our existence based on some understanding or interpretation of what it is to be. This, of course, generates anxiety: our whole existence can teeter before us and become uncertain. 4. Religious (or Relational). Existence in this sense reaches even beyond human freedom. It is perhaps possible to grasp our existence in relation to a Ground that predestines or at least calls us to a relation that precedes our choices. Kierkegaard discovers this dimension of existence as a passionate relation to the Absolute. Here the human and historical open up into the divine and eternal. Existence is no longer simply the given and manifest but an inexhaustible mystery. The lineages of the two main forms of existentialism, atheist and Christian, might be traced as follows: Atheist Existentialism Sartre Camus De Beauvoir Heidegger Nietzsche Sade Ockham (nominalism) Abelard

Christian Existentialism Marcel Gilson Maritain Mounon Jaspers Kierkegaard Pascal Thomas Aquinas Augustine Tertullian St. Paul (I Cor. 1)

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The Pre-Socratics, with their insight into truth as aletheia or the disclosedness of beings, which is in itself the shining of the sacred, could be placed near the root of both branches of this genealogical tree. T H E O L O G I C A L R O O T S O F AT H E I S T I C E X I S T E N T I A L I S M I N S A RT R E

Existentialism seemed to its opponents to be the denial of all values that had once constituted humanity.6 With its emphasis on the absurd and anxiety, all reassurances of the goodness of humanity and the value of human life were undermined. Sartre denied all belief in human nature as intrinsically good, as made in the image of God, or as destined by the course of history to evolve towards a Marxist utopia. Nevertheless, there is something potentially redeeming about human reality, even if it is not exactly a determinate quality or inherent nature. It is freedom. All value rests on and emerges from human freedom alone. What human freedom is cannot be positively defined. Sartre analyzes it rather as an absolute power of negation in L’Être et le néant. L’Être et le néant was published in 1943 and generated the polemical context into which the essay Existentialisme est un humanisme (1946) was launched. This essay is thus a work of circumstance. It attempts to defend the new philosophy against attacks from Marxists and Christians. Both agree in accusing existentialism of isolating the human individual and alienating man from the contexts of human solidarity. Sartre gives a new turn to his philosophy, emphasizing the collective and universal aspects of individual human choice, in order to counter this objection. This slight shift of direction helps bring underlying motives of his thinking into the open. Sartre’s texts make theological motives and metaphors crucial to defining the nature and purport of existentialism: he presents it as an anti-theology. It is, in effect, an effort to continue to think philosophically in the wake of the death of God. Sartre’s atheistic form of existentialism thus follows in the tradition of Nietzsche (herald of the death of God), which we have distinguished from that of Kierkegaard. Existentialism is defined by Sartre in fundamentally theological terms as a consequential atheism. The denial of all a priori values, or of essences, is best understood simply as a necessary consequence of the affirmation that God does not exist. The concept of God as artisan of the world epitomizes the whole technological conception of the world that Sartre rejects, a conception in which things are made and ordered according to their uses (EH, p. 27). And yet Sartre’s representation of the human being and his or her inalienable freedom in effect theologizes human subjectivity, or what he calls “human reality” (“la réalité humaine”). It is rendered absolute. This free individual is indeed made in the image of God—without God. God is dead, but an absolute

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being lives on in this individual endowed with inalienable and unconditioned freedom. Of course, all sorts of “facticity,” the sum of physical and social constraints, limit and condition this individual. But he or she is not conditioned in his or her freedom. This remains absolute and infinite and as such it is, I maintain, a theological postulate. It is through monotheism that such an absoluteness and infinity and sovereignty of the person came to be conceived in Western culture7 . Sartre transfers these theological properties to man. This secularization of theology, in affirming the infinite value of the individual, is the quintessence of modernity. Sartre particularly emphasizes the absolute negativity of human reality and its freedom. His reasoning in fact runs parallel the development of negative theology from its positive counterpart. Following the dialectic of anthropological conceptions of unconditioned freedom and the purely negative conception they deliver, Sartre reproduces some of the same movements that come about in theological speculation at a point where its conceptions tend to fall into contradiction and become absurd in the face of the Infinite. This is the dialectic of theology with its own limits, with its incapacity to conceptualize God, with the impossibility of “theology” as a Logos concerning God. This self-subversion of its own discourse has been part of the reflection of theology throughout the traditions of the monotheistic religions, particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam8 . For Sartre, human liberty becomes the god of its own life: there are no norms outside it. It does not create its life and being, but it is the sole creator of all the significance that these and the world can have. Within its own world of significances, the human subject is omnipotent. Nothing external and foreign to it can determine the meaning of its world and acts. The free subject itself is the absolute origin, the genesis, the alpha and omega of all essential meaning and significance in the world that is its own. Sartre’s representation of an absolutely free subject that cannot be constrained or coerced to act contrary to its own will is a translation to the human sphere of an absolute sovereignty that was first conceived as belonging to God. The Sartrean subject inhabits a dimension of absolute freedom that is essentially theological. Sartre himself is aware at some level of this derivation from theology at the source of his thought. It comes out ad hoc in various statements. In particular, the last chapter of L’Être et le néant ends by drawing the parallel between the human endeavor to ground itself and the divine nature: “Every human reality is a passion in that it projects its own loss in order to found being and to constitute in the same stroke the in-itself that escapes contingency in becoming its own foundation, the Ens causa sui that religions name God” (« Toute réalité-humaine est une passion, en ce qu’elle projette de se perdre pour fonder l’être et pour constituer du même coup l’en-soi qui échappe à la contingence en étant son propre fondement, l’Ens causa sui que les religions

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nomment Dieu, » p. 662). Or again, in his analysis of the regard of the other, Sartre notes that Kafka’s novels take place under a gaze that is confounded with divine transcendence and stipulates that “God here is only the concept of the other pushed to the limit” (« Dieu n’est ici que le concept d’autrui poussé à la limite, » p. 324). In a similar spirit of secularizing the divine consciousness, Jean Hyppolite remarks that “Sartre compared the freedom of our consciousness to that which Descartes ascribes to his God, but it is for him the lot of our human reality” (« Sartre a comparé cette liberté de notre conscience à celle que Descartes prête à son Dieu, mais elle est pour lui le lot de la réalité humaine. »9 Hyppolite further observes that from Sartre’s perspective, “Human reality is the desire to be God” (« La réalité humaine est désir d’être Dieu, » p. 777). It is thus no accident and is in fact deeply revealing that the key passages in which Sartre defines existentialism tend to take their bearings from theology. This is notably the case in the programmatic definitions offered in Existentialisme est un humanisme. “Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw out the consequences of a consistent atheism” (« L’existentialisme n’est pas autre chose qu’un effort pour tirer toutes les conséquences d’une position athée cohérente, » p. 77). This statement near the conclusion of the essay is a reprise of unmistakable hints that have been dropped also from early on: “And when one speaks of abandon, an expression dear to Heidegger, we mean simply that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of this all the way” (« Et lorsqu’on parle de délaissement, expression chère à Heidegger, nous voulons dire seulement que Dieu n’existe pas, et qu’il faut en tirer jusqu’au bout les conséquences, » p. 37). Many of Sartre’s literary works evoke theological contexts such as hell (Huis clos) or a Platonic heaven (Les mouches). Like Nietzsche, Sartre is an anti-theological thinker and thus tends to think, sometimes even inadvertently, within theologically schemas—even if only in order to negate them. Any philosophy that wishes to think radically the grounds of human life and the world enters into theological waters, at least from the point of view of theology. Theology is a discourse about the ground of all being. Philosophy can be this too. The difference is that theology does not expect to know this ground by reason alone. Theology concedes that the ground is in human terms alone unknowable. In this light, existentialism shows up as a paradigmatically modern philosophy that is concerned essentially with the secularization of theological postulates. Existentialism understands itself as the ultimate exaltation of human freedom, but precisely this concept of unconditioned freedom, which defines the very telos of history for quintessentially modern thinkers like Hegel and Marx, derives from theological notions of an omnipotent or unconditioned will and absolute sovereignty that in Western culture were developed originally

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in theological terms. Total authority over one’s own world is given back to the individual subject even after the collapse of all metaphysical systems and in the midst of the human condition of the absurd. All this is possible in the wake of the death of God. Without God, the world of essences itself collapses: God was the hypothesis of a supreme being or essence that grounded and guaranteed all the rest. Without this ground, the universe has no essence per se, but is given as naked existence. Hence Sartre’s definition of existentialism as atheism thought through to its final consequences. CHRISTIAN EXISTENTIALISM

Christianity, as the religion of the secularization of religion, has a unique affinity with existentialist philosophy. Christianity centers on existence as the starting point for human living and salvation. Christ is the revelation of a radical form of existence broken open to love and no longer circumscribed by metaphysical essences. Love, and more generally relationship, is primary rather than supplementary to the being of the Christian. Christ is the divine model of existing in a relationship of love with others. This is not our essential nature, as something necessary and inherent, but a free, gratuitous act. It is motivated by nothing but love. There is no essential structure underlying it. Such is a radical (especially Protestant) conception of the nature of existence. There are also modern Catholic existentialists who are inspired essentially by Saint Thomas Aquinas and his vision of absolutely simple existence or pure being as God. In this rather different sense, the Neo-Thomists Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain also count as existentialist philosophers. Other religious philosophies, too, such as the Jansenism of Port Royal and Pascal in particular, much closer to characteristically Protestant emphases on the enigmatic darkness of the creation and the hiddenness of God, have also served to articulate sentiments and outlooks recognizable as characteristic of existentialism. PA S C A L

Pascal describes the human situation, in strikingly modern terms, as without absolutes, none that can be known by the light of reason, in any case. He conveys a powerful sense of modern man’s lostness in the universe that was revealed by Galileo and Descartes as infinite empty space: “The eternal silence of these spaces terrifies me” (« Le silence éternel de ces espaces m’effraie, » 101).10 He anticipates Heidegger in registering the “thrownness” of our existence: “Our soul is thrown into the body” (« Notre âme est jetée dans le corps . . ., » “Le Pari”). He describes our loss of orientation in the midst of a reality infinitely greater than the physical universe (itself already become infinite in the new science) and the infinite divisibility of an infinitesimal atomic world. Our ideas are lost in the unimaginable immensity of reality.

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Thus man is between the infinite immensity of the universe and the infinitesimal nothing of the atom. Man is in the middle: only God grasps the beginning and the end. Our existence is without absolutes and thus is floating and uncertain. We can deal only with mediocre sensations and facts, not extremes. We are the middle between extremes that we cannot perceive. Everything escapes our grasp; we have no stable basis on which to stand between these two infinities. Pascal observes: “nothing can fix the finite between the two infinites that enclose it and flee from it” (« rien ne peut fixer le fini entre les deux infinis qui l’enferment et le fuient »). This leaves us with no absolutes, no foundation for knowledge, such as we desperately desire: “We burn with desire to find a stable platform and a constant base on which to build a tower that rises to the infinite, but our whole foundation cracks and the earth opens into an abyss” (« Nous brûlons du désir de trouver une assiette ferme, et une dernière base constante pour y édifier une tour qui s’élève à l’infini, mais tout notre fondement craque et la terre s’ouvre jusqu’aux abîmes »). We cannot know any part except in relation to the whole, which we wholly ignore as infinitely disproportionate with us. Things are simple, but we are dual: we are of opposed natures, body and soul. Such is the incomprehensible dualism of human nature—our incomprehensible essence. Hence we have only our existence from which to reason (“Disproportion de l’homme”). Only an arbitrary act of will, a wager, can give essential meaning to an individual’s life. There is no objective knowing of the truth of the Christian religion, but rather an act of subjective will at the origin of the Christian commitment that Pascal, as Christian apologist, undertakes and recommends. He maintains that with experience one sees that what is wagered (finite existence condemned to death) is nothing and that the wager will show itself with each new step in this life, in which one gains much already, to be certain of winning also the next life (“Le Pari”). However, we have no natural knowledge as to whether God exists or not. This is absolutely a toss up. “And thus our proposition is of an infinite strength, when the finite is wagered in a game with equal chances of winning and losing—and the infinite to be won. That is undeniable ; and if men are capable of some truth, that is it” (« Et ainsi, notre proposition est dans une force infinie, quand il y a le fini à hasarder à un jeu où il y a pareils hasards de gain que de perte, et l’infini à gagner. Cela est démonstratif; et si les hommes sont capables de quelque vérité, celle-là l’est » 451). Thus we make a choice at bottom between the infinite and nothing: l’infini or rien. “The finite annihilates itself in the presence of the infinite and becomes a pure nothing. So is our spirit before God; so is our justice before divine justice” (« Le fini s’anéantit en présence de l’infini, et devient un pur néant. Ainsi notre esprit devant Dieu ; ainsi notre justice devant la justice divine » 451).

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God is a hidden God (Deus absconditus). Christianity does not pretend to have a clear knowledge of God. On the contrary. Yet, just this unknowing demands total engagement vis-à-vis the supreme mystery of the immortality of the soul. Pascal upbraids indifference towards our eternal destiny, even while admitting our total self-ignorance. Either we must know God or seek God: no other position is reasonable. Pascal’s “Thoughts” begin from an assessment of the condition of man. He emphasizes man’s misery and weakness as caught between two infinities. Man loses his grip on the world thanks to the encroachment of an infinite that is not only the divine spirit that surpasses human understanding but also the universe itself in expansion without limit in the age of scientific discovery, to which Pascal is particularly alive. This is the existentialist premise of Pascal’s thought: human existence finds itself without absolutes. But rather than remaining in skepticism or taking this condition as a motive for despair, Pascal finds in it the justification for Christianity, for making the wager—blindly as far as reason can tell—that there is a God and that the soul is immortal. Reason is incapable of finding a stable foothold in this abyss of the human condition between two infinites. Nothing it establishes is more than arbitrary, nor can it lift us out of human misery; nonetheless, the consciousness of this predicament marks the grandeur of the human spirit. In this humanism, pivoting on consciousness or thought as the distinctively human, Pascal lays the premises for Camus’s Sisyphus and for Sartre’s existential Cartesianism, both of which exalt consciousness as the redeeming liberty of man condemned to mortality. For Pascal, however, the solution to the human predicament is rather Christianity. Man makes a wager in faith that brings him out of the despair of the human condition. Not by the presumption of selfsufficiency, whereby the man who wants to be an angel becomes a beast, but by self-abandon following Christ, existence can be infused with value. In my judgment, nevertheless, Pascal’s strongest affinities are with atheistic existentialism. He was recognized by atheistic existentialists as an authentically modern thinker of the human predicament. God for him is not so much a living presence felt in the unfathomable experience of life and being as a wager on the part of an isolated reasoning consciousness. To reason from a wager concerning the existence of God and the immortality of the soul seems too abstract to me: it defines premises for reasoning which are conceptual creatures; it takes them as either absolutely true or absolutely false, rather than allowing them to be images for a mystery that no definition or decision can grasp and exhaust. Pascal initiates a profound self-questioning of reason that displays remarkable capacities of reason to void itself. But still reason remains isolated and is not really penetrated from outside itself and its

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calculations that it had best believe in a God beyond itself. Reason’s calculations concerning the future of this life are caught in the veil of time and abstract from eternity as now, with all its ambiguities, in our finite incarnation. Pascal’s reasoning remains substantially cut off from the mystery of God or unlimited being. GABRIEL MARCEL

Perhaps Marcel’s most programmatic essay, originally given as a conference on January 21, 1933 to the Philosophical Society of Marseille, “Position et approches concrètes du mystère ontologique,” promulgates its fundamental theses as “the culmination of the whole philosophical and spiritual evolution that is pursued through the Metaphysical Journal” (“l’aboutissement de toute l’évolution philosophique et spirituelle qui se poursuit à travers le Journal Métaphysique”).11 It begins from the observation that the ontological sense, the intuitive awareness and understanding of being, is repressed in modern man. The modern world is based on the concept of functionality. Everything that is apprehended in terms of the function that it performs; individual persons themselves are reduced to an aggregate of functions. In such a world, there is no place for mystery, but only for problems. This world is empty and sad. In order that every being not be reduced simply to an empty place for the appearance or performance of various functions, we must rather participate in being. This means that we must not just observe and analyze being (instantiated in beings) with detachment, but must understand ourselves as part of it. Yet being is not, as a certain nominalism insists: only beings exist. Such is the perennial conviction of nominalism since the Middle Ages, as well as in modern times of materialism that recognizes nothing but individual entities as real. Being as such resists analysis and explanation in terms of givens. It escapes the nets of verification and is discernible rather as an interior presence (« cette présence, cette réalisation intérieure de la présence au sein de l’amour qui transcende infiniment toute vérification concevable, » p. 53). For Marcel, the problem of the cogito leads to the mystery of being. Is the “I” within or outside of the problem it formulates? The question of who I am is inseparable from the ontological problem. Marcel takes a position contrary to Cartesian dualism. The subject’s questioning is itself taken as object, as ontological event: as such, its being is passive rather than subjective. It is a participating that surpasses the consciousness of a subject. This is an existential viewpoint: knowledge is enveloped by being; participation is presupposed by all knowing. In this case, existence as a subjective act comes before the subjects knowledge of essences. In this priority of being over knowing, being is affirming rather than affirmed.

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Marcel defines a mystery as a problem that encroaches (“empiètre”) on its own givens, that invades them and thereby exceeds itself as simple problem. Examples of mystery include the relation between body and soul, in which their unity is not just a given but a giving in presence of the self to itself. Reflection turns this classic philosophical problem into a mystery. Likewise the problem of evil: evil exists only as long as I am implicated in it. Purely contemplated evil ceases to be evil. There is a mystery in death, decay, and destruction, but no problem of evil. We do not understand why, but that is not an objection. It opens to a region of mystery. Love similarly opens upon the sphere of the meta-problematic in that it is not reducible to the contents of experience. Its criterion is fidelity. A final example of mystery is the encounter. It is singular, inexplicable, not universalizable. It places us in the presence of something inexplicable. And I am not outside the encounter when I interrogate it. This mystery, then, is meta-problematic. It entails a sort of disengagement and detachment from experience in an objective sense. Yet it is not abstraction. It is recueillement, that is, contemplation or recollection. It is intentional, but without any specifiable object. Rather than being a return simply to self, it is self-dispossession, as for Saint Paul. It is not equivalent to intuition, except for an intuition that is not given, but is rather a surplus to experience. It is a private, personal intuition of being. Being, so intuited, is not equivalent to life: it includes rather despair, death, and suicide. The metaphysical or ontological exigency accentuates these tragic givens of human life that are vaporized by idealist philosophies. Metaphysics is dramatic, whereas abstract thought liquidates the tragic. Idealists ignore the person and sacrifice it to pure interiority. Philosophy expresses a will to negate being, but radical positivity of life is exposed by radical pessimism. Despair leads to the highest affirmation. Hope in mystery establishes prophetically the order that it wills. Yet the mystery of hope finds itself degraded inevitably to the level of a problem. The objective attitude, in which the self is not implicated in reality, effaces the ontological one. Yet life does not have value objectively and as separate from me. It must be apprehended more as a mystery than as a problem. The problem belongs to the technical, functional world of desire and fear. Our age of despair—that is, of belief in technique—envisages the world as an ensemble of problems. The global failure of techné (together with its partial successes) makes clear that it offers no salvation for man. It warrants the prophecy rather of technical advance to total domination, but therewith also despair. Optimism vested in technical progress leads to the eclipse of every ontology of hope, hope in what does not depend on us. The latter attitude requires humility rather than pride.

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Recollection is the source of memory, but is itself unrepresentable. It is a sort of self-reflection, but is not self-enclosed. It is open to ontological mystery. It is a surplus to intuition and experience, to experience that can be collected or gathered into a memory. It cannot be communicated (hence for Hegel it would be simply nothing). Marcel describes it as an underlying assurance gained in a movement of conversion. It is the vital rhythm of consciousness. A secondary reflection with regard to origins renders perceptible an initial ontological reflection ignorant of its own grounds. In other words, I discover in me something deeper than what I can possess. Fascism (Marcel writes in 1933) was built on the total organization of the world made possible through techné. Pride cuts us off from communication with beings—we find our strength in ourselves alone. But this leads to destruction of oneself. One might object, on the other hand, that Marcel’s philosophy leads to moral quietism and inaction, but he understands hope as necessarily oriented to action. Hope prolongs the unknown of a central activity rooted in being. The will is applied to what does not depend on it. Such will is an expansion and creativity of being rather than its hardening into a fixed resolve. It is opposed to desire. Good technique is creative and fecund and an expansion of our being, as opposed to contraction and mere repetition. But creation entails rootedness in being rather than just invention and innovation. It is a fidelity to creation, fidelity not as inert conformism, not formal, but rather ontological. This type of fidelity is conformity not to a principle; it is an adherence to something present not as an idea but as a mystery in us. It is uncircumscribed. Such creative fidelity corresponds to an ontological presence; it communicates the hold of being on us. Such metaphysical presence is greater than any object or effigy. This is proved by death. The dead are alive in us, and this not just subjective. It is rather the presence of an influx that does not depend on us. It is not an objective presence but a spiritual availability. It is also called charity. It entails an encounter that shatters the ego and the separation of what belongs to our responsibility from the rest. This separation tends to grow rigid with age. Sainthood is, for Marcel, the true introduction to ontology. It reveals the perversity of the normal order of things. Sainthood consists in spiritual “disponibilité” or availability to be invaded by being rather than being encumbered with self. Such self-dispossession is crucial to creative action. Marcel’s existentialism turns entirely on this openness and receptiveness to what does not depend on us, what becomes in poststructuralist discourse an openness to the Other. Difficulties can induce to formulating dogmas, or else they can be labeled as mysteries. For example, the mystery of presence is enshrined in the doctrine of the Christian Eucharist. The insoluble mystery of being can actually be illuminated by this doctrine. Yet Christianity is only a fecundating principle

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here; it is not presupposed by the philosophical notions proposed by Marcel. He distinguishes between human and Christian mysteries because he refuses the union of the natural and the supernatural. He wishes to recognize ontological mystery without positive religion. Such mystery belongs to superior modes of human experience.

