Classic Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice 0367820749, 9780367820749

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CLASSIC WRITINGS FOR A PHENOMENOLOGY OF PRACTICE

Classic Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice features examples of newly translated classic phenomenological texts that have been largely forgotten or misunderstood. The writings are unique in that they speak to the practice of doing phenomenological  research for the purpose of gaining insights and better understandings regarding aspects of professional practice and ordinary life phenomena and events. Phenomenology does  not have to be impenetrable philosophy, dealing with tedious technical issues. Instead, phenomenology may offer relevance, value, and enduring allure to readers and researchers who are engaged with the quotidian life experiences and events of students, patients, clients, friends, and other individuals. This phenomenological approach  aims  to stay as close as possible to the ordinary events of everyday life: seeing the first smile of a child, feeling  compulsive, being humorous, having a conversation, experiencing childhood secrecy, encountering new things—topics that span a  manifold of life experiences. In this collection of classic phenomenological writings, each author is thoughtfully introduced, and each text is followed by a conversational descant: a reflection on the phenomenological reflection. The presentation of these classic writings and their reflections aims to show us what it means to do phenomenology directly on the phenomena that we live—thus asking us to be attentive to the fascinating varieties and subtleties of primal lived experiences and consciousness in all its remarkable complexities. This book is relevant for scholars and students who are interested in human science research and the origins and practices of the phenomenological method. Michael van Manen is Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry,  and Endowed Chair of Health Ethics and Director of the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has a clinical practice as a physician in neonatal-perinatal medicine with the Stollery Children’s Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Max van Manen  is Emeritus Professor in Research Methods, Pedagogy, and Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, Canada. His interests include phenomenological pedagogy, childhood’s secrets, pedagogical tact, and phenomenological human science method.

Phenomenology of Practice Series Editor: Max van Manen University of Alberta

The series Phenomenology of Practice sponsors books that are steeped in phenomenological scholarship and relevant to professional practitioners in fields such as education, nursing, medicine, pedagogy, clinical and counseling psychology. Texts in this series distinguish themselves for offering inceptual and meaningful insights into lived experiences of professional practices, or into the quotidian concerns of everyday living. Texts may reflectively explicate and focus on aspects of method and dimensions of the philosophic and human science underpinnings of phenomenological research. For further manuscript details available from the series editor: please contact Max van Manen at [email protected]/+250–294 4345

Other volumes in this series include: Visual Phenomenology Encountering the Sublime Through Images Erika Goble Pedagogical Tact Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do Max van Manen Phenomenology of the Newborn Michael van Manen For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

CLASSIC WRITINGS FOR A PHENOMENOLOGY OF PRACTICE

Michael van Manen and Max van Manen

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Michael van Manen and Max van Manen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections  77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-82074-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-01179-8 (ebk) ISBN: 978-0-367-82076-3 (pbk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

We honour the personal encouragements and assistance received from the late professors Martinus J. Langeveld, Jan H. van den Berg, and Anthony (Ton) J. Beekman.

CONTENTS

Prefaceix Acknowledgementsxi   1 Doing Phenomenology

1

  2 Jan H. van den Berg

25

  3 The Conversation: [Het Gesprek, 1953]

31

  4 Descant on “The Conversation”

47

  5 Frederik J.J. Buytendijk

53

  6 The First Smile of the Child: [De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind, 1947]

60

  7 Descant on “The First Smile of the Child”

73

  8 The Experience of Compulsiveness: [De Doorleefde Dwang, 1970]

77

  9 Descant on “The Experience of Compulsiveness”

90

10 Martinus J. Langeveld

94

viii Contents

11 The “Secret Place” in the Life of the Child: [De “Geheime Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind, 1953/1967]

102

12 Descant on “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child”

120

13 The Thing in the World of the Child: [Das Ding in der Welt des Kindes, 1956]

126

14 Descant on “The Thing in the World of the Child”

135

15 Johannes Linschoten

141

16 On Humour: [Over de Humor, 1951]

146

17 Descant on “On Humour”

179

Index186

PREFACE

Being involved in a conversation, seeing the first smile of a child, suffering obsessive compulsions—topics like these span a manifold of life experiences. As readers, we have no difficulty understanding what it means to see a child smile, to feel compelled to do something, to have a conversation. And yet, when we are asked to describe what it means to have such experiences we may wonder: How do we put words to them? Even the meanings of the most common experiences are hard to articulate. We might also wonder: Is the child really smiling? Is the infant smile just the result of a facial grimace? What really is the meaning of smiling? Where do we experience compulsions coming from? How can a thought be intrusive yet at the same time recognized to originate from our own minds? How can we obsessively want to do and not want to do something at the same time? What does it mean to have a genuine talk? How is it that some conversations seem empty or disingenuous despite all our efforts to forge a connection? Are there moments when words are superfluous in a conversation? It seems that the meanings of a child’s smile, of an obsessive compulsion, or of a conversation are actually quite mysterious, enigmatic, or seemingly hidden. Yet, explicating the meanings of such experiences are exactly the concern of phenomenology. For newcomers, the nomenclature of “phenomenology” tends to be esoteric, but the aim of phenomenology is simple and rests on two basic considerations. The first is to be attentive to the ordinary, the quotidian, the everyday. This attentiveness is not directed to something dull or commonplace; instead, it is built into the very focus of phenomenology on the manner in which we directly experience the world before cognitive acts of conceptualization, theorization, or abstraction. The second consideration is related to the first, and consists of the realization that, on closer attention, the ordinary is not so ordinary at all. The practice of phenomenological inquiry has epiphanous consequences. The

x Preface

phenomena of “the conversation,” “the compulsion,” and “the smile” that seemed rather prosaic or banal are revealed as enigmatic when we attentively turn to their depthful phenomenality. In this epiphany of wonder, we recognize that despite the significance of a phenomenon we have real difficulty explicating its meaning. We realize that there is more to the phenomenology of “the conversation,” “the compulsion,” or “the smile” than what we can say about it. Here we find the enduring allure of phenomenology: the phenomenologist is preoccupied with the meaningfulness of human existence. And phenomenology may be oriented outwards as we are concerned not only with those existential meanings that found our own existence, but also those that compose the lives of others. For professional practitioners such as teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, or other caring professionals, the meaning of life experiences of students, patients, or clients are of concern. This book features classic writings that at the time of their original publication were viewed as being of direct relevance to practitioners. They are examples of inquiry that exemplify doing phenomenology directly on the phenomena. And even though the majority of these writings date from the 1930s to 1960s, they have promising significance today. In translating these classic writings, we took some liberties with some of the original texts, sometimes by shortening them or deleting some obscure references. But we strove to keep the central themes of the original texts intact. We should also add, that as translators and editors of the classic texts in this book we are keenly interested and engaged in fairly extensive studies of the phenomenological literature. Yet, our main preoccupations and responsibilities lie in our professional fields. Michael van Manen is a clinical neonatologist, Director of the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre, and medical researcher in pediatrics, and Max van Manen retired from teaching curriculum studies, research methods, and pedagogical theories and practices. Michael van Manen has published on the phenomenology of neonatology, the technology of medical practice, patient experience, and the ethics of pediatrics and neonatology. Max van Manen has published on the epistemology of professional practice, human science research methods, the phenomenology of pedagogical tact, childhood secrecy, and various health science topics. Each of the classic texts in this book are introduced by a short portrayal of the author and each text is concluded with a reflective descant. By way of this organization of the book, we hope to offer an understanding of doing phenomenology that differs from the dominant exegetical approaches to phenomenology that tend to focus on technical issues and remain at a philosophically theoretical level. The first and opening chapter, “Doing Phenomenology,” offers a discussion of the unique features of the classic phenomenological texts in this book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We sincerely thank our friends and colleagues Catherine Adams, Wendy Austin, Malte Brinkmann, Amedeo Giorgi, Bas Levering, Wilfried Lippitz, Wouter Pols, Tone Saevi, David Seamon, Eva Simms, and others who have contributed to the translations or commented on aspects of this text. And we thank the Routledge editor in chief Hannah Shakespeare for kindly encouraging and reminding us of the ever-present deadline. We especially thank our loved ones: Miep, Luka, Jude, and Judith for putting up with our distracting discussion of “the book” when we should have paid attention to the real family conversations.

1 DOING PHENOMENOLOGY

Words constitute the ultimate texture and stuff of our moral being, since they are the most refined and delicate and detailed, as well as the most universally used and understood, of the symbolisms whereby we express ourselves into existence. We became spiritual animals when we became verbal animals . . . Both art and philosophy constantly recreate themselves by returning to the deep and obvious and ordinary things of human existence and making there a place for cool speech and wit and serious unforced reflection. Iris Murdoch (1999, pp. 241, 242)

This book offers translations of six classic writings that exemplify doing phenomenology directly on phenomena. The writings belong to a unique phenomenological movement, historically associated with the University of Utrecht. They were originally created by proponents of the fields of psychiatry ( Jan H. van den Berg, 1953, 1959, 1972), physiology (Frederik J.J. Buytendijk, 1947, 1970a, 1970b), pedagogy (Martinus J. Langeveld, 1953, 1956, 1972), and psychology ( Johannes Linschoten, 1951, 1953, 1987). The selected and professionally situated phenomena (as reflected in the titles of these essays) are explicated in a phenomenological manner. The writings are examples of what Herbert Spiegelberg later called “doing phenomenology on the phenomena” (1975). To be clear, these are not technical texts by philosophers writing about abstract, theoretical, or exegetical issues. Rather, the authors practised phenomenology in the quotidian sense of doing phenomenology on “the things.” Historically, this development came to be known as “the Utrecht School” or “the Dutch School” of phenomenology even though some of the authors were German or wrote in French or other languages. In hindsight, this Utrecht School of phenomenology may be considered

2  Doing Phenomenology

an original contribution to the international formation of a phenomenology of practice in the professions (see also Levering & van Manen, 2002). We call the phenomenological texts in this book “classic” not only because the majority date from the period of the 1930s to the 1960s, but also because they were inspired by the foundational works of leading phenomenologists such as Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, and especially the French phenomenological writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Maurice MerleauPonty, Eugène Minkowski, Georges Gusdorf, and other writings that had been published in the wake of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s foundational works. However, even today these classic writings by the Utrecht School proponents tend to be overlooked or misrepresented by those who write on the basics of phenomenology. Of course, the texts were not written to be read only by philosophers. They were meant to be of value to educators, clinicians, and other professionals concerned with the experiences of children and adults. The work of the authors of these classic writings is unique in that it speaks to the practice of doing phenomenological research for the purpose of better understanding aspects of professional practice as well as ordinary life phenomena and events. The first mention of “the Utrecht School” is probably on the back cover of Persoon en Wereld [Person and World] (1953) edited by van den Berg and Lin­ schoten. They stated, “one could say that in the fifties at Utrecht University, a phenomenological school had emerged under the leadership of F.J.J. Buytendijk.” That is likely when and where the title “the Utrecht School” of phenomenology was coined. Van den Berg and Linschoten further declared programmatically that the phenomenologist resolves to stay as close as possible to the ordinary events of everyday life (1953). Indeed, these phenomenologists were driven by a professional and a quotidian interest in ordinary life topics, even as these topics often were born in the contexts of professional practices. That is why we now may call this approach a phenomenology of practice (van Manen, 2014). The various figures who have commonly been considered to belong to the Utrecht School did not really form a close-knit group. It would be an exaggeration to refer to them as “members” of a school. What they had in common was that they were not professional philosophers but rather professional practitioners who had developed deep and personal interests in philosophical phenomenological works as well as in the broader French and German existential literature of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Proust, Herman Hesse, André Gide, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Soren Kierkegaard, and so forth. As Spiegelberg said, they were “a group of thinkers on the move” and thus constituted some sort of movement (1983, p.  295). At the time, these scholars usually did not even refer to themselves as members of the Utrecht School. And some were associated with other universities such as those found in Leiden, Amsterdam, Groningen, and Göttingen. But in hindsight, the name “the Utrecht School” became an identifier of this tradition.

Doing Phenomenology  3

In this opening chapter we show that the classic writings demonstrate a way of “doing phenomenology” on ordinary lifeworld topics arising from professional and clinical practice and ordinary life concerns. This attention to the “lifeworld” differs from technical philosophical theory in that it does phenomenology directly on the “phenomena” or on the “things” themselves. We show that and how these research studies are guided by the “phenomenological attitude” (shaped by the epoché and the reduction) to arrive at meaningful insights. And we show that this lifeworld phenomenology is rooted in concrete experience, and proceeds through “examples” that speak to so-called originary or inceptual dimensions of phenomenological knowledge and understanding.

Classic Writings in the Context of a Phenomenology of the Lifeworld Nowadays, philosophers of various cloths and human science scholars of different disciplines pursue all kinds of topics and projects as reflected in the phenomenological, philosophical, and human science literature, and many of these are published under the flag of “phenomenology.” Even though it is a simplification, it may still be helpful to distinguish some order in these publications. In introducing a collection of phenomenological texts of the Utrecht School, Joseph Kockelmans distinguished three common streams of phenomenological publications: Over the past decades many books and essays have been written on phenomenology. Some of these publications are historical in character and were designed to give the reader an idea of the origin, meaning, and function of phenomenology and its most important trends. Others are theoretical in nature and were written to give the reader an insight into the ways in which various authors conceive of phenomenology and how they attempt to justify their views in light of the philosophical assumptions underlying their conceptions. Finally, there are a great number of publications in which the authors do not talk about phenomenology, but rather try to do what was described as possible and necessary in the first two kinds of publications. (1987, p. vii) The first stream of publications is the most original, of historical relevance, and probably the most challenging. Such writings address, advance, and deepen the original idea of phenomenology. Indeed, Husserl’s and Heidegger’s works are probably among the more challenging to read and comprehend. Still, for those seriously interested in phenomenology, their writings offer fundamental insights that appear inexhaustible in their philosophical significance. Husserl’s works (1970a, 1970b, 1983) gave us the method of the reduction that must establish the phenomenological attitude; the mode of intentionality of consciousness that allows

4  Doing Phenomenology

the things of the world to give themselves as phenomena; the epoché that involves the suspension of the natural attitude in favour of the transcendental reduction, the lifeworld as the source of our lived experiences, and the means of bracketing to assist in identifying eidetic aspects of phenomena. Heidegger’s works (1962, 1977, 1982, 2001) gave us the focus on the Being of being; human ontology as Dasein; the characterization of phenomenological method as to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself; his notions of zuhanden and vorhanden; and his writings on technology whereby technology is not to be understood instrumentally but as the explication of the general comportment by which technology may shape our existential ways of being. And, of course, there are other early and subsequent phenomenological publications that offer founding phenomenological ideas, such as in the writings of JeanPaul Sartre (1956, 1991), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), Max Scheler (1970), Emmanuel Levinas (1979, 1981), and more contemporary originary works of thinkers such as Jean-Luc Nancy (1997, 2007), Jacques Derrida (1995), Michel Henry (2008, 2009) and Jean-Luc Marion (1997, 2007) (see van Manen, 2014). These works are indeed recognized as brilliant, original, and pathbreaking texts. As for the second stream that Kockelmans distinguishes, there is the broad scholarly literature that continues to address and explore technical, historical, and theoretical issues of phenomenology. These are publications that tend to take up in an exegetical, critical, and philosophical manner the arguments and positions of other philosophers and scholars of phenomenology. This literature is enormously variegated and extensive, sometimes offering interesting comparative studies and probing thought-provoking topics, and other times texts that are steeped in “language” and only of interest and readable by other philosophers. The etymology of the term “exegesis” borrows from Latin and Greek, meaning exposition, narrative, and explanation. Exegetical phenomenology tends to be meta-phenomenology. The general style of these publications is that they offer explanations of, theories about, comments on, and introductions to other published phenomenological works, topics, and concerns that tend to be technical and/or historical in a philosophical phenomenological sense. These phenomenological publications also include numerous texts from a philosophical psychological or other disciplinary perspective. Kockelmans’ third stream of phenomenological literature is neither primarily presenting new phenomenological foundations nor presenting arguments or developing theories about phenomenology and technical philosophical issues and themes. Rather, the third stream is composed of phenomenological texts, such as the Utrecht works, that actually practise or do phenomenology on concrete topics of the lifeworld. They try to do, as Kockelmans says, what was described as possible and necessary in the foundational and theoretical forms of phenomenology. They “do” what the works of the two streams of founding originators and subsequent commentators are suggesting or implying is the possible and necessary task of phenomenology. Developing phenomenological insights into human

Doing Phenomenology  5

existence may even be considered the original and primary task of phenomenology. In the contemporary phenomenological literature, these are phenomenological studies of topics that may be of interest and relevance to everyday life and to the working lives of professional practitioners. For example, in philosophy there are publications such as The Glance by Edward Casey (2007), Abuses by Alphonso Lingis (2001), The Thinking Hand by Juhani Pallasma (2009), The Erotic Phenomenon by Jean-Luc Marion (2007), The Fall of Sleep by Jean-Luc Nancy (2007), and The Five Senses of Veils, Boxes, Tables, Visit, Joy by Michel Serres (2008), and others that offer surprising and fascinating phenomenological insights into the meaning of concrete everyday human experiences and lifeworld events. Of course, in addition one might distinguish publications that seem to comprise foundational and exegetical literature. For example, a text such as Derrida’s On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy (2005), is a genre of phenomenological philosophical thinking that transposes the apparent exegetical style of interpreting Jean-Luc Nancy’s texts to a level of originality and fascination that does not only clarify but that (re)invents. This book, Classic Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice, is primarily concerned with this third stream of a phenomenological lifeworld practice. The Utrecht studies were probably among the first to focus on the practice of actually doing phenomenology on mostly ordinary phenomena of everyday and professional life, as van den Berg and Linschoten indicated. We believe that these writings are challenging and demanding, not only because of their scholarly resourcefulness, but also because of the required talents for perceptive phenomenological insights of these early leading proponents. Readers may benefit from these classic examples for their own interests and for gaining an understanding of these features of insightful inquiry for their own possible phenomenological projects. Of course, the reader may wonder how this book, Classic Writings for a Phenomenology of Practice, fits into the various streams as identified by Kockelmans. We do not see ourselves performing exegesis on technical philosophical positions and arguments. This book is about the puzzling process of aiming to let phenomenological meanings of the topics of these featured classic phenomenological texts appear into view, hopefully helping us to gain a sense of how phenomenological inquiry and research may be pursued and practised when performed directly on the phenomena and the things. We discuss and reflect on methodological ideas, such as the phenomenological attitude and example, that are crucial for phenomenological inquiry and research while doing so in a manner that shows phenomenologically how phenomenology is done (rather than abstractly theorize about phenomenological themes). We selected these essays for their variety of subject matter as well as the differing ways the authors engaged a phenomenological method. We aim to show that these authors and essays were driven by the phenomenological attitude. “Phenomenology is a method; it could be called an attitude,” said van den Berg (1972, p.  77). But in what sense could it be called a phenomenological attitude? We aim to show that this attitude consists of a certain way of seeing, thinking, and

6  Doing Phenomenology

expressing; and that it is a phenomenological attitude because it rests on the epoché and the reduction aimed at eidetic (essential) and inceptual insights into the phenomena and events of our existential lifeworld. The authors van den Berg, Buytendijk, Langeveld, and Linschoten engaged concrete and fictional experiences, pursued core meanings of a phenomenon, traced etymological origins, conversed with phenomenological insights, and so forth (see van Manen, 2014). However, we are inclined to believe that such “methods” should not be regarded as prescriptive series of steps. It is too tempting to regard technical steps as a sure promise towards productive phenomenological findings or insights. We think that the authors of these six essays did not lean on a procedural program but rather that they let themselves be guided by the phenomenological attitude. In this book, we address the methodological meaning of this attitude. We include our tentative descanting reflections on each of these essays and leave it to the reader to decide how they would otherwise interpret the implicit approaches used by the authors.