UNITY OF TWO EXISTENTIALISMS

The basic insight of existentialist thought that is common to all the thinkers we have considered, atheists and Christians alike, is that existence is given without essential values inscribed in it prior to the exercise of human freedom. For the atheists, the individually existing self is an irreducible core from which all valuation and commitment must proceed. The individual is called on to create value in a world void of pre-existing values. For the Christian or religious existentialist, the individual is not a separate base and source unto him- or herself. This individual is always already sundered and fragmentary. The individual is already in need of relationships in order to exist. The world presents itself as without value a priori, and even the self cannot be taken as resource for giving value to things. It is through relation to others in faith and hope and belief that values may arise. Again, existence is absolute, without determination; and freedom in the form of freely contracted relations is necessary to give any sense at all to it. But value does not emanate from the self as such. It emanates from relationships in which we freely engage. Human freedom is necessary to any determination of essential values, but only as a catalyst rather than as their creator. Another way to say this is that existentialism discovers existence abandoned to itself, but that this can be taken in two senses. This abandon can mean the denial of transcendence. There is nothing other than existence as given. No hope in another world. Camus makes this insight—the denial of transcendence—the fulcrum for his thinking. This is also a characteristically modern posture that posits the empirically given world as real, as the only reality. It is a human world without divinity. The divinities of pre-modern thinking expressed in myths have fled from the world. But the abandon of existence to itself can also open it to transcendence from within. Nothing holds it together any longer in any kind of integrity. Its being given is itself not a reliable fact, but a mystery. This existence does not know itself, its whence and wherefore. Human existence is given not as a discrete entity, but as an open question traversed by unknown factors, by mystery. It is not essentially even human. Radical existentialism in this sense is thus not a humanism. It is rather religious, in the sense of harboring openness to mystery, the dimension that religion explores.

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Existentialism reveals existence as absolute. Whether this is absolute isolation and reduction of the individual or the shattering and dispersal of individual existence depends on the existentialist. Existence is absolute, but is this absolute aseity and autarky, or absolute relationality? Contrary to modern materialism, which is atomistic in its ontological presuppositions, a postmodern or a religious view sees the individual as broken open and shattered, as inhabited by otherness and as “founded” in relationships. A hope transcending all empirical disappointments is inseparably correlated with absolute despair. Despair of reality in toto—nothing resists dissolution— is the premise for belief founded in hope in what is beyond our constructions, in what is other to all we comprehend.

AGAINST THE HUMANIST REDUCTION OF E XISTENTIALISM: C O N T E M P O R A R Y E X I S T E N T I A L I S T T H O U G H T I N T H E WA K E O F L U I G I PA R E Y S O N

As our consideration of its theological precedents has suggested, existentialism can lead in the direction of a philosophy of religious experience. Gabriel Marcel pointed the way in his explorations of the experience of being as mystery rather than as a problem. Being is experienced thus as open to exploration through free involvement and engagement rather than as an object of rational analysis. Marcel’s work is one of the foundation stones for the existentialist philosophy of religious experience developed by the Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). The philosophy of religion, in this perspective, is no longer conceived of as “secondary philosophy.” It is not preceded and grounded by any more fundamental philosophy in the form of ontology or metaphysics. Rather, philosophy of religion stakes its claim to being primary or first philosophy. Only through the comprehension of the relationality through which all things are tied together, which is literally religious (re-ligio), can philosophical reason in general begin to get a handle on anything whatsoever, and so begin to open up its questionings. This religious approach is not in contradiction with the focus on finitude that has generally characterized existentialist thinking—quite the contrary. Pareyson, like Schelling before him, infers the essentially religious nature of human existence precisely from its finitude. The incompleteness of each finite existence as such opens it towards relation with others and ultimately with the Infinite. Pareyson has fostered a following of philosophers of religion in Italy engaged in thinking through in religious terms the implications of existentialist

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thought after the demise of metaphysics. Their ideas and their developments of Pareyson’s existential hermeneutic of religious experience give perhaps the most convincing contemporary rendering of the existentialist heritage.12 They represent a current of existentialist philosophy that is still productive and growing today. The philosophy of existence, we have seen, leads in two different directions: the atheistic existentialism of Sartre and Camus and, in good part, the contemporaneous theatre of the absurd, of Beckett and Ionesco, on the one hand, and on the other, the Christian existentialism of Gabriel Marcel and perhaps also of Neo-Thomists, such as Etienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain, as well as Georges Mounin. The liberation of finite existence from metaphysical grounds in the totality of the Hegelian concept harbors these two distinct and opposed potentialities. The finite, taken in and for itself, can become the fulcrum for an existence focused exclusively on its own action in the world. Existentialism so conceived becomes a philosophy of human action and freedom par excellence. This is the freedom of the single individual, and hence the notorious difficulty Sartre had with attributing a positive meaning to relations with others, especially to relations involving the type of fusion represented by sexual relationships. The other for him is, before all, the one who robs me of sovereignty over my world by regarding me as an object in their world. Existentialism, however, can also lead in another and opposite direction. The finite human being can discover itself to be intrinsically insufficient and to be constituted only by its relation to others. It begins and takes its orientation not from itself but from the Other. Human existence in this case is not centered on itself as a locus of freedom, but rather on what is not present to it in any finite form, on what it can only relate itself to as an absent ground or abyss. This posture then produces religious existentialism. In the Christian existential vision of Luigi Pareyson, freedom thus becomes the focus again, yet it is no longer just the freedom of an individual subject, a postulate which has fallen prey to postmodern critiques. Existence as pure unqualified freedom reveals itself in a necessarily theological dimension to Pareyson, following Kierkegaard and Schelling, as well as Marcel. Religious existentialism can still be a philosophy of action, but it implies an activity that is also a passivity or receptivity to becoming an action of the other, an act at least responsive to an Other. Being, in this philosophy, is always already relational rather than atomic or centered in an individual subject. Freedom itself is a matter of acting, which is intrinsically also a responding, and this responsiveness is based on an originary relatedness.

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Pareyson’s hermeneutic of religious experience is to be understood on the basis of existentialism and the primacy it accords to human freedom.13 Pareyson’s hermeneutic of religious experience is not a phenomenology, not just description of religious phenomena as given. Such phenomena could be objects only of “secondary philosophy.” Phenomenology is an approach that must be receptive before it can be constructive, whereas existentialist thought is before all an unconditionally free act. Existentialism insisted on the impossibility of total vision and thus on the impossibility of a foundation for a system of all knowledge. Knowledge was unveiled as having to be rooted rather in particular, historical, and even personal experience. Existentialism is a philosophy of the finite extracted from the Hegelian system and its totality of the concept.14 As such, however, existentialism proves deeply ambiguous. It points in two contrasting, even contradictory directions. The liberation of the finite from the rational security of totality in the system results in atheistic materialism à la Feuerbach, but also in the religious faith of Kierkegaard turning on an opening to relation with the Other and against the solipsism of total immanence. This entails ultimately an infinite relation with the Infinite itself. The relation with the Other is thus constitutive of the finite human being. This relation is interpreted by Pareyson through an ontological hermeneutic. For finite existence is a perspective on being, a relation with being, an ontological relation. This ontology is based, for Pareyson, on freedom. It does not entail a global possession of truth but rather an orientation to freedom. Pareyson includes also evil in his ontology. The failure of freedom and truth results in evil. Pareyson’s hermeneutic of religious experience is employed to approach mystery as the experience of transcendence in relation to being. This is fundamentally experience of the abyss of freedom, of freedom as before being. This is the experience of God as originary positivity. The originary positiveness of God is itself a victory over negation because it does not simply exist, but wills to be; it is an originary act of freedom. Freedom is a pure beginning from nothing, a choice of good. This choice implies the possibility of negation, which is defeated. Evil is inherent in God, that is, in absolute freedom, but it is made real only by human actions. In divine history, evil is always already defeated, but in temporal history it can still win. The outcome depends on human freedom. As in Christian faith, suffering is the necessary remedy, suffering in which God is involved through a free act. Pareyson thus opts for a tragic Christianity of existential decision and against atheistic nihilism. In these terms, philosophy must begin from the religious problem of existence. Re-ligio is primary, not secondary philosophy, since our existence is originarily ec-static—open to others. Hence Pareyson proposes philosophy as a

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hermeneutic of religious experience. The mystery of being (in a language made current by Marcel) is plumbed in myths and symbols, and thus is not reduced to concepts. As refracted in such poetic discourses, there can be only a finite point of view on the absolute. Philosophy needs the religious question of the sense of being in order to avoid being reduced to sectarian, specialized knowledge. Hence the hermeneutic of religious existence and being which asserts its claim to be first philosophy. Philosophy in its widest acceptation thus comes to coincide with reflection that is, in this sense, “existentialist.”

FINAL REFLECTION

The project of existentialism as a modern humanist movement, as exemplified by Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus, was to take the existence here and now of the human individual as absolute. A religious existentialism, on the other hand, finds the absolute as absent and as transcendent to our existence here and now. Religious living can still be an existentialism, in that it uses this existence here and now as the point of leverage for opening toward what is conceived of as another existence or as another dimension of existence, as a greater and truer reality. More precisely perhaps, an existentialist might hold that there is only one reality, but that it is not circumscribed but rather infinitely open. In this case, the human subject does not determine his or her own reality in absolute, unconditional freedom and as enclosed within a total void, but is first and foremost receptive to what is other, to what does not depend on human decision, in letting reality be. This way of posing the question of what existentialism is can be elicited from the debate between Sartre and Heidegger already at the beginning of the so-called existentialist movement. Heidegger, in effect, in his Brief über den Humanismus (1946), without embracing theistic beliefs, outlines the possibilities of (what I am calling) a religious existentialism open to a dimension beyond human subjectivity. This avenue of existentialism continues to be explored in our day following particularly the thought of Luigi Pareyson. This is the strand of existentialism that I take to be its growing tip. As a religious philosophy that fully assimilates the modern discovery of secular existence, seemingly abandoned to itself, without definable givens, and yet open to relation with what gives itself only in withdrawing and so leaves us always peering through the mystery of existence towards its unfathomable source, existentialism is still relevant to and illuminates our postmodern world. Vanderbilt University

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1

Basic Writings of Existentialism (New York: Modern Library, 2004), p. xii. I wish also to record that this essay is the fruit of a course on Existentialism that I gave in Spring semester 2008 at Vanderbilt-in-France in Aix-en-Provence. My thanks go to the students and to philosopher Laurence Vanin-Verna of the University of Toulon for her participation. 2 See, for example, Abdennour Bidar, L’islam sans soumission: Pour un existentialisme musulman (Paris: Albin Michel, 2008). Concerning Christianity, see Mircea Eliade, Le mythe de l’éternel retour. Archétypes et répétition (Paris: Gallimard, 1969 [1949]). 3 Situations III (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp. 11–14. 4 Gilles Vannier, L’existentialisme: Littérature et philosophie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), p. 171. 5 The works of Pierre Hadot, for example, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002) and of Giovanni Reale, Radici spirituali e culturali dell’Europa (Milan: Cortina, 2003), on ancient philosophies as life wisdom reinterpret this philosophical heritage in an implicitly existentialist key. Earlier in the 20th century the neo-Thomastic school of Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson understood itself as a kind of Christian existentialism based on the thought of being or existence in the Middle Ages. 6 Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1946); originally a conference given in Paris on October 29, 1945 at the request of the Club Maintenant. Abbreviated hereafter EH. 7 For similar views, see Gianni Vattimo, Dopo la cristianita: ` Per un cristianesimo non religioso (Milan: Garzanti, 2002). 8 For specifics in this regard, see Introduction to my On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.) 9 Jean Hyppolite, Figures de la pensée philosophique II (Quadrige : Presses Universitaires de France, 1991 [1971]), p. 765. 10 Numberings and titles of Pascal’s fragments follow the edition of Louis Lafuma, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Seuil, 1963). 11 Gabriel Marcel, Position et approches concrètes du mystère ontologique, 2nd ed. (Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts, 1967), p. 45. 12 A good point of entry into this association of thinkers is the collection of essays around Pareyson’s work: L’esistenza e il logos: Filosofia, esperienza religiosa, rivelazione, ed. Paolo Diego Bubbio and Peiro Coda (Rome: Città nuova, 2007). 13 See Marco Ravera, in “Al di là della lettera . . .” in L’esistenza e il logos. 14 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “La querelle de l’existentialisme, » Sens et Non-sens (Paris : Nagel : 1949).

J O H A N N E S S E RVA N

THE HORIZON OF HUMANITY AND THE T R A N S C E N D E N TA L A N A LY S I S O F T H E L I F E W O R L D

ABSTRACT

As a preliminary investigation to an intentional history of Human Rights, this paper will be appointed to the relation between the institution of ideal objectivity and the experience of the Alien. With a point of departure in Edmund Husserl’s well known fragment The Origin of Geometry, readings of Merleu-Ponty’s essay Primacy of Perception and The Prose of the World and Steinbock’s inspiring book Home and Beyond – Generative Phenomenology after Husserl will be applied in an effort to elaborate upon the notions of living institutions and responsibility. In The Origin of Geometry Husserl admitted that the problem of language is fundamental. The institution [Stiftung] of ideal objectivity – even that of geometrical objects – involves the relation between language and the world as an inseparable, intertwined unity. The objective being of the world presupposes humanity – understood as a linguistic community of those who can reciprocally and normally express themselves. The significance of the written is described as giving persisting existence to the ideal objects, making virtual communication possible, and thus lifting the communalization of men to a new level. This institution of the written language is also seen as constituting of a new threat: the historicity of death. (homelessness, alienation, seduction or troubled faith). For Merleau-Ponty (at least in his late works) a linguistic community presupposes a metamorphosis of our corporeal existence, which we recapture and use to symbolize instead of merely to coexist. The example of “the pointing finger” shows how humans superimpose a virtual space upon the actual. In this sense the living institutions – meaning an active, recreative and renewing way of symbolizing – must be kept alive by the renewal of the poetry of the gestures and history in human relations. Could the responsibility for oneself and the Other be seen as an ability to respond (response-ability) that sustains (cares for, holds sway) this relations. And if so, how is this to be perceived in terms of a humanity based on virtual communication such as “contracts” or “human rights”? 395 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 395–408. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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By pointing out the true place of philosophy as in history, this “problem of survival” becomes the problem of a historical becoming. As Steinbock argues in Home and Beyond, even though Husserl seems preoccupied with the problems of geometry and the foundation of the “one philosophy to which our life seeks to be devoted”, the purpose is not absolute knowledge, but the becoming of an ethical humanity. As already pointed out, this becoming of an ethical community presupposes language, and the written seems to have generated a new level of becoming. How can Human rights – constituting a virtual level of community – generate actual, living and responsible relations among men?

INTRODUCTION

This paper could be read as a provisional introduction to a larger project that investigates ways of applying generative phenomenology on the problems related to a universal ethics of human rights. In this paper I focus on the generative possibility of ideal objectivity in general, and on the important function of writing in particular – using UN’s declarations and conventions of human rights as an example. I intend to show that a critical reflection upon the possibilities and limitations of documentation, understood as the institution of ideal objectivity – will be necessary in order to disclose the ultimate sense of transcendence [Nichturpresäntbarkeit] and that this reflection might shed new light to the sense of responsibility for the Other. In one sense this is not a radically new project. It draws heavily on the works of Jacques Derrida in the sense that the philosophical reflection upon the function of documentation and the concept of necessity concerning the institution of ideal objectivity, leads towards an ethics. (Derrida 1992) On the other hand, the recent publishing of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work (Merleau-Ponty 2002 and 2000), has given new insights in the continuity of the development of generative phenomenology from the late works of Edmund Husserl (Husserl 1970a, b and 1993), through the late works of Merleau-Ponty, the first philosophy of Derrida and to the more recent works of Anthony Steinbock (Steinbock 1995). It has, so to speak opened up fields of the unthought in both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Like the Owl of Minerva they seem to have spread their wings at dusk, casting shadows for us to relive and rethink. In order to recognize the value of these thought and their importance for a universal praxis of humanity, human rights will be treated as an example of the general pragmatic test of phenomenology. According to the idea of transcendental philosophy, the question is not to secure the objectivity or universality of human rights, but to understand these characteristics. The advantage of a phenomenology that takes the generative aspect into consideration is its constant

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reminding [Besinnung] of the historical situatedness of a vocational attitude, such as the transcendental: By the time phenomenology becomes generative, phenomenology does not only describe essences, and in particular social essences, but participates in the ethical becoming of social structures or essences that the phenomenologist describes. In this sense, a generative phenomenology becomes a normative project of contributing to the way in which the a priori structures of society develop historically as they are being described. (Steinbock 1995: 14–15)

The historical responsibility connected to such fundamental, though abstract values as human rights, will be connected to reflections on how we perceive ourselves and others of our semblance as situated in the same world. In order to pinpoint this brief paper on the subject, I will concentrate on the intertwined relation between language and the world. Since this leads us to an argument that claims that the world understood as the horizon of human existence is not an object but a lifeworld, I will end this paper with some thoughts concerning the transcendental concept of the lifeworld and its implications for the possibilities and limitations of a universal ethics. If “I ought” implies an “I can”, much like Husserl’s own formulation of his ethical imperative, the self-critical reflection upon the generation of our possibilities would be decisive for our moral awareness. In Humanism and Terror (1947) Maurice Merleau-Ponty mentions Karl Marx’s critique of the liberal state and the formal humanism of human rights, arguing that: “[. . .] a society is not the temple of value-idols that figure on the front of its monuments, or in its constitutional scrolls; the value of a society is the value it places upon man’s relation to man.” (Merleau-Ponty 2000 [1947]: xiv) Suggesting that the problem of communism does not pose itself on the ground of principles through ethical arguments, but on the ground of human relations, Merleau-Ponty seeks to understand the violence of the revolution before judging it according to liberal principles. At “the end of history” (at least in terms of the cold war), we are situated in a seemingly uncontested, international and multicultural order that could be characterized as a universal community of human rights. But we are still, as John O’Neill’s introduction points out, unable respond to such violence because we have lost faith in the history and politics of collective life, embracing a combination of weak civility and human rights without any overarching faith in humanity. (O’Neill 2000) How can generative phenomenology contribute to the development of such a faith in history and sense of human responsibility? L A N G U A G E A S T H E F U N C T I O N O F H U M A N C I V I L I Z AT I O N

In order to meet this challenge we have to clarify the relationship between the abstract and formal idea of human rights, and the concrete and creative

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relations among human beings. I seek to do this by reflecting upon the way ideal objectivity is given in a concrete, historical situation. According to our example this would imply the linguistic experience of reading and interpreting the declarations and conventions of human rights, talking about them and discussing their content and practical consequences, etc. In this sense we do not start with something abstracted from political life. We start with “the things themselves” as situated in a lifeworld. In Logical Investigations Husserl makes an important distinction between three different intentional modalities. In perception we have direct awareness of the intentional object with its full bodily presence [leibhaftig]. Second, the full intuition of the object can be recalled [Vergegenwärtigung] as a memory or fantasy, without bodily presence. Last, Husserl recognizes the possibility of a kind of “empty intending” [Leermeinen] in language. (Moran 2000: 117) In these early writings Husserl seems to impose a static, constitutional hierarchy in which language and ideal objectivity was founded in the intentional modalities of intuition. At first sight human rights seem to be at the very top of this constitutional complex. Standing within a horizon of human civilization in which everything is historical, we encounter essential structures that can be revealed through methodical enquiry. Because every understanding of “culture” involves the implicit “co-consciousness” that it is something constructed through human activity by someone, the self-evident possibility of “making it explicit” or “poetizing history” could be actualized at any given moment by me. This potentially “I can” is of course conditioned by what can be grasped through subsumption, hence even though tradition is open to inquiry, the ability to go into the depths would acquire a reflective regressive inquiry. (Husserl 1970b) Facing the problem of historicity the constitutional hierarchy gradually turns into a non-hierarchy, and Husserl admits the fundamental problem of language. The question of origin still seems to imply the tendency to go back to the evidence of original living experience. Analogically to the question asked in The Origin of Geometry (Husserl 1970b) we could ask: “Given that human rights have universality and ideal objectivity; is it possible to understand human rights as originated in intentional experience [Erlebnisse]?” How is it possible that an ideal meaning, which is identically the same for “everyone” – or, at least for every actual and possible democratic citizen – can “proceed from its interpersonal origin, where it is a structure within conscious space of the first inventor’s soul, to its ideal objectivity?” (Husserl 1970b: 357–358) Our first inclination might be to think it possible to answer this question by explaining how we, in our intentional experience, always transcend series of profiles [Abschattungen] in our consciousness toward the object. And, even though Husserl in advance announces the significance of language, or the

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linguistic living body of the ideal object [Sprachleib], the actuality of the pre-linguistic always remains pertinent: It is noteworthy that Husserl thinks of the organisation or synthesis of sense in the initial act of interpretation [Auffassung] as a non-conceptual act, distinct from conceiving and from naming an object. There is, for Husserl, pure sensuous perception of physical objects and this is not necessarily mediated by language. In later works, Husserl will spend more time trying to account for the nature of this interpretive experience of objects through his paradoxical concept of ‘passive synthesis.’ (Moran 2000: 117)1

The problem, or even stronger the enigma – which later becomes the guiding idea for Merleau-Ponty’ final philosophy and the first philosophy of Derrida – is to understand how humans, the world and language is inseparably interwoven. It is also expressed by Merleau-Ponty as the chiasm of the flesh and the idea [Verflechtung].2 “Language is borne by our relation to the world and others, and language also bears and makes our relation to the world and to others. It is through language that our horizon is open and endless [endlos]. Because we know that ‘everything has a name,’ each thing exists and has a way of being for us.” (Merleau-Ponty 2002: 7). In The Origin of Geometry Husserl also emphasized this relation between the objective world and the function of language as an inseparably, intertwined unity: “The objective world is from the start the world for all, the world which ‘everyone’ has as world-horizon. Its objective being presupposes men, understood as men with a common language.” (Husserl 1970b [1939], p. 359) Language, as the embodiment of thought, institutes an objective structure that guides experience. The notion of the horizon of humanity is not thought of as an aggregate of things or monads, like a machinery of ontological being, but as the shadow of the typical or the style, as the invisibly normal in every institution. And, following this through we can also understand Merleau-Ponty’s description of the perceived world as “a universal style shared by all perceptual beings” and that it is a world of historical becoming; the world is – so to speak – “an unfinished task” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 6).3 On the other hand, being human, understood as the sedimented lifestyle of a linguistic community, cannot be reduced to some presupposed standard or statistical average. It cannot for instance be conceived as a subject of knowledge or subject of the state – without conceiving it as an abstract and isolated entity, abstracted from the linguistic community that constitutes this historically generated normality. Reminding ourselves that the objective being of a world (both physical and political) presupposes Humanity, we make ourselves aware of our participation and responsibility in the historical movement of transcendental intersubjectivity that we call our Home [Heimat]. Therefore, in order to understand the relation between ideal objectivity and men, we must

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make an account of our Homeworld4 as the geo-historical delimited sphere which is always already pregiven. What is pregiven is not to be perceived as the faculties of a rational individual but as the guiding expectation and confidence constituted by an immediate and mediate linguistic community, and it is exactly within this living community – or more precise: within a mature normal civilization – that Husserl discovers the conditions for ideal objectivity: Now we must note that the objectivity of the ideal structure has not yet been fully constituted through such actual transferring of what has been originally produced in one to others who originally reproduce it. What is lacking is the persisting existence of the “ideal objects” even during periods in which the inventor and his fellows are no longer wakefully so related or even are no longer alive. What is lacking is their continuing-to-be even when no one has [consciously] realized them in self-evidence. The important function of the written, documenting linguistic expression is that it makes communication possible without immediate or mediate personal address; it is, so to speak, communication become virtual. (Husserl 1954 [1939]: 360–361)

This implies that the way human beings communalize is lifted to a new, anonymous level. The linguistic living body – which in its turn transformed the internal subjective iteration of identity into an intersubjective expression – finally becomes sedimented as a universal culture and thus transforms human sociability.5 Human rights obviously presuppose this new, virtual level of communication or “collective memory”. At the same time the sediments of virtual meaning introduce a new problem of original reproduction beyond the immediate linguistic community of the writer. I suggest that it is possible to understand the fundamentally different ways of interpreting and reproducing the actual meaning of human rights in the light of the co-generativity of the Homeworld/ Alienworld. According to this assumption, the presupposed mature normal humanity; the community of those who can reciprocally express themselves, cannot be understood as a culturally homogenous multitude of monads. The problem goes beyond the acceptance and recognition of the interpretative privilege of the Other (Levinas 1963). It also involves a non-violence and tolerance toward those whose alien interpretation oppose the conditions that makes our interpretation of human rights seem objective and true to us.

LIVING INSTITUTIONS AND UNIVERSAL RESPONSIBILITY

The reflection upon the possibilities and limitations of this new level of communication will be brief, having in mind the potential of this theory of linguistic institution for a general theory of social institutions. I will draw the main lines of implications of the writing-down or documentation, suggesting that a critical understanding of virtual communication may open news ways

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of meeting the problems of the historical renewal of institutions and the ways we respond the Alien. To better understand the significance of the new possibilities introduced by documentation we might investigate the way Merleau-Ponty describes the relation between our body and different modes of symbolizing. As is well known, he often expresses the presence of our body in space as a way of “inhabiting” or “haunting” space, obviously unlike the way of things. In The Primacy of Perception (1964) Merleau-Ponty explains this way of haunting space as conditioned by a superimposition of a virtual space upon the actual. “As an active body capable of gestures, of expressions and finally of language, it turns back on the world to signify it.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 7) In this way the field and referential implications of objective knowledge and values, in other words the world-horizon as a referential nexus or the ontological concept of lifeworld, could be seen as part of this virtual space that generates and regenerates itself through different modes of symbolizing. The expressive gestures – like pointing my finger or smiling – directly depends on our concrete corporeal situation and assumes all of its meaning in order to be univocal. With language this changes: Abstract and conceptual thinking becomes possible, cut off from the direct dependency of our corporeal situation, allowing communication at distance, with someone out of sight or with several others at the same time. Further, documentation does not merely allow us to communalize our thoughts without personal address; it ultimately brings all knowing lives together. Writing fulfils the constitution of the ideal object and transforms “the original mode of being of the sense-structure”; it becomes super-temporal or rather omni-temporal. This could be understood as the memorization of an exact sense that gives for instance the documents of human rights a virtual unity. Virtually, human rights speak with one voice. In Husserl’s phenomenology univocity is presented as an imperative of scientific work. But, as both Derrida and Merleau-Ponty acknowledges: A rigorous univocity would sterilize or paralyze history, enclosing it, instead of opening it up. Since univocity is connected to the unique and actual intentions of the writer, the author must die in order to make the communication virtual – i.e., interpretation without interruption and correction. On the other side the death of the author imposes the threat of the pure reactivation of the literal or virtual sense as nothing more than a habitual (or even sterile) repetition, leaving no room for the non-presentability [Nichturpräsentbarkeit] of the Other; it is the very death of the logos. It ceases to be a call which a situated thought addresses to other thoughts. (Lawlor 2002: xxiv) Thus, the virtual communication also relies on the life of actual subjects and their ability to renew and criticize culture and tradition.

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Quite similar to Husserl’s concept of Auffassung, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the importance of the muteness before or as the background of language. In The Prose of the World he formulates this in a poetic metaphor: “We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven. One does not know what one is saying, one knows after one has said it.” (Merleau-Ponty 1974:46) When we listen, this muteness in a sense is not a mere passive attitude, we have the ready-made or spoken speech at our disposal, which makes “language a system capable of its own self-recovery and self-confirmation” (Merleau-Ponty 1974: 36). We know how to animate linguistic events, much in the same way we know how to apperceptually recognize the intentionality of another body [Leib]. This brings us to the limitations of virtual communication which involves the necessity of reactivation of sense. In The Origin of Geometry Husserl distinguishes meaning received through passive ego-participation from the active explication of the elements of meaning. For example “the way in which we understand, when superficially reading the newspaper, and simply receive the ‘news’; [. . .] is a passive taking-over of ontic validity such that what is read straightway becomes our opinion.” (Husserl 1970b: 364) This passive way of reproduction is different from an active explication which constitutes a peculiar sort of self-evidence. Husserl claims that: “The structure arising out of it, is in the mode of having been originally produced.” (Husserl 1970b: 364) This handed down, actually developed capacity becomes essential for the renewal and critique of tradition because, it enables us to “reactive the original activities contained within its fundamental concepts”. (Husserl 1970b: 366) This capacity seemed to Husserl’s general concern, to be lacking in the whole modern age. If the same lack of capacity can be said to be found in the contemporary community of human rights, the critical self-awareness of generative phenomenology involves the motive of seeking to reconstitute this capacity of explication. It is not intended to make the past survive, which Merleau-Ponty expresses as “the hypocritical form of forgetfulness”, but to give it new life, as a “noble form of memory” (Merleau-Ponty 2002): The Museum makes painters as mysterious for us as octapuses or lobsters. It transforms these works, created in the heat of life, into marvels from another world. [. . .] It is the historicity of death. But there is a living historicity of which the Museum offers only a broken image. It is the historicity that dwells in the painter at work when, in a single gesture, he binds the tradition he continues into the tradition he founds. (Merleau-Ponty 1974: 73)

The first essay in The Primacy of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1964), called An Unpublished Text, is very dense and highly interesting, especially considering the way it outlines Merleau-Ponty’s future studies, reading: “The linguistic relations among men should helps us understand the more general order of

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symbolic relations and of institutions, which assure the exchange not only of thoughts but of all types of values, the co-existence of men within culture and, beyond it, within a single history.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 9) Not only does this remind us of the way Husserl treat the problem of language in The Origin of Geometry, it also seems to have a strong affinity to the more recent development of generative phenomenology by Anthony J. Steinbock (1995) and Klaus Held (2002). The phenomenon of expression is given decisive significance for the possibility of humanity, considering its definition as a spontaneity which gathers together the plurality of monads, the past and the present, nature and culture into a single whole. “To establish this wonder would be metaphysics itself and would at the same time give us the principle of an ethics.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 11) History is not apperceived as a physical or spiritual object; rather, it is defined by its horizontal structure: “History is no more external to us than language. There is a history of thought: the succession of the works of the spirit [. . .] in whose development truth capitalizes itself. In an analogous sense we can say that there is a history of humanity or, more simply, a humanity.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 9) There is a unity of human style which transcends spatial and temporal distances in a sort of quasi-eternity that always depend on actual subjects. (Merleau-Ponty 1974: 81) An expression presupposes in this sense tradition (something already established, part of a system and coexistence with other signs; a matter of course, an analogue or uniform pattern), and at the same time something new (not identical, an intention not completely realized). (Merleau-Ponty 1974: 36) Just as the thing perceived or the intention expressed is never absolutely given, the truth is never possessed, but only transparent through a language instituted by us, not by God or by nature. May we find at the core of this institution, the seeds of a genuine humanism?6 To still hold the belief in the development of human rights as the discovery of something pregiven, would certainly not take our provisional findings into considerations. Finally, to understand the concept of responsibility as part of a noble and living memory, we have to reflect not only upon the actually active and positively given. It is rather precisely because Nachverstehen encounters the limit of nonpresentability (of the other) – precisely because it is passive and listening – it must be active (repeating; working with passivity as coincidence; actualizing virtualities). Thus: “To make oneself responsible is to concern oneself with a heard speech; it is to take upon oneself the exchange of sense in order to stand guard over its progression.”7 Responding involves faith in the interrogator and my self (I do not know what the other is asking of me, and not what I am going to say since it lies in silence and muteness). (Toadvine and Embree 2002)

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In this sense the ambiguity and disagreements concerning the way to read the documents of human rights, shouldn’t necessarily be replaced by univocity and harmony. Rather, we should be concerned with the understanding and actualization of human rights as an unfinished, historical task, and as a part of an ethical becoming of humanity. In order to open up these historical depth-problems, history is defined by Husserl as “the vital movement of the coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning.” (Husserl 1970b: 371). According to Husserl, every historical fact has its inner structure of meaning, a general ground of meaning and ultimately a historical a priori. This a priori can superficially be understood, according to Husserl, as the structure of humanity; that is the externally “ready-made” men within the social-historical normality. Deeper it implies the disclosure of the inner historicities of persons taking part, for instance Husserl’s very own exemplary investigation and reconstruction of Galileo’s motives for the modern conception of nature. In our creation and sedimentation of cultural values, like those of human rights, Husserl challenges us to do this reasonably, or as some critics would say; to do it in a European and Cartesian way. But, admitting the relativity of his and ours concrete historical present, Husserl employed the notion of plural cultural lifeworlds in The Crisis8 s as a methodological springboard in order to prepare a non-foundational, regressive transcendental approach by showing that cultural relativism is not overcome by a scientific idealizing or mathematizing of the lifeworld. This should also imply that the relation between the Homeworld and the beyond is not overcome by documenting linguistic expression. Science and human rights are just parts of a subjective-relative lifeworld among other lifeworlds, which of course happens to be very successful and have a sever impact on our lifes. In order to solve this problem Husserl offered the concept of a universal lifeworld a priori as a way of making the progressive disclosure of the universal, historical structure possible. The problem with the concept of the universal lifeworld a priori is that it in some way presupposes an ability to make it an explicit theme of inquiry. But to approach the lifeworld as a horizon, implies taking into considerations that it – as a way of revealing – is never itself a theme. It reveals itself only through referential implications. In the same way as the sensitivity of the body is a mode of pregivenness, the language also has a function as horizon: leading us from one aspect to another in such a way that it is essentially open, leaving room for surprise or the unexpected. The horizon reveals by pointing away from itself. (Steinbock 1995) The horizon is not a field (as background) in relation to subjects for whom it is at all meaningful (and not a referential

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nexus, dependent upon the objective givenness as something which in turn will be thematic): As the pregiven horizon for praxis, the lifeworld transcendentally understood is the mode of meaningful interaction as implied reciprocal revelation for “subject” and “object,” or rather, for “praxis” and “sense” or “meaning.” (Steinbock 1995: 108) These styles of appropriateness are articulated by the peculiar way in which sense-determination is revealed, becoming meaningful for this type of interaction or for that future action. In this respect, the pregiven lifeworld horizon is a mode of delimiting styles of interaction, of life and of sense. [. . .] The world-horizon opens out to new possibilities by limiting off the Spielraum or “leeway” of possibilities. (s. 109, H&B)

In this way it is possible to see the horizon of language as a way of opening up possibilities of expression, revealing dimensions of sense-determinations that would be impossible in the silence of the pure perceptual sensibility of the body. In Home and Beyond Anthony Steinbock argues that we have to conceive this universal lifeworld a priori as the final stage of the development of the provisional concepts of the lifeworld, giving valuable leading clues for the regressive transcendental investigation of the lifeworld in terms of its modes of pregivenness. As much as it is temping to rely on the notion of a universal a priori as the foundation of a universal ethics, we have to be careful not to interpret this eidetic reduction as capable of disclosing a sufficient ground for this purpose. Interpreted in this way, this provisional concept functions rather as a closing principle; as a totality of all things, turning the sense of the lifeworld into a world-sense, based on the ontological model of objective sense. To ask what the lifeworld is, is already to have misconstrued the horizontal character, the response would of necessity be static/eidetic. Mistakenly confusing the directional and constitutional role of objective sense with the function of a horizon, the lifeworld becomes an overarching unity which revolves all conflicts into a higher harmony. (Steinbock 1995) As a strategy of actualizing human rights, the world becomes a future world that guides the development of the unitary sense for all objects, communities and cultures – ultimately there would be no possibility of encountering a radically different world; there would be no “I can” listen to and respond to an Alien. This dream of a intercultural coming to an understanding on the basis of communalities, and ultimately on the universal lifeworld a priori, relies according to Klaus Held upon a natural fallacy. While emphazing that the “generativ perservation of life” enables the intercultural coming to an understanding in the global practice of today’s living-together, Held makes a distinction between a practical dimension and a deeper lying dimension. Underscoring that a practical optimism grounded in the commonalities as living beings, rely

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on a naturalistic fallacy: “Even when we correspond with our behaviour to the necessities that nature dictates – from eating and drinking to reproducing offspring – we do so in the unavoidable form of cultural customs or habits. There is no human behaviour that would be ‘purely natural’ without culture.” (Held 2002)9 The most obvious example of this, is the conflict between cultures who localize the preservation of life in the oikos (in the household or in the family) and cultures who localize it in the individual. Today Husserl’s tendency to expand his ethical reform of philosophy – connected to the rhetoric of cultural “renewal” and “critique” – to an all encompassing world or “one humanity” could be read as a naive narrative expression of European cultural imperialism, regrettably too common among modern philosophers. But, as Steinbock puts it: “[. . .] the effort to create a ‘universal ethical humanity’ would actually be the destruction of generativity, of the becoming of Homeworld/Alienworld.” (Steinbock 1995: 207) We might avoid this unintentional consequence of a philosophical self-responsibility through a regressive transcendental analysis of the lifeworld, approaching our homeworld not as a synthetic totality, but as its transcendental modalities of world-horizon and earth-ground. University of Bergen

NOTES 1

I thank Ronald Bruzina for his generous comment on my paper and for helping me to acknowledge the importance of the aspect of Auffassung in relation to virtual communication and the possibility of generative phenomenology. The parallel to a universal life world a priori seems plausible, given the continual renewal of concepts in Husserls work. It is naturally also associated with Merleau-Ponty’s description of perception as interpretative. On one side this gives us the courage to believe in a universal language, on the other side it is a constant threat of wanting to submit the pregivenness of the “interpretative sense” [Auffassungssinn] to formal and essential actqualities, like the objective a priori. Is it possible to describe this intentional structure in a way that makes the reductive abstraction possible without forgetting the concrete historicity of Auffassung and the co-generativity of the Alien-world? 2 The parallel even seems to go back to Husserl’s distinction between semantic essence and ideal meaning. 3 The siginification of signs derives initially from their configuration in current usage, from the style of human relations that emanate from them, and only the blind and involuntary logic of things perceived, totally suspended in our body’s activity, could lead us to a glimpse of the anonymous spirit which in the heart of language, invents a new mode of expression (s. 37, Prose). 4 Steinbock and Dan Zahavi’s reading of Analysen zur passiven Synthesis (Husserliana XI) suggest that our experience is led by expectations of normality, we perceive, experience and constitute in concordance with the normal and typical structures, models and patterns, which has been layered in our consciousness through past experience.

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5 “Ideal existence is based upon the document. Note, undoubtedly, upon the document as a physical object, or even as the vehicle of one-to-one significations assigned to it by the language it is written in. But ideal existence is based upon the document insofar as (still through an ‘intentional transgression’) the document solicits and brings together all knowing lives – and as such establishes and reestablishes a ‘Logos’ of the cultural world.” (pp. 96–97, Merleau-Ponty, Signs). 6 Style as preconceptual generality – generality of the “axis” which is preobjective and creates the reality of the world; the thing is there where I touch it; it is not a geometric of Abschattungen; it escapes Erlebnisanalyse (its “entrance” in its register is only [noted?] in my history) because there is a transtemporality which is not that of the ideal but that of the deepest wound, incurable (Merleau-Ponty 1974, fotnote s. 44). 7 Humanity as horizon: [paradox of horizon] Merleau-Ponty stresses that, since the horizon is not an aggregate of Einfühlungen, it is humanity, Mitmenscheit, in the double sense of the substantive: “It is humanity as extensional concept and humanity as historic idea” (BN 22). In fact, an this is crucial, Merleau-Ponty says that the horizon is “between the two” senses, in the middle of the doubling, at the limit. (Lawlor 2002: s. XIX) [At both poles of the paradox, at the pole of brute existence (Eros of the eye, blind, lack of ideas) and at the pole of ideas (disinterested spectator, lack of passions), I am no longer human; only in the milieu or at the limit am I human]. 8 As part of a series of provisional concepts of the lifeworld, following each other through a series of motivations and responses leading toward the transcendental concept of the lifeworld. 1. Restoring the epistemiological contribution of simple intuitive experience. 2. Establishing lifeworld as the pre-reflective foundation of sense through a static, non-critical project of phenomenological archaeology. 3. The whole of science is pushed into the merely subjective-relative lifeworld in a non-hierarchical plurality of lifeworlds as cultural worlds. 4. universal lifeworld a priori (Steinbock 1995). 9 “Examining the function of linguistic communication for the constitution of the homeworld, Husserl writes: ‘The homeworld of humans [. . .] is fundamentally and essentially determined by language.’ Only through language, he continues, does there grow not only a sensuous communal world, a co-living present-world with past and future horizons, but a practical human homeworld.” (Steinbock 1995: 209).

REFERENCES Derrida, J. (1992) “Force of Law: ‘The Mystical Foundation of Authority’ ”, in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell and Michael Rosenfeld. Routlegde, New York. Held, K. (2002) The possibilities and Limits of Coming to an Understanding Between Cultures, Prague. Husserl, E. (1970a) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. David Carr. Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Husserl, E. (1970b) “The Origin of Geometry” in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, ed. David Carr. Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Husserl, E. (1988) Cartesian Meditations: an Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Husserl, E. (1993) Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transcendentale Phänomenologie: Ergänzungband. Texte aus dem Nachlaß 1934–1937. Ed. Reinhold N Smith. Husserliana Vol. XXIX. Kluwer, Boston. Husserl, E. (2001) Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay, ed. Dermot Moran. Routledge, London.