Doing Phenomenology on the “Phenomena” and the “Things” Herbert Spiegelberg, the encyclopedic scholar who wrote the authoritative international study entitled The Phenomenological Movement, A  Historical Introduction (1960), initially scarcely mentioned the early Utrecht School initiatives in his accounts of phenomenological developments. In this two-volume work, he only included the contributions of professional academic philosophers. And none of the Utrecht proponents started out as philosophers. But in his 1972 book, Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry, Spiegelberg dedicates an extensive chapter to Frederik J.J. Buytendijk. He described Buytendijk as the “central pioneer” of the Utrecht School movement (p. 281). Buytendijk was a medically trained physician with a research interest in physiology. He received university appointments in medicine, physiology, and psychology as he gained an international reputation for his academic and clinical scholarship. Buytendijk was indeed a major proponent alongside the pedagogue Langeveld, the psychiatrist van den Berg, and the psychologist Linschoten who are included in the present collection. Spiegelberg had become famous for his encyclopedic presentations of phenomenological developments around the world. But by 1975, he had apparently become dissatisfied with the way that phenomenology was progressing and practised in philosophy. Fifteen years after the first edition of his authoritative The Phenomenological Movement, Spiegelberg published Doing Phenomenology: Essays On and In Phenomenology, in which he decried “the relative sterility in phenomenological philosophy . . . especially in comparison with what happened in such countries as France and The Netherlands” (1975, p. 25). He proposed that what was needed is “a revival of the spirit of doing phenomenology directly on the phenomena, the ‘things,’ ” and he spoke nostalgically of “the spirit which permeated the first generation of phenomenologists.” Spiegelberg asked, “What

Doing Phenomenology  7

can be done to reawaken [this spirit] in a very different setting?” (p.  25). He advocated a reorientation of “doing phenomenology on the phenomena themselves” (p. xiv), and he urged “a fresh approach directly to the phenomena in opposition to mere meta-phenomenology through textual and historical studies” (pp. 24, 25). Although Spiegelberg spoke somewhat dismissively of “mere metaphenomenology through textual and historical studies,” there is, of course, no reason to discourage such meta-phenomenological studies, except to say that when phenomenology is practised primarily at a meta-level, then the concrete and existential levels of phenomenology, as presented in this volume, may become neglected and devalued. Ironically, by the time Spiegelberg pointed at these developments most of the leading figures had retired in the Netherlands, and by the mid-1970s, these phenomenological initiatives had eroded under the pressure of behavioural and empirical analytic science influences from the United Kingdom and the United States. It is quite remarkable that the philosopher Herbert Spiegelberg initially ignored phenomenological initiatives by scholars who were not professional philosophers themselves, but later deliberately turned towards scholars in professional fields (rather than to professional philosophers) in providing examples where the “spirit” of doing phenomenology was alive. Indeed, phenomenologists like Buytendijk, van den Berg, Linschoten, Langeveld, and others were guided by a phenomenological way of seeing while doing phenomenology on the phenomena. Someone can be occupied with writing scholarly papers and books about phenomenology, at a meta-level, but that is not the same as “doing phenomenology directly on phenomena themselves.” The difference is that one can “argue” philosophically about exegetical phenomenological issues and aim at developing philosophical systems, while being purblind to phenomenological “seeing” and failing to demonstrate a phenomenological attitude that is able to explicate sensitively and insightfully the originary meanings of selected lifeworld phenomena. Significantly, in the opening pages to his “Phenomenology as a Rigorous Science,” Husserl makes clear that he is not interested in building some “ ‘system’ for which we yearn, which is supposed to gleam as an ideal before us in the lowlands where we are doing our investigative work” (1965, p. 75, 1980, p. 47). It is indeed unfortunate that not more contemporary philosophers seek to pursue their phenomenological interests in the lower (concrete) regions of investigative work that, according to Husserl, should aim to make our lives more livable (see van Manen, 2019). In this book we like to be attentive to Spiegelberg’s phrase “doing phenomenology on the phenomena themselves” (1975) to describe the third stream of phenomenological writings that Kockelmans had identified in 1987. When Spiegelberg recommends doing phenomenology directly on the phenomena, he means not just any phenomena, but “phenomena” and “things” as they give themselves while seen under the spell of a phenomenological attitude. This is what it means to do phenomenology directly on the things, on concrete lived

8  Doing Phenomenology

human experiences that are now approached with a sense of wonder regarding their phenomenality. We wonder, what really is the phenomenological meaning of “having a conversation,” “feeling compelled to do something,” “encountering humour,” “experiencing a secret place”? To approach any such topic as a phenomenon is part of the original intent of doing phenomenology. The uniqueness of the writings of the Utrecht phenomenologists from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, is that these protagonists had a dual interest: their (clinical) professional practice and their enthusiasm for phenomenology. They found in the leading phenomenologists of their time a source for deepened understandings and epiphanic insights of the meaning dimensions of their practices. Various proponents such as van den Berg, Buytendijk, and Langeveld had visited and maintained correspondences with Husserl, Heidegger, Binswanger, Scheler, Sartre, Minkowski, and Merleau-Ponty, and were closely familiar with their phenomenological developments. Seeing something phenomenologically means seeing it as a “phenomenon,” as something that appears or gives itself (in our awareness or consciousness). According to Husserl (1983), phenomenology treats everything that “appears” as a phenomenon—in its manner of givenness. We have to focus not on words, views, or opinions but on the self-showing appearance, the self-givenness of the concrete phenomenon. Put differently, we have to focus on “the whatness” and “the how” of intentional consciousness or the structures of lived experience through which phenomena are identified, encountered, or found. And yet, the vocabulary of philosophical phenomenology easily becomes a morass of abstract concepts, even to the serious reader of the interpreters of Husserl, Heidegger, Stein, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Levinas. We have “to go from words and opinions back to the things themselves, to consult them in their self-givenness,” says Husserl (1983, p.  35). Here we propose that decisive for understanding phenomenology as practised by the Utrecht proponents is to gain a grasp of the sense of attitude, attunement, way of seeing, or disposition that characterizes the methodical practice of doing phenomenology.

Being Guided by the Phenomenological Attitude We suggest that a main characteristic of the classic writings included in this text is that they were guided by the phenomenological attitude in order to gain insights into the originary meanings of a phenomenon. And yet, a feature of the works of the Utrecht phenomenologists appears to be that they rarely engaged in arguing or articulating the philosophical technicalities of phenomenology for their inquiry. This absence of theorizing about methodological issues was likely a function of the fact that these proponents were all professional practitioners, often with significant clinical responsibilities. While it is evident that most of these proponents had read the philosophical phenomenological literature, apparently, they just were not that interested in philosophizing about the conditions of doing

Doing Phenomenology  9

phenomenology. However, their disinterest for theorizing was also a consequence of their view of the nature of phenomenology: “the phenomenologist is obsessed by the concrete . . . he distrusts theoretical and objective observations,” said van den Berg, in his A Different Existence (1972, p. 76). One might ask, how were these individuals able to practise phenomenology in their respective fields of psychology, medicine, pedagogy, law, and psychiatry when they generally opted not to engage in exegetical studies of the foundational philosophical discourses of Husserl and Heidegger that established phenomenology? First, the answer is that they were actually engaged with the leading philosophical-phenomenological literature, and second, the answer probably has to do with a topic that is rarely articulated in the methodological literature: the phenomenological attitude. Through their familiarity with the works of Husserl, Stein, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, the Utrecht phenomenologists internalized the phenomenological attitude while largely ignoring the technical philosophical discourses that preoccupied the increasing number of academic philosophers who were engaged in the exegesis and arguments about phenomenological themes, issues, systems, and theories of their time. How can the internalization of the phenomenological attitude be described? We have to begin with the “natural attitude” that we carry most of the time. Dermot Moran (2013) pointed out that the natural or naturalistic attitude is so taken-for-granted that the bearers of this attitude do not know that they have it. In contrast, phenomenologists must understand the nature of this natural attitude, and must understand the critical and methodological importance of transforming the natural attitude into the phenomenological and existential attitude that enables phenomenological seeing and intuition. The significance of the phenomenological attitude is evident already in the explications of phenomenology by Heidegger (1962), Merleau-Ponty (1962), Henry (2008), and others. Heidegger stated that Husserl’s teaching took the form of practicing phenomenological “seeing” (Heidegger, 1972, p.  78). MerleauPonty described phenomenology as a “manner or style of thinking” (1962, p. viii). And Henry put that the “transcendental possibility of experience is the original phenomenalizing of the phenomenality of the phenomenon” (2008, p. 104), which is opening the path to the meaning of a phenomenon. None of these methodological characterizations refer to the application of a technical or scientific set of procedural steps. The practice of phenomenological “seeing” is an internalized, perception-based, and creative serendipitous act. And, the methods of the epoché and the reduction are involved, in a broad sense, as the distinguishing critical feature and essence of the phenomenological attitude. While Husserl characterized the practice of the epoché and the reduction in many different ways (transcendental, phenomenological, sceptical, vocational, psychological), a key feature of the transcendental epoché is that is makes possible the transcendental reduction and a transformation of the natural attitude (1970b, pp. 148–158). It is hard to fully realize and recognize the depth, pervasiveness,

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and taken-for-grantedness of the objectivism, naturalism, positivism, and shallow distractionism that shapes our way of looking at ourselves and the world around us and how this has affected the ecology of the planet and human civilizations. Even expressing our naturalistic predicament like this betrays a blindness to the fact that we always already immediately see the things around us as objects and objective forces. Etymologically, the term “attitude” refers to the disposedness, disposition, posture, and fittedness of the comportment of a certain way of seeing, feeling, and acting according to the online Oxford English Dictionary. An attitude regarding an object of thought can be deliberately or even unwittingly adopted. And an attitude can also be purposefully altered or disposed. This is a key idea for Husserl’s phenomenology since it is the taken-for-grantedness of the natural attitude that prevents us seeing the so-called hidden meanings of phenomena. He defines an “attitude” (Einstellung) as: a habitually fixed style of willing life comprising directions of the will or interests that are prescribed by this style, comprising the ultimate ends, the cultural accomplishments whose total style is thereby determined . . . Humanity always lives under some attitude or other. (Husserl, 1970b, p. 280) Husserl speaks about “the natural primordial attitude, of the attitude of original natural life” (p. 281) as the attitude of the culture and the historical age in which we are born and that forms the default natural orientation to life that characterizes our being-in-the-world. Still, while the idea of the phenomenological attitude is helpful, we ought to be somewhat reserved about Husserl’s acceptance of the idea of the “natural attitude.” Ironically, the general popularity of attitude as a psychological entity seems itself to be born from the natural attitude that tends to conceive of dispositional mental phenomena as objectifying entities that can be measured, manipulated, and reduced to operations of consciousness and unconsciousness. The extensive literature about attitude as a psychological construct— in terms of attitude change, attitude functions, ego-defensiveness, etc.—attests to the naturalistic assumptions of this very idea of naturalistic attitude. To reiterate, the authors of the classic texts of this book were less interested in involving themselves with methodological technicalities and abstract theories that still busy many exegetical philosophers today. However, that does not mean that these authors could not speak to the foundational methodological literature of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and so forth. For example, Langeveld published in 1972, Capita from the General Methodology of Pedagogical Science, in which he addressed the issue of method in his phenomenological work. He suggested that one can debate Husserl about philosophical issues, and he criticized the assumptions that were introduced by Husserl’s elaborations of transcendental subjectivity (1970b). Husserl had proposed how the knowing self

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must experimentally annul the existence of the world, meaning annul the self as concrete subject of this knowledge of the world, by experimentally pretending that there is no world and no knowing subject. In Langeveld’s view, this sense of transcendental subjectivity abrogates the empirical “I” and the lived “world” relative to objective knowing. Langeveld asked rhetorically what the point would be of a phenomenological philosophy that only yields forms of knowing and understanding that are so detached from everyday human experience that they fail to serve the existential lives of (professional) practitioners or any other human beings? What good are transcendental truths and “pure” ideas that can neither be related to the concrete world nor to the lives of those who live in this world? Langeveld suggested that refusing to follow Husserl into this philosophy of transcendental subjectivity did not mean that one must give up on the phenomenological method of inquiry. He pointed out that in Husserl’s writings, the term “phenomenology” occurs in two meaning contexts: “to signify a method and to signify a philosophy.” Langeveld chose to use the term primarily to refer to the method and remain impartial to Husserl’s development of a phenomenological philosophy (Langeveld, 1972, p. 105). Thus, Langeveld and his colleagues seldomly addressed epistemological philosophical issues arising from the texts by Husserl and his followers. Yet, they shared an understanding of the philosophical method that lies at the core of phenomenology, and this understanding was realized through the sensibility of what may be called the “phenomenological attitude or disposition.”

The Phenomenological Example Animates the Epoché and the Reduction The authors of the classic writings in this text adopted the phenomenological attitude as a tacit application or transformation of the epoché and the reduction in a broad sense. While many contemporary phenomenologists no longer mention the Husserlian terminology of the epoché and the reduction, they nevertheless seem to adopt through a process of mimesis, the methods of the epoché and the reduction when practicing phenomenology on concrete phenomena. Of course, it is entirely possible that some philosophers theoretically understand the necessity of adopting a phenomenological way of seeing and yet fail to do so since they are too preoccupied arguing about technicalities. It is hard, for them, to let go of the exegetical attitude. In other words, a philosopher may be able to expertly traverse and interpret the numerous thematic topics and inconsistencies in Husserl’s and Husserlian texts and yet strangely lack the talent or ability to adopt the phenomenological attitude required to actually write an insightful phenomenological study on some concrete phenomenon or event of the lifeworld. In Husserl’s texts, we seldom meet extended concrete examples of the practice of the phenomenological attitude. Dermot Moran said that, although Husserl’s project was ostensibly “descriptive phenomenology,” ironically Husserl’s writings are often abstract, focusing on technicalities, and notoriously “lacking in concrete

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examples” (2000, p. 63). In an interview, van den Berg also remarked that Husserl remained too tied to his desk and hardly moved outside the philosophical world (Kruger, 1985, p. xvi). It is well-known that even Husserl’s home was an extension of his university office when he invited students for philosophical seminars. Indeed, it might be interesting to speculate how Husserl’s followers might have been inspired and how the development of phenomenology might have unfolded in a richer fashion if Husserl himself had indulged some of the time to focus on concrete and down-to-earth lifeworld phenomena in his pursuit of a pure phenomenology. Still, van den Berg and Langeveld admired Husserl’s genius and his dedication. There is an anecdote that tells that Husserl as a young boy wanted to sharpen his knife and he kept doing it so insistently that he finally had nothing left (de Boer, 1980, pp. 10, 11). Interestingly, this story also typifies the way that the Utrecht proponents actually respected Husserl’s perfectionism and recognized his need for continuously rewriting of his manuscripts. Still, in spite of this admiration, they did not think it was necessary for them to follow Husserl into all those minute explorations of the foundational technicalities that Husserl obstinately kept pursuing. And, we too hope that more philosophically based authors may recognize the value and join the effort to do more phenomenology on the concrete phenomena of our professional and everyday lives. As an example of the phenomenological attitude, let us consider a passage from van den Berg’s book A Different Existence (1972) where he tells about an evening spent waiting for a friend to come over for a visit. He mentions a bottle of wine that he had already put on the table. It is a green bottle of red Médoc wine, and he is looking forward to a pleasant social get-together. But then his friend phones and cancels the visit. There is a snowstorm outside and it would be too difficult to make the trip. Van den Berg returns to reading his book, and then looks up and sees the bottle of wine on the table. He asks, what do I see? I see the bottle of wine and I realize that my friend will not come. What happens at this moment? Or, more precisely: what do I see when I observe the bottle of wine? The question seems trivial and the answer is accordingly simple. I see a green bottle with a white label, on which is printed a mark. At closer examination I can read the printed words. It is a bottle of Médoc. The bottle is corked and sealed with a lead capsule. I could go on this way and sum up all the details of the bottle. But it becomes obvious to me that, writing down these facts, I don’t get any nearer that which I was observing when looking up, I saw the bottle. What I was seeing then was not a green bottle, with a white label, with a lead capsule, and things like that. What I was really seeing was something like the disappointment about the fact that my friend would not come or about the loneliness of the evening. (van den Berg, 1972, p. 34)

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The point van den Berg is making seems certainly simple, but it is also a nice example of the epoché and the reduction: on the table stands the object, the bottle of wine. But rather than seeing the object, the bottle, van den Berg frees himself from such an objectifying perception and realizes that he really sees his disappointment. He is overcome with a mood of disappointment. But, only in asking the question, what he sees when looking at the bottle does van den Berg become reflectively aware of his disappointed self. Van den Berg has tacitly adopted the phenomenological attitude: the look, the act of “perception.” He further realizes that it is in that immediate sense of looking that we see ourselves in the things of the world. Therefore, van den Berg can say: the phenomenologist should not direct his glance “inwardly” but “outwardly,” expressed paradoxically, “we are seeing ourselves when we observe the world” (p. 130). This paradox seems like a simple phenomenological insight but it could not have been “seen” without suspending the “natural” inclination of simply seeing the object or thing (the glass wine bottle) as object. The epoché may be understood, in part, as this act of suspending the tendency of objectifying our world. And, the reduction can be understood as the discerning and lifting up of a phenomenon from unreflective or lived experience to arrive at an in-sight. When van den Berg looks at the bottle, he sees his disappointment and he sees also more than his disappointment. He “sees” or has an in-sight: that we see ourselves in the things of our world. This aspect of the reduction shows the thematic significance of the idea that the reduction involves “phenomenological seeing,” as stated by Heidegger. It also shows that a phenomenological insight is a form of in-seeing: seeing the inceptual meaning or essence of a phenomenon. The reduction is the philosophical “device” that inheres in the phenomenological attitude. It helps us to “see” something (grasp serendipitously perhaps) that we would not see if we are still in the everyday normal natural attitude. But by questioning of what we “see” when we look at the wine bottle the question turns more ambiguous and phenomenologically complicated as we sense the intentional paradoxality of the how and the what of object-perception and self-perception that the engagement of the epoché and the reduction reveals. Husserl laid the foundation for the development of phenomenology and for distinguishing phenomenology from psychology (Husserl, 1968). Psychology can be considered as an empirical social science or human science discipline. In comparison, phenomenology is regarded as an independent and autonomous human science method that can be engaged (coupled) with any academic or professional discipline such that there is phenomenological psychology, and also phenomenological sociology, phenomenological pedagogy, phenomenological health science, and, of course, even a phenomenological philosophy. Clearly, some of the authors associated with the classic phenomenological studies in the Utrecht tradition were psychologists, and others were medical specialists, lawyers, educators, and so on. Thus, the work of these professional practitioners-as-phenomenologists cannot narrowly be referred to as Phenomenological Psychology, as Joseph Kockelmans

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entitled his edited collection, subtitled, The Dutch School. In the present book, Classic Writings, we regard phenomenology as an independent discipline that is rooted in philosophy and in the humanities, and that is distinguished as a method characterized by a certain phenomenological mode of seeing, an essential style of thinking, and a phenomenalizing of the meanings of phenomena. We hope that the examples of classic writings in the following chapters are helpful to show and clarify the practice of doing phenomenology on the phenomena themselves. The reader will see that and how the authors of these relatively brief studies actually “practise” the epoché and the reduction in a broad sense. We also show that the engagement of the epoché and the reduction cannot be reduced to procedural or technical steps, but rather that they should be understood as something more perspectival, like adopting a phenomenological attitude or engaging a phenomenological disposition and way of seeing. We keep emphasizing these points since they have critical methodical relevance for doing phenomenological research and inquiry.