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Lawlor, L. (2002) “Introduction” in Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology: including texts by Edmund Husserl/Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo. Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Levinas, E. (1963) Totality and Infinity: an essay on exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964) The primacy of perception and other essays on phenomenological psychology, the philosophy of art, history and politics, ed. James M. Edie. Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1974) The Prose of the World, ed. Claude Lefort, trans John O’Neill. Heinemann, London. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2000[1947]) Humanism and Terror: the Communist Problem, trans. John O’Neill. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002) Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology: including texts by Edmund Husserl/Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ed. Leonard Lawlor with Bettina Bergo. Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Moran, D. (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology. Routlegde, London. O’Neill, J. (2000) “Introduction” in Humanism and Terror: the Communist Problem, trans. John O’Neill. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick. Steinbock, A. J. (1995) Home and Beyond. Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. Northwestern University Press, Evanston. Toadvine, T. and Embree, L. (2002) Merleau-Ponty’s reading of Husserl. Kluwer, Dordrecht.

S T E FA N O Z E C C H I

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The more science tends to make its own knowledge objective, that is, to formulate objectively valid paradigms and laws, the more the other branches of learning dealing with worldly matters (aesthetics, ethics, jurisprudence, sociology, political science) tend to make theirs subjective. Art has always been a great symbolic communicator of the values and meanings that identify a community. Nowadays the artist is closed inside his own subjective world, an experimentation in forms that do not open to any sort of communication. The very idea of a work of art’s universality can now be thought of as having been substituted by the technological globalisation of communication. The crisis in artistic communication has brought about a crisis in dialogue, in language which establishes differences and identities, which is responsible for describing and interpreting, which possesses an ethical character. Through genetic engineering we lose the old distinction between what comes about spontaneously and what is “technically” produced, between what is subjective and what is objective, and thus the traditional “ethics of kind” ceases to exist. While we need to establish a precise boundary that enables us to exploit the curative advantages of genetic engineering in such a way as to avoid trespassing into the field of eugenics, scientifically speaking this appears to be a very difficult thing to do. The notion of art for art’s sake, where the artist’s subjectivity dominates objective, existing reality, can be found structurally reproduced in the freedom that science invokes for genetic engineering research. Contemporary ethics maintains that what we understand as the doctrine of a morally just life cannot be formulated. In other words, we cannot create binding maxims and use them as a basis to justify the principles of the education and upbringing of an individual or society. The superseding/cancellation of the morally just life as a doctrine accords well, in political terms, with contemporary democracy. And so we have two rules: it’s clear that the democratic claim to scientific freedom is in conflict with the respect for the traditional ethics of kind, where human organic nature is recognised as an objective fact and not subject to 409 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 409–419. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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manipulation. But scientific knowledge is assuming the role of metaphysics by presuming to decree what is morally just or unjust, even though its knowledge is by no means all-encompassing, as in a traditional metaphysical system: it is incomplete, as befits the laws of science. Just as we need to recognise the objectivity of beauty in aesthetics, so in ethics it is necessary to recognise the objectivity of a boundary, one that guarantees the ethics of kind on the basis of man’s objective organic/natural reality. When Edmund Husserl was working on The Crisis in European Sciences, the focus of his philosophical concern was the elaboration of a new humanism. At the time such a project might have seemed anachronistic, ignoring the historical reality that showed a major growth in humanity’s advancement owing to the ever new and extraordinary discoveries of science. Husserl, however, was actually interested in how science had become central to social development, and the underlying cause of the crisis. A crucial theme of this philosophy is the division of the fields of knowledge into sectors, an essential characteristic of scientific research: if science is unable to proceed by dividing knowledge, by breaking apart its cohesiveness, mathematics and the physical sciences just cannot be understood. But breaking down the cohesiveness and unity of humanity in the same way ends up reducing man to a product of his own science. A subject Martin Heidegger later took up, when examining the question of technology. Modern technology, Heidegger declared, is not a tool that mankind controls; it is mankind, on the contrary, that is being controlled by technology. For the most part, these analyses are based on Husserl’s reflections in the Crisis, even though the two perspectives arrive at radically different conclusions: whereas Husserl maintains that philosophy, aware of the crisis provoked by scientific categorisation, can and must rediscover the sense of a new humanism, Heidegger believes that the very awareness of the crisis caused by science locks philosophy into traditional metaphysics, without allowing it a new humanistic horizon. I believe it is important to point out that Husserl and Heidegger both assert that scientific knowledge modifies in an essential way the subject-object relationship. The more science tends to make its own knowledge objective, that is, to formulate objectively valid paradigms and laws, the more the other branches of learning dealing with worldly matters (aesthetics, ethics, jurisprudence, sociology, political science) tend to make theirs subjective. In other words, the objectivism of science on the one hand, and the relativism of the other forms of human knowledge on the other.

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This increasing relativism in the fields of learning not having to do with mathematics and the physical sciences can be observed very clearly in the aesthetics of contemporary art and in a number of ethical problems relating to genetic engineering. In every time and place, art has borne witness to man’s sensibility, it has recounted his beliefs, his hopes, his fears. Art has always been a great symbolic communicator of the values and meanings that identify a community: its artistic creativity allows it to transmit to future generations an idea of world, of truth, of beauty. At the beginning of the twentieth century a radical break with this millenary aesthetic principle took place. As the great avant-gardes developed, the artists belonging to them revealed that they were fully aware that their work no longer bore witness to some truth, as had been the case for thousands of years of civilisation. Modern knowledge was basically scientific, not aesthetic, education was scientific, not aesthetic, and this shift brought with it a decisive change in human culture. It meant a rigid closing of the artist inside his own subjective world, an experimentation in forms that did not open to any sort of communication. Artists (writers, musicians) in the early twentieth century gradually began to adopt the languages of science and technology as their own communicative models, hoping in this way to avoid succumbing to their power. They abandoned symbolism and expressive myth-making to become “experimental” themselves. By withdrawing into the subjective, artists abandoned the communication of meaning, gave up representation (deeming it a worthless challenge), stopped bearing witness to transcendence. I should like to explain what I mean by discussing first of all a story that was in the news. It seems one of those controversies destined to be of little consequence, and yet it throws a good deal of light on our problem, that is to say, on contemporary art’s ever increasing subjectivism. The controversy is between Gerhard Richter, 75 years old, one of the world’s greatest artists, originally from Dresden, and the cardinal of Cologne (Germany) Joachim Meisner, another 75-year-old, originally from Breslau (today the Polish city of Wroclaw). Setting them at odds is a glass window, a work by Richter, installed in a nave of Cologne’s Gothic cathedral, partially destroyed during the Second World War. At the unveiling ceremony, Cardinal Meisner was conspicuous by his absence. To express his disapproval of Richter’s work, he declared to a newspaper (Express): “I can imagine that window as part of a mosque!” The window is made up of 11,000 fragments of coloured crystal, arranged by chance. The artist made adjustments only when the union of crystals might have suggested a real image to the eyes. In other words, it is a thoroughly

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abstract work of art. And this is what the cardinal is objecting to: a church as famous as the Cathedral of Cologne, in his opinion, ought not to have a stained-glass window that lacks any sort of religious imagery, any sort of divine representation, as if the artist had been following the dictates of the Islamic religion, where image-making, as everyone knows, is forbidden. Cardinal Meisner would have liked to see a representation of the Martyr of Cologne, Edith Stein, a Jewish woman who converted to Catholicism and was ordained a nun in Cologne. She was later deported to Auschwitz, where she died. The issue is that Gerhard Richter had no intention of making a work of art pleasing to Islamic taste. On the contrary, it was the figurative representation of the Sacred which he, himself a figurative artist since the 60s, was unable to work out artistically. The dispute with the cardinal bears witness to how difficult it is today to do artistic work for the Christian religious community, when churches go up or when sacred ornaments have to be made. Even a renowned artist like Richter can’t find the inspiration to bring contemporary art and Christianity together in a figurative way, preferring a “neutral” solution, like an abstract image. At this point, however, it’s clear that Cardinal Meisner has plenty of good reasons to criticise Richter for the absence in his window of sacred symbols or of any aesthetic allusion to the Christian tradition. In this regard I should like to mention a text from the Second Vatican Council, which I quote briefly (Sanctorum Concilium, VII, pp. 123–125): “The Church has never had a particular artistic style of its own, but, according to the characters and circumstances of different peoples and the requirements of its various rites, has welcomed the artistic forms of every age, thus creating over the centuries an artistic treasure to safeguard with great care. Even the art of our own times, belonging to all the peoples and countries of the world, is free to express itself in the Church, provided it serves the needs of the sacred buildings and sacred rites with all due reverence and honour. [. . .] In the promotion and encouragement of an authentic sacred art, prelates are to seek out noble beauty rather than mere sumptuousness. And this is the case too for vestments and sacred accoutrements. Bishops are to be careful to keep from the house of God or other sacred places works which are contrary to the faith, to decorum and to Christian piety, which offend genuine religious sentiment either because they are depraved in form or are mediocre or false or lacking in artistic expression.” As we can see, the text provides the artist with a great deal of freedom, albeit within strict guidelines meant to safeguard the idea of beauty and the truth of faith: a very difficult artistic task, but one which represents an authentic challenge to a secular, desecrating modernity. And so the artist who wishes to dedicate himself to depicting the forms of the sacred has before him a vast expressive space, though certainly a difficult one, and full of pitfalls.

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So then, in the art of the early twentieth century, we already begin to see the first, unmistakable signs of the anti-humanistic shift of our own modern culture. Its formal languages have given up the search for beauty, evocation has been replaced by the fragmentation of sense, projectual tension has vanished in the face of deconstructive procedures. A reactive nihilism now pervades all the forms of art, promoting a systematic renunciation of mythopoeia, which is the essential characteristic of every creative energy. But, at the same time, we have witnessed an extraordinary innovative development of computer technology. The very idea of a work of art’s universality can now be thought of as having been substituted by the technological globalisation of communication. But the universality of art used to mean continuity, through time, of its values and of its various interpretative possibilities, because the work of art took shape on the basis of expressive excellence and mythopoetic elaboration. Technological globalisation aspires to the same universality, without, however, being able to elaborate works of art that will last through time: instead, we find ourselves facing ordinary communication, without anything exceptional or mythopoetic about it, capable of transmitting itself without distinction but in a pervasive way, capable of putting all the forms through which humanistic culture has traditionally expressed itself – art, writing, élites – in a state of crisis. History has always shown that in every fundamental transformation of western civilisation there have been stages that have allowed the old to carry over into the new: our culture has depth, made up of gradual developments, but no abysmal ruptures. The radical nature of the anti-humanism of our times, having to do with art as well as school education, with the written word as well as the stage, is evidence of a profound crisis – without, in all likelihood, the possibility of a mediation with past history – in the culture of modern-day man. It is the sign of a radical change in role-models and of the dislocation of old power structures and the construction of new ones in society. Anti-humanism is destroying what remains of the old cultural élites, who are more and more ignored because their power to communicate is weak. It was once possible and easy to make a distinction between communication and information, between the high, expressive languages of art and the ordinary ones used to transmit mere news. Today computer technology has blurred the differences in this relationship and provoked a radical breakdown in our customary communications system, where the configurations of imagination have become passive reproductions of the patterns of perception. Modern nihilism is not a consequence of technology and its languages, but their cause. In the last hundred years art has abandoned expression, has forsaken an expressivity made up of symbols and living beauty. The great avant-gardes theorised the end of all refined communication, they adapted their

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own languages to those of technology and science. It was inevitable that by severely weakening art’s expressive language – a language based on the principles of aesthetic education, which in their turn were the basis of the ethics of social life – the whole system of communication should end up progressively losing its ancient function as the humanistic shaper of mankind. Mankind used to define itself much more profoundly through its own imagery than through the material conditions of life. The expressive image is something other than the thing it refers to. This difference is what is essential – the distinction between what is explicit and implicitly indicated. The symbolising role of imagery is basic to this. This has been substituted by a de-symbolising, reactive imagery, which has as much expressive power as a fetish: “false” images, which have nevertheless become the basis of our communication. We are surrounded by them. The crisis in artistic communication has brought about a crisis in dialogue, in language which establishes differences and identities, which is responsible for describing and interpreting, which possesses an ethical character. Computer technology and the new communication systems can no longer find a point of resistance (or of comparison) in the humanistic tradition: they are the inheritors and standard bearers of the disintegration of culture begun at the beginning of the twentieth century, arising from the artistic, literary and musical experimentation of the avant-gardes. And the increasingly dogmatic theorisation of anti-humanism has in the end transformed itself into a happygo-lucky nihilism – which spectacularises and homogenises everything – capable of absorbing every attempted opposition and of appropriating it as its own. In this state of decadence, great is the responsibility of those philosophers and artists who have given up thinking about and attempting to project an idea of beauty. The squalor of metropolitan slums – urban disaster areas where the poor, the outcast, the rejects of consumer society have been relegated – represents life reduced to ugliness, manifesting itself in baseness and violence. Ugliness isn’t something people desire, it’s something they wish to distance themselves from: we can understand the aggressiveness of those who seek to destroy it and the frustration of those subject to its violence. The banishment of beauty is the order of the day. No one feels responsible any longer for the beauty of the world – responsible socially and politically, I mean. It almost sounds insulting to say nowadays: “This is beautiful.” Or perhaps presumptuous, for failing to respect the autonomy and independence of those listening in: such a peremptory statement seems almost to deprive a person of his freedom of speech. In other words, everyone has the personal and inviolable right to say: “This painting is beautiful, that poem is beautiful,” simply

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because they are pleasant, without having to defer to a higher authority establishing the principles of beauty which ought to be referred to. Art has become subjective and the category of beauty is apparently irrelevant to making an aesthetic judgement. Nevertheless, it’s a good thing not to confuse the beautiful with the pleasant. Immanuel Kant showed that “the pleasant” is something belonging to purely subjective taste. The question of beauty poses itself in a different way from that of taste. When we say: “This is beautiful,” we are making a judgement that goes beyond a simple sensation (the pleasant, the agreeable, etc.) to formulate a thought. The pleasant concerns feeling, sensation; beauty has to do with the mind. When we are in the presence of an affirmation about what is beautiful, we are dealing with a meaning expressed by way of reflection, not sensation. Human life is not merely matter that develops and decays, it is also creativity, design, utopia. Beauty belongs to the non-material dimension of life, which has an idealness of its own not restricted or limited to the subjective world. We can all recognise that a thing is beautiful and demonstrate why in such a way as to elicit agreement. We should never say that beauty is a personal illusion: on the contrary, the illusion consists in reducing beauty to an illusion. Beauty is a sign, the sign of a real world and of a real life, understood as creation and rebirth. And yet in the present day the word “beauty” has no philosophical importance, it possesses no connotation of truth or ethics. Other values are the ones upon which we set our social structure and construct it. “Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, Beauty?” From a poem by Charles Baudelaire, these words were written at a time when our world was becoming more and more hostile to beauty. But the poet was aware of the need not to lose that precious boon, which had accompanied mankind along the road of civilisation – knowing too, however, that from here on beauty had to be sought everywhere, in the refuse of the city as well as in princely palaces, among the abject poor as well as the extravagantly rich. The slow abandonment of beauty has brought with it the loss of a fundamental part of our culture. In antiquity, beauty was an attribute of ideas: truth was considered beautiful; an act of justice or a kind of gesture each possessed the sign of beauty. The concept of what is beautiful had a rigorous and formal coherence, and every variation in the concept over time was evidence of a radical change in our way of thinking, in the way we determine true and false, right and wrong, something clearly beyond a change, however slow or quick, in social customs or behaviour. Nowadays we confuse beauty with taste, without reflecting for a moment on what it means to liken these two concepts to each other, as if they were interchangeable. Doing this not only causes us to forget the original meaning

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of beauty, but also leaves us bewildered when we find ourselves making a simple judgement about quite ordinary things, by saying they are beautiful or ugly. In the present day we are witnessing the twilight of beauty, in the sense that beauty is not being accorded a conceptual character, a value of truth. Of course, beauty continues to be a word that everyone uses a great deal; indeed, it’s on everyone’s lips as never before, but it’s the ghost of an image lacking truth, tucked away in an agreeable, non-committal corner, among the ephemeral and feckless things of life. Beauty will save the world, said Dostoyevsky in The Idiot. Today we are called upon to save beauty from the world. Beauty has been mortified and deformed, it has been reduced to something paltry, overshadowed by the economic and scientific issues stirring society. Even a great theologian like Hans Urs von Balthasar maintained in his monumental work, The Glory of the Lord, that modern theology has entered a state of crisis because it has neglected to deal with a fundamental transcendental principle: beauty, of course. Catholic theology, in going about its analyses, has conducted a thorough research into two other transcendentals, the verum and the bonum, but not the pulcrum, because of the implication that beauty is an ephemeral and ethically frivolous vision of social behaviour. As a consequence, Balthasar maintains, the whole apologetic dimension needful to the witnessing of the word of Christ has been put into a state of crisis. Our world will always be the result of an interpretation and of a representation that we ourselves make of it: for this reason, though its function may not be recognised, beauty will continue to have a propositional, projectual, nonnihilistic and non-regressive meaning and will always preserve a subterranean link with truth, even though today it may seem debased and degraded, reduced to the task of indicating the ephemeral pleasantness of things. I stated above that some questions of ethics connected to biotechnology find specific analogies in the transformation of the subject-object relationship observable today in the field of aesthetics. Through genetic engineering we lose the old distinction between what comes about spontaneously and what is “technically” produced, between what is subjective and what is objective, and thus the traditional “ethics of kind” ceases to exist. This loss is offset by an advantage, an immediately discernible one: biotechnology is allowing us, for the first time in the history of humanity, to cure some very serious maladies. While this is quite true, it is also necessary to establish a clear boundary between cures and the intentional programming of individuals (including all potential and practicable eugenic projects).

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So then, if the use of genetic engineering is acceptable for the cure of illnesses, I believe that such is not the case when it comes to eugenics. But let us ask ourselves: Are we able to make a clear distinction between the two? The way things stand today, no. And so, while we need to establish a precise boundary that enables us to exploit the curative advantages of genetic engineering in such a way as to avoid trespassing into the field of eugenics, scientifically speaking this appears to be a very difficult thing to do. In the Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky wrote: “If God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted.” We have to recognise this sentence for what it is, a denunciation of nihilism, the true spiritual malady of modern-day society: we have to oppose the nihilism of a world without God with a vision of the world that is not simply fideistic but capable of giving man his freedom, without basing it on scientific authority. The secular and the religious outlooks of the past both shared the view that man ought not to be subject to any sort of programming, that his education and upbringing should take place gradually over time in the family, in the schools, in his work. Such a thing as prenatal programming was inconceivable. The thinking of science was: genetic engineering infringes upon a human being’s native inviolability and uniqueness. With the state of scientific research as it is today, every educational process aiming to mould an individual clashes with the advance of biotechnology, which inevitably conditions what we commonly mean by education and by an individual’s cultural upbringing. The transformation of the subject-object relationship can be observed in the transformation of organic nature objectively given (as a human being’s very essence at birth) into an organic nature constructed in a subjective way (before birth by our parents, or later by our own desire to be modified) through genetic engineering. What we are talking about is a huge and terrible ability to transform an object into a subjective uncontrolled personal reality. In aesthetics, an artist transforms and portrays an object as he pleases: Picasso said that the “distortions” of his images depend on the fact that he is painting not what he sees but what he thinks. Kandinsky claimed that abstraction is the absolute freedom to portray following the law of “interior necessity”: I paint a landscape, he stated, not as I see it but as I feel it. This notion of art for art’s sake, where the artist’s subjectivity dominates objective, existing reality, can be found structurally reproduced in the freedom that science invokes for genetic engineering research. Not only. In addition there’s our conception of democracy: it too guarantees freedom of scientific research and considers any limit placed upon it an abuse.

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And once again, in this idea of scientific freedom (or, to put it another way, in this vision of democratic ethics), we find another analogy with modern-day aesthetic subjectivism. Contemporary ethics maintains that what we understand as the doctrine of a morally just life cannot be formulated. In other words, we cannot create binding maxims and use them as a basis to justify the principles of the education and upbringing of an individual or society. That was possible when philosophy was capable of elaborating a metaphysical system in which the totality of knowledge was represented and also, consequently, a model of life which could be considered morally just. For example, from the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle we can see that the principles of paideia, of the education of the young, are based on the concept of the polis. Reflecting upon the metaphysics of St. Thomas or upon the Hegelian system, we discover something analogous: both philosophies spell out an ethical doctrine of the morally just life. With the end of metaphysics as the elaboration of an all-inclusive form of knowledge in which we can discover the truth of the various cognitive points of view, comes the end too of the doctrine of the morally just life: it is left to the individual, with his subjective freedom of choice, to orient his own life strategies. The superseding/cancellation of the morally just life as a doctrine accords well, in political terms, with contemporary democracy. We know that the rules of democracy have given man a breadth of freedom unparalleled in the history of humanity. But, democratic though they may be, they are still rules. One of these rules is freedom of scientific research; and another is respect for the ethics of “kind,” that is to say, the recognition of man’s organic nature as an objective fact, not subject to the individual, subjective modifications of genetic engineering. And so we have two rules: it’s clear that the democratic claim to scientific freedom is in conflict with the respect for the traditional ethics of kind, where human organic nature is recognised as an objective fact and not subject to manipulation. The alleged freedom of the scientist also underscores how scientific knowledge is assuming the role of metaphysics by presuming to decree what is morally just or unjust, even though its knowledge is by no means allencompassing, as in a traditional metaphysical system: it is incomplete, as befits the laws of science. And so, if we do not possess a doctrine of the morally just life, nevertheless we are still faced with the question of what is right and wrong. One development of contemporary philosophy has, in Kierkegaard and, later, in Sartre and the existential school in general, supporters of a principle of responsibility based on the freedom of becoming oneself, the ability to be. Whereas in Kierkegaard man’s freedom is based on God, who legitimises his ability to be, in Sartre man is the absolute basis of his own ability to be.

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Man is “being” that exists before being defined by any concept. It follows, therefore, that he cannot be defined before his birth by some form of genetic manipulation because that would change the very essence of his being human. Man defines himself in terms of tradition and history through an educational process, aware that this process teaches him to be conscious of his own projection into the future. Above all a man will be his own life’s project and his own volition is responsibility for what he is: this is one of Sartre’s fundamental observations, from which it follows that a man “makes himself,” he isn’t “ready-made” from the beginning, and we define ourselves according to a commitment. As we can see, this path belongs to a secular existentialism and is fundamentally individualistic, subjectivistic. It belongs to the point of view in which personal choices, from the simplest to the most difficult, always involve humanity, inasmuch as personal choices in the end also and inevitably determine an idea of man. By choosing for oneself, one chooses for all of humanity. Even the freedom to become oneself – an idea that could in the hands of existentialists be used to try and preserve the objective ethicity of kind from the manipulations of genetic engineering – withdraws into a subjectivism that reopens the doors to the freedom of the scientist, who is thus authorised to proceed without fetters and without guiding principles, for the simple reason that such fetters and principles contradict the individual freedom guaranteed by democracy. Just as we have emphasised the need to recognise the objectivity of beauty in aesthetics, so in ethics it is necessary to recognise the objectivity of a boundary, one that guarantees the ethics of kind on the basis of man’s objective organic/natural reality. This is a phenomenological investigation, not an ontological one. We must keep in mind that by abandoning the phenomenological path – abandoning it based on the idea that such a path is by no means necessary because it opposes the principles of individual freedom (including the freedom of scientific research) – we cast man into a nihilistic subjectivism that abolishes the very notion of human beauty and ethics. University of Milan

translated by John Satriano

S E C T I O N VII

M A R A S TA F E C K A

U N D E R S TA N D I N G A S B E I N G : H E I D E G G E R A N D M A M A R DA S H V I L I

ABSTRACT

The paper deals with the concept of thinking that Heidegger and Mamardashvili promoted to encourage and sustain questioning of being by abstaining to use language forms that did not contain the voice of being. Heidegger and Mamardashvili lived in the 20th century separated by cultural, social and political divides of their time, entangled into ideological struggles in their countries, keeping loyalty and allegiance to their principles of authenticity in the turbid world of mass obsessions and rampage of totalitarian ideologies. They both were very sensitive to calcified forms of rationality that functioned in the modern society contributing to build-up of inauthenticity that both men diagnosed and tried to remedy. In spite of Mamardashvili’s uncompromisingly straightforward statement that he wanted to distance himself from Heidegger and his philosophical groundwork, and that he was not interested in reading Heidegger’s texts because even in times of ancient Greek philosophy existentialism was an unavoidable part of true philosophy, I will argue that the inner meaning of the philosophical thought of Heidegger and Mamardashvili is much closer than it manifests itself in the linguistically and culturally different textures of their work. It is crucial to see that Mamardashvili’s philosophy, like that of Heidegger, concerns the existence of a human being whose true being is possible as understanding, as willingness to open itself and throw itself into future possibilities. It is possible that Mamardashvili, the son of a World War II veteran, could not forget and forgive Heidegger’s flirtation with Fascist authorities in the 1930’s. Mamardashvili himself labored through hardened ideological platitudes of Soviet reality and dogmatic notions without constantly wandering into superficiality and submissively surrendering under the opinion of the authorities. As a consequence, he gave the highest marks to his fellow philosophers who demonstrated the ability to detect inauthenticity in human existence and the social surroundings. In the eyes of Mamardashvili, Heidegger failed the test of being. 423 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 423–432. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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According to Mamardashvili, Heidegger was not able to reach the threshold of authenticity and did not free himself from the superficiality of worldliness, thus, falling in the same trap of the “they-ness” he critiqued in his work. At the same time, remarkably Mamardashvili admitted noticing strange similarities between himself and Heidegger. He mentioned that Heidegger sensed something very important for the very existence of philosophy. In other words, Heidegger realized that philosophical thinking and its categorical apparatus were becoming abstract and too far removed from the primordial meaning of life. Philosophical thinking was strapped into conceptual scaffolding, calcified and desperately needed freedom of being. Heidegger called for the destruction of ontological concepts. “When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it ‘transmits’ is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial ‘sources’ from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn. Indeed it makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is something which we need not even understand.” (Heidegger, 2, p. 43). Mamardashvili called for restoring the primordial source of thinking. Consciousness and thinking were his primary focuses. He did not belong to any established lines or traditions of philosophy (Kruglikov, pp. 198–199). He was an outsider who wanted to be in a place where a thought is born. He was a wanderer freely visiting any place in the history of thought to take what he needed to feed the flame of thinking. The history of philosophy existed for him in the sense that he could have a dialogue about anything that matters for everyone then and now, in the past and today. According to Mamardashvili, thinking constitutes the human being not as much by making it more knowledgeable but by providing elaborate sensibility and restoring the feeling of what being is. Philosophy begins as a very simple urge of disagreement that smolders in our mental self-awareness. In a situation where everyone understands and accepts some common knowledge, our inner self disagrees and stubbornly repeats: I do not understand. Similarly, many researchers acknowledge that “one of the major problems we face when approaching Heidegger’s thought is that we are forced to dwell in uncertainty. When Heidegger speaks, he does not give any assurance regarding his saying. He willingly puzzles us; he always tries to undermine and rouse us from our comfortable thinking zone. And in so doing, Heidegger wants his reader to be open to something unusual that could occur.” (Pezze, p. 94). In this sense, it is appropriate to insist that Mamardashvili was following in the footsteps of Heidegger. It does not matter here that, as we mentioned

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before, subjectively Mamardashvili made critical statements about Heidegger and considered his influence questionable. Nevertheless, he walked on the same thinking path as did Heidegger. Mamardashvili tried to recover the lost sense of thinking as being, braving not only the usual obstacles of philosophical thinking, such as everyday knowing, empirical experience and historically developed clichés of thought, but also direct simplification and dogmatization of conscious efforts to understand life and human existence. We know that Heidegger freely used everyday language to escape using categories and cognitive terms and to guide thinking into a yet unexplored path. He was well aware that preconceptions could trap thinking and destroy its groundedness in being. Correspondingly, Mamardashvili argued that thinking exists in a mental space that is created by being. Therefore, acquiring knowledge from texts and the experiences of other human beings has to be filtered through everyone’s existential self. Thought has to be lived to become understood. Only from that lived-through state can thinking deliver a message, which truly means something. Mamardashvili was very fond of using examples from literature, film, and theater to demonstrate how thinking works and what influences we can observe. Remarkably and persistently, Heidegger began the destruction of Western intellectual tradition with its calcified cognitive apparatus. In the 1920’s, “Heidegger’s critical appraisal of traditional, culturally oriented contemporary philosophy was warmly received among students and younger professors who, following the devastation wrought by World War I, questioned the soundness of the Western cultural heritage.” (Barash, p. 54). Derrida not only borrowed Heidegger’s idea about deconstruction but also built upon it a concept that became central for a generation of post-modern philosophers. A recent article of Steven Helmling touches the point of authenticity of thought: “It was Hegel who first put on philosophy’s agenda the question of the meaning of philosophy’s written-ness, and the consequent imperative that philosophers must write self-consciously, to unfold, indeed, to perform the process of their thinking, rather than merely to constate, after the fact, thought’s (supposedly) finished results.” (Hemling, p. 160). I would paraphrase his “perform the process of their thinking” as a request of necessity to ignite the state of consciousness in which thoughts can be perceived as mentally evident. In our times, when thinking has proved itself as the mighty and unmatched faculty of rational strength and technological innovations, it is not an obvious requirement to acknowledge that beyond the countless gadgetry entering our world every day and the processes that follow it, there is something that gives thinking a perspective of meaning and sense or senselessness. We recognize the reality of technological improvements and the existence of complicated social institutions. We recognize the amount of information that the human mind has

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to process on a daily basis and the depth and broadness of scientific accomplishments that our society has already accumulated and keeps accumulating at an increasing speed. Can this progress substitute for a different awakening of our conscious self and for sensing the inner trembling and tremor when a never-before-felt depth with clarity and evidence opens? Heidegger, Gadamer and Mamardashvili were among those thinkers who pointed out the frightening implications of a blinding passion for technology. Gadamer elaborates the aforementioned: “When science expands into a total technocracy and thus brings on the ‘cosmic night’ of the ‘forgetfulness of being’, the nihilism that Nietzsche prophesied, then may one look at the last fading light of the sun that is set in the evening sky, instead of turning around to look for the first shimmer of its return?” (Gadamer, 3, p. XXV). Technological reasoning cannot appreciate the mystery of human existence, and that becomes a great concern for the philosophers who see the flame of thinking flickering and diminishing. We can have all the experience and power of logic, admits Mamardashvili, but it will not be enough to spark a question about meaning. Mamardashvili sees the task of philosophy not as dealing with solvable problems but instead dealing with a mystery of thought and human existence, which cannot be simply deducted and understood from our worldly experience. In the times when in the Soviet Union reigned the only politically correct philosophical doctrine, Marxism, Mamardashvili began his lonely quest – first, to rescue thinking from its ideological imprisonment, and then, to unravel its dependency from the empirical and rationalistic naiveté that confuses thinking and puts it on a blind path. Thinking is a state of thought that is ontologically woven into human existence. Thinking is a primordial human experience. When thinking happens, we know it; we sense it, even when we are unable to define it. Mamardashvili uses a metaphor to create a visual scaffold for understanding. He describes thinking as light shining on itself. (Mamardashvili, p. 70) Man needs sensory scaffolds to reestablish his identity, which has been scattered during the 20th century. Mamardashvili names Nietzsche and Arto, two personalities who tried to expose and make sense of “nonsense” as they perceived the crisis of identity to be. This enormous struggle with sensory and emotional discoveries that reasoning was pitilessly defining as “nonsense”, sent Nietzsche and many others into insanity. Instead of recognizing the cause of their struggle and insanity, some critics blamed Nietzsche for undermining the strength of Western culture and the Western tradition of rationality. When an idea retains its own sensory evidence, it is not functioning according to the relational patterns of our discursive reasoning (comparisons and conclusions) but according to a different force, which Mamardashvili calls gravity (Mamardashvili, p. 76). This thinking represents a different universe of mental identification that is built around a

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thought-action and not the psychological actuality of our perceptions. Our natural naiveté of reasoning leads us to the grounds of psychological actuality. It is the natural way how our reasoning works. “When we say ‘thinking’, we mean our ability to operate with ideas and images independently from our sensations, to use them in judgments, conclusions, etc. In doing this we make ourselves believe that thinking also is a psychological faculty, like sensuality, imagination and emotions” (Mamardashvili, p. 83). In this case, the verbal description of an actuality where something happens is identified with the happening itself. When we perceive “thinking” as a psychological ability that can be observed objectively as it functions, something important is left out. Mamardashvili uses an example from astronomy. When we stand on the Earth and observe the Sun, we see it moving, and, at the same time, the real movement of the Earth is not part of our actual perception. In the same way, when we think, we have sensations of our actual psychological reality, which does not exhaust “thinking” as a mental capability to generate meaning. Thinking, according Heidegger and Mamardashvili, is something we experience. It is a rare occurrence. It is a gift that has to be cherished and treasured. Most of the time when we think that we think, we are not thinking. Usually, reasoning, the presence of cognitive indicators or the use of logic would let us identify a mental activity as thinking. Traditionally, as a consequence, philosophy or metaphysics have been looked upon as historically prestigious, elaborate, and complex examples of thinking. But for Heidegger, metaphysics leads thinking into negativity and nihilism (Heidegger, 1, p. 249). In “Letter on Humanism”, Heidegger retells the story about Heraclitus that Aristotle reported in his book. Visitors come to see the famous thinker in his dwelling. They are expecting to find an impressive and inspiring place. They are expecting to see something extraordinary. It could be a meditating thinker or a very engaging and entertaining conversation. But “instead of this the sightseers find Heraclitus by a stove. That is surely a common and insignificant place. True enough, bread is baked here. But Heraclitus is not even busy baking at the stove. He stands there merely to warm himself. In this altogether everyday place he betrays the whole poverty of his life” (Heidegger, 1, p. 257). Of course, the visitors are disappointed and frustrated. They are ready to leave this unexciting place. Heraclitus sees this and understands that the visitors need encouragement and guidance. He invites them to come in with words: “Here too the gods come to presence”. It puts Heraclitus’ dwelling into a different perspective for the visitors. Now it is a place where seeing sees itself. Heidegger uses different metaphors to grasp the nature of thinking, which is not controlled by the act of will but comes to life spontaneously, on impulse when something happens in us that makes us transcend or go beyond ourselves.

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Thinking is a state of mind; an emotionally spiritual component is very important to invoke it, to light it up, to inflame it. A thought can be born only in the act of a deep, existentional disparity accompanied by sharply, piercingly penetrating light that brings the feeling of dynamic eternity. Mamardashvili needs to talk off the common language associations that philosophy and humans living in the world have accumulated to reveal the focal point – how to detect authenticity of thinking and keep it alive. Thinking lets the human being step into history, become a “vertical being” and attach itself to eternity. Our existence can be a connecting point between the past and the future, if being is able to become a birthplace for meaning. This could be called the grounding of being, and our existence would matter for the historical process. The question now is what is responsible for our mental awakening and inner alertness? In “Letter on Humanism”, Heidegger stresses, “Thinking does not become action only because some effect issues from it or because it is applied” (Heidegger, 1, p. 217). Thinking should be engaged by being and for the truth of Being. Historically and culturally, there are many scaffolds that hold thinking and guide it in certain directions. Those are language structures and preconcepts that exist in philosophical systems that developed and functioned throughout history. They implicitly determine our use of language. Accordingly, “language is not the mirror of nature, it is the mirror of history. Since language does not always by its nature explicitly define the relationships it embodies, the need is to deconstruct the fixed, linguistic relation between an object and its social history” (Neal, p. 54). This idea is grasped in the concept of a “vicious circle”, which implies that our understanding is predetermined by an a priori existing framework of cognitive and experiential abilities that are set up in our cultural tradition. Heidegger applied Husserl’s proposed “phenomenological reduction” in a different way to clarify the beginnings of man’s existence as a human being. Heidegger changed “reduction” from a technique that works mostly with empirical experiences into a mentally and historically grounded selfexplication of a human being, into a confrontation with one’s own historical finitude. Western thought, as Heidegger saw it, was entangled between the realms of subjectivity and objectivity trying to find an acceptable middle ground and was slipping occasionally into extremes and magnifying a single aspect of cognition. Heidegger was himself a product of a tug-of-war in the metaphysical tradition, so he spoke about it in the first person. “When thinking comes to an end by slipping out of its element it replaces this loss by procuring the validity for itself as techne, as an instrument of education and therefore as a classroom matter and later a cultural concern. By and by philosophy becomes a technique for explaining from highest causes. One no longer thinks; one occupies oneself with “philosophy” (Heidegger, 1, p. 221).

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To become true thinking again, one that can speak the truth, thinking has to free itself from the pre-conditioned scaffolds in language and philosophy. Judgment in both philosophy and language fails to disclose the lack of engagement with the existing human being on the grounds of being. Philosophy and the social sciences keep trumpeting accomplishments on the level of psychological and technological innovations. Language becomes a servant of objectification and enslavement of being. In this case, language has to be liberated from grammar “into a more original framework” which can thrive in thinking and poetic creations in art. Metaphysics sanction the dominance of subjectivity in the public realm, and “language thereby falls into the service of expediting communication along routes where objectification – the uniform accessibility of everything to everyone – branches out and disregards all limits. In this way, language comes under the dictatorship of the public realm, which decides in advance what is intelligible and what must be rejected as unintelligible” (Heidegger, 1, p. 221). Instead of initiating and answering the call of thinking, language suppresses both the ecstatic engagement of thinking and the thought-provoking silence of listening. In language, the clutter of naming overwhelms the call for thinking. As D. Kelley puts it, for Heidegger “linguisticality /Sprachlichkeit/ constitutes the fundamental condition of thought and existence” (Kelley, p. 154). If it is impossible to step out of language, as it is equally impossible to step out of the history of ideas, how can we neutralize the dominance of the existing structures of language and knowledge? How can we approach the task of understanding if all the available ways and helping tools are suspected of leading to the wrong conclusions? At this point, we can rely on Gadamer’s approach when he tries to explain how Heidegger understood the work of language. The use of language in Heidegger’s philosophy was a phenomenon in itself. As Gadamer highlights, “even in the intensification of the German language that took place in his concepts, Heidegger’s thought seemed to defy any comparison with what philosophy had previously meant” (Gadamer, 1, p. 229). Language is the most primordial poetry of being, and as such it bridges gaps and supports the continuity of tradition. Gadamer reminds us “language is not an instrumental setup, a tool, that we apply, but the element in which we live and which we can never objectify to the extent that it ceases to surround us” (Gadamer, 2, p. 50). To overcome short-circuited generalizations and conclusions involving language, Gadamer stresses the dialogical nature of language. What he did was meant not only to move subjectivity out of the spotlight, but also to aid Heidegger “in his almost tragic grappling against a fall back into the language of metaphysics” (Gadamer, 2, p. 56). At the same time, Gadamer acknowledges that “Heidegger’s half-poetic attempts at discourse are sometimes more expressive of a linguistic need than of its overcoming” (Gadamer, 2, p. 57).

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Mental states where meaning is coming into being and thinking thinks do not have ready-made linguistic naming. This absence creates ambiguities that flatten the richness and depth of thinking and leads to easy misinterpretations. Heidegger says, “thinking lays inconspicuous furrows in language” (Heidegger, 1, p. 265). It is a simplicity that, according Heidegger, can embody keen mental responsiveness and sensibility. Mamardashvili also stresses the grounding nature of the interdependence of thinking and language and believes that metaphor helps to fine-tune mental responsiveness. He borrows a metaphor from the poem of Russian poet Maksimilian Voloshin. “The furrowed earth” signals the necessity of readiness and preparedness, but also implies the hardiness of the task (Mamardashvili, p. 99). When we are ready, the “word can be crucified in us”. More researchers see similarities between Heidegger and Mamardashvili’s view of philosophy as a voice of consciousness. “Authentic Dasein’s responsibility is to return to the inauthentic world of the ‘they’ to become their ‘conscience’, and to summon them to their own authentic Selves” (Padgett, p. 13). Padgett concludes that Mamardashvili’s philosophy contains traces of both, Heidegger and French post-structuralism. He pinpoints the importance of Mamardashvili’s understanding of consciousness. “Consciousness is split from itself and is always a guest of the other, and it turns to language and speech in its passion to accomplish itself”, Padgett continues (Padgett, p. 18). Consciousness is alive in the space of dialogue, in the space of communication, in the space between the Self and the Other. Padgett also mentions a unique, distinctive feature of Mamardashvili – he never spoke following the written text. His thought was always lived and its presence was felt very powerfully. Some people who were attending Mamardashvili’s lectures admitted that it was very hard and sometimes almost impossible to retain the content when the gravity of Mamardashvili’s presence was gone and with it was gone the structure of the mental space. It was easy to follow his thought in his presence because he created the space of a dialogue where consciousness and understanding happens and non-categorized language emanates the passion and the struggle of thinking. From my point of view it does not work for Mamardashvili to search for a particular place of his philosophy somewhere between Heidegger and poststructuralism. I think that placement “between” diminishes his contribution to the 20th century philosophy. The central theme of his philosophy was understanding thinking through the centuries. He always distinguished two facets of thinking – thinking as a faculty that generates knowledge and thinking as a faculty that lives in understanding. His life and work was a combination of both capabilities of thinking.

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Critics of Heidegger argue that he greatly exaggerated the influence of metaphysics and overstated the need to overcome its conceptualizing power (Bartky, p. 377). From the standpoint of researchers who value the analytical side of thinking, Heidegger’s thought appears ambiguous. Heidegger has always had critics that would interpret his thinking not by its spirit but word for word, finding themselves in denial of meaning and sense. According to some of them, Heidegger demotes metaphysics from the science of first principles of knowledge to a mere sequence of questions. Heidegger is criticized for his style of thinking which is considered redundant and linguistically challenging. These critics go so far that they argue that Heidegger diminishes the role of reason to make space for “alternative thinking” which they place in the tradition of Meister Ekhart and Zen Masters. They tend to dismiss Heidegger’s way of thinking as obscure and belonging to the world of irrational. They would overlook Heidegger’s clues that one’s own being is a key that can unlock the “vicious circle” and accept the burden of self-conscious and open presence in history. When we compare Heidegger and Gadamer’s styles of philosophizing, it may help to realize why Heidegger’s contribution to history of philosophy is often misunderstood and, thus, overlooked. If Gadamer’s strength was in negotiating reasoning and adding broader perspective and historic context, then Heidegger and Mamardashvili worked with states of mental evidence – transparent, overwhelming, and inspiring. When critics divide Heidegger’s philosophy into compartments with catalogued concepts, themes and categories and compare it to the philosophies of his fellow contemporaries, they diminish its challenging character by either exaggerating logical irregularities in his work or taking a particular statement to its logical end. When critics attempt to find a specific location of Mamardashvili’s thought and describe concepts that it contains, they fail to notice the moment that Mamardashvili taught how thinking must live to understand. Rockford, Illinois REFERENCES Barash, Jeffrey. “Martin Heidegger in the Perspective of the Twentieth Century: Reflections on the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe”, Journal of Modern History, 64, March 1992. pp. 52–78 Bartky, L.S. “Originative Thinking in the Later Philosophy of Heidegger”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30, 3, 1970, pp. 368–381 Gadamer, Georg. “Heidegger and the Language of Metaphysics”, in Philosophical Hermeneutics, University of California Press, California 1977. Gadamer, Georg. Reason in the Age of Science, The MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1996. Gadamer, Georg. Truth and Method, Seabury, NY, 1976.