Approaching Phenomenology as the “Science of Examples” Buytendijk once referred to phenomenology as the “science of examples” (van Manen, 2014, p. 257). Whether taking the form of vignettes, anecdotes, or narratives, “examples” may be understood as rhetorical and aesthetic devices for evoking phenomenological understandings or phenomenological knowledge that cannot necessarily be expressed, explained, or explicated in a straightforward descriptive or prosaic manner. The use of “phenomenological examples” is a clear feature in the classic writings contained in this book. But “examples” in this methodical sense are also found in the wider phenomenological philosophical literature: the example of “boredom” while waiting for the train in the study of metaphysics in Martin Heidegger (1995, p.  93); the example of the myth of “the Gaze of Orpheus” in the study of writing in Maurice Blanchot (1981, pp. 99–104); the example of the voyeur looking through the keyhole of the door in “the look” in Jean-Paul Sartre (1956, pp, 259, 260); “Homer’s Odysseus” as an example of The Homecomer in Alfred Schutz (1971, pp. 106–119); the example of “Morpheus” in The Fall of Sleep in Jean-Luc Nancy (2007, pp. 8, 9); and so forth. Although Husserl rarely used concrete examples to analyze and explicate the meaning of a concrete phenomenon or event, a well-known reference to the role of examples in phenomenological explication occurs when Husserl describes the cogito as act. He says, Let us start with an example. In front of me, in the dim light, lies this white paper. I see it, touch it. This perceptual seeing and touching of the paper as the full concrete experience of the paper that lies here as given in truth

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precisely with these qualities, precisely with this relative lack of clearness, with this imperfect definition, appearing to me from this particular angle— is a cogitatio, a conscious experience. (Husserl, 2014, p. 65) Husserl sets himself the task of describing the phenomenon of conscious experience (Erlebnis), meaning “lived experience.” According to Husserl, the cogitatio, the stream-of-consciousness lived experience, in the fullness of its unity, can be seen to give access to the essence of every lived experience. The Eidos, the pure essence, can be exemplified intuitively in the data of experience, data of perception, memory, and so forth, but just as readily also in the mere data of fancy (Phantasie). Hence with the aim of grasping an essence itself in its primordial form, we can set out from corresponding empirical intuitions, but we can also set out just as well from non-empirical intuitions, intuitions that do not apprehend sensory existence, intuitions rather of a merely imaginative order. (Husserl, 2014, p. 14) The phenomenological philosopher Edward Casey (2000, 2007) has written several insightful and eloquent phenomenological studies on topics such as places and landscapes, the glance, imagining, remembering, and map-paintings. Casey asserts that phenomenological method as conceived by Husserl takes its beginning from carefully selected examples (2000, p. 23). Note earlier that W.R. Boyce Gibson’s translation of Husserl’s Ideas reads as: The Eidos, the pure essence, can be exemplified intuitively in the data of experience. (Husserl, 2014, p. 14) Casey, however, translates this passage as follows: The eidos or pure essence, can be exhibited by example. (Casey, 2000, p. 23) With this slight but pronounced modification, Casey lets Husserl make his point even more clearly and emphatically than Husserl probably meant himself. But the point for us is that phenomenology may indeed be seen to proceed through examples. For Casey, the “example” is not only the method to carefully select his studies. He also uses the notion of “example” as a methodological device. In his study Imagining, Casey (2000) takes his own experiences as a source for constructing narrative examples to investigate the meaning of a selected phenomenon

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(imagining). And he affirms that it is not only fictional texts that can function as examples, but also observed and fictive objects, events, and actions. Phenomenological method takes objects, events, or acts—whether real or imagined—as exemplifying an essence or essential structure. In this way their basic constitution is made perspicuous, and examples become the specific vehicles or privileged media of eidetic insights. (Casey, 2000, p. 24) Casey wants to make the strong case that examples, that exhibit an essence or essential structure with a maximum of evidential lucidity, can achieve eidetic insights. Even carefully selected factual or empirical material may serve as phenomenological examples, but only after they have been fictionalized through the application or performance of the reduction (Husserl, 1983, p. 160). It is important to keep in mind that phenomenology does not deal with facts. Accordingly, we may need to allow that some examples only partially serve the purpose of the phenomenological reduction since while they present evidentially perspicacious examples, they may remain linguistically ambiguous or enigmatic. For the Utrecht phenomenologists the methodological power of the “example” also serves an analytic purpose. The “example” does not express what one knows through argument or conceptual explication, but, in a vocative manner, an “example” lets one experience what one does not know. There is an indirectness in the turn to the narrative meaningfulness of phenomenological examples (see also van Manen, 2014, p. 257). The example can make the singular experienceable and thus knowable as an indite method of phenomenological writing. While the methods of the epoché and the reduction are engaged in an attempt to gain insights into the originary meaning of a phenomenon, it is the indite methods, the vocative aspects of writing, that assist in bringing phenomenological insights to textual understanding. The online Oxford English Dictionary defines the term “indite” in this way: “to put into words, compose (a poem, tale, speech, etc.); to give a literary or rhetorical form to (words, an address); to express or describe in a literary composition.” So, we use indite here to focus on the semiotic or writing practices that present the linguistic, methodological dimension to phenomenological thinking, inquiring, and writing. An “example” often takes shape as a story (as in existential literary fiction), and thus orients to the singular. Indeed, any literary story or novel is always some unique narrative that brings out the particularity or singularity of a certain phenomenon, event, or life. In the exegetical phenomenological literature, little attention appears to be paid to the methodological significance of the “example” in phenomenological essays. But, some of the leading phenomenologists commonly speak of, and reach for, an “example” when examining a phenomenon or event for its phenomenal features. Unfortunately, most of Husserl’s “examples” are seemingly overly

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simplistic, such as a reference to seeing a blossoming apple tree, in his explication of the noema and intentionality (1983, pp. 214, 215). But Husserl’s most famous and extended “example” is probably contained in his study of the phenomenology of internal time consciousness (1964). In his description of our inner consciousness of time, Husserl uses the example of hearing a familiar melody. In hearing a well-known musical melody, the present notes of the melody and the notes just past are retained in retention while the notes about to be heard are already anticipated as protention. Thus, Husserl explicates and shows the streaming structure of ongoing retentions and protentions as primal impressional consciousness in the exemplary experience of hearing a familiar melody. Similarly, when Heidegger (2001) reflects on the meaning of the “thing,” he uses the example of a jug. When Henry (2009) presents the aesthetic revelation of the invisible essence of “life,” he uses the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky as an example. When Sartre (1956, p. 9) discusses the experience of “negation and nothingness,” he says that he needs an example, and he describes having an appointment with Pierre in the café where they are supposed to meet at 4 o’clock. But as he arrives at the café and looks around, Sartre discovers, “He is not here.” Next, Sartre explores how it is that we “see” this absence that is a nothing (a not-being-there) and yet not a nothing (the absence of not being there) (1956, p. 10). Interestingly, all of these aforementioned examples have acquired iconic fame in the phenomenological literature. They have become classic or well-known phenomenological anecdotes, vignettes, narratives, or images, and it matters not whether they are fictional, imagined, or real, in an empirical or biographic sense. In contrast, in the traditional and qualitative social sciences, examples are usually employed as concrete or illustrative “cases-in-point” to clarify an abstract idea or theory. This commonly used form of example-as-case-in-point is meant to make theoretical knowledge more accessible, concrete, or intelligible, even though the example itself may not contribute to the knowledge. Indeed, examples are often used as informative illustrations. But, an example-as-illustration can be left out of the text without compromising the text. So, it is important to realize that “phenomenological examples” differ radically from such explanatory, clarifying, or illustrative uses of examples. The phenomenological notion of “example” is methodologically a unique semiotic figure for phenomenological inquiry. Examples in phenomenological texts have evidential significance because the example is the example of something experientially knowable or understandable that is not directly expressible—it is a universal singularity. If a singularity were to be expressed in ordinary prose, it would immediately vanish. Why? Because language cannot really express a singularity by naming or describing it. A singularity cannot be grasped directly through words because words are already generalized bits of language. Language universalizes. However, and this is paradoxical, the “phenomenological example” as story can provide access to the phenomenon

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in its universal singularity. It makes the “singular” knowable and understandable. Every fictional story or novel has at its core a singularity: a unique theme or signification. Each of the authors of the classic writings featured in this book employ such examples in their phenomenological texts. Van den Berg recounts the story of two cousins looking at a painting to explore the meaning of conversation, Buytendijk describes the threat of being tickled to elucidate the character of the stimulation of the smile, Langeveld tells of the gift of a feather to explore the meaning of things in the life of children, and Linschoten shows humour that gives itself without laughter in the story of the Tao student and his master. The etymology of the Greek word for model is to “show something in something and thus make it present” in an interpretive methodical sense. Günther Figal makes special use of the term “model” as an equivalent term for “example.” He says, “a model is a definitive example” (Figal, 2010, p. 29). To reflect in a hermeneutic phenomenological manner on the meaning of something is to examine it as an originary model. The model is like an incept (as opposed to a concept). It points toward the originary meaning of something. Some models are more appropriate or better suited to get at the originary meaning of something. And so, models (as examples) must be well-chosen because the essence of the matter has to be in the model. In the words of Figal, “models are supposed to be distinguished by their pregnancy; they must prove themselves as such by really letting something be shown in them” (2010, p. 30). Similarly, Giorgio Agamben uses the term “example” interchangeably with paradigm: “example” means para-deigma. Agamben says, “paradigm means simply ‘example’ . . . a single phenomenon, a singularity” (2002). A singularity is, by definition, single and unique—it does not share properties in common with anything else. In other words, a singularity has no specifiable identity (idem); it has no recognizable sameness except that it is self-same. A singularity is only identical to itself (ipseity). Interestingly, Agamben points out that a true example is neither particular nor universal (1995, p. 6). To reiterate, it would be wrong to assume that the “example” in phenomenological inquiry is used as an illustration in an argument, or as a particular instance of a general idea, or as an empirical datum from which to develop a conceptual or theoretical understanding. Rather, the phenomenological example is a philological device that holds in a certain tension the intelligibility of the singular. How can the example do this? It can do this because the example mediates our intuitive (self-evidential) grasp of a singularity, which is exactly the project of phenomenology. Again, we need to sense the paradoxicality of this explication of a critical methodological aspect of phenomenological inquiry, thinking, and writing. The singularity of the singular may show itself by way of the example. “The example lets the singular be seen,” says Agamben (1995, p. 10). But one could perhaps equally say that the phenomenological example actually reconciles the incommensurable couplet of the particular and the universal. In other words, singularity emerges in the deconstructive fusion of the particular with the universal.

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In this sense, the phenomenological example expresses the singular as universal. So, the example is somewhat of an enigma and contradiction. This idea may be seen as a phenomenological variation on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s notion that a lived experience originates as particularity but becomes recognizable as universal. A distinguishing feature of the classic writings by the Utrecht School related phenomenological studies is that they engaged with examples in their phenomenological explications. We showed previously how van den Berg used an anecdote for showing the meaning of phenomenological seeing with the example of the bottle of wine. Spiegelberg speaks of these anecdotes as “colorful vignettes that are characteristic of Dutch phenomenology” (1972, p. 87). In a paper called, “The Phenomenology of the Look,” Spiegelberg (1989) himself employs some colourful vignette-style expressions to provide concrete contexts for his explication of various kinds of eye contact in his phenomenological text. But he makes no effort to discuss the methodological significance of these “exemplary” vignettes. Joseph Kockelmans, too, observes how the phenomenologists of the Utrecht School frequently make use of poetry and literature. He sees three reasons: First, many “great poets and novelists have seen something very important and have spoken of it in a remarkably adequate way” that is useful for phenomenological explication. Second, phenomenologists may use literary sources “to illustrate a point on which the phenomenologists wishes to focus attention.” And third, most important, “poetic language . . . is able to refer beyond the realm of what can be said ‘clearly and distinctly’ ” (Kockelmans, 1987, pp. viii, ix). Experiential descriptions, in the form of colourful vignettes, should not be taken as mere embellishing or illustrative examples of points made in a text. We must avoid confusing phenomenological examples as if they are mere didactical explanations. Rather, these narrative stories should be approached as fictional vignettes or narrative anecdotes or aesthetic and poetic objects. Wilfried Lippitz (2019), who was a German representative of the phenomenological pedagogy of Langeveld, referred to “exemplary description” as a method for pedagogical understanding (1972). Phenomenology reflects on “examples” in order to discover what is originary, singular, or essential about a phenomenon or event. The example is the presencing of something experientially knowable or understandable that is not easily directly expressible—a singularity or an essence. In other words, the “phenomenological example” as fictionalized story provides access to the eidetic meaning of the phenomenon in its singularity. It makes the essence as the “singular” knowable and understandable. To reiterate, we have pointed out that the example is indeed a way that phenomenology may proceed. Buytendijk, Spiegelberg, Kockelmans, Casey, Figal, and Agamben have made clear, in different ways, that the example is a powerful methodological device to reveal eidetic and intentional phenomenological meaning. What makes the classic writings by the Utrecht proponents classic is that they perfected the use of concrete “examples” in order to evoke understandings

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inherent in concrete but phenomenologically universal narrative descriptions, gained from or modelled on fictional, poetic, mythological, and aesthetic sources.

Putting Phenomenology Back Into Phenomenology Our aim in translating and discussing these phenomenological texts is to demonstrate the development and existence of an early and unique approach to doing phenomenology. In this opening chapter to the essays, we have highlighted that the phenomenological attitude and the use of the example are two key methodological features for doing phenomenology on phenomena as exemplified by these classic writings. As the Husserl specialist Joseph Kockelmans indicated, these collected phenomenological studies are a type of phenomenological inquiries that was intended by the founding scholars like Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and other original phenomenological thinkers. We hope that the readers of these essays will feel engaged and enriched by them. Each of the classic writings in this book is a study that explores and explicates the eidetic meaning of a singular human phenomenon. This explication gives us sensitive insights into the meanings of these phenomena: having a conversation, meeting the first smile, feeling compulsive, experiencing a secret place, the meaning of a thing for a child, and experiencing humour. The phenomenological studies in this book differ from other more theoretical and exegetical publications in the literature of phenomenology. So, when newcomers to these classic writings inquisitively turn to the multitude of other philosophic phenomenological essays in the professional literature, they may be puzzled that so often the more exegetical and critical writings (however scholarly they may be judged) evidently lack an interest in focusing on the concrete phenomena of the lifeworld themselves. We are indeed struck by the uncanny observations made by Herbert Spiegelberg who, in his later years, found that so much philosophical scholarship of phenomenology lack the vitality of what phenomenology could be. So, our aim is to try to put phenomenology back into phenomenology, by showing how this had been practised by the Utrecht proponents and how it may inspire our present-day and future phenomenological research projects. To reiterate, we propose that the classic writings presented in the following chapters, demonstrate a way of doing a phenomenology of practice on ordinary lifeworld topics. This attention to the lifeworld means doing phenomenology directly on the “phenomena” or on the “things” themselves. We also propose that these research studies are guided by a phenomenological attitude aimed to arrive at meaningful insights, sensitive to concrete experience, and proceeding through phenomenological examples. One might ask whether it is necessary to be a philosopher to do phenomenology. There are some advantages to not being a philosopher. Professional and academic practitioners may be less inclined to get stuck in irrelevant and obscure

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21

philosophical arguments because they are mostly deeply and actively interested in phenomenological issues and questions that have actual relevance to their professional fields. And yet there is value in studying and reading philosophical texts; especially by the originary phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Edith Stein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice MerleauPonty, Helmuth Plessner, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Alphonso Lingis, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Michel Serres, Michel Henry, Bernard Stiegler, Jean-Luc Marion, and other such original minds (see van Manen, 2014). As well, existential, literary, and artistic works are worth reading and studying, since they may function as examples and offer fascinating insights into the enigma of human existence, consciousness, ethics, technology, and inner experience. For Max van Manen (1990, 2014, 2015) these interests were sparked in his student years in the Netherlands (in the early 1960s) when initiated into the writings of Martinus J. Langeveld, Jan H. van den Berg, Frederik J.J. Buytendijk, Johannes Linschoten, Stephan Strasser, Nicolas Beets, David van Lennep, and other likeminded scholars of a phenomenology of everyday life practice (see also Levering & van Manen, 2002). So for him, doing this book with his son Michael van Manen feels like completing a celebrable circle. See Michael van Manen’s work on the phenomenology of neonatology and ethics (2019, 2021). Each of the translated classic texts is preceded by a brief (but obviously incomplete) sketch of the author and its situatedness in the Utrecht phenomenology movement. And each text is followed by a conversational descant: a reflection on the phenomenological reflection. A descant is a discourse on a theme, or a song played above a basic melody, somewhat like a method on a method that aims at revealing (playing on) the structure of the basic theme or melody without disturbing it, but possibly enhancing or enriching it. The original texts were written more than half a century ago, yet we suggest that they are especially relevant now and that they may contribute to future projects of phenomenological inquiry. They have exemplary value for the engagement of phenomenology by researchers and practitioners in the clinical and academic human science professions, for these classic writings show what it means to be guided by a phenomenological attitude and to do phenomenology on the phenomena themselves.