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Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings, Harper, San Francisco, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, Harper&Row, N.Y., Evanston, 1962. Hemling, Steven. “A Martyr to Happiness: Why Adorno Matters”, The Kanyon Review 28, 4, Fall 2006. Kelley, R. Donald. “Horizons of Intellectual History: Retrospect, Circumspect, Prospect”, Journal of History of Ideas, 48, 1. 1987, pp. 143–169 Kruglikov, Vitim. “Do not Become the Other”, in Congeniality of Thought, Moscow, Progress, 1994 (in Russian). Mamardashvili, Merab. Aesthetics of Thinking, Moscow, 2001 (in Russian). Neal, Aubrey. “The Promise and Practice of Deconstruction”, Canadian Journal of History, 30, 1995. pp. 49–76 Padgett, Andrew. “Dasein and the Philosopher: Responsibility in Heidegger and Mamardashvili”, Facta Universitatis, Series: Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology, 6, 1, 2007. pp. 1–21 Pezze, Barbara. “Heidegger on Gelassenheit”, Minerva, An Internet Journal of Philosophy 10, 2006. pp. 94–122

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M I N D – I T S WAY O F E X I S T E N C E , S T RU C T U R E A N D F U N C T I O N S I N T I B E TA N B U D D H I S M – C O M PA R I S O N WITH PHENOMENOLOGY

ABSTRACT

The main subject of the paper is mind as it is expounded in Tibetan Buddhism (Gelug and Kagyu traditions); within Tibetan doctrinal approach, involving Tibetan technical terminology. The paper discusses such topics as: – Mind, its defining characteristics – Types of consciousness; their cognitive abilities – Stream of consciousness, its continuity – Place and significance of ego within the structure of mind – Meditative approach to mind The text includes some notes comparing Oriental tradition with Western Phenomenology (Husserl and Ingarden). These are two different approaches to the subject: philosophically-meditational and philosophically-scientific. Comparative analysis of Eastern and Western knowledge on mind results in exposition convergences as well as differences between both traditions. AN INTRODUCTION – THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

The best outline of the questions discussed in the paper is basic Buddhist teaching about The Four Noble Truths: 1) Truths, that is true things1 that are unsatisfactory (sdug bsngal gyi bden pa) 2) Truths that are sources (kun ‘byung gi bden pa) 3) Truths that are cessations (‘gog pa’i bden pa) 4) Truths that are paths (lam gyi bden pa). These, basically, mean: the Thirst Noble Truth – we all face problems in our life, most striking of them is suffering, the Second – these problems are not unavoidable, they come from causes, the Third – it is therefore possible to have a complete stopping of the problems such that they never return, and the Fourth – such a stopping is achieved by an understanding that eliminates the cause of the problems. 433 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CIII, 433–450. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

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According to the Thirst and the Second Truths the root cause of suffering is lack of awareness. It means that unawareness – either not knowing reality or knowing it incorrectly – is the deepest cause of our problems and this is what we really need to get rid of, if we want to change the whole situation. Indeed, with the Third Noble Truth, we are dealing with the possibility of true stopping of our problems, we can get rid of them. The Four Noble Truths however are not obvious, as true facts they are seen only by highly realized beings (tib. ‘phags pa, skt. arya). The Four Noble Truths supply, as an introductory question, a framework for next Buddhist topics: – mind and its structure – the five aggregate factors as basic scheme describing our experience – unawareness of reality as the source of our problems, and – the false “me” versus correct view of “me”.

M I N D A S M E N TA L A C T I V I T Y

According to the Buddhist definition, mind (tib. sems) is mere clarity and awareness (tib. gsal rig tsam).2 What does it mean? In short terms it refers to the individual, subjective mental activity of experiencing things (tib. myong ba). Clarity (gsal) means giving rise to cognitive appearances of things (tib.‘char ba) and awareness (rig) refers to cognitively engaging with them (tib.‘jug pa). Mere (tsam) implies that this occurs without a separate, unaffected, monolithic “me” that is either controlling or observing this activity. The “I” exists, but merely as an imputation based on a continuity of ever-changing moments of experiencing ever-changing things. In general, some elements of the Buddhist view of mind are obviously acceptable in Western approach while others are not so easy evident. As above definition is not so clear, it needs some further explanations.3 a) Minds are individual. What I experience is particular to me alone. It depends on our physical and mental perspectives. For example, my experience of seeing a sight is never the same as yours. b) Mental activity always involves an object (tib. yul, skt. visaya – object of consciousness). We do not just see; while seeing we see a sight, while thinking we think a thought. Also, mind is the ever-changing experience of things. The objects of our mental activity are always changing. One moment we are seeing the wall and the next we are seeing the sight of our relative. Even if we stare at the wall, our focus constantly shifts very slightly. Each moment of our experience has different contents, which continually change, like a flowing stream. These contents consist not only of various sights,

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sounds, or thoughts, but also of diverse emotions and different levels of interest, attention, and so forth. c) Each person’s mind, or mental activity, has unbroken continuity (tib. sems rgyud, skt. samtana).4 Buddhism explains that mental activity continues uninterruptedly not only in this lifetime, but without beginning or end. These statements may be acceptable for most thinkers. What follows, is for Western way of thinking a subject of discussion and maybe fruitful controversies. According to Buddhists mind has no form.5 It is also not reducible to something physical, like the nervous system or the electrochemical processes that describe neurological functions. From the Buddhist point of view, the phenomenon translated in English as “mind” is not an entity at all. Rather, the term refers to the mental activity – both conscious and unconscious. The word “mind” denotes only mental activity itself, such as seeing, thinking, feeling something or thinking. It includes also subtle mental activity while asleep. Further, the term “mind” does not refer to the agent of mental activity.

T H E D E F I N I T I O N O F M I N D ( T I B . S E M S) E X P L A I N E D

It is interesting to analyze, especially for comparative purposes, the standard definition of mind in Tibetan Buddhism. In this definition: mere clarity and awareness (tib. gsal rig tsam), clarity (gsal) refers to the mental activity of producing a mental object. Describing this mental activity from a Western point of view, we would say that in each moment our mind creates a mental object. Mental objects include sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile or physical sensations, dreams, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Awareness (rig), the second word of the definition, is the mental activity of engaging with a mental object in some way or another. Experiencing something necessarily entails either seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, physically feeling, dreaming, thinking, or emotionally feeling it. That mental engagement can be with or without understanding. Producing a mental object and engaging with it, clarity and awareness, are two facets of the same activity. They occur simultaneously, not consecutively. The word mere (tsam) in the definition is important as it implies that producing an appearance of something and engaging with it are all that is necessary for mental activity. Moreover, “mere” excludes not only the necessity, but also the existence of a concrete, findable mind or agent “in here” that is making a sight arise or doing the seeing of it. From Buddhist point of view there is no concrete, findable “me” or mind inside our head that is the passive observer or active controller of our mental activity. “Mere“, however, does not exclude the fact that mental factors of discrimination and self-control can always accompany our thoughts and our feelings.

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Buddhist description of our experience does not revolve around some central item such as subject or personality, also does not claim our self as a centre of some inner and outer surrounding, but views it in its complexity and takes into account its various components and their way of existing. The fundamental statement is that our experience is made up of many elements, which are continuously changing. Each moment of our experience is made up of a multitude of variables. A basic classification scheme for those variables are the five aggregate factors of experience. The five aggregates (phung po lnga) may in general be called as aggregates of mind and body. Meaning of aggregate (tib. phung po, skt. skandha) is: made up of many parts. Each aggregate is in turn a collection of many components. Each variable component changes from moment to moment and has a different length of continuity. The five aggregates (tib. phung po lnga) are: 1) The aggregate of forms (tib. gzugs kyi phung po, skt. rupa skandha) 2) The aggregate of feelings (tib. tshor ba’i phung po, skt. vedana skandha) 3) The aggregate of distinguishing (tib. ’du shes kyi phung po, skt. samjna skandha) 4) The aggregate of compositional factors (tib. ’du byed kyi phung po, skt. samskara skandha) 5) The aggregate of consciousness (tib. rnam shes kyi phung po, skt. vijnana skandha) The five aggregates scheme is a wide one as it contains all nonstatic (tib. mi rtag pa, skt. anitya) phenomena.6 Each moment of our experience has one or more components from each of the aggregates, and every variable that constitutes our experience is in one or another of them. The basic explanation of five aggregates is as follows. Ad 1) The aggregate of forms means that each moment of our experience has as part of it one or more forms of physical phenomena. They fall within the eleven groupings of the aggregate of forms of physical phenomena: (a) The five sensory objects: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, (b) The five physical cognitive sensors: receptive organs of the eyes, of the ears, of the nose, of the tongue, of the body, and as a separate group (c) all forms of phenomena cognizable only by mental cognition. Ad 2) The aggregate of feelings. This aggregate refers to the fact, that each moment of our experience, whether it be with sensory or mental cognition, has as one of its components a feeling of some level of satisfaction on the spectrum ranging from total happiness through neutral to total suffering.

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Ad 3) The aggregate of distinguishing means that in each moment of our experience a factor from the aggregate distinguishes the characteristic feature of an object of focus from the characteristic features of what is not this object, that is from everything else seen at the moment in the cognitive-field of vision. Ad 4) The aggregate of compositional factors comprises all variables affecting the experience, that are not included in the other four aggregates. The aggregate of consciousness will be explained in next passage. P R I M A RY C O N S C I O U S N E S S E S A N D S U B S I D I A RY AWA R E N E S S E S – WAY S O F B E I N G AWA R E O F S O M E T H I N G ( T I B . S H E S PA)

There are two principal types of mental activity: primary consciousnesses (tib. rnam shes) and subsidiary awarenesses (tib. sems byung) named also mental factors. According to the Chittamatra (tib. sems tsam pa) systems of tenets7 there is also a third type: reflexive awareness (tib. rang rig). All Tibetan Buddhism systems accept that there are six types of primary consciousness: (1) eye consciousness (mig gi rnam shes), (2) ear consciousness (rna’i rnam shes), (3) nose consciousness (sna’i rnam shes), (4) tongue consciousness (lce’i rnam shes), (5) body consciousness (lus kyi rnam shes), and (6) mental consciousness (yid kyi rnam shes). The aggregate of consciousness (tib. rnam shes kyi phung po, skt. vijnana skandha) comprises all the six types of primary consciousnesses. Primary consciousness (tib. rnam shes) cognizes merely the essential nature or category of phenomenon (ngo bo) that something is. For example, eye consciousness cognizes a sight as merely a sight. In Western cognitive theories, including phenomenology, consciousness is taken as a single, uniform factor that can cognize all categories of cognitive objects: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, and mental objects. On the contrary, Buddhist epistemology differentiates six types of consciousness specifying them according to the cognitive sensor (tib. dbang po, skt. indriya) it relies on to arise. Subsidiary awarenesses (tib. sems byung), like primary consciousnesses, are also merely ways of being aware of something. Some of them perform functions that help the primary consciousness to cognitively take (‘dzin pa) an object. Others add an emotional flavor to the taking of the object. A network of subsidiary awarenesses accompanies each moment of primary consciousness and each shares five congruent features with the primary consciousness it accompanies.8 Reflexive awareness (tib. rang rig) accompanies every moment of conceptual and nonconceptual cognition of an object. It focuses on and cognizes

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only the other awarenesses of the cognition: the primary consciousness and subsidiary awarenesses. It does not cognize the objects of the primary consciousnesses and subsidiary awarenesses on which it focuses as it’s main function is to allow for recalling the cognition (tib. dran pa, mindfulness). As a separate kind of consciousness it is accepted by Cittamatra school. For Prasangika (tib. thal ‘gyur ba) this function is performed by the cognition itself, with implicit apprehension (tib. shugs la rtogs pa). Valid cognitions explicitly apprehend their objects and implicitly apprehend themselves. Apprehension of an object (rtogs pa) means a correct and decisive cognition of it. This difference between Cittamatra and Prasangika resembles two trends in phenomenology as to a way of cognition: stressing reflexive consciousness (Husserl) and self consciousness, Durchleben (Ingarden). There arise many questions concerning comparison of the structure of mind and our experience in Buddhism and phenomenology. Here, due to limited scope of the paper, I would like to expound only one issue: I or self – what is this and how it exits? In order to do this some kind of introduction is necessary.

U N AWA R E N E S S O F R E A L I T Y ( T I B . M A R I G PA) – T H E D E E P E S T LEVEL

When we speak about the deepest cause of our problems as set forth in the Second Noble Truth it comes down to the question of unawareness (tib. ma rig pa). There are two different levels of unawareness. In one, we are unaware of cause and effect in terms of our behavior, that if we act in a destructive way it will cause problems. This is level of karma (tib. las). On a deeper level, we are talking about unawareness of reality as we have the habit of cognitively taking things to exist with what is called inherent existence (tib. rang bzhin).9 According to Buddhists, something inherent, if it existed, would be innate by its own power. It is sometimes spoken of as some characteristic or defining feature inside the object that makes it what it is. It would be within the thing, for example a table, something really, which is findable inside it, permanently there, and which, by its own power, makes it table. Another aspect of our unawareness of reality is grasping (tib. zhen) for inherent existence. It means that things appear to us to exist as concrete “things” and we believe that this is truly the way that they exist.10 We assume that the way something appears to us corresponds to reality. The Tibetan word zhen, usually translated as “grasping” or “clinging” (zhen yul – grasping the object), requires explanation. It’s not really grasping like with our hands, it is just taking an object, a way of cognizing. This cognitive habit is common deluded view. According to Prasangika, grasping for true

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existence (bden par yod pa) is common deluded view as it accompanies all moments of conceptual and nonconceptual cognition of all sentient beings (tib. sems can, skt. sattva), it means beings that not yet realized ultimate view of realisty.11 Tibetan Buddhism claims, that unawareness (ma rig pa) is the true origin, the true cause of our problems and difficulties. We just do not understand what is happening, and not understanding things, we project all sorts of strange made-up ideas, believe in them, and live in a fantasy world of the impossible. This unawareness is about the nature of reality: how persons – ourselves and others – exist, and how all phenomena around us exist. With respect to ourselves, we have a misconception, with which we imagine that we exist as a false “me”.12

THE CORRECT VIEW: THE CONVENTIONAL “ME” INSTEAD O F FA L S E “ M E ”

Buddhism differentiates between the false “me” and a correct one. According to the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, we have an “I” or “me,” which can be labeled onto the ever-changing stream of continuity of the five aggregates factors that make up each moment of our individual subjective experience.13 This is the conventional “me”. It is taken for sure that this “me” is always there, but we add something to it, some special qualities, and exaggerate it. Grasping for true existence of one’s self is aimed at the conventional “me”, but its way of cognizing it is to cognize it as if it were the false “me”. Therefore we project and think that conventional “me” exists in all sorts of strange impossible ways, which do not refer to reality. The false and the conventional “me” – step by step analysis. In order to clarify this confusion; refute the false “me” and correctly understand the conventional “me” we need make careful analysis of the “I” or “me” within the framework of the five aggregates, that is all factors of our subjective experience. We do that in several steps, several levels of understanding. Each level refers to recognition of certain qualities ascribed to “I” and refutation them. Eventually, this method leads to the correct understanding the “me”. The first level of what Buddhism is refuting is a self that has three characteristics.14 The first characteristic is – in Buddhist terminology – that it is permanent or static (rtag). It means that “I” doesn’t change from moment to moment, it is not affected by anything, and therefore can not produce any effect. The second characteristic is that the self is one thing (gcig), which means that it is a monolith without any temporal parts and without any aspects that are parts of it. In a sense, this means that self is always one and the same.

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One can say that most people think that they remain the same throughout their whole life. Maybe it has something to do with the feeling that somehow inside there is this real “me” as one intact thing. The third characteristic is that the self is separate or independent (rang dbang can – lit. own-power-possessing) and therefore separable from any set of aggregates, simply speaking from body and mind, and as such can exist by itself and go off after death. Such understanding of the self we can find in phenomenology. For example, according to Roman Ingarden, it is possible to keep an independent position and our true self, which he calls an individual constitutive nature of the personal ego, is intact by time. In Man and Value author declares: Neither the very occurrence of changes in my psychic structure and in my body, even deep and multi-faceted ones, nor even the consciousness of such changes having taken place hinders me in the least in this feeling of being myself through the course of my entire life. . . . And although through its passage time forces out of actuality everything which is merely a happening, it can do nothing to me myself: it washes over me, as it were, leaves me undisturbed.15 As a consequence of the idea that I am static we start to think that we can just extricate ourselves from cause and effect dependences. Moreover, it is because of misconceiving our selves to exist separate from aggregates that we feel alienated from our body and feelings. For example, in a dangerous situation we can try to protect ourselves by withdrawing inside, like we have gone into another level and that there is a precious little “me” that we can keep immune from everything and that is not going to be affected by what is just happening. Not only this. This wish to be able to cut ourselves off from everything and just do what we want without being affected by anything else, as if we were static, is the basic underlying premise or thought for being selfish and self-centered. It is Buddhist insight that this type of “me” with three characteristics is not referring to anything real.At the first level we can become convinced of ourselves as “me” that is not static, that it cannot be separated from body and mind. But, we may still think that this nonstatic “me” is a boss or controller – someone or something, usually located in our heads, making decisions and controlling what is happening. That idea of the “I” as a controller can lead to the fantasy of human beings as sovereign beings, even controlling nature and things.16 On the second level we need to understand that this misconception of a “me” that is a controller or boss is not referring to anything real. There is no such “me” inside, sitting back and experiencing things or making things happen. Even if we understand that the “me” does not exist as an inner controller, still we may think and feel as though the “me” can be known self-sufficiently,

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all by itself, without simultaneously seeing, hearing, thinking, or knowing the basis on which it is imputed. We can think, “I know myself,” as if we could know a self that is “me,” independently of knowing our body, our mind, our relationships, our possessions, and so on. Here, on the third level, we need to realize that such a self-sufficiently knowable “me” also does not refer to anything real.

M E R E - I ( T I B . N G A T S A M) – T H E C O N V E N T I O N A L “ M E ” A S M E N TA L L A B E L I N G

Finally one can ask: what are we left with when we refute even the most subtle level of a false “me”? The answer is: the “me” which is imputed as a way of putting together an individual continuity of ever-changing factors of subjective experience. In Gelugpa terminology it is called also the mere-I (tib. nga tsam). According to Prasangika, the highest philosophical system in Tibetan Buddhism, the existence of the “I” or “me”, which is conventional, is established in terms of mental labeling.17 With mental labeling there are three things involved: (1) the mental label or imposition: “I” or “me” (2) the basis for labeling it: the aggregate factors of mind and body, and (3) what the label refers to: the conventional “me.” This is one of the most interesting and striking point of the Buddhist view. However this subtle and difficult point can be quite confusing. In Tibetan Buddhism, one talks about an “I” or “me,” which does exist.18 But from Prasangika Madhyamaka point of view this “I” or “me” is conventional (tib. kun rdzob). So, conventionally, we are experiencing everything: we’re seeing, feeling and so on. This conventional “me”, however, is not a linguistic entity; it is what the word means, it is the significance of the word on the basis of a continuum of ever-changing factors. This conventional “me” is an abstraction in the sense that it is not some controller inside our heads. The problem is that it appears as the author of voice in our head, as though there is the controller inside. It appears to us to be who we truly are and we believe it is true, but that’s not the way that it exists. Let us clarify this point. According to Prasangika, we are applying the word “I” to an individual sequence of moments of five aggregates of experience – walking, talking, seeing and doing various things. That is the basis for the label. And the basis has to be an appropriate, valid one.19 The word “I” refers to the conventional “me.” But who, or what, is this “I” or “me?” It is something that seems the be very nebulous as all we can say is that it is what the word “me” refers to when it is applied to this basis. However, if we think, that there

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is some special, individual defining characteristic mark findable on the side of our body and mind that allows for a correct labeling of them as “me”, we are wrong. It appears as if there is something findable in me that makes me “me” – some defining characteristic, that makes me “me” and not “you,” and which allows for the correctly labeling. We may understand that the “me” is not a controller, it is changing all the time, not monolithic, it is not separable from the aggregates and cannot be known on its own, but still we might think there is in something special there that makes me “me”. That, for Gelugpas, is also a misconception. Although we are all individuals, there is nothing findable inside that makes us individual. An example used in the Buddhist texts is labeling someone “a king” (tib. rgyal po).20 Here we can see the important difference between two Buddhist philosophical schools Svantantrika (tib. rang gyu pa) and Prasangika (tib. thal ‘gyur ba). Someone exists as a king depending on the label and concept “king.” If there were no social custom of kings, obviously, nobody could be a king. The question is: what makes a label valid? Svatantrika says that things have some findable defining inherent characteristic on their own sides that allows to label the things correctly, as what they are. There must be something inside the king making him royal so that he can correctly be labeled “king.” Prasangika refuses; there is nothing findable on the side of the person that makes him the king. Of course, conventionally, there are defining characteristics. Somebody who rules a country in the system of royalty is a king. There is a defining characteristic of what a king is. If nothing had a definition, it would be impossible for things to function, but it is only conventional (tib. kun rdzob), not ultimate (tib. don dam) reality. It is not that defining characteristics actually exist as something findable inside the object, by their own power making a person royal. Therefore, from Prasangika point of view wanting to prove our existence with some findable thing inside us that makes me “me” is part of our ignorance, our unawareness of reality, although it is the subtlest level of ignorance. Concluding the analysis, the main question is: is there something findable within us or somebody else that makes us either “this” or “that”? Prasangika anwers, that the “me” is merely what the word or concept “me” refers to on the basis of the aggregates, but there is nothing in the aggregates – in the body or mind – that we can find as “me” or as an individual defining characteristic mark. The basis of labeling, the ground for designation, and what is being labeled on it, the phenomenon designated, cannot be the same thing. They are different, the one is not the other. This point, according to Jeffrey Hopkins, is quite interesting, because: If you study this and seem to get an understanding of how it fits together – of what it means for the basis of designation and the phenomenon designated

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to be different – without its bothering you as if you had fallen on your head, it means that its import has not yet hit.21 The conventional “me” is therefore something like an illusion because there is nothing solid there! It is like an illusion in the sense that it appears to be concrete, whereas is not. The problem is that it appears to us as if there is something solid there and we believe that that’s true. Just in this way Buddhism speaks about a false view that appears to us to be true. In a sense, from the doctrine of the Mahayana (tib. theg chen gyi chos) there is something about each individual being that is eternal; nevertheless it is not permanent, it is not static. Buddhism asserts that the subtlest level of mind or mental activity, together with the subtlest life-supporting energy, is what continues unceasingly from lifetime to lifetime, and ultimately, this is the basis for labeling the conventional “me.” In anuttarayoga, the highest class of tantra, this subtlest level of mind or mental activity is called the “clear-light mind” (‘od gsal).