Notes Years in square brackets are the original publication dates.

References Agamben, G. (1995). Idea of Prose. Albany: SUNY Press. Agamben, G. (2002). What Is a Paradigm? Lecture at European Graduate School. Available from: www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/what-is-a-paradigm/. Blanchot, M. (1981). The Gaze of Orpheus. New York: Station Hill Press.

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Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1947 [1961]). De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind [The First Smile of the Child]. Inaugural, Nijmegen University Speech. In: F.J.J. Buytendijk (ed.). Academische Redevoeringen [Academic Lectures]. Utrecht: Dekker & Van de Vegt. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1970a). Some Aspects of Touch. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 1 (1), pp. 99–124. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1970b). Naar een Existentiële Verklaring van de Doorleefde Dwang [Toward an Existential Explication of Lived Compulsion]. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 32 (4), pp. 567–608. Casey, E.S. (2000). Imagining: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Casey, E.S. (2007). The Glance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. de Boer, T. (1980). Inleiding [Introduction]. In: T. de Boer (ed.). Edmund Husserl: Filosofie als Strenge Wetenschap [Edmund Husserl: Philosophy as Strict Science]. Amsterdam: Boom Meppel. Derrida, J. (1995). The Gift of Death. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (2005). On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Figal, G. (2010). Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press. Heidegger, M. (1962 [1927]). Being and Time ( J. MacQuarrie and E. Robinson, trans.). New York: Harper and Row. Heidegger, M. (1972). On Time and Being. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, M. (1982 [1975]). The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (1995). The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M. (2001). Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper and Row. Henry, M. (2008 [1990]). Material Phenomenology. New York: Fordham University Press. Henry, M. (2009 [1988]). Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky. London: Continuum. Husserl, E. (1964). The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, E. (1965). Philosophy as Rigorous Science. In: Quentin Lauer (trans.). Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row. Husserl, E. (1968 [1925]). Amsterdamer Vorträge: Phänomenologische Psychologie [Amsterdam Lectures: Phenomenological Psychology]. In: Walter Biemel (ed.). Phänomenologische Psychologie, Vorlesungen Sommersemester [Phenomenological Psychology, Summer Semester Lectures]. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 302–349. Husserl, E. (1970a [1900/1901]). Logical Investigations. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press Inc. Husserl, E. (1970b [1954]). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1980). Filosofie als Strenge Wetenschap [Philosophy as Strict Science] (Ger Groot, trans.). Meppel: Boom. Husserl, E. (1983 [1913]). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Husserl, E. (2014 [1913]). Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Kockelmans, J.J. (ed.). (1987). Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kruger, D. (1985). The Changing Reality of Modern Man: Essays in Honour of Jan Hendrik van den Berg. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

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Langeveld, M.J. (1953). De “Verborgen Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind [The “Hidden Place” in the Life of the Child]. In: Jan H. van den Berg and Johannes Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 11–32. Langeveld, M.J. (1956 [1968]). Das Ding in die Welt des Kindes [The Thing in the World of the Child]. In: M.J. Langeveld (ed.). Studien zur Antropologie des Kindes [Studies in Child Anthropology]. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 142–156. Langeveld, M.J. (1972). Capita uit de Algemene Methodologie der Opvoedingswetenschap [Capita from the General Methodology of Pedagogical Science]. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. Levering, B. and Van Manen, M. (2002). Phenomenology and Philosophical Anthropology in the Netherlands. In: Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.). Phenomenology World-Wide. Dordrecht: Kluwer Press, pp. 274–286. Levinas, E. (1979). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Levinas, E. (1981). Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Lingis, A. (2001). Abuses. Berkeley: University of California Press. Linschoten, J. (1951). Over de Humor [On Humour]. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 13 (4), pp. 603–666. Linschoten, J. (1953). Aspecten van de Sexuele Incarnatie [Aspects of Sexual Incarnation]. In: J. H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Erven J. Bijleveld, pp. 74–126. Linschoten, J. (1987). On Falling Asleep. In: J. J. Kockelmans (ed.). Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 79–117. Lippitz, W. (2019). Exemplarische Deskription (1984) [Exemplary Description]. In: Malte Brinkmann (ed.). Phänomenologische Erziehungswissenschaft von ihren Anfängen bis Heute [Phenomenological Educational Science from its Beginnings to Today]. Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 315–336. Marion, J-L. (2007). The Erotic Phenomenon: Six Meditations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. London: Routledge. Moran, D. (2013). ‘Let’s Look at It Objectively’: Why Phenomenology Cannot be Naturalized. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 72. pp. 89–150. Murdoch, I. (1999). Salvation by Words, Blashfield Address, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Annual Ceremonial, May 17, 1972. In: Peter Conradi (ed.). Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature. New York: Penguin Books. Nancy, J-L. (1997). The Sense of the World. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Nancy, J-L. (2007). The Fall of Sleep. New York: Fordham University Press. Pallasma, J. (2009). The Thinking Hand. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Sartre, J-P. (1956). Being and Nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library. Sartre, J-P. (1991). The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang. Scheler, M. (1970). The Nature of Sympathy. Hamden: Archon Books. Schutz, A. (1971). Collected Papers, II, Studies in Social Theory. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Serres, M. (2008). The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies. New York: Continuum. Spiegelberg, H. (1960). The Phenomenological Movement, a Historical Introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Spiegelberg, H. (1972). Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry: A Historical Introduction. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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Spiegelberg, H. (1975). Doing Phenomenology: Essays on and in Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Spiegelberg, H. (1983). Movements in Philosophy: Phenomenology and its Parallels. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 43(3), pp. 281–297. Spiegelberg, H. (1989). Phenomenology of the Look. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 20 (2), pp. 107–114. Van den Berg, J.H. (1953). Het Gesprek [The Conversation]. In: Jan H. van den Berg and Johannes Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 136–154. Van den Berg, J.H. (1959). Het Menselijk Lichaam [The Human Body]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1972). A Different Existence. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van den Berg, J.H. and Linschoten, J. (eds.). (1953). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Bijleveld. Van Manen, M. (1990 [1997]). Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. London: Routledge. Van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and Writing. London: Routledge. Van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical Tact: Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. London: Routledge. Van Manen, M. (2017). Rebuttal: Doing Phenomenology on the Things. Qualitative Health Research, 29(6), pp. 908–925. Van Manen, M.A. (2019). Phenomenology of the Newborn: Life from Womb to World. London: Routledge. Van Manen, M.A. (2021). The Birth of Ethics: Phenomenological Reflections on Life’s Beginnings. London: Routledge.

2 JAN H. VAN DEN BERG

Phenomenology does not offer a fine theory but, rather, gives a plausible insight. Jan H. van den Berg (1972, p. 4)

Jan Hendrik van den Berg (1914–2012) was a clinical psychiatrist and an extraordinary scholar. Not only did he author numerous articles and books, his writings have been translated into more languages than any other author in the Netherlands. Van den Berg was born in Deventer, a Dutch industrial town founded in the Middle Ages. As a young person he grew up near a nature reserve in a protected part of the surrounding woods that was barred to the general public. His father was the technician who had to keep the pumps going for the water towers of Deventer. In an interview, van den Berg recalled: “at the water tower in Deventer, my father was chief engineer. He was lord and master of that area. There was also our house, where my father, mother, my older brother and I lived and where no one else was allowed. It was a true dorado” (De Jong & Snel, 2001, p. 2). The young van den Berg was fascinated with the flora and fauna of the Dutch landscape, and especially with the study of insects that remained a hobby all his life. He started as a teacher but aspired to a medical career. From the money he earned teaching, he was able to pay for university and completed medical school, specializing in psychiatry and neurology. Van den Berg studied under Henricus C. Rümke who was one of the early phenomenological proponents of Dutch psychiatry. Part of van den Berg’s psychiatric training also included time in Switzerland with Ludwig Binswanger, a distinguished phenomenological psychiatrist who had studied with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and who was heavily

26  Jan H. van den Berg

influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. It was after his preparation for psychiatry that van den Berg took up phenomenology. Van den Berg completed his doctoral work in 1946 with a dissertation on phenomenological existential schizophrenic psychosis entitled De Betekenis van de Phaenomenologische of Existentiële Antropologie in de Psychiatrie [The Significance of Phenomenological or Existential Anthropology in Psychiatry]. In 1946, van den Berg took a year of residence in Paris, while working as an assistant in a psychiatric clinic. In Paris, van den Berg connected with many influential scholars. He had conversations with the erudite Gaston Bachelard, who he described as a “a nice, jovial and enthusiastic man” (De Jong & Snel, 2001, p. 7). He interacted with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, “a dandy” and “beau garçon” (p. 7). And he gained insights into the influence of German and French culture on phenomenological philosophy of Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and others. In the interview with de Jong and Snel, van den Berg recounted the influence of Heidegger: Sein und Zeit was a revelation for me. When I received the book, I opened it and immediately put it away again. I knew it would transform me and I wanted to wait a little longer. But in Heidegger I found the précis of the answers to all the questions and problems I could think of. He showed me what holds human existence together in the innermost. In Heidegger’s works, the primordial is communicated in spite of the fact that it is the indescribable, the non-translatable. (De Jong & Snel, 2001, p. 9) This was done, said van den Berg, in a strange German, a completely unique vocabulary, in a kind of appropriated language. Heidegger had his own grammar. You had to get used to that, but then it became easy. Nevertheless, I later secretly accused him of using an impenetrable secret language. In later publications, I  sometimes thought: “please, rather be clear, say exactly what matters, don’t hide behind all those neologisms.” But in Sein und Zeit that was less the case, that was as clear as a glass, at least for me. (p. 9) In 1947, upon making contact, van den Berg was invited by Heidegger to spend several days in his Hütte (a cottage in the German forest). Ah, Heidegger and the Hütte: I was kindly received. Heidegger was busy together with a chimney sweep, checking the chimney, which drew badly. But he gave me a very cordial welcome and the atmosphere remained that way. A  pleasant stay, where I  received responses to the list of questions I  had prepared. In a relaxed mood and patiently he responded to those

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inquiries. They were mainly questions about certain twists and turns, passages in which he lets a certain suspicion play a role in the text, but does not pronounce it. That hiddenness is also specific to German, in which it is quite possible to proclaim crypto-truths, but Heidegger has taken part in it considerably. We made a number of walks. During one of those trips we ended up at a farm. Heidegger was apparently at home there, because he just went inside. We entered a large room with a table and a few chairs and a wide view over the valley. Really beautiful! There he put his hand on the solid wooden table and said: “und hier habe ich Sein und Zeit geschrieben!” [and here I wrote Being and Time]. Yes, a unique moment, masterly, magnificent, really magnificent. (p. 10) Upon returning from France to the Netherlands, van den Berg received a lectorate in psychopathology in 1948 at the University of Utrecht, and later at Amsterdam University. In 1954, he was appointed to the Chair of Phenomenology and Conflict Psychology at the University of Leiden. For van den Berg, phenomenology meant to focus attention on how the world is actually present to us (Giorgi, 2015). About his work, he said, “phenomenology is here taken in the sense of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty” (1952, p. 90). However, while Husserl was a great thinker for van den Berg, he had remained too much tied to his desk and hardly moved outside the philosophical world. Even though Husserl advocated a return to the concrete, the world as lived, his work ironically lacked concrete lifeworld concerns and engagements which are an essential feature that makes human existence phenomenologically meaningful, accessible, and understandable. In interviews, van den Berg said that he believed that, “in order to become a good phenomenologist one has to have a fairly wide interest. One requires a certain knowledge of philosophy, of art and literature, of cultural history and so on” (Kruger, 1985, p. xvi). Van den Berg became particularly well-known for the development and application of a historical, phenomenological approach that he termed “metabletics,” a word derived from the Greek, meaning “to change.” In his first major work, Metabletica (1956), published in English in 1961 as The Changing Nature of Man, he described the changing relation between adults and children, neurosis and sexuality, and the phenomenon of the miracle and God. This book was provocative so that it immediately became a best seller in the Netherlands. Van den Berg aimed to show that the assumption that human beings are essentially the same through the ages was unfounded. The chapter on the adult-child relation appeared several years earlier (in 1956, 1961), than a work with a similar theme that the French historian Philippe Ariès (1960, 1965) became famous for. Van den Berg described the process of the infantilization of adulthood and the appearance of puberty as a historical and cultural phenomenon. The unique feature of the metabletical

28  Jan H. van den Berg

method is that it approaches its object of study not diachronically, as development through time, but synchronically, from within a meaningful constitution of relations among different events during the same shared socio-historical period. For example, in Divided Existence (1974), he provided a detailed portrayal and a surprisingly early postmodern interpretation of the development of the human psyche by connecting it with a variety of simultaneous developments in the surrounding culture, showing how the sense of self-identity is increasingly fragmented, divided, and impacted by externals. Van den Berg’s writings were an essential contribution to the reputation of the Utrecht School movement. His phenomenological text Het Ziekbed [The Sickbed] (1952) was published in English as The Psychology of the Sickbed (1966). His book The Phenomenological Approach to Psychiatry (1955) was reissued as A Different Existence (1974), which still is an excellent introduction to the phenomenological approach. In addition to his many phenomenological studies in psychology and psychiatry, he also wrote several lucid general lifeworld studies, such as Zien: Verstaan en Verklaring van de Visuele Waarneming [Seeing: Understanding and Interpretation in Visual Perception] (1972). In his work, van den Berg was especially conscious of the historical and cultural embeddedness of phenomenological psychology. He was far ahead of the later postmodern critique of the dangers of foundationalism, essentialism, and historical and cultural universalism. He argued that the project of phenomenology was contextualized by the limits of language, culture, time, and place. According to van den Berg, phenomenological psychology and psycho-pathology does not claim to have found a universally valid approach to human phenomena; instead, it is always self-conscious of its anthropological starting point. Therefore, it is futile to speak of a general phenomenology of perception since people from different cultures “see” differently, and people see and understand their worlds differently from the ways that their close and distant forebearers did, just as their children will perceive the world differently. As an example, van den Berg criticizes such studies as the Kinsey report, The Sexual Behavior of the Human Male. He suggests that while this report might be characteristic of the North American male, it says virtually nothing about, for example, the European male. Jan H. van den Berg was without a doubt highly influential on the uptake of phenomenology by practitioners in psychology, medicine, and other disciplines. Robert Romanyshyn, a close friend and student of van den Berg, explained how he came to appreciate “that phenomenology practiced in this fashion was a work of homecoming, a work of anamnesis or un-forgetting, a work of return” (2008, p. 397). In the central park of the Dutch city of Deventer there is a dedicated plaque with the following words: In this area the physician-psychiatrist prof. dr. Jan H. van den Berg grew up (1914–2012). Here he acquired his enormous interest in nature. He gained fame, amongst other works, with his metabletica, science of

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changes. The focus of this science is that a comparison of concurrent happening phenomena of different varieties can show insight into human existence and history.

Notes Where an English translated publication is available for the selected works, the English publication alone is cited in the list.

Selected Works Van den Berg, J.H. (1952). The Human Body and the Significance of Human Movement: A  Phenomenological Study. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XIII, pp. 159–183. Van den Berg, J.H. (1953). Het Gesprek [The Conversation]. In: J.H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 136–154. Van den Berg, J.H. (1955). Over Neurotizerende Factoren [On Neurotic Factors]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1956). Metabletika [Metabletics]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1959). Het Menselijk Lichaam: Het Verlaten Lichaam [The Human Body: The Abandoned Body] (Vol. 1). Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1961). Het Menselijk Lichaam. Het Geopend Lichaam [The Human Body: The Opened Body] (Vol. 2). Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1963). Leven in Meervoud [Divided Existence]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1964). The Changing Nature of Man. New York: Delta. Van den Berg, J.H. (1966a). Concise Psychiatry. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1966b). The Psychology of the Sickbed. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van den Berg, J.H. (1968). Metabletika van de Materie [Metabletics of Matter] (Vol. 1). Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1969). De Zuilen van het Pantheon [The Pillars of the Pantheon]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1970a). Dieptepsychologie [Analytic Psychology]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Van den Berg, J.H. (1970b). Things—Four Metabletic Reflections. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van den Berg, J.H. (1970c). Things. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van den Berg, J.H. (1972). A Different Existence. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van den Berg, J.H. (1974). Divided Existence and Complex Society. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van den Berg, J.H. (1978). Medical Power and Medical Ethics. New York: Norton. Van den Berg, J.H. (1983). The Changing Nature of Man (H.F. Croes, trans.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Van den Berg, J.H. (1987a). The Human Body and the Significance of Human Movement. In: J.J. Kockelmans (ed.). Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, pp. 55–77. Van den Berg, J.H. (1987b). Hooligans: Metabletisch Onderzoek naar de Betekenis van Centre Pompidou en Crystal Palace [Hooligans: Metabletic Research into the Meaning of Center Pompidou and Crystal Palace]. Nijkerk: Callenbach.

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Van den Berg, J.H. (1996). Geen Toeval: Metabletica and Historische Beschrijving [No Accident: Metabletica and Historical Description]. Kampen: Kok Agora. Van den Berg, J.H. (2013). Op Het Scherp van de Schede [On the Cutting Edge] ( J. de Visscher and H. Zwart eds.). Kalmthout: Pelckmans Uitgeverij. Van den Berg, J.H. and Linschoten, J. (eds.). (1953). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld.

References Ariès, P. (1965 [1960]). Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Vintage. De Jong, J. en Snel, J. (2001). Met Hartstocht en Passie in de Wetenschap Staan. Een Gesprek met Jan Hendrik van den Berg [Doing Science with Dedication and Passion. A  Conversation with Jan Hendrik van den Berg]. Wapenveld, 2, April, pp. 19–26. Available March 10, 2020 from: https://wapenveldonline.nl/artikel/396/ met-hartstocht-en-passie-in-de-wetenschap-staan/ Giorgi, A. (2015). The Phenomenological Psychology of J.H. van den Berg. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 46 Leiden, pp. 141–162. Kruger, D. (ed.). (1985). The Changing Reality of Modern Man. Essays in Honor of J.H. van den Berg. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Romanyshyn, R.D. (2008). Journeying with Van den Berg. Amherst, NY: Trivium Publications. Janus Head, 10 (2), pp. 397–414. Van den Berg, J.H. (1952). The Human Body and the Significance of Human Movement, A  Phenomenological Study. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XIII, pp. 159–183. Van den Berg, J.H. (1955). The Phenomenological Approach to Psychiatry. Springfield: Charles C.Thomas Publisher. Van den Berg, J.H. (1956). Metabletika [Metabletics]. Nijkerk: Callenbach.

3 THE CONVERSATION [Het Gesprek, 1953] Jan H. van den Berg

In conversation, we blend a common world. Frederik J.J. Buytendijk (1952, p. 44)

If we wish to explore what it means to have a conversation, then it is advisable not to begin with the conversational element “the spoken word,” as understood in a linguistic or theoretical sense. As soon as the “word” is isolated from conversational talk, it loses all phenomenological meaning. Instead, here we start with an anecdote, a story about a conversation. To focus immediately on an enigmatic property of any conversational talk, we will immediately begin with a remarkable example of a conversation. There is a story about the poet Alfred Tennyson visiting the philosopher Thomas Carlyle. They sat the entire evening silently beside a fireplace. And when it came time for Tennyson to leave, Carlyle concluded their meeting with the following words: “We had a grand evening, please do come back very soon.” Now, no one will want to argue that these two friends were engaged in an animated conversation. Not a word was spoken! Yet, something must have happened that evening that is closely related to being engaged in a conversation. Why else would Carlyle have urged Tennyson so heartily to come back again? It occurs to me that the interpretation of this particular anecdote is this: No word needed to be spoken. The most important condition for any true conversation was so completely fulfilled that the spoken word became entirely unnecessary and could, therefore, be absent. If we ask ourselves what this condition is, then we will not be mistaken when we determine that both Tennyson and Carlyle knew themselves together in a very special way during that evening. There existed a being together that doubtlessly permitted a conversation, in an encounter that set

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free the spoken word, releasing the necessity to speak at all. Precisely because this being together was so exceptionally complete, a spoken word would have been a disruption of the shared silence they enjoyed beside the brightly burning fire. In one form or another, we all know this being togetherness, which gives our words freedom to be spoken or remain unspoken. These are encounters in which we feel understood. We can sit silently with the other person without sensing any tension or concern. And if we do want to speak, our words come without effort. We do not need to explain our words, and we need few words to make ourselves clear. We certainly also know—and probably more commonly—situations in which all of this does not happen. In that case, the presence of the other becomes an obstacle that we must continuously overcome with our words. This other person stands, as it were, between us and our words, as if we experience the other ready to criticize, driving a wedge between our thoughts and our words. In such situations, we have to think before we carefully speak. We are forced to weigh our words with a measure imposed on us by the other person’s presence. We sense how our wrongs must be corrected. We are constantly diligently justifying our words, so awkwardly that they seem to necessitate even more words. But all this is in vain, because the only thing that would save us is the way that the other person is listening to us, and that is precisely denied to us. There are moments in which we are dumbfounded because of a lack of mutual understanding. But it is generally the case that the more words we speak, the less the condition for a conversation is met. Where few words are sufficient, there is usually a close togetherness. So, we can say that the conversation is determined by the nature of our being together. Yet, what is this being together? Our understanding of the conversation will depend on how we answer this question. Aristotle pointed out that we cannot equate human togetherness with that of animals: “Cows are together as a herd when they graze on one pasture” (1940, p. 44). In contrast, humans can feel and work together when they do not bodily share the same physical space. Humans are probably never more conscious of their togetherness when they miss one another, when they feel lonely, isolated despite the physical presence of others. “Einsam bin ich ‘nicht alleine’” [I am lonely, ‘not alone’], says Binswanger thoughtfully, when I lovingly miss “Hinblick auf Dich” [the regard of you] (1942, p. 131). It is quite possible to feel a lack of togetherness amid a crowd. We can be alone when the other is present, even when this person addresses us, and we politely respond with answers. In other words, the physical presence of fellow human beings is no guarantee for the being together that we have in mind here, and even the exchange of words cannot be considered a guarantee for this exclusively human phenomenon of the eminently social unity of two. And because the conversation is made possible by this unity, “speaking with the other” is no guarantee for a true conversation. A conversation does not live by the grace of the spoken word. In fact, it is not

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rare that we experience the opposite: that the spoken word destroys virtually all chances for a conversation. We shall dwell on this last possibility in a moment. Let us imagine that a man, a resident of Amsterdam, who has the habit of visiting the art museums of his city and who has learned to admire the art collections, has invited his cousin, a contractor from a small town in the northern part of the country, to visit the capital. It goes without saying that the famous art museums are not forgotten during the visit. And so, the host and the contractor both go to the Stedelijk [Metropolitan] Museum. Soon, they stand together in front of a painting by Carel Willink, entitled De Jobstijding [Bad Tidings] dated 1932. Both look at the same thing: a picture of an almost banal part of the suburbs of a city. In front, a well-dressed man is seen walking on the sidewalk, and at the rear-left, a woman is seen running after him with a letter in her outstretched hand. The man appears unaware. But the woman seems desperate to give the letter to him. Also visible in the painting is a large pink-coloured house in the centre of the canvas. Both visitors regard these details and more of the scenery: trees, clouds, and other houses. Beyond all these details, the host sees what we could describe as “ominous tidings.” He sees a fateful inevitability that awaits the walking man who is unaware of the woman who desperately runs after him. He sees the almost ridiculous civility of the man who appears to walk with a measured stride compared to the frantic woman whose gestures already seem to reflect a resigned attitude. This scene unfolds against the ugly nakedness of the house, an impossibly pedantic tree, and heavy dark clouds that hang menacingly over the panorama. The Amsterdam host is searching for words to talk with his cousin about this painting, that is, about the mysterious inevitability of fate. But before he can utter a word, his cousin suddenly says: “Can you imagine how a roofer would so poorly install shingles to cover the roof of a house?” Now, how can we blame the host for immediately feeling sorry that he had invited his cousin? We can understand that he feels regret to have entered the museum with his cousin. This museum visit has turned out to be not a going together but rather a coincidental walk alongside each other, “like cows in the meadow.” Or even less so, because cows still graze on the same grass, while the two cousins’ eyes have completely different appetites. Upon the remark of his cousin, it becomes clear to the host that he is alone. Or better, if at that moment he had thought of his wife, with whom he learned to admire the painting, he would have felt lonely. And because he is alone, all the words that he wanted to share about this painting become meaningless. He is speechless. He knows not what to say. The cousin’s question about the poorly installed roof shingles has disrupted the hoped-for conversation. His cousin’s words unmistakably make clear that he and his cousin are not really together; therefore, it is impossible to “see” together and to “speak” together.

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We can analyze this whole situation with more accuracy. The art-loving host from Amsterdam entered the museum with the intent to enjoy the art on display with this cousin. As a good host, he did not just go inside. Nor did he enter for a visit by himself. Instead, he was counting on walking and talking together with this cousin and, therefore, looking at the art with this cousin. But instead, the cousin’s unexpected question made him see differently. In a manner of speaking, the Amsterdam host saw himself. He saw what he had come to see all those times when he had visited the museum and what all the literature on paintings had taught him. He saw his own art appreciation history. And he also saw more. He saw everything for which the reading of art-historical publications had opened his soul. He saw a dimension of his own personal being. The only place where one realizes oneself is where something, like this painting, draws one to really “see.” It draws so strongly that we may say that one is wholly absorbed by where one looks. Such an onlooker who is fascinated by what is observed has, in a certain sense, forgotten him- or herself. Such a person who closely examines a painting is unaware of his or her own presence, attitude, or expressivity. Instead, by being completely immersed in what is seen in the art, he or she passes beyond everything that another person might see. Indeed, it is not going too far to say that museum visitors, who allow themselves to be “absorbed” by a particular painting or another art object, have merged with the art, become one with it. From such a perspective, we understand that paintings, sculptures, and other art creations are not inflexible objects that we look at, but rather, that our looking at the exhibited art objects involves the meaningfulness that the art evokes in us. For example, when one sees a work by Peter Paul Rubens, one visitor may experience rediscovery of a fascination with the human body, another visitor may walk hastily past the abundance of flesh, while a third person tries to steer his children away from the revealing naked figures. In their response to the painting, these three visitors have exposed something about themselves. The Amsterdam host, who sees in the painting of Carel Willink the mystery of an approaching ominous fate that will overpower, also proves with this seeing who he is himself. And his observation also shows something else to him when he stands alongside his cousin in front of the painting. He sees the picture to the best of his intent, however vaguely and unconsciously, as a possibility for sharing a meaningful moment of being together. In realizing that this painting may possess the potential for a being together, he searches for words: words, which he seeks to find in the real presence of the art. These would, at first, be probing words; next, words that seem to resonate; and finally, words that reveal a shared understanding of the meaning evoked by the painting. The host searches for these words “in himself,” but because he is not really standing in front of the painting, but more in the painting where his fascination draws him, he searches the image for words. He reads them in the painting, as the art manifests itself in this togetherness.

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No doubt, the reader may feel that this way of describing the museum scene is odd. And yet, it is advisable to take a very accurate account of what is actually happening. Generally, our words originate and are heard from where they are spoken. If I want to call my friend who is over there—for example, if I need to warn him or her—my words are heard in the spot where my friend finds him- or herself. If my voice can barely reach my friend, my warning cry will sound soft in my ears, as quiet as it will sound to my friend, while, “in reality” (another reality, not the phenomenological!), my voice will be shouting. If a voice from another room in my home awakens me, my answer will sound where it should be: on the other side of the door; and possibly it sounds so exclusively there that I  can remain calm, so quiet, that I may even continue to sleep peacefully. The Amsterdam host in no way searches “behind his eyes,” as it were: in other words, in his brain or heart for the words that he might utter about the painting. Instead, he searches for them in the picture image, because there they will soon be born to be heard. He reads them from the aesthetic forms, textures, and colours, from the portrayals of attitudes and expressions of those pictured figures, and of course, also from all the other details of things as they are now disturbed in the failed sphere of togetherness with his cousin. Anyone who looks at the same painting, panorama, cityscape, or scene with three different people will talk about the same thing in three different ways. One knows that and how certain words are generally understood. With flawless, albeit conscious sensibility, one chooses a particular intonation and modulation of the sentences as they are pronounced. Or more correctly: with different companions, one will see various scenes in the same “objective situation.” For example, during a proverbial walk through the same forest with a forester, a timber trader, a botanist, a dendrologist, or with a romantic partner, this same forest manifests itself in an ever-changing manner of meaning, when one walks, looks, and speaks (or is silent) with this other, said Binswanger famously (1946, p. 30). This forest always shows itself differently: this forest becomes that forest, in which being together with the other becomes a real togetherness. And precisely for that reason, a conversation in and about the forest differs in all these situational examples. As multiple conversations about the same thing become possible, various ways of being together become possible—and even these ways of being together may become the subject of conversation. Commonly, the shift in the meaning of a scene takes place without one being fully aware of this change. For example, I  am generally unaware of a shift in meaning when I  look at a painting in a museum by myself and then look at the same picture with someone else. The changed sense of awareness is what is called non-thetic consciousness. Non-thetic consciousness is our awareness of things without consciously attending to them. It could be argued that only when such a shift in meaning is least noticeable, then the conversation is least forced. Usually, it is only later, afterwards, that one can be surprised about the new wealth

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of understanding that one gained about a landscape, an object, or an image from the togetherness of being with another person. So, what the Amsterdam host of our example sees in Willink’s painting is this meaning, as it unfolds in its non-thetic mood of being together with his cousin, the contractor. Standing beside his cousin, he now sees more architecture in this image than he used to see. Perhaps he sees the colours a bit more as house paint. And as his emotionality is drained, he may have erased his past shared understanding of the Willink painting with his wife, with whom he learned to appreciate it. In this encounter—which happened very quickly—he is disturbed by the brash question asked by his cousin: “What do you think of those shingles?” These words betray to the host a distance that he had not suspected. They teach him that their sense of togetherness outside the museum is no longer valid in this place. Outside the museum, his cousin, no doubt, appreciates the houses and neighbourhoods while not necessarily looking at them with “contractor’s eyes.” But the museum presupposes a new appeal, which the host now realizes with disappointment and discouragement that remains inadequately responded to by his cousin. While outside the museum, he could partially adopt the perspective of a contractor—just as his cousin could take a view of the world that let go of things that he would typically notice, but now the Amsterdam host is no longer together with his cousin. And it is precisely because he had partially denied his view of the world that the words that were about to be uttered die. He sees “nothing” that can be used to entertain roof shingles. The approaching ominous fate has no shingles. He is speechless. Perhaps he wonders for a moment whether it still makes sense to go further or even if it is not better to say goodbye. But he will immediately correct this thought. He must respond, he must give an answer if he wants to remain faithful to the invitation that came from him. He does not want to make the day for his cousin, and for him, an unsavoury memory. Therefore, let us assume that the Amsterdam host answers in this way: “Yes . . . I have never paid attention to that detail . . . but now I see it too . . . And yet, do you not think the house makes a wondrous impression?” It is worth asking what might have transpired. When his cousin came up with the question about the shingles, the anticipated plan of sharing of an aesthetic reality at the museum was destroyed, and with it the art “object,” in which the shared togetherness would have been found. This “object” was not the disclosure of fate—the Amsterdam host was too much in the company of his cousin for that—but some intermediate phase between seeing a suburban house and seeing the threat of impending fate. However, the question that his cousin posed reduced, without any doubt, the possibility of perceiving the “object” of a suburban scene (houses, trees, and streets) with the possibility of observing various details (stones, leaves, windows, chimneys, and shingles). After a moment of wondering whether he should allow this degradation, the Amsterdam host accepts his cousin with the words: “now I see it too.”

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Thus, he sees again with his cousin, or rather, he has given himself the freedom to see his cousin—because that is how his cousin turns out to be when he is absorbed in the image of poorly installed shingles. He accepts his cousin in the shared painting again, seeing him as the painting. After a moment’s hesitation, the conversation becomes possible again. But immediately afterwards, he tries to “move” his cousin: “And yet, do you not think the house makes a wondrous impression?” Despite everything, he remains faithful to himself; he does not want to remove himself entirely from the painting; he wants to see both the cousin and himself in the image. It is this perception: seeing both, seeing a possible “being together,” that—after the destruction of an illusionary sharing of the canvas— restores the possibility of having a conversation again. We have thus come to a provisional answer to the question about the nature of the togetherness that is constituted by the conversation. These moments of being together (together over there, together in the landscape, together in the painting, etc.) express the togetherness of being in one world. Only when we can join a world together can we be together in this world and does our speaking about this world become possible. Incidentally, we should not think that this answer only applies to an ideal conversation. Even conversations that are merely “sociable,” “pleasant,” or “kind,” and even idle talk are only possible when the points of contact lie in a design of the world that is based on togetherness. The eristic conversation presupposes a starting point that departs from a common being-by-things, just as it is the case with, for example, the friendly, practical, narrative, amorous, Socratic, neurotic, and psychotic conversations. However, it is true that the departure from a shared world, by the partners of an eristic conversation implies a focus on a goal that is hardly contained in the togetherness of the starting point itself. Søren Kierkegaard says, “Wenn es wirklich gelingen soll, einen Menschen zu einem bestimmten Ziele hinzuleiten, muβ man zunächst darauf achten, daβ man ihn da finde, woe r ist, und da anfängt” [If one is truly to succeed in leading a person to a specific place, one must first and foremost take care to find him where he is and begin there] (1930, p. 14). In the example described previously, this “where the person is” could be found in the poorly installed shingles, while the ominous quality of the painting concerned the goal to which the Amsterdam host wanted to take his cousin. It is particularly interesting to read how differently this departure from the place where the other can be found, this moving towards the other, is appreciated. Kierkegaard speaks of a “Demütigung” [humiliation] and considers humility not only necessary but also a courteous form of interacting with fellow human beings (1930, p. 15). Marcel Proust, in contrast, sees in this gesture only a betrayal committed to one’s own principles. He would undoubtedly have called the host’s response to his cousin’s remark a gross lie. It is a lie, forced by the friendship or familial bond that brought the two cousins to the museum. Proust declared, “On ment toute sa vie, même surtout, peut-être seulement, à ceux qui nous aiment” [We lie all our lives, even—especially—perhaps only—to those who love us] (1925, p. 88).