G R A S P I N G F O R T R U E E X I S T E N C E ( T I B . B D E N ‘ D Z I N) A S A S O U R C E O F P R O J E C T I O N A FA L S E “ M E ”

According to Tibetan Buddhism there is nothing static underneath our conventional “me” as it does change from moment to moment. But, even if we see that, we do not want to accept it as long as we grasp for true existence (bden‘dzin). Grasping for the true existence of persons projects some level of a false “me” onto the conventional “me” and causes us to believe that this false “me” is true. One can do this in reference to the conventional “me” of ourselves or of any other person in any life form – humans (mi), animals (dud ‘gro), ghosts (yi dwags) and so forth. Let us see what follows from grasping for true existence. In philosophy it opens way to various kinds of ontological speculations. In practical, everyday dimension if we confuse the conventional “me” with the false “me,” we base our sense of self-worth on what the other person thinks. When some people don’t approve what we are doing, we start to think “I am a bad person and I have no self-worth”. If we think in terms of the false “me,” we take their criticism personally and get all sorts of psychological problems. The conventional “me” is – on the other hand – so to speak, more impersonal. If somebody criticizes us, we can learn from it – all on the basis of the conventional “me.” There is quite a difference between the two. Not only this. On the basis of grasping for true existence disturbing emotions and attitudes inevitably arise. These are mental factors that, when they arise and accompany our sensory or mental cognition, cause us to lose peace of mind

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and become out of control. They make ourselves or others uncomfortable, sometimes very uncomfortable. The most common disturbing emotions are the three poisonous emotions and attitudes called afflictions (tib. nyon mong, skt. kle´sa): obscuration or naivety (gti mug), longing desire/attachment, desire (‘dod chags), and aversion or hostility (zhe sdang). Naivety or closed-minded ignorance refers to unawareness that accompanies destructive states of mind. When we have longing desire we, exaggerate the good qualities of something or someone that we don’t have, and feel we have to have it. Hostility is a brutish state of mind that exaggerates the bad qualities of something or someone, and wants to harm it or get rid of it.

M E D I TAT I O N O N T H E S E L F L E S S N E S S ( T I B . B D A G M E D PA)

Selflessness (tib. bdag med pa, skt. anatman) is one of the four key doctrinal statements which specify Buddhist philosophy.22 This term sensu largo refers to the absence of intrinsic identity in all phenomena. In reference to persons (tib. gang zag, skt. pudgala) it means the absence of a person that is either partless, permanent and independent or self-sufficient, discussed above.23 Buddhism wants to get rid of our problems, but not occasionally; it wants to stop them for ever recurring. This is why, first of all, it aims at getting rid of grasping for true existence, the root of the false “me” which generates our problems. The method for this is meditation (tib. sgom pa, skt. bhavana) on the selflessness (tib. bdag med pa). There are two basic types of meditation termed as calm abiding (tib. zhi gnas, skr. shamatha) it in which the mind remains focused on its object in a clear and steady way, and special insight (tib. lhag mthong, skr. vipashyana). The term lhag mthong, which means an exceptionally perceptive state of mind, is built upon state of calm abiding; within it the mind penetrates to the nature of phenomena. The reason for applying meditative method is that in order to overcome problems in our life – as they are expounded by the Thirst Noble Truth – it is not sufficient to have and sustain the correct view of the “I”. State of calm abiding is a stilled and settled state of mind; it is more than just absorbed concentration. It is not merely a state of mind stilled of the obstacles to concentration (tib. ting nge ‘dzin, skt. samadhi) and settled single-pointedly (rtse-gcig) on an object or in a particular state. In addition, it has a further mental factor of subsidiary awareness (sems byung) accompanying it: a sense of physical and mental fitness (shin sbyangs, pliability, flexibility). A sense of physical and mental fitness is the mental factor of feeling totally fit to do something – in this case, remain totally concentrated on anything. It is both exhilarating and blissful, but in a nondisturbing way.

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Calm abiding does not have by itself the mental factor of subtle discernment, scrutiny (dpyod pa).24 Achieving calm abiding means that the mental factor of subtle discernment and a sense of physical and mental fitness are present; together they generate the state of mind called special insight (lhag mthong), it is exceptionally perceptive state of mind. The additional sense of fitness is the sense of feeling totally fit to discern and understand fully the subtle details of anything. In the practice of meditation it becomes very important first to identify in our own experience how we hold various views of ourselves and next to identify what is to be refuted. If we want to see that the fantasy, which we project about ourselves does not refer to anything real, we have to be able to see what that fantasy is – not just theoretically and intellectually. Meditation in Buddhism begins with listening to a correct explanation. The second step is to think about it, so that we understand it. We need to understand what we have heard or read, and become convinced that it is correct. Then, the actual meditation entails making what we have heard and understood a part of ourselves, integrating it. Through frequent repetition, meditation builds this understanding up as a beneficial habit. We need to gain a long familiarity with an object of meditation. It is a long process, because unawareness is very deeply ingrained in all of us. First, we rid ourselves of the doctrinally based grasping that came from learning some non-Buddhist view of reality. Then, with further meditation, we rid ourselves of the automatically arising grasping. Then, in the end, we get our minds to stop producing and projecting appearances of true existence. T I B E TA N B U D D H I S M A N D P H E N O M E N O L O G Y – A N O U T L I N E O F C O M PA R AT I V E A N A LY S I S

It is noteworthy to make some remarks comparing Buddhist thought and phenomenology. Such analysis reveals points of convergences as well as field of controversies. With regard to convergences one of them is sphere of transcendental subjectivity, which in phenomenology is revealed by epoche. Edmund Husserl underlies its importance, stating that, as to every objective entity and every truth, there is in it the ground for its existence and cognition.25 This is very close to Buddhist view. Let us cite only one author. The eminent Tibetan master, Third Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje in Shastra on Distinguishing Between Consciousness and Primordial Wisdom (rnam shes ye shes ‘byed pa’i bstan bcod) writes: Three spheres (that is the world and all beings) are solely mind.26 Due to the author, outward phenomena and perceiving consciousnesses manifest differently but they have the same nature: mind. The important point

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of convergence is analogy between incessant continuity and lack of limitation in the life of transcendental consciousness (Husserl) and continuity of mental activity (Buddhism). Also very similar to Buddhist view is conclusion, which Husserl pulls out from deliberation concerning human transcendental subjectivity. Noticing that philosopher can not respect the conviction that God created the world and people, and gifted them with consciousness and reason, as it is naivety, he writes: Epoche . . . leads us to comprehension, that the world, which exists for us, for the sake of its existence and its qualification is our world, it derives sense of its existence from some provable aprioristic typicality of accomplishments – provable, but not invented in some mythical thinking.27 We can compare it with similar announcement in Shastra: All phenomena do not exist as objects different from consciousness. Their appearance is (nothing other than) experiencing own consciousness. Phenomena, small particles as well as big forms, are mind. Because there are no existing independently outer things, creator like Brahma does not exists, understand this.28 As there is meaningful correspondence between phenomenological transcendental sphere and Buddhist view of mind, precise Husserl’s description of this sphere maybe helpful in better understanding what Buddhist statements about mind and consciousness mean. There are also, independently of solutions, convergences in both traditions in theoretical elaboration of philosophical terms and concepts. For example, Prasangika’s list of modes of existence (of which persons and things) are empty, may be compared with Ingarden’s analysis of the ontological terminology. On the one hand we have such modes of existence as: – natural existence (rang gi mtshan nyid kyis grub pa), lit. established by way of its own characteristic nature – inherent existence (rang bzhin gyis grub pa), lit. established inherently – objective existence (rang gi ngos nas grub pa), lit. established from its own side – existence as its own reality (yang dag par grub pa) and – ultimate existence (don dam par grub pa).29 On the other, in the Controversy Over the Existence of the World there is scrupulous analysis of such pairs of phenomenological terms as: – selfexistent entity, non selfexistent entity – primordial entity, derivative entity – independent entity, not independent entity – absolute entity, relative entity.30 But in spite of convergences one cannot overlook essential discordances. A rudimental one refers to the ontological status of ego and consciousness.

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It is striking that subject, so crucial concept of Western philosophy, including phenomenology, is absent in Buddhist view of mind. In phenomenology pure consciousness without subject is, so to speak, unthinkable.31 It even seems that what has been said about Buddhist view on mind and consciousness goes contrary to the main current of the phenomenological thinking. For example, according to Husserl pure I (ego) as subject of consciousness is stable, absolutely identical and necessary.32 What are principal points of differences? According to Tibetan Buddhism, all phenomena arise through dependent arising (tib. rten byung) and in their nature are not self-existing, that is, are empty (tib. stong pa). Understanding of emptiness very central in all forms of Buddhism, because the correct understanding of emptiness (tib. stong pa nyid) is the correct understanding of reality. All phenomena are in their essence mind, but mind is also not real, its essence is empty (tib. sems kyi ngo bo stong pa).33 This is what distinguishes Buddhist point of view as opposed to the statement made by Husserl, that pure consciousness is an absolute, immanent being that nulla “re” indiget ad existendum.34 As long as phenomenologist is proponent of the real I (self), he/she goes contrary to the Buddhist view which determines it as afflicted view (lta ba nyon mongs can), based on ignorance (ma rig pa). General depiction of such afflicted view is that the view of the transitory collection (‘jig tshog la lta ba), conceives one’s own mind and body as the real “I” or “mine”. In Husserl’s way of philosophizing ego-thinking is predominant. This however invokes many problems, especially concerning the other I and inter-subjectivity. As to philosopher itself, Husserl notes that transcendental reduction generates some special kind of loneliness.35 The question is, whether such solitude is in philosophy unavoidable. As to other people, Husserl, being consistent in his transcendentalism, has said something puzzling: we-all, from me, yet in me, too.36 Buddhist philosophy is not ego-centered. It claims that just not recognizing the empty essence of mind one will think that there is a self and clings to a self. The consequences of it we have already discussed. There are many questions arisen from comparing Buddhist and phenomenological views. How to investigate consciousness; by means of introspective, reflexive or meditative methods? Can we train and change our stream of awareness? Can we speak about subtle and deep levels of awareness? There are also topics requiring further investigation, such as: nature of thoughts and emotions in both traditions, continuity of awareness and the problem of death and rebirth. No doubt, there is a need – for many reasons – to get a better understanding phenomenology, one of the supreme achievements of Western thought, in its relation to Buddhist philosophy. A more precise work in this field, in the face

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of globalizing tendencies in philosophy, is a task for the future, but making the starting point in this endeavor may be regarded, I hope, as one of benefits of this paper. University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland

NOTES 1 Or phenomena that are seen to exist. Truths are things. In Tibetan Buddhism Truths (bden pa) in The Four Truths are not treated as general propositions (truths), rather as categories of specific phemonena (chos). 2 This definition occurs mainly in Gelug teachings. Definition of consciousness (shes pa) is clear and knowing (gsal zhing rig pa). 3 These explanations follow those given by Alex Berzin in: The Berzin Archives/Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism/Level 5:Analysis od the Mind and Reality/ Cognition Theory, http://berzinarchives.com. 4 Continuum (tib. rgyud, skt. samtana) is basic term in the Buddhist way of speaking about the continuation of mind and body over time. 5 Although the original term used here is gzugs, which in its broad sense is equivalent to matter (bem po), it seems that such concept of mind excludes also “form of consciousness”, propounded by Roman Ingarden in his ontological investigations, see Roman Ingarden, Spór o istnienie s´wiata (Controversy Over the Existence of the World), Warsaw PWN, 1987; vol. I, p. 68. 6 Nonstatic or impermanent phenomena (tib. mi rtag pa, skt. anitya) are one part of twofold meaningful division of all existent (tib. yod pa, skt. sat) in Tibetan Buddhism. The other are permanent phenomena (tib. rtag pa, skt. nitya). 7 In Tibetan Buddhism there are the four tenet systems traditionally put in order from ‘ highest’ to ‘lowest’; ‘higher’ are those doctrines which are more adequate explanations teachings of the Buddha: 1) Madhyamika (tib. dbu ma pa, skt. madhyamika), 2) Cittamatra (tib. sems tsam pa, skt. cittamatra), 3) Sautrantika (tib. mdo sde pa, skt. sautrantika), 4) Vaibhashika (tib. bye brag smra pa, skt. vaibhasika). 8 For more detailed description see: Lati Rinbochay Mind in Tibetan Buddhism Snow Lion Publications 1981, pp. 15–28, 43–74. 9 As to this elaborated terminology cf.: Tibetan Buddhism and Phenomenology – an Outline of Comparative Analysis. 10 Not only this. J. B. Wilson notes: “The principle is that ordinary perceptions and thoughts are pathologically flawed (that is controlled by ignorance (ma rig pa) and that in order to attain enlightenment (byang chub), one has to determine the way that things really do exist and then actually see them in that way.” (underlined by W. K.) J. B. Wilson Translating Buddhism from Tibetan Snow Lion Publications, New York, 1998, p. 395. 11 Sentient beings are called ordinary beings (so so’i skye bo) until they directly have seen lack of inherent existence or selflessness (tib. bdag med pa) of phenomena.

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The core of Buddhist sayings about phenomena is principle that phenomena do not exist in the manner in which they seem to exist. 13 One of most fundamental Buddhist claim: selflessness (tib. bdag med pa, skr. nairatmya) is thoroughly analyzed in the important texts of tradition. Here, the way of presentation and arguing follows Berzin op. cit. 14 All Tibetan Buddhism systems of tenet (tib. grub mtha’) claim that there is no person that is (1) permanent, (2) partless and (3) independent (rtag gcig rang dbang can gyi gang zag). 15 Roman Ingarden Ksia˙ ˛zeczka o człowieku (Man and Value), tr. A. Szylewicz, Philosophia Verlag Munchen Wien 1983, pp. 33–35. 16 J. B. Wilson Chandrakirti’s Sevenfold Reasoning. Meditation on the Selflessness of Persons Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1983, pp. 37–60. 17 In other words it is imputedly existent (tib. btags yod, skr. prajnaptisat). 18 Buddhism denies the atman that the various schools of Hinduism assert, but it does not deny that there is a conventional “me.” The conventional “me” or “person” (tib. gang zag, skt. pudgala) do exists athough does not exist as an atman or as a “soul.” 19 Prasangikas claim that there are various conventions and rules that allow for correct mental labeling without there having to be something findable in the object. 20 A. Berzlin, op. cit. 21 Jeffrey Hopkins: Emptiness Yoga, Snow Lion Publications, New York, 1987, p. 212. 22 The other three statements are: the unsatisfactory nature of mind and the world as we know them, impermanence and the peace of nirvana. 23 One should notice that the Buddhist concept of personhood is far wider than that accepted in the Western tradition, including phenomenology, as the persons are any sentient beings (sems can), nor only humans. 24 State of subtle discernment (dpyod pa) is an active understanding of the fine details of the nature of something, having scrutinized them thoroughly. It does not imply verbal thinking, although it may be induced by verbally thinking. 25 ´ ecicka, Husserl, Wiedza Powszechna, Warsaw, 2005, p. 242. Krystyna Swi˛ 26 khams gsum ‘di dag sems tsam te. Shastra, verse 15, Dazer, Wydawnictwo Zwiazku ˛ Buddyjskiego Tradycji Karma Kamtzang, 1997, p. 2. 27 ´ ecicka, op. cit., p. 272. Swi˛ 28 ∗ Shastra, op. cit., verses 44–50, p. 4. 29 Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness, 1st ed., Wisdom Publications, London, 1983, pp. 36–39. 30 Ingarden Controversy . . . op. cit., vol. I, pp. 83–129. One should be careful as to establishment of the close analogies because main philosophical tendencies of both systems are divergent. 31 One should not overlook, however, that Husserl tried to consider egoless consciousness. 32 Edmund Husserl Idee I, Pa´nstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1967, pp. 146, 148; Idee I, pp. 177–180; pp. 186–187; Idee II, Pa´nstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1974, pp. 158, 159. 33 Here are some standard statements seen in Tibetan Buddhism, which expound its fundamental view of reality: (1) The mind’s essence is empty, it has no form, color etc. sems kyi ngo bo stong pa red gzugs dand kha dog la sogs pa yog ma red (2) Ability for anything to appear in the mind is clarity (luminosity) gang yin na sems la shar thub pa gsal ba red (3) If one does not recognize the empty essence, one clings to a self. ngo bo stong pa ma shes na bdag la ‘dzin gyi yog red

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(4) If one does not recognize the characteristic of clarity, one clings to other. rang bzhin gsal ba ma shes nas gzhan la ‘dzin gyi yog red In this way basic dualistic attitude arises. 34 Husserl Idee I, op. cit., p. 158. 35 ´ ecicka, op. cit., p. 275. Swi˛ 36 Ibid., p. 272.