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No matter how misanthropic these words may sound, no matter how incorrect they are in their overall sensibility, this statement contains a core of truth. There are conversations that we have with others in which we are brought to a compromising limit of our own position. If, in those cases, we wanted to force ourselves to continue the conversation, then we would be uttering such personal lies that we could rightly feel the blame of Proust. To illustrate, consider the following experience related to me by a Parisian colleague. This colleague had invited an acquaintance for a walk through some old parts of Paris. But as they were walking, the conversation was not going very well. She tried to interest her companion in some of the peculiarities of this metropolis. She pointed to the traces that Napoleon had left in this extraordinary city; yet, Paris could not release Napoleon. She and her companion could not, for a moment, identify with Napoleon, meaning with that image of Napoleon, that Paris may offer us. And the same with the Sun King, Louis XIV. They could not find a historic Paris in their walk. It became gradually clear to my colleague that they were not in the same Paris, the cultural centre of Europe, or the wonderful hospitality that greets visitors in the smell of the metro, the sounds of the buses, and the gestures of the parishioners who pass in the streets. In hindsight, it seemed that the colleague sought in vain for her companion during their Paris walk. And this search abruptly halted, when in one of the most picturesque places of the Latin Quarter, the companion exclaimed: “They should tear down these old parts and build new needed housing.” From that moment on, the colleague felt that she was walking alone next to her companion—this “next to each other” had turned into an immeasurable distance. Their being together was in ruins, and their chances were gone for a conversation, no matter how many words were thereafter spoken. Did the companion prove with her remarks that she had searched for this Parisian colleague in Paris and that she had tired of this search? Did she also feel that about the conversation? Of course, that is entirely possible. What else does this mean then that their judgments and their observations of Paris were incompatible for each other, and so they had become disinterested in conversing with each other? Now, if my colleague had forced herself to continue the already shaky conversation, which would not have been entirely impossible, then she might have said something like the Amsterdam host in the earlier example: “I have never seen it that way, but now that you say it, yes, they should tear down the entire Latin Quarter!” But, if she had made such a statement, would she not have been obliged to find herself reprehensible? No doubt, the physiognomy of Paris would have reproached her for her unfaithfulness, that is, to this city, as it had become for her, and thus unfaithful to herself. Self-blame is always invoked from a certain view of the world. It is the “things” that we deal with, which convince us how much we are violating ourselves, how we malign ourselves, how we betray ourselves. In this regard, we have to agree with Proust: self-betrayal mainly emerges in contact with other people and then in the first place in contact with those who became somehow dear to us. There is no place where the

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dialectical relationship between the “I” and the “self ” reveals itself as truthfully as in relation with others. Our partners form the indicator of the peace or discontentment that we experience in our selves. In that sense, every conversation is a self-conversation. I do not mean to return to old theories of communication, but rather to rehabilitate what was seen at the time of the association or analogic theories of empathy. In our first explication of togetherness, it became clear that the condition for a genuine conversation consists of a co-constitution of the world. We can now add the following to this. While our faithfulness to the world does not get damaged in our conversational relations with others in our lifeworlds, the coconstitution of the world, being with the things of our world together with our conversational partners, presupposes the play of give-and-take. A conversation is suspended between two poles of accountability: the accountability to the conversational partner, which one should not want to lose during the conversation, and the accountability to one’s self, one’s own history, which ultimately amounts to accountability to all those who were the mediators for us in becoming who we are. Both poles of accountability translate into a single physiognomy of what is given and what orients the conversation. So, what is the conversation itself now? What is the word that harmonizes with being together and, at the same time, adds a new element to being together? What role does the spoken word play? To answer this question, we will return to our visitors of the Stedelijk Museum and consider the possibility that the cousin responds with words that were immediately appreciated by the conversational partner, the Amsterdam host. We will consider the possibility of the cousin speaking about the threatening darkness of the sky with the ominous clouds, the treacherous greenery of the trees, the purplish colour of the house that seems to express a determinate and terrible hostility. The scene is unmistakably anthropomorphized: the darkness threatens, the clouds menace, and the greenery terrorizes a person who has been able to make the world a home in a certain sense. That this anthropomorphism can be articulated proves a togetherness that permits the acknowledgement that our reality can reveal a world that is indeed ominous, threatening, terrifying. We have paid sufficient attention to all of this previously. However, the word accomplishes even more: it details. It mentions the sky, the clouds, the trees, and the house successively. The undivided being together that yielded power to the word is explicated in the spoken word. Speaking is explicating, a setting apart. And because this setting apart, this separating of aspects of the world takes place in a con-tact with the other—this setting apart is con-versant, con (together) verse (line, draw, express, poetic). Conversation is together expressing a shared world. In other words, conversation is the shaping of togetherness. “Das Mitsein wird in der Rede ausdrücklich geteilt, d.h. es ist schon, nur ungeteilt als nicht ergriffenes und zugeeignetes” [Being-with is “explicitly” shared in discourse, that is, it already is, only unshared as something not grasped and appropriated], says

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Heidegger (1927, p. 162). He wants to underline with this observation that the conversation does not take place in a kind of vacuum between two inner rooms, but is moving in a world of common interaction: “Mitteilung ist nie so etwas wie ein Transport von Erlebnissen, z.B. Meinungen und Wünschen aus dem Innern des einen Subjekts in das Innere des anderen” [Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, for example, opinions and wishes, from the inside of one subject to the inside of another] (p. 162). Although this view creates the atmosphere in which an understanding of the meaning of conversation can be freed from all solipsistic obstacles, it is too absolute to not immediately provoke some contradiction. Heidegger’s term “never” should probably be substituted for “also.” No matter how much I am engaged in conversation with the other person, I always know that it is him or her, who is there next to me, who speaks. Time and again, I am forced to understand his or her words as expressing an audible inner self. Anyone who could have watched the two cousins in the museum would have seen that both of them turned their gaze now and then from the painting to each other, as if it were to establish that they were standing there and expressing with one another words that reflected what they were experiencing, of what went on inside of them. Sartre (1943), who is undoubtedly more a psychologist than Heidegger, explains in his L’Être et le Néant [Being and Nothingness] that every human phenomenon can manifest itself in three fundamentally different ways. First, the human being is the world. We usually “forget” ourselves when involved in an activity that is part of a daily task. The steps of the staircase teach the person the size of feet and steps; the bicycle proves that he or she has two hands; and, the hand shows the turning of the doorknob. Yet, the foot itself and the hand itself are constantly unnoticed, “passed over” as Sartre says, passé sous silence [passed over in silence]. Second, this same person walking up or down the stairs, riding a bicycle, or opening or closing a door can be observed by other people, and for those who see this person engaged in these activities, things look different. It may be that for the person engaged in activity, the door is easily or routinely opened, but to the onlooker, it shows that the person is intent on entering the room. It may be that the landscape simply proves to the walker how to move his or her legs in reaching a destination. Still, when I see the walker walking in his or her environment, then I have to assume that there is a motivation that inhabits the walker and controls his or her body. For me, as the one who (unnoticed) watches the walking person, the centre from which the actions are determined is not the world in which he or she lives, but the head and heart, that directs the hand and steps. Third, when the other person notices that I see him or her, he or she can experience my gaze as positive or as a hindrance; in both cases, the centre from where his or her actions are given becomes my gaze. We will not further explore this third dimension, which has given a special meaning to the understanding of a disturbed conversation—think of stuttering, falling over words, talking down to

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people. The conversation is not only the sharing of a common view of the world but also a participation in each other’s inner self. The conversation is, therefore, the most immediate, intimate contact between people. The question about the relationship of the mystery of head and heart, and the disclosure thereof through the spoken word leads to the question of participation. Let us imagine that we have acquired a good knowledge of Willink’s painting, De Jobstijding, and that this knowledge asks us what we think of it. Quite possibly, this question will embarrass us slightly. What shall we say: “It is beautiful”? This answer would be too vague and too banal. It does not reflect enough how the painting so eloquently or compellingly addresses and speaks to us. We want to let the panorama speak for itself, and to that end, we point to the details that most speak to us: the “ominous cloud,” the “treacherous greenery,” and the “hostility of the purplish colour house.” We may want to leave it at that. However, can we be satisfied with this description? Hardly. The quality of the green is undoubtedly insufficiently characterized by the adjective “treacherous,” and the colour of the house is more than just “hostile.” And yet these words satisfy us when we speak them while being together in conversation and when we trust the other to receive our words. We count on it as it were that the other adds to it, what we would add to it—whatever the lake we visit means to us, that the clouds, the greenery, and the flowers make us feel good. Only when being together gives a fiat to our word can this word express the appreciation that we mean. If being together has been realized in an optimal way, a comment can easily suffice that we would carefully avoid in other contexts. We then possibly say, “It is beautiful.” We trust in the being together, and that speaks for itself. Is not this being together for the time being concretized as a painting, which now lets us say, “It is beautiful?” Without this trust, our word would be defective. That is to say: our communication is always communicating with an appeal to a mutual understanding that the word itself can never guarantee. Our communication is always indirect. We say, “treacherous greenery,” but we mean more than what the picture convinces us of. The conversation is an indirect communication. With this conclusion, we have approached the conviction of Jaspers (1935, p. 378) and Gusdorf (1918, p. 187) that talk, when it is more than just reporting (and every conversation is more than that), is an indirect statement. The conversation communicates the hidden. What is this hidden? Our answer must be formulated in two very different ways. Marcel Proust (1927) describes how, when he found himself in an open rural field, he suddenly felt the desire to see a farmer’s daughter, to hug and hold her in his arms. The moment that this wish was most vivid, the landscape changed its character: “(Ce désir) ajoutait pour moi aux charmes de la nature quelque chose de plus exaltant” [(This desire) added for me something more exalting than the charms of nature] (p. 225). He sees this added aspect in the colour of the roof tiles, in the herbs that grow around him, and he sees it lying on the village, dreaming in a

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blue distance. He does not know how to name what has been added to the landscape, and he is fully aware that it would vanish if he looked at nature around him objectively. This added something is nowhere and, at the same time, everywhere. It imposes itself on him as the wish itself. Proust does not know what to say with regards to where this wish is most manifest: in himself or in the new aspect of the landscape. He is surprised that this new aspect continues to fuel his desire. What else could Proust mean than that the sudden emerging desire reveals a landscape of love? The landscape anticipates the loving togetherness, concretized in the colour of the roofs, in the herb of nature, and in the azure distance. The added something, for which he cannot find words and which he nevertheless communicates flawlessly to us, is nothing but the realization of the being together of love. This addition remains hidden: no word can speak it directly. But had the farmer’s daughter appeared before him, as his wish evokes imaginatively, then he would have been able to point at this landscape. He could have spoken to her about the details of this landscape, and she would have understood him. True, even then, the added aspect itself would not have materialized in words. His talking would have been a simple talk of the greenery and the colour of the roof tiles. Nevertheless, with these inadequate words, he could have made clear to her what the landscape had become for them both. His words would indirectly have communicated this something that was added, this hidden, this new aspect of things; in other words, his love. He probably could not have found a better way of expressing to convince her of the special kind of being together. We can, therefore, say that the hidden, which indirectly communicates the word, is what is added to the objectively given. This added is the visible realization of the being togetherness. The hidden is the quality of being together, which is visible in the things that the conversation is about. The “changed aspect,” the quality of the topic of conversation, proves to me how I “stand” with the other and to the other, how I stand in relation to him or her. Our words circle this quality; they are nourished by it, yet are never really filled by this secret hidden. Precisely because what is hidden remains hidden, no conversation can exhaust its subject. What we are talking about always turns out to be infinitely more than what we can bring to words. A conversation is infinite. It can only come to a satisfactory end when being together silently approves of our words. It is incorrect to believe that all of this only applies to those conversational relations where some kind of friendly bond exists. Indifference, irritability, and hatred can also show themselves to be added to the topic of a conversation. The colour of the roof tiles, which Proust (1927), in his pinkish fantasy, simply calls “pink,” can turn pale-pink or even poisonous-pink in another context of togetherness. If we first established that being together is the condition for the conversation, we can now translate this determination: the visible that is added, the hidden in the things that the conversation is about, that which feeds our words. While

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we first articulated the conversation as the communication of a shared world, our understanding is now this: the conversation is the direct communication of being together, which appears in the world as a visible excess. Yet, an imperfect answer has been given to the question about the nature of the hidden, that constitutes the conversation. As a mirror image of the mere indirect communication only, this hidden is also (and equally really) within us, within us as the secret of our heart. Kierkegaard formulated both answers in an inimitable way when he described the urge to communicate with oneself, which the walker experiences when he leaves the noisy street and suddenly finds himself in the countryside: Wenn der Wandrer von der lärmenden Landstraβe in die Stille tritt, dann ist’s ihm (denn die Stille ist ergreifend), als müβte er sagen, was in der Tiefe seiner Seele verborgen liegt; es ist ihm, nach der Erklärung der Dichter, als wollte sich etwas Unnennbares aus seinem Innersten hervordrängen, jenes Unaussprechliche, für das die Sprache keinen Ausdruck hat; denn auch die Sehnsucht ist nicht das Unaussprechliche selbst, sie eilt ihm nur nach. Was die Stille aber bedeutet, was die Landschaft aber mit dieser Stille sagen will,—das ist eben das Unaussprechliche. [When the wanderer comes away from the much-traveled noisy highway into places of quiet, then it seems to him (for stillness is impressive) as if he must examine himself, as if he must speak out what lies hidden in the depths of his soul. It seems to him, according to the poets’ explanation, as if something inexpressible thrusts itself forward from his innermost being, the unspeakable, for which indeed language has no vessel of expression. Even the longing is not the unspeakable itself. It is only a hastening after it. But what silence means, what the surroundings will say in this stillness, is just the speakable.] (1930, p. 18) The walker experiences two things that are essentially identical: the landscape wants to tell him something for which no words can be found, and, from his innerness, something emerges for which language has no expression. The visible mystery of the landscape is, at the same time, the secret of our inner self. Every conversation can convince us of that, when (this is the rule) we focus our gaze from the “landscape” to the other, who speaks about this landscape. At that moment, we experience the secret mystery of the other—this is the secret being of being different. If we take Kierkegaard’s words literally, then we must conclude that there is an immeasurable distance between this secret and the expression. The expression remains estranged from the secret; the words are an alienation of what seeks expression. So, one can sigh with Schiller: “Spricht die Seele, so spricht ach! schon die Seele nicht mehr” [If the soul speaks, then, alas, it is no

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longer the soul that speaks] (1837, p. 96). Then it becomes understandable that so many writers consider the spoken word an unfaithful interpreter of thought. Bergson says: Le mot aux contours arrêtés, mot brutal, qui emmagasine ce qu’il y a de stable, de commun et par conséquent d’impersonnel dans les impressions de l’humanité, écrase ou tout au moins recouvre les impressions délicates et fugitives de notre conscience individuelle. [The word with its fixed contours, the brutal word, which stores what is stable, common, and therefore impersonal in human impressions, crushes, or at least covers over, the delicate and fleeting impressions of our individual consciousness.] (1888, p. 100) If, however, at the very moment that we face the other, we remain with this other on the topic of the conversation, then his or her words do indeed reveal the secret of his or her inner self, even though the secret itself remains hidden. We must realize that this secret keeps the conversation with the other going. What should we discuss if words do not constantly point to an area that exceeds words and their significance? How could our interest stay awake if the other did not remain a secret for us? Not because he or she likes to hide him- or herself from us, but because every word points to the secret that is (in) the other person. Thus, the other remains a “stranger,” a “newcomer,” an alter for which our interest never diminishes. The condition of the conversation is the secret of the other. This secret is the secret in him or her that the conversation indirectly communicates. And herewith, the second answer is provided to the question of the nature of the hidden, that makes the human being a communicating being: We speak because there is something to communicate. We speak because the essence of our being is ineffable. Those who do not have a secret have nothing to say. “If you know a man too well, you don’t want him to kiss you,” Lawrence let one of his protagonists say (1947, p. 112). We could equally assert that it would be difficult for us to speak to someone and listen to an answer if we knew this person completely—which, incidentally, is never the case. Every friendship, every love, every marriage lives by the grace of the secret that one remains for the other. Likewise, we can only hate or despise the other on the ground of something hidden that is abject, and that appears only indirectly in his or her words. Here we arrive at a final (paradoxical) definition of the condition of a conversation: The condition of every conversation is the secret of the other. The conversation is born by a never satisfied, and at the same time, always satisfied, “wondering” about the secret of the conversational partner. The condition of the conversation is the unfamiliarity of this partner, the inequality of two people who

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talk to each other. The condition of the conversation, we can finally say, is the asymmetry of the speakers. If there is a typical asymmetry of the conversational partners, then the conversation has a typical character. No one will call the conversation of two lovers common: yet it is supported by the typical asymmetry of two people in an erotic situation. The teaching conversation is also not common: it is fuelled by the unique asymmetry of teacher and student. The asymmetry of doctor and patient makes it possible for the conversation to possess a disclosing quality, and, therefore, many social norms can be put aside. The psychiatrist makes use of the special asymmetry of the mentally ill and him- or herself to assist the patient in finding a way to a healthy world. The conversational modalities in these and so many other professional contacts are entirely determined by the particular forms of asymmetry of the two speakers in conversation. We come across a strange fact here, which we do not want to elaborate on, but that we need to mention because it is probably characteristic of the fundamental nature of human existence and the conversation. We found that the condition of the conversation is the unfamiliarity of the conversational partners: their being different. Therefore, the condition of friendship, marriage, or the intimate human relation is the mutual alterity of the partners that is never boring, never coming to an end, and accordingly has no end.

Notes 1. This text has been translated and edited by Max van Manen and Michael van Manen. 2. From: J.H. Van den Berg (1953). Het Gesprek [The Conversation]. In: J.H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 136–154.

References Aristotle. (1940). Nicomachean Ethics, Book IX, 10. Cf. Paris: Garnier. Bergson, H. (1888). Essai sur les Données Immédiates de la Conscience [Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness] (36th ed.). Paris: Alcan. Binswanger, L. (1942). Grundformen und Erkenntnis Menschlichen Daseins [Basic Forms and Knowledge of Human Existence]. Zürich: Niehans. Binswanger, L. (1946). Ueber Sprache und Denken [About Language and Thinking]. Studia Philosophica, 6, pp. 30–50. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1952). Phénoménologie de la Rencontre [Phenomenology of the Encounter]. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Gusdorf, G. (1918). La Découverte de Soi [The Discovery of the Self]. Paris: Presses University. Heidegger, M. (1927). Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. Halle: Niemeyer. Jaspers, K. (1935). Psychology Weltanschauung of the Gene [The Psychology of Worldviews]. Berlin: Springer.

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Kierkegaard, S. (1930). Die Unzulänglichkeit des Nur-Menschlichen [The Inadequacy of the Human]. In: Religion der Tat: Sein Werk in Auswahl [Religion of Fact: A Selection of His Work]. Leipzig: Kröner, pp. 1–85. Lawrence, D.H. (1947). The Blue Birds. In: The Portable D.H. Lawrence. New York: Viking Press, p. 121. Proust, M. (1925). Albertine Dispame II (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu) [Albertine Dispame II (In Search of Lost Time)]. Paris: Gallimard. Proust, M. (1927). Du Coté de Chez Swann [Swann’s Way] (Vol. 1). Paris: Gallimard. Sartre, J.-P. (1943). L’Être et le Néant: Essai D’ontologie Phénoménologique [Being and Nothingness: Essay in Phenomenological Ontology]. Paris: Gallimard. Schiller, F. (1837). Schillers Sämmtliche Werke [Schiller’s Collective Works] (Vol. 1). Paris: F. Locquin.

4 DESCANT ON “THE CONVERSATION”

What is more valuable than gold? Light. What is more precious than light? Conversation. Johann W. von Goethe (quoted by Kaplan, 2005, p. 311)

On his deathbed in Weimar, while dying from heart failure, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s final words were told to have been “Mehr Licht!”  [More light!] (Vogel, 1833). Surely it was Goethe’s studies of colour and light that had made him famous. And yet, above gold and light, Goethe valued conversation. While Goethe would have us wonder how the conversation is so supremely valuable, Jan H. van den Berg makes us wonder about the nature of the conversation in a phenomenological manner. Van den Berg draws us into the phenomenological attitude that forces us to let go of our common view of a conversation as something consisting of spoken words and to wonder about its originary meaning. The phenomenological text, “Het Gesprek” [The Conversation] (1953), shows van den Berg’s compelling talent for drawing phenomenological reflections from everyday, concrete moments. He does not engage in an empirical or speculative exploration of the use and meaning of conversation in our modern age, nor does he engage in technical philosophical explanations. Instead, he begins with an ordinary narrative example—as he often does in his phenomenological essays—about an evening visit of the poet Alfred Tennyson with the philosopher Thomas Carlyle. As the story goes, the two friends shared their evening, steeped in silence, and when the evening had passed, and the friends finally parted, Carlyle urged Tennyson to come back soon. Note that this anecdotal vignette is only three short

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sentences long. And yet, van den Berg immediately creates a vivid and concrete image of an experience of togetherness of these two friends. To begin, we could say that the anecdotal example of Tennyson and Carlyle sitting in silence beside a fire, and yet something resembling a conversation transpiring, is paradoxical. After all, the common view is that the basic meaning of a “conversation” is that it consists of words. The central term in Dutch for conversation is “spreken,” meaning “to speak.” So, for van den Berg to suspend the idea that the essence of a conversation lies in spoken words would seem an even more radical application of the epoché than it might be in the English language. Indeed, the Dutch dictionary equivalent for the term “the conversation” literally is “the speaking.” Now, van den Berg is intrigued with the Carlyle-Tennyson anecdote, and he wonders if this was not such a perfectly shared togetherness that words were not necessary—a conversation without words. Can one have a conversation without words spoken? In a phenomenological fashion, van den Berg helps us to wonder: What is really at the heart of a conversation? What is it that makes a conversation a unique and particular human phenomenon? Common sense seems to say that a conversation consists of talk, words spoken, and no doubt, this is superficially true. But are words the essential (eidetic) feature of a conversational relation? Throughout his phenomenological essay, van den Berg engages, in a writerly manner, the devices of the epoché and the reduction, without mentioning these terms. He simply asks his readers to be willing to be open and consider, counterintuitively, that “words” are not be the essential component in the conduct of conversation. He asks his readers to be open to the seemingly bizarre proposition that the essence of the conversation does not inhere in the talking, arguments, or chatter that we usually associate with having conversations. Next, van den Berg draws on a second anecdote as an experiential ground for reflecting on the quotidian meaning of a conversation. He tells us the story of a resident of Amsterdam inviting his cousin, a contractor from a small town in the northern part of Holland, to visit the Stedelijk Museum. Although the two are positioned in front of the same painting, De Jobstijding by Carel Willink, they see the picture differently. Togetherness is disturbed, and the possibility for conversation seems ruined. Van den Berg offers additional reflections including short phenomenological reflections on the experience of an awkward talk, of viewing a painting or other art object, of finding the space and source for words to speak, of sharing in a walk, of looking at a countryside, and so forth. Van den Berg’s phenomenological analysis (reduction) aims to show that a genuine conversation depends more fundamentally on the blending as well as the separating of the subjectivities of two people into the special conversational sharing of a common world. A good conversation is a hermeneutic, says Gadamer, that bridges the distance between minds and reveals the foreignness of the other mind. Whatever says something to us is like a person who says something. It is alien in the sense that it transcends us (Gadamer, 1976, p. 100). Van den Berg

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wrote this essay some decades before Gadamer addressed the phenomenology of conversation as central to hermeneutics (1975). His explorations for the phenomenological meaning of the phenomenon of the conversation are layered on reflections of descriptive examples and thoughtful observations allowing him to draw original phenomenological insights: the meaning of a conversation as expressing a certain mode of relational togetherness, of sharing a common world, of experiencing a shared sphere, and each other’s being present that makes a conversation what it is. Van den Berg explores the phenomenological features of this conversational space. He suggests that we all know this kind of togetherness where we feel so understood that our words are given freedom. We can speak, or we can be silent, because we feel completely comfortable in this shared conversational space. Van den Berg deepens our understanding of conversational togetherness without ever becoming lost in abstraction. He is doing phenomenology on the phenomenon. In other words, all of his reflections are constantly grounded in reflections on the concrete, the world as lived. We can appreciate the eidetic explications as he freely varies the details of his anecdotal examples: “let us assume that the Amsterdam host answers in this way . . .” and also offers an example of an antipathetic exchange about a scenic setting in Paris. Here we find the eidetic reduction in the phenomenological writing of van den Berg at the service of explicating the life meaning of a seemingly everyday human experience. We do not need to question the validity of these stories for their empirical truthfulness because it is the plausibility of these exemplary stories that provides them with self-evidentiality. The ground for van den Berg’s reflections is what the reader in some way already knows, the possible experience of the conversation. We appreciate the breadth of his knowledge of art, literature, and philosophy. Van den Berg draws on aphorisms from Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Proust, and also the philosophical writings of Heidegger, Sartre, and Binswanger, and he explicates phenomenological terminology when necessary for his reflective text. In doing phenomenology, he shows to be steeped in the philosophical phenomenological literature. And yet, it would be hard to identify any single passage as being overly philosophically technical or abstractly theoretical because his writing is always a play between concrete examples of experiential life stories and phenomenological reflections on the meaning and subtle aspects of the phenomena of human existence. So, when van den Berg arrives at his final reflections, they are not abstract but rather embedded in the reader’s empathic understandings of van den Berg’s words: Here we arrive at a final (paradoxical) definition of the condition of a conversation: The condition of every conversation is the secret of the other. The conversation is born by a never satisfied, and at the same time, always satisfied, “wondering” about the secret of the conversational partner. The condition of the conversation is the unfamiliarity of this partner,

50  Descant on “The Conversation”

the inequality of two people who talk to each other. The condition of the conversation, we can finally say, is the asymmetry of the speakers. For Gadamer too, the conversation is a dialogue that lies at the core of coming to an understanding in the hermeneutic process of questioning. And vice versa, Gadamer points out that “every sudden idea has the structure of a question” (1975, p. 329). Gadamer’s primary interest in the conversation is the hermeneutic interest of coming to an understanding. The reader may still feel somewhat unsatisfied about the final paragraphs of van den Berg’s phenomenological essay. The reason is that van den Berg has actually “shown” more insight into the meaning of conversation than he seems to capture in his brief concluding words. But, interestingly, van den Berg provides insight into this unsatisfaction as well. He describes how he needs to be open to the other. In Gadamer’s words, “[Openness to the other] involves recognizing that I myself must accept some things that are against me, even though no one else forces me to” (Gadamer, 1975, p. 361). The point is that van den Berg has created a conversation with the reader, and the ultimate phenomenological meaning of this conversation lies in the meaningfulness of the world that gives meaning to the in-between togetherness as well as the separated difference of the conversational relation. Maurice Blanchot expresses phenomenally how the conversation plays with the secret and otherness of the thoughts of self and other. Note how Blanchot is writing this recollection as a vignette or anecdote—or as we suggested in the opening chapter, as an example: I recall being present at a conversation between two men who were very different from one another. One would say in simple and profound sentences some truth had taken to heart; the other would listen in silence, then when reflection had done its work he would in turn express some proposition, sometimes in almost the same words, albeit slightly differently (more rigorously, more loosely or more strangely). This redoubling of the same affirmation constituted the strongest of dialogues. Nothing was developed, opposed or modified; and it was manifest that the first interlocutor learned a great deal, and even infinitely, from his own thoughts repeated— not because they were adhered to and agreed with, but, on the contrary, through the infinite difference. For it is as though what he said in the first person as an “I” had been expressed anew by him as “other” [autrui] and as though he had thus been carried into the very unknown of his thought: where his thought, without being altered, became absolutely other [l’autre]. (Blanchot, 1993, p. 341) Blanchot reflects on the (fictional or real) conversation he had witnessed. He says, these two men had in a certain sense nothing in common, except the movement

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(which brought them very close) of turning together toward the infinite of speech, which is the meaning of the word conversation. In a sense, Blanchot confirms van den Berg’s phenomenality of the conversation when the latter says, “we speak because the essence of our being is ineffable. Those who do not have a secret have nothing to say.” And he concludes, “it is the mutual alterity of the partners that is never boring, never coming to an end, and accordingly has no end.” Van den Berg shows us the paradoxical character of conversation: it is a relational space that unites and separates. It unites in that it blends us together in a common world, but it also separates us in recognition of the secret and otherness of this other with whom we share a conversational world. The conversation is a relation, but it is also a nonrelation in the sense that the other remains a secret and must remain a secret to give meaning to the asymmetricality of the conversation. Van den Berg reveals the paradoxical limitation and the richness of language and linguistic silence underlying the shared space of the conversation. Language and silence constitute the paradoxical human medium that blends and separates, that shows sameness and difference, that shares and hides what is the absolute secret in the other. If van den Berg’s explication of the conversation is successful in a phenomenological sense, then the reader has been able to grasp the elusive meaning of the condition of paradoxical in-betweenness on which every conversational experience depends. Finally, in the closing paragraphs van den Berg briefly explains how professional practitioners, such as nurses, physicians, educators, and psychologists, may want to understand the nature and significance of the asymmetry when engaged in conversational dialogue with their patients, students, and clients. Phenomenology is not a technology and does not produce “fine theories,” as van den Berg says, rather it gives us meaningful “insights” into the phenomena of human existence (1972). Such phenomenological insights may be relevant for the conduct of conversation in the professional fields of pedagogy, nursing, pediatrics, medicine, psychology, counselling, and also the practice of conversation in everyday life. Van den Berg’s 1972 book, A Different Existence: Phenomenological Psychopathology, is an excellent (nontechnical) study of the neurosis of mental illness. It is also an excellent text demonstrating the method of the phenomenological attitude in the significance of conversation in psychiatry. A major theme that may strike the reader of A Different Existence echoes van den Berg’s phenomenology of the conversation: when a patient, suffering from neurosis, says that he does not dare to go outside because the houses are falling down, then the psychiatrist must believe the patient. The houses are indeed falling down for the patient. Van den Berg shows what it means to take the experience of the patient’s world seriously. Psychologically and phenomenologically it does not make sense to try assure the patient that the houses are fine and that they are not falling down. Rather, phenomenology must start with the question of how a mental illness is experienced. Gaining phenomenological insights into phenomena contributes to the depth of professional wisdom. To put it differently, this import of phenomenological insights for the

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professions is at the level of thoughtfulness and tact (see van Manen, M.A. 2019; van Manen, M. 2014, 2015).

Notes All unmarked quotes are taken from the preceding essay on “The Conversation,” by Jan H. van den Berg.

References Blanchot, M. (1993). The Infinite Conversation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gadamer, H-G. (1975). Truth and Method. New York: The Seabury Press. Gadamer, H-G. (1976). Philosophical Hermeneutics. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Kaplan, A. (2005). Emerging Out of Goethe: Conversation as a Form of Social Inquiry. Janus Head, 8, pp. 311–334. Van den Berg, J.H. (1953). Het Gesprek [The Conversation]. In: J.H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 136–154. Van den Berg, J.H. (1972). A Different Existence. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and Writing. London: Routledge. Van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical Tact: Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. London: Routledge. Van Manen, M.A. (2019). Phenomenology of the Newborn: Life from Womb to World. London: Routledge. Vogel, C. (1833). Die letzte Krankheit Goethes [The Last Illness of Goethe]. Journal der Practischen Heilkunde.

5 FREDERIK J.J. BUYTENDIJK

Science is knowing the essence of things . . . of the invisible in visible, of the unchanging in the changing, of the eternal in the temporary. Frederik J.J. Buytendijk (1920a, p. 12)

Frederik Jacob Johannes Buytendijk (1887–1974) was born in Breda, a Dutch town in the south of the Netherlands. In his youth, he developed a keen love for animals and plants that he later kept as botanical and zoological interests in his medically related research. He completed medical studies in 1909 and then, on the advice of his father, pursued additional studies in physiology. He was promoted in 1918 on a dissertation entitled Proeven over Gewoontevorming bij Dieren [Probations on Habit Developments in Animals]. This topic may seem like an unusual research concern, but behind this subject was the profound and lingering childhood interest of a highly talented and original scholarship of a philosophically grounded empirical scientist (Prick, 1975). Because of his extraordinary talent for insightful observation, the young Buytendijk was posted to the Stazione Zoölogica in Naples. Initially, he pursued problems integrating methods that lie at the heart of medicine, physiology, biology, chemistry, neurology, and also psychology, anthropology, and psychiatry. However, the physician Buytendijk was unique in that he found in his world numerous and a variety of inimitable manifestations of phenomena and events that he referred to as “the playful logos of nature.” These became the substance of a creative corpus of fascinating studies. Soon, Buytendijk was given academic appointments at several major universities. In 1919, he assumed the Chair in Physiology at the University of Amsterdam, and in 1929, he was appointed at Groningen. In 1946, he received the assignment of Chair in Theoretical Psychology at the University of Utrecht, as

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well as appointments in Nijmegen and Leuven. He also taught at the Universities of Naples, Cambridge, Berlin, Giessen, Bonn, and Basel. After 1957, he remained as emeritus at Utrecht and returned for two more years as chair after the death in 1964 of his former student and successor, Johannes Linschoten. During his career, Buytendijk drew audiences consisting of colleagues, students, and the general public with his wide-ranging lectures and his many books, journal publications, and specialized monographs. He acquired fame as a learned international scholar who was able to integrate seemingly unrelated scientific discoveries into deep understandings of issues and topics such as obsessive compulsiveness, the nature of inner life, moral freedom in children, the difference between sudden pain and chronic pain, and so forth. Gradually he shifted his scientific inquiries into domains that overlap with aesthetics, philosophy, ethics, and, more specifically, phenomenology. The writings of Edmund Husserl, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Levinas, Sartre, Marcel, de Waelhens, von Weizsäcker, Minkowski, Goldstein, James, Michotte, van Melsen, Strasser, Walgraven, Dostojewski, Rilke, Pascal, and many others influenced the development of his work. Buytendijk became close friends with Max Scheler, and like Scheler, accepted Husserl’s fundamental methodological principle to approach the things themselves while suspending prior assumptions and without dissecting them into their analytical elements. He also felt affinity for Scheler’s phenomenology of the feeling states of sympathy and love, and the view that phenomenology is more like an attitude, based on intuitive grasping of meaning, rather than on a philosophical method that focuses on consciousness and rationality (Scheler, 1970, 1973). Buytendijk also maintained lively interactions with phenomenological psychiatrists, philosophers, physicians, and psychologists such as Helmuth Plessner, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Romano Guardini, Erwin Straus, Helmut Binswanger, and his Dutch colleagues, Jan H. van den Berg and Martinus J. Langeveld. One of Buytendijk’s early interests was the unique biological and social nature of the dog as human companion. This is a quote from the opening pages of Frederik J. J. Buytendijk’s The Mind of the Dog, written in 1932, and published in English in 1936. Have you ever seen a child and a dog together? I do not mean strolling, playing, and romping in each other’s company, but sitting still side by side in those quiet moments that seem to bring with them an almost disturbing sense of mystery. A child and a dog. I saw them like that on a terrace one summer evening at the hour when the light had lost its shadows and gave to trees and garden paths an independent existence, while in the dusk the surrounding objects began to melt into one another. Side by side they sat together, the little girl and her dog, an ordinary yellow puppy. Both were passing the evening intent upon themselves. They were dreaming thus unreflectively, their beings moulded in

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harmony with the great forces presented by Nature at that hour—the delicacy and purity of the motionless forms, tranquil and secure in the warmth that enfolded them. Whenever the little girl made any movement—lifted her head, or tossed the hair back from her face—the dog looked at her. It gazed up at her face, watched her eyes. It regarded her quietly and steadfastly, not with a fleeting or indifferent glance. And when the child looked down at the ground, the dog looked down too. And if a sound came from any part of the garden, both child and dog turned their heads in the same direction. The little girl touched the puppy, even stroked it gently. The animal moved its fore-paws a little, leaned against the child, and then sat looking at her quietly once more. Thus, they sat side by side again for the space of a few minutes. Then, abruptly, the dog nestled closer to the child, put both its fore-paws on her lap, stretched up and tried to lick her, just as an ordinary puppy does. And into the child’s eyes there came a look of happiness and tender melancholy; she took the puppy in her arms and pressed its head to her breast. Every one of us must have seen such a picture, and I recall it to memory here because we are anxious to know the secret, to get to the bottom of the reasons why the dog has been the faithful companion of humans from the very beginning of times, and has remained so despite all the changes wrought by culture and science, and all the differentiations in the forms of life and of civilization. (Buytendijk, 1936, pp. 11, 12) Some readers may feel that these paragraphs are too sentimental or too poetic. Others may be surprised to learn someone specialized in experimental, physiological research wrote these paragraphs. Buytendijk’s work uniquely bridges the natural and human sciences. In The Mind of the Dog, Buytendijk makes insightful observations and constantly tests them against empirical and laboratory scientific studies of animal behaviour. That makes his eventual phenomenological method of insightful observation of the meaning of experiential moments even more remarkable. And importantly, while Buytendijk often succeeds in creating a profound sense of wonder in his readers, he refuses to make easy judgments or draw unwarranted conclusions in this 318-page book. Yet, we learn to understand more insightfully some of the mysterious dimensions of the mind of the dog. As a medical doctor, Buytendijk appreciated the value in exploring what is experienced as meaningful in life. According to Buytendijk, to understand human existence, one does not start from the simple or the bottom but instead from the complex or the top. Similarly, animal psychology is best understood from the higher orders down. This approach is characteristic of all Buytendijk’s work, from his early Psychologie der Dieren [Psychology of Animals] (1920), De

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Psychologie van den Hond [The Mind of the Dog] (1936), to his later Prolegomena van een Antropologische Fysiologie [Prolegomena of an Anthropological Physiology] (1965/1974). For example, in the Prolegomena, he employs considerations about the idea of an anthropological physiology and aspects of human embodiment and psycho-physical problems to introduce a comprehensive study of exemplary modes of human existence and physiological regulatory systems. He describes in detail modes of being such as being-awake and -asleep, being-tired, beinghungry, being-emotional, as well as regulatory aspects such as posture, respiration, and circulation. In his main works, Buytendijk occupied himself only rarely with methodological issues. But in his later writings, he turned his interest again to Husserl, though, like Langeveld, he did not subscribe to all of Husserl’s developments. His De Psychologie van de Roman [The Psychology of the Novel] (1950) contains a seeming discussion of methodology, in which he quotes Saint Augustinus, “Res tantum cognoscitur, quantum diligitur” [one can only really understand what one loves]. He speaks of “the objectivity of love,” and in reflectively analyzing novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky, he shows how literature provides especially relevant insights for psychological understanding. In discussing Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, he likens the narrating voice of the text to that of the lover or the mother. In the presence of such pure love, there is the experience of solid ground, of deep trust that permeates the words as well as the silence about the words. Buytendijk says: We must believe in the novel, more than a child in a fairy-tale and only thus do we, as readers, enter a new world as virtual reality and discover a life and meaningful relationship of an order different than the one given to us in our own existence. (1962, p. 37) In his paper “Husserl’s Phenomenology and Its Significance for Contemporary Psychology” (1987), Buytendijk shows how phenomenological method can be applied to those modes of existence that belong to the praxis of the lifeworld. Elsewhere, Buytendijk wrote of the “phenomenological nod” that occurs when the reader recognizes the self-evidentiality of the nuanced experiential meanings that only a phenomenological description can evoke through insightful descriptive, scientific, and evocative poetic means (1970, p. 596). That is why he proposes that a phenomenological association with literature and the arts can provide insights into the psychology of everyday motivations, and the deep dramas of human life—insights that the disciplines of psychology or physiology alone are incapable of producing. Over the years, Buytendijk published a great many theoretical and also practical scientific and phenomenological studies on thoughtful and provocative topics in Dutch, French, and German. During the war, he wrote Over de Pijn (1943)