NA M E I N D E X

Abbagano, N., 130 Abelard, P., 379 Abraham, 26, 30 n.19, 205, 211 Adorno, T., 25 Akinci, S., 347–357 Aleksander, P. J., 213 n.1 Allison, D., 189 n.2 Alston, W. P., 28, 30 n.27 Amiel, H. F., 129 Andrews, M. F., 337, 345 n.68 Arendt, H., 29, 30 n.36, 35, 36, 42 n.12, 136, 159 n.26, 253, 266 n.1, 266 n.2, 266 n.3, 280, 310, 321 n.4 Arisaka, Y., 117, 123 n.20 Aristotle, 3, 208, 210, 232, 236, 239, 243, 244, 245, 250 n.23, 250 n.24, 250 n.25, 295, 296, 297, 298, 313, 361, 418, 427 Armand, W., 353 Barash, J., 425 Barbaras, R., 59 Barnes, S. J. M., 30 n.25 Barth, K., 24 Bartky, L. S., 431 Bataille, G., 24, 26, 29 n.7, 277, 278, 279, 281, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292 n.2, 292 n.21, 293 n.34, 293 n.38 Baudelaire, C., 30 n.31, 129, 415 Bayerová, M., 115, 122 n.14, 123 n.22 Beck, H., 45, 46, 47, 53, 56, 60, 69, 70 n.3, 70 n.4, 70 n.8, 71 n.11, 71 n.14, 71 n.19, 72 n.51, 72 n.53, 72 n.57 Beck, S. H., 49, 71 n.16, Beckett, S., 30 n.29, 129, 142, 376, 391 Bello, A. A., 174 n.2, 326, 327, 330, 331, 332, 334, 339 n.13, 339 n.15, 339 n.16, 339

n.18, 340 n.20, 340 n.22, 340 n.28, 340 n.29, 340 n.30, 341 n.37, 342 n.51 Benjamin, F., 349 Benoist, J., 79, 81, 164, 172, 175 n.21, 176 n.33 Berdyaev, N., 3, 217–229 Bergson, H., 23, 24, 29 n.2, 50, 96, 260, 266 n.4 Berlin, A., 30 n.17, 307 n.5, 449 n.20 Berman, M., 145–160 Bernet, R., 75, 78, 124 n.32, 170, 177 n.50 Bespaloff, R., 24, 29 n.5, 33, 41, 42 n.5, 43 n.28 Bidar, A., 394 n.2 Blomfield, J. D., 42 Blondel, M., 72 n.47, 95–110, 189 n.2, 253–273 Blumenberg, H., 307–319 Bochenski, I.M., 96 Boehme, J., 218 Boer, T. de, 87 n.6 Bolzano, B., 12, 16 Bossert, P., 20 n.5 Brée, G., 200 n.20 Brentano, F., 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 20 n.4, 21 n.16, 21 n.24, 47, 70 n.1, 100, 101, 102, 103, 327, 329 Brown, K., 187 Bruzina, R., 406 n.1 Buber, M., 107, 207 Buckley, R. P., 89 n.18 Burckhardt, J., 242, 251–252 n.56 Cairns, D., 42 n.3 Calian, C. S., 217, 219, 225, 227 n.1, 228 n.6, 229 n.27

451

452

NAME INDEX

Camus, A., 3, 127, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 136, 139, 140, 142, 143 n.30, 198, 199, 200 n.18, 200 n.19, 200 n.20, 206, 207, 319, 371, 373, 376, 379, 385, 389, 391, 393 Cantor, G., 11, 12, 14, 15, 21 n.10, 21 n.19, 21 n.20, 21 n.23, 327 Capelle, P., 43 n.21 Cassirer, E., 122 n.12, 124 n.32, 315, 321 Castelli, E., 267 n.10, 269 n.15 Cerbone, D. R., 109 n.20 Chestov, L., 24, 42 n.1 Churchill, J. S., 1, 343 n.58 Cieszkowski, A., 220 Cioran, E., 279, 284, 285, 292 n.7, 292 n.16, 300, 307 n.7, 365 Claesges, U., 86 Coniglione, F., 21 n.10 Conrad-Martius, H., 4, 340 n.29 Couceiro-Bueno, J. C., 295–307 Crusoe, R., 111, 120 Cumming, R. D., 24, 29 n.1 Curtius, E. R., 311 Danta, C., 30 n.19 Dante, 128 Danto, A. C., 128 Dauben, J., 14, 21 n.20 de Beauvoir, S., 129, 371, 373, 379, 393 de Gandillac, M., 70 n.1 de Gruyter, W., 30 n.32, 252 n.57, 252 n.81 de Lautrément, C., 128, 129 de Sade, M., 379 de Unamuno, M., 231, 234, 249 n.1, 250 n.7, 250 n.9, 250 n.10, 250 n.11, 250 n.13, 250 n.14, 250 n.15, 250 n.16, 250 n.17, 250 n.44, 251 n.51, 251 n.52, 251 n.53, 252 n.67 de Vries, H., 29, 30 n.33 de Waelhens, A., 58 Debray, R., 40 Delecroix, V., 30 n.37 Deleuze, G., 24, 28 Depraz, N., 116, 117, 118, 121, 122 n.1, 123 n.16, 123 n.17, 123 n.19, 123 n.21, 123 n.22, 123 n.24, 123 n.27, 124 n.31, 124 n.32, 124 n.33, 124 n.40, 174 n.3 Derrida, J., 86, 396, 399, 401, 425

Descartes, 23, 25, 26, 50, 96, 100, 232, 239, 250 n.33, 251 n.39, 266, 267, 278, 279, 313, 382, 383 Dilthey, W., 50, 234, 235, 309 Din, D., 289 Dodd, J., 75, 76, 86, 87, 87 n.4 Dorje, R. R., III., 445 Dostoyevsky, F. M., 128, 130 Dreyfus, H. L., 200 n.4 Drummond, J. J., 164, 175 n.20 Duffrenme, M., 131 Dufrenne, M., 142 n.17, 145–160 Earle, W., 42 n.8, 42 n.9 Eckhart, M., 218, 379 Ekhart, M., 431 Eliot, T. S., 129 Elliston, F., 20 n.4 Embree, L., 403 Evdokimov, P., 217 Ferrarello, S., 161–177 Findlay, J. N., 20 n.5, 29 n.10, 109 n.25 Fink, E., 20 n.5, 76, 85, 87 n.3, 124 n.32, 175 n.9 Fiodorov, N., 218 Flaubert, G., 58, 129 Fondane, B., 24, 29 n.8, 42 n.5 Foreman, C., 111 Foucault, M., 375 Fr. Bulgakov, S. N., 217 Frank, M., 321 Franke, W., 371–394 Frege, G., 21 n.10, 351, 352, 353, 355, 357 n.8 Gadamer, H.-G., 279, 280, 283, 304, 307 n.9, 311, 426, 429, 431 Galileo, 383, 404 Gehlen, A., 193, 311, 315 Genet, J., 129 Ghigi, N., 336, 343 n.62, 345 n.74 Gibson, J. J., 152 Gilson, E., 376, 379, 383, 391, 394 n.5 Goodrick-Clarke, N., 15, 21 n.22 Gruca, G., 203–214 Hadot, P., 394 n.5 Ha´nderek, J., 191–200

NAME INDEX

Hanneborg, K., 96, 100, 104, 108 n.5, 108 n.7, 109 n.24 Harries, K., 200 n.11 Hegel, G. W. F., 2, 3, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29 n.10, 50, 69, 70 n.9, 97, 130, 145, 146, 147, 148, 156, 179, 206, 218, 220, 248, 249, 252 n.86, 256, 267 n.7, 268 n.14, 283, 299, 307 n.3, 372, 382, 388, 391, 392, 418, 425 Heidegger, M., 16, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30 n.20, 30 n.28, 31, 33, 34, 35, 42 n.6, 42 n.7, 45, 46, 49, 52–53, 56, 70 n.8, 71 n.26, 71 n.28, 72 n.47, 105, 107, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143 n.27, 154, 161, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200 n.2, 200 n.4, 200 n.6, 200 n.13, 206, 208, 209, 233, 234, 237, 238, 250 n.31, 250 n.32, 251 n.39, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283, 284, 286, 290, 292 n.3, 307 n.1, 309, 319, 343 n.58, 362, 365, 376, 377, 379, 382, 383, 393, 410, 423–431 Held, K., 403, 405, 406 Helmling, S., 425 Herder, J. G., 311, 321 Hering, J., 4 Hesse, H., 197 Hilbert, D., 16, 17, 22 n.31, 22 n.32 Hill, C. O., 9–22 Hölderlin, J. C. F., 24, 25 Holestein, E., 174 n.1 Hopkins, J., 442, 449 n.21, 449 n.29 Hout, G.V., 289 Hübner, K., 321 Hudson, W., 321 n.18 Husserl, E., 3, 4, 5 n.1, 9–22, 30 n.30, 31–43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 59, 61, 62, 69–70, 71 n.15, 72 n.43, 73 n.77, 75–89, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 108 n.5, 108 n.7, 109 n.14, 109 n.15, 109 n.24, 109 n.25, 111–124, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 149, 152, 158 n.4, 161–177, 179, 208, 234, 238, 239, 265, 278, 279, 280, 295, 296, 299, 307 n.2, 309, 310, 312, 313, 315, 319, 321 n.1, 325–346, 365, 366, 377, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 406 n.1, 406 n.2, 407 n.9, 410,

453

428, 433, 438, 445, 446, 447, 449 n.31, 449 n.32, 450 n.34 Hyppolite, J., 24, 29 n.2, 382, 394 n.7 Ingarden, R., 33, 42 n.6, 81, 108 n.5, 433, 438, 440, 446, 448 n.5, 449 n.15, 449 n.30 Ionesco, E., 391 Ivanowicz, I., 132 James, W., 24, 29 n.3, 96, 97, 108 n.3, 109 n.12 Janet, P., 96 Jankelevitch, V., 71 n.10, 277, 278, 289, 290, 291, 293 n.36 Jaspers, K., 3, 24, 27, 29, 30 n.17, 30 n.20, 30 n.22, 30 n.28, 31, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42 n.9, 42 n.10, 43 n.26, 43 n.27, 43 n.29, 43 n.30, 45, 46, 51–52, 56, 61, 72 n.47, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 138, 142, 207, 218, 238, 251 n.35, 254, 319, 379 Jaspers, S., 71 n.20 Jauss, H. R., 311 Jefferson, T., 243 Job, 205, 211 Johnson, M., 183, 184, 189 n.1 Jones, H., 21 n.17 Jones-Cathcart, A., 30 n.30 Joseph, K., 132 Jung, C. G., 15, 21 n.21, 218, 220, 223, 224, 311 Kafka, F., 40, 129, 208, 211, 376, 382 Kaizo, 31, 35, 36, 38, 175 n.8 Kalinowski, I., 30 n.23 Kandinsky, W. W., 417 Kant, E., 13, 14, 17, 18, 50, 71 n.17, 121, 130, 137, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 155, 156, 157, 160 n.28, 184, 218, 220, 239, 246, 252 n.73, 253, 266 n.4, 267 n.7, 272 n.44, 278, 279, 280, 331, 340 n.19, 340 n.22, 350, 365, 415 Kaufman, W. A., 128, 143 n.22 Kelley, R. D., 429 Kern, E., 28, 30 n.29 Kern, I., 122 n.2, 124 n.32 Khomiakov, A., 218 Kierkegaard, S., 3, 23–30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42 n.1, 42 n.4, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51,

454

NAME INDEX

97, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 142, 142 n.14, 179, 194, 195, 200 n.9, 200 n.12, 205, 206, 210, 211, 212, 218, 234, 240, 248, 319, 365, 371, 372, 373, 378, 379, 380, 391, 392, 418 Kirk, G. S., 208, 214 n.6 Kline, G. L., 42 n.2 Kołakowski, L., 132, 207, 213 n.4 Kortooms, T., 326, 339 n.6, 340 n.25 Kremer-Marietti, A., 23–30 Kruglikov, V., 424 Kuhn, H., 88 n.11 Kurpiewski, W., 433–450 Kwan, T.-W., 231–252 Lacroix, J., 105, 110 n.38, 253, 259, 265, 266, 266 n.4, 268 n.13, 269 n.15, 269 n.18, 270 n.24, 272 n.39, 272 n.43, 273 n.48 Lakoff, G., 183, 184, 189 n.1 Lambert, J., 97, 349 Landgrebe, L., 174 n.2 Langland, W., 128 Laurer, Q., 158 n.4 Lawlor, L., 401, 407 n.7 Leibniz, G. W., 313, 362 Leontiev, K., 218 Leopold, I., 353, 356 n.4 Lévinas, E., 16, 21 n.28, 28, 29, 191, 200 n.1, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292 n.1, 292 n.12, 292 n.19, 292 n.28, 400 Loman, W., 132 Long, E. T., 96 Long, F., 96, 109 n.19 Lotze, H., 12, 13, 14, 21 n.11, 21 n.17, 21 n.18 Luft, S., 69, 73 n.77, 115, 121, 122 n.1, 122 n.2, 122 n.12, 123 n.17, 124 n.32, 124 n.41 Luther, M., 204, 205 Macann, C., 42 McCormick, P., 20 n.4 Mackey, L., 200 n.10 McNeill, J. J., 110 n.51 Macquarrie, J., 96, 97, 108 n.8, 108 n.9, 108 n.10, 129, 142 n.8 Malacki, V., 28

Maletta, S., 266 n.1, 266 n.2, 266 n.3 Mamardashvili, M., 423–431 Mandolini, C., 253–273 Marbach, E., 124 n.32 Marcel, G., 3, 27, 30 n.28, 45, 46, 56–57, 72 n.47, 96, 97, 107, 128, 129, 130, 132, 134, 142, 207, 238, 250 n.27, 250–251 n.33, 259, 266 n.4, 268 n.13, 371, 376, 378, 379, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 393, 394 n.11 Marías, J., 234, 244, 249, 250 n.7, 250 n.9, 250 n.10, 250 n.11, 250 n.13, 250 n.14, 250 n.15, 250 n.16, 251 n.44, 252 n.61, 252 n.67 Maritain, J., 266 n.4, 379, 383, 391, 394 n.5 Marquard, O., 321 Marx, K., 29, 179, 217, 256, 270–271 n.27, 382, 397, 426 Masters, Z., 431 Mauriac, C., 250–251 n.33 Meisner, C., 411, 412 Meisner, J., 411 Melle, U., 170, 175 n.6, 176 n.49 Merleau-Ponty, M., 16, 45, 46, 57, 58, 60, 71 n.28, 72 n.36, 72 n.37, 72 n.38, 72 n.39, 72 n.41, 72 n.43, 72 n.44, 118, 140, 142, 145–160, 161, 179, 180, 187–188, 280, 282, 309, 377, 394 n.12, 395, 396, 397, 399, 401, 402, 403, 406 n.1, 407 n.5, 407 n.6, 407 n.7 Michau, M. R., 42 n.1 Michel, E., 321 Milton, J., 128 Misch, G., 234, 235, 236, 250 n.19, 250 n.20 Mohanty, J. N., 79, 80 Mora, J. F., 238, 240, 251 n.36, 251 n.46, 251 n.47 Moran, D., 109 n.21, 109 n.29, 398, 399 Mounier, E., 3, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 53, 70 n.2, 71 n.12, 71 n.13, 71 n.18, 96, 101, 109 n.27, 214 n.11, 218, 266 n.4 Mounier, S., 57 Mounin, G., 391 Mozart, W.A., 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 356 n.4 Mróz, P., 127–143, 200 n.17 Murphy, T., 185

NAME INDEX

Nabert, J., 39, 43 n.21 Napoleon, B., 1 Neal, A., 428 Nelson, L., 17, 22 n.31, 22 n.32 Nenon, T., 42 n.11, 175 n.8, 176 n.23 Nietzsche, F., 3, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 n.17, 31, 32, 34, 35, 40, 41, 50, 71 n.16, 71 n.26, 128, 129, 130, 133, 179–189, 204, 205, 214 n.5, 218, 242, 244, 247, 252 n.57, 252 n.79, 252 n.81, 299, 307 n.5, 321, 378, 379, 380, 382, 426 Nijhoff, M., 20 n.3, 20 n.5, 42 n.3, 42 n.6, 122 n.2, 175 n.8, 175 n.10, 175 n.11, 175 n.16, 176 n.32, 176 n.34, 227 n.2, 228 n.12, 228 n.18, 229 n.26, 307 n.2, 338 n.1, 340 n.23, 340 n.26 O’Neill, J., 397 Orringer, N. R., 250 n.8 Padgett, A., 430 Panzer, U., 176 n.34 Parain-Vial, J., 56 Paryeson, L., 371 Pascal, B., 45, 46, 50, 59, 208, 234, 267 n.7, 365, 371, 379, 383–386, 394 n.10 Pawliszyn, A., 277–293 Peirce, C.S., 97 Pérez, A., 235 Pesoa, F., 129 Pessoa, F., 41 Peter, J., 133 Peters, C., 20 n.5 Pezze, B., 424 Pfänder, A., 4 Philippe, G., 127 Picasso, P., 417 Picon, G., 56 Plato, 3, 4, 11, 12, 149, 150, 158 n.8, 159 n.24, 208, 243, 286, 298, 310, 311, 312, 313, 418 Plessner, H., 246–247, 248, 252 n.74, 252 n.76, 311, 315 Plotka, W., 75–89 Poirot, H., 348 Poli, R., 20 n.4, 21 n.10 Pomian, K., 132 Popper, K., 245, 252 n.70

455

Prasangika, M., 438, 441, 442 Proust, M., 59, 72 n.37, 250 n.27 Quiles, I., 45, 46, 60, 61, 63, 66, 72 n.50, 72 n.52, 72 n.54, 72 n.56 Raven, J. E., 208, 214 n.6 Ravera, M., 394 n.13 Raynova, Y. B., 22 n.29 Reinach, A., 4 Richardson, D. B., 218, 222, 227 n.2, 228 n.12, 228 n.18, 229 n.26 Richter, G., 411, 412 Ricoeur, P., 43 n.21, 47, 71 n.16, 234, 236, 250 n.21, 250 n.22, 250 n.26, 250 n.27, 266 n.4, 280, 309, 319 Rilke, R. M., 129 Rizzacasa, A., 359–368 Rodemeyer, L., 82 Rollinger, R., 21 n.10 Rothaker, E., 314, 321 n.12 Rudd, M. T., 235, 241, 250 n.17, 250 n.18, 251 n.46, 251 n.53 Rudnick, H. H., 108 n.5Ryba, T., 101, 107, 108, 109 n.22, 109 n.26, 110 n.52 St. Augustine, 3, 32, 241, 245, 267, 325, 339 n.5, 361, 365, 378, 379 St Paul, 371, 378, 387 St. Tertullian, 206, 240, 248, 371, 378, 379 St Thomas d’Aquinas, 49, 50, 70 n.1, 371 Šajda, P., 111 Sánchez, A., 235 Santayana, G., 24 Sartre, J. -P., 3, 16, 22 n.29, 22 n.30, 27, 28, 29, 30 n.28, 30 n.29, 30 n.31, 45, 46, 49, 53–55, 57, 58, 61, 105, 106, 107, 109 n.36, 110 n.43, 110 n.49, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 142 n.4, 143 n.22, 143 n.24, 143 n.25, 143 n.29, 143 n.34, 149, 161, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 n.14, 200 n.16, 200 n.20, 206, 208, 268 n.12, 271 n.35, 309, 364, 365, 366, 371, 373, 375, 376, 377, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385, 391, 393, 394 n.6, 418, 419 Schaffi, H., 132

456

NAME INDEX

Scheler, M., 4, 107, 145, 146, 153, 154, 157, 233, 251 n.39, 311, 315 Schelling, F. W. J., 310, 321, 390, 391 Schoen, H., 14, 21 n.18 Schofield, M., 207, 214 n.6 Schrag, C. O., 343 n.58 Schuhmann, K., 20 n.1, 21 n.12, 22 n.35, 81, 124 n.36, 176 n.32 Schwartz, R., 29, 30 n.34 Scott, F. J. D., 108 n.3 Sepp, H. R., 42 n.11, 175 n.8, 176 n.23 Servan, J., 395–407 Shahid, M., 325–346 Shakespeare, W., 128, 205, 212, 234, 371 Shestov, L., 31, 32, 33, 42 n.1, 42 n.2, 42 n.4, 42 n.5, 129, 203–214 Shestow, L., 128 Shinn, R. L., 142 n.13, 142 n.18 Silesius, A., 218 Šímová, Z., 124 n.35 Sivák, J., 45–73 Socrates, 2, 45, 149, 208, 209, 281, 304, 365, 377 Soffer, G., 175 n.5 Solomon, R. C., 103, 109 n.31, 252 n.61 Soloviov, V. S., 217, 218 Somerville, J. M., 108 n.2, 109 n.28, 109 n.35 Sophocles, 128, 283, 286 Souche-Dagues, D., 42 n.6 Spengler, O., 36 Spiegelberg, H., 77, 81, 142 n.19 Spinka, M., 218, 220, 222, 227 n.3, 228 n.11, 228 n.16 Stafecka, M., 423–431 Stark, K., 217–229 Stein, E., 4, 21 n.21, 71 n.15, 338 n.4, 340 n.29, 412 Steinbock, A. J., 42 n.18, 122 n.1, 123 n.23, 123 n.24, 124 n.32, 339 n.8, 345 n.69, 395, 396, 397, 403, 404, 405, 406, 406 n.4, 407 n.8, 407 n.9 Stirner, M., 129, 130 Strindberg, A., 129 Ströker, E., 124 n.32 Sugarman, R., 21 n.28 Svendsen, L., 200 n.8 ´ ecicka, K., 449 n.25, 449 n.27, 450 n.35 Swi˛

Szestow, L., 214 n.5, 214 n.7, 214 n.8, 214 n.9, 214 n.12 Taine, P., 269 n.14 Tarasti, E., 29, 30 n.32, 30 n.35 Teboul, M., 29 n.4 Thomson, E., 124 n.31 Tillich, P., 319, 321 n.3 Tischner, J., 195 Toadvine, T., 403 Tolstoy, L., 129, 205, 218 Torjussen, L. P. S., 179–189 Tugendhat, E., 87 n.5 Tymieniecka, A.-T., 1–5, 21 n.28, 22 n.29, 30 n.30, 95, 107, 108, 108 n.5, 110 n.52, 174 n.2, 326, 339 n.7, 345 n.68 Van Gogh, V. W., 129 Vannier, G., 394 n.4 Vattimo, G., 300, 307 n.6 Verlag, J. B. W., 42 n.8, 122 n.4, 307 n.5 Vialatoux, J., 266, 270 n.24 Villela-Petit, M., 31–43 Voloshin, M., 430 von Balthasar, H. U., 416 von Margot F., 42 n.18 Vydrová, J., 111–124 Wahl, J., 23–30, 42 n.12, 43 n.28, 61, 105, 110 n.40, 205, 206, 213 n.1 Waldenfels, B., 78, 123 n.22 Walkey, J. M., 95–110 Warnock, M., 140, 142 n.6, 143 n.21, 143 n.32, 192, 193, 200 n.5, 200 n.15, 206, 213 n.2 Welton, D., 78, 83, 88 n.6, 124 n.29 Wetz, F. J., 321 n.2 William (of Ockham), 379 Wilson, J. B., 448 n.10, 449 n.16 Wodzínski, C., 212, 214 n.5, 214 n.8, 214 n.12 Wust, P., 45, 46, 55–56 Zahavi, D., 115, 118, 122 n.1, 122 n.2, 123 n.15, 123 n.18, 123 n.28, 123 n.29, 124 n.30, 124 n.38, 158 n.4, 406 n.4 Zecchi, S., 409–419 Zowisło, M., 309–321