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(published in English as Pain, Its Modes and Functions) (1961), which still offers a relevant contemporary critique of the search for a life without suffering. Buytendijk believed that we must supplement natural science findings with human science research. Without this action, the findings of the natural sciences remain incomplete in their abstractness. To understand humanity in its fullness, we must revise the analytical results of research in light of the overall existence of the person concerned. As a medical doctor, Buytendijk knew that a physician is not primarily a theoretical scholar in his or her clinical work, but instead an experienced practitioner and aid to the patients and their families. In other words, it is the meaningful existence of the patient that tasks the physician to act responsibly. Natural science thinking is insufficient to address experiences of health and illness. Medicine, which is not primarily pure science, but based on empiricism, cannot shirk the ethical responsibility of a healthcare practitioner. Some of the writings of Buytendijk may be challenging to the reader. They demand knowledge and understandings of both the natural and human sciences. The reader also soon appreciates that the inclusion of the science-of-the-day cannot help but antiquate some of his work. And yet, these writings also contain timeless insights into human existence, such as living with pain: Modern people regard pain merely as an unpleasant fact, which, like every other evil, we must do our best to get rid of. To do this, it is generally held, there is no need for any reflection on the phenomenon itself . . . The modern person is irritated by things that older generations accepted with equanimity. We are irritated by old age, long illness, and even by death; above all we are irritated by pain. Pain simply must not occur. Modern society demands that all possible means be used to combat and prevent pain, everywhere and for everybody . . . Advances in diagnosis and therapy are expected to produce more and more such healing methods . . . The consequence is an immoderate state of algophobia (fear of pain), which is itself an evil and sets a seal of timidity on the whole of human life . . . Medicine, the all-powerful authority for discovering the remedies against pain has been quite successful . . . [but yet has not] had the expected effect of ridding us of the fear of pain. (Buytendijk, 1973, p. 15) While pain as suffering carries mostly negative connotations in today’s world, Buytendijk suggests that pain forces us to reflect and to give it a place and meaning in our lives. Ironically, nothing makes us feel alive more than pain. Buytendijk believes that we should gather knowledge of human existence from observations of everyday life situations and events. The features of a lifeworld that we interpret linguistically become questionable and enigmatic, inducing us to wonder about the significant aspects of human existence. Thus, to understand the human world, we need to begin from a situated understanding

58  Frederik J.J. Buytendijk

of human life—from the meaningful ground structure of the totality of situations, events, and cultural values that constitute human experience. No world is conceivable without humans, and no humans without the world, existing in its complexity.

Selected Works Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1920). Psychologie der Dieren [Psychology of Animals]. Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1936). The Mind of the Dog. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1943). Over de Pijn [About Pain]. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, N.V. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1961). Pain, Its Modes and Functions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1947). De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind [The First Smile of the Child]. In: Inaugurale Rede te Nijmegen. Utrecht: Dekker & van der Vegt, N.V. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1948). Algemene Theorie der Menselijke Houding en Beweging [General Theory of Human Comportment and Movement]. Utrecht-Antwerpen: Uitgeverij het Spectrum. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1960). Husserls Denken en de Hedendaagse Psychologie [Husserls Thinking and Contemporary Psychology]. Wijsgerig Perspectief op Maatschappij en Wetenschap, 1, pp. 70–83. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1950). De Psychologie van de Roman: Studies over Dostojevski [The Psychology of the Novel: Studies on Dostoyevsky]. Utrecht: Aula Boeken. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1951). De Vrouw, Haar Natuur, Verschijning, en Bestaan. Een ExistentieelPsychologische Studie [The Woman, Her Nature, Appearance, and Existence: An ExistentialPsychological Study]. Utrecht: Aula Boeken. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1970). Naar een Existentiële Verklaring van de Doorleefde dwang [Towards an Existential Explication of the Experience of Compulsiveness]. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 32 (4), pp. 567–608. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1965/1974). Prolegomena van een Antropologische Fysiologie [Prolegomena to an Anthropological Physiology]. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1987). Husserl’s Phenomenology and its Significance for Contemporary Psychology. In: J.J. Kockelmans (ed.). Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

References Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1920a). In: R. Abma (2015). Maak Buigzaam wat Verstard Is [Make Flexible What Is Rigid]. Tilburg: KSGV. (p. 12). Cited by: H.M.A. Struyker Boudier (1989). Mier en slang. Correspondentie van F.J.J. Buytendijk met Erich Wasmann S.J. [Ant and Snake: Correspondence of F.J.J. Buytendijk with Erich Wasmann S.J]. Splijtstof, 18 (1–2), pp. 7–226, 162. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1920b). Psychologie der Dieren [Psychology of Animals]. Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1936). The Mind of the Dog. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1943). Over de Pijn [About Pain]. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, N.V.

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Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1950). De Psychologie van de Roman: Studies over Dostojevski [The Psychology of the Novel: Studies on Dostoyevsky]. Utrecht: Aula Boeken. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1961). Pain, Its Modes and Functions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1987). Husserl’s Phenomenology and its Significance for Contemporary Psychology. In: J.J. Kockelmans (ed.). Phenomenological Psychology: The Dutch School. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Prick, J.J.G. (1975). Herdenking van F.J.J. Buytendijk [Commemoration of F.J.J. Buytendijk]. (April 29, 1887–October 21, 1974). In: Jaarboek 1974. Amsterdam: NoordHollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 207–229 (citaat 209–210). Scheler, M. (1970). The Nature of Sympathy. Hamden: Archon Books. Scheler, M. (1973). Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

6 THE FIRST SMILE OF THE CHILD [De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind, 1947] Frederik J.J. Buytendijk

The smile is the expression of an emerging humanness in the first reticent encounter. Frederik J.J. Buytendijk (1947, p. 116)

The first smile of the newborn child deserves our special timid attention because this first smile presents us with a dual mystery that must be probed from both a biological and a psychological viewpoint. While the biological perspective considers the human being a part of living nature, the psychological view understands the human being as a bearer of mind or spirit. And so, the phenomenon of smiling compels us to inquire into its physiological causalities and genesis as well as into its significance and essential meaning. The notion of human nature as a biologically determined existence implies that any action or expression is the result of a preceding constellation of causes. Therefore, van Melsen (1946) rightly says that “physics is and remains a knowledge of causes in exactly the same sense as the ancient philosophers regarded physics” (p. 194). Thus, in the natural sciences, cause and appearance implies a mechanistic understanding of processes of human development. And yet, empirical appearances, such as the appearance of the first smile of the infant, can only be made understandable from an understanding of the developed form of smiling. Rather than explaining the appearance of developed phenomena from prior undeveloped processes, we have to understand the undeveloped from the developed. Plessner (1941) rightly says that if we wish to understand the genesis of language, play, or intelligence, we must first come to an understanding of the essential nature of these phenomena (p. 20). Only then will it be possible to see how a more primitive stage constitutes the developmental antecedent of a later phase.

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Therefore, if we wish to consider smiling as an early form of laughing, it is not sufficient to note how the first phenomenon transforms into the second phenomenon. The point is that we must be able to see how, in this transformation, something becomes different and yet remains essentially the same. Moreover, to explain the origin of smiling, it is not enough to study the factors that precede it, whether these are psychological, such as joyfulness or physiological, such as activation of certain parts of the brainstem. Joy or excitement may be the immediate antecedent that gives rise to smiling but to say that smiling is caused by joy or stimulation only makes sense when we have come to an understanding of what this joy or this excitement consists. Also, one has to determine what is the nature of the organism which seems to show happiness. Is it stimulated? Is it functionally engaging in a physical movement? What types of movements exist in its repertoire? Finally, is smiling an expressive movement, and if so, what does it ultimately express? And so, it should be evident that the scientific analysis of even a simple motor manifestation, like the first smile of the child, is only possible if we start from an understanding of the nature of the individual, the species, and all living beings in nature. Darwin (1872) explained the occurrence of expressive movements as vestigial reminders of purposive behaviours, and by employing the principle of antithesis, he declared that the phenomenon of laughing is the opposite of crying. He based this view on a particular conception of nature and the genealogy of human life. But if one holds on to a different understanding of nature and genealogy of the human being, then one must reject Darwin’s explication of expressive movements. If there exists such an inseparable connection between an apparently independent function of an organism and its meaningful significance, then it is clear that we can attempt to understand its significance from the way it appears. Thus, psychology must fulfill a double task. The call and the sound of alarm of a bird, the babbling of a child, the play of young kittens, the intelligence of a rat or an ape—all these are expressions of living beings, each of whom has its own mode of existence and finds in this mode of being its significance. In reflecting phenomenologically on the appearance and essence of a phenomenon, such as the first smile, this relation of significance must be continually held in view. In this way, one must try to respond to the question of what is the essence and meaningful significance of a certain expression such as the first smile of the child. One might perhaps suppose that the question of the essence and significance of the first smile of the newborn can be answered simply on the basis that we adults smile too. And, therefore, we should be able to provide an account of the lived meaning of the smile. We should be able to tell under what conditions we smile, and what we express by it. However, comparative psychology admonishes us to be careful. The observable behaviours of animals, children, and adults may appear to be similar, but they are in essence quite different. For example, a reflex, an instinctive reaction, a learned behaviour, an expressive movement, a symbolic

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gesture, and an arbitrary movement—although these are in essence quite different, they can all seem to appear, for example, in the observable expression of a wink of the eye. In searching for an adequate explication of the first smile of the infant, there are two reasons to be extra careful. First, it is quite possible that during the first few months after birth the human impulse in the infant still slumbers in a latent state. At the time when the first smile appears, the child may still function in a state that may not be animalistic, but that is, nevertheless, a physiologically closed existence—a primal existence, as yet without an inner life. If this were the case, then we could not compare the crying and smiling of the infant with our adult expressions. Second, we need to be cautious in our description because adults may smile for entirely different reasons and possibly they may have lost the childlike smile. Everyday life shows us that we can distinguish among various kinds of smiling. No other mimic expression assumes quite such a wide range of feelings, moods, and personal characteristics. And no other mimic expression can appear in so many shades and nuances. For example, we know the real and the inauthentic smile, just as we may recognize a restrained, frank, resentful, painful, contemptuous, cheating, mocking, bitter, sarcastic, compassionate, intelligent, stupid, kind, shy, affectionate, cheerful, peaceful, or delighted smile. We know the more mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa, the stone sculpture of Le Sourire de Reims [The Smile of Reims], and the still smile of the death-mask of the unidentified girl from the Seine River, L’Inconnue de la Seine [The Unknown Woman of the Seine]. One might mistakenly assume that these different types of smiles are so easily recognizable that it is quite possible to identify the infant’s smile as one of these. But when people are shown photographs of smiling individuals, then there is a wide disparity of interpretations that people give of them. Very few expressions are clearly recognizable independent of the situations in which they occur. Most smiles can only be understood from the context in which the smiling takes place (Buytendijk & Plessner, 1925). Before we should accept the first smile of the infant as a psychological expression of something—whatever it may be—we need to consider whether the facial contortions involved in the smile are not simply physiological processes that only accidentally look like smiling. Protests from mothers and fathers who claim to have witnessed “real” smiling in their infant should not deter us, just as the protest from dog lovers should not prevent us from questioning whether dogs can know feelings of fidelity and jealousy. When a parrot says “good morning,” then this only mimics acoustically the same greeting by a human being. Just so the first smile of the child might be only seemingly similar to the smile of the adult. This possibility needs serious consideration because adults too can show mimic expressions that do not possess the expressive meanings that they seem to portray. Every excitation or irritation of a non-specific nature is accompanied by stimulations from the central nervous system, which then sends a flood of impulses to the facial muscles. For example,

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strong emotions such as anger, fright, shock, and overwhelming joy can produce sudden physical expressions that differ from the underlying emotions, and that may be contingent on certain situational factors. The stimulation of strong muscle groups produces the activation of the strongest as well as the least used muscles. This often accompanies the exertion of strong effort. For example, we may observe the laboriously writing child, intensely concentrated, contorting his or her tongue, face, arms, and legs even though such movements are neither purposeful nor helpful for maintaining posture. Such movements are not themselves real expressions. Duchenne (1876) had shown already that stimulation of the facial nervous system with a mild electric current could easily produce contractions of the facial muscles that resemble smiling. Not just the mouth shows signs of happiness and contentment; even the eyes partake in the smiling. Dumas (1937) drew this conclusion from Duchenne’s experiments: “The spontaneous smile is the easiest reaction of facial muscles to elicit from moderate stimulation” (p. 344), where easiest reaction and moderate stimulation are understood to mean purely physical phenomena. According to this psychologist, it is, therefore, to be assumed that the expression of the smile occurs through physical causes: not only with an infant but with an adult person as well. Any slight stimulation of the facial nerve can elicit a smile. As an example, Dumas (1937) mentions the fact that the blow of cold wind across the face elicits the same facial expression as a satisfied smile. He continues that the same expression occurs even by slight stimulation of the facial skin, or by way of the stimulating odours of a perfumed mineral bath. Even the stimulation of a cool breeze or the application of aftershave lotion on the face can bring about such expression. And, likewise can the stimulation of alcohol or a good meal produce in the facial muscles an expressive response of contentment. Against Dumas, one might object, however, that some facial reactions in such situations look more like a grimace than a real smile, as when a person is walking in a snowstorm. But even if we wish to disregard the subtle nuances in the mimic response, we need to ask what exactly is to be understood by the term “moderate stimulation” and whether there are common characteristics that bring about a smile-like effect. Now, based on the experiences of daily life, it is noticeable that the widening of the mouth and the narrowing of the eyes, following the aforementioned stimuli of the facial skin while resembling a smile, also clearly differ. The departures are usually much stronger or akin to a grim-smile than a contented-smile. However, it is certainly possible to consider that an even mild facial stimulation—such as occurring when someone walking on the beach encounters a cool breeze— produces a mimic image that cannot be distinguished from a smile, just like how some of the images that Duchenne (1876) produced from the stimulation of the facial nerve displayed striking similarities to smiling. One can see, therefore, from inspection of these mimic images, that Dumas (1937) is right, from “moderate stimulation” occurs a similar effect. The question that must be asked, however, is

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what should be understood by the term “moderate stimulation,” and which common characteristics bring about a smile-like effect? To elucidate these characteristics, it is necessary first to examine the nature of those situations that cause real smiling. The truth of a mimic image, of course, comes about only in the relation of an inner experience to a real or imagined happening, in which the subject experiences him- or herself as a lived and situated self. Now, to my mind, there are two situations that, more than any other, typically provoke real smiling. These are the friendly encounter and the threat of being tickled. I need to explicate first what is meant by “encounter,” and by the predicate “friendly.” An encounter is not just the appearance or sensory perception of the presence of someone else. This may be the precondition of an encounter, but the essence of encounter consists in the meeting of a significant other person who engages with me in a relation, and who, so to speak, enters the threshold of my inner life, and whose own inner life reveals itself to me. Anyone who knows what is meant by the fundamental concept “person” will understand how an encounter is a “personal” and thus an existential happening. However, one will note that animals too, such as dogs, can “meet” each other, and this comment is certainly important for our topic of the first smile. Now an animal is not a human person, but it is an individual being, a being to oneself. Therefore, being personal can apply to an animal. This is the case when a dog encounters another dog and greets it as hostile or as friendly. In the latter case, the dog does not smile but wags its tail. If one wants to call this a smile, then there are no more objections than talking about dog friendship. Next, as far as the predicate “friendly” is concerned, I chose this, because it is precisely the encounter with a friend and with everything that we have friendly feelings about—whether this is a child, an animal, or a beautiful thing—that almost automatically makes us smile. Such a meeting is almost always a reunion, or has the character of “seeing again.”  In a friendly encounter, we beam with pleasure, and the face expresses this radiance of pleasure through the mouth and the eyes. Yet, the feeling of joy is in itself not the real reason for the smile. Indeed, joy can be expressed in a variety of ways such as through other bodily expressions of lively movements or gestures, through beaming eyes and a somewhat opened mouth, and so forth. So, there are many expressions of joy. The smile, however, is not only an expression but also an answer to a person or thing before which our heart has affectionately opened itself in an encounter. The experience of contentment is comparable to a clear, sunny sky. It is a form of happiness that scintillates well-being that invites heart-warming goodness. Laughter is a relaxation pleasure, an outburst, and exuberance. But we smile in contentment, expressed as Frohheit. I use the German word deliberately here, not only because it means “clear, cloudless” as well as “tidy and satisfied,” but also because Lersch proposes two modifications  of Frohheit distinguishing Heiterkeit

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and Lustigkeit, which we translate to the not-entirely-equivalent terms “cheerfulness” and “joviality,” respectively. The experience of contentment is indeed comparable to a clear, cloudless, sunny sky. It is a form of happiness, scintillating well-being as an invitation to heart-warming goodness In contrast, “joy” is also scintillating, but it is more exuberant, while the word “funny” means amused at the things that cheer. Both joy and funny are more egocentric states. A contented human being is, therefore, quieter, more tranquil, and more restful while remaining open to the world. “Contentment” is more an attitude of reserve than of complete surrender. With this word “more” I want to bring out the ambivalent character of contentment that we notice when we carefully consider the lived experience of contentment as it is directed to our being and to our being in the world. It is an ambivalence that shows itself also in the polar unity of tension and relaxation. In comparison, cheerfulness and joy express themselves in laughter, in a release of tension through surrender—by surrendering oneself in one’s relation to the lived body as a means for acting and expressing, as has been shown by Plessner (1941). In a way, laughter as a “relaxation pleasure” is an outburst and exuberance. Along this line, Gregory (1924) says, “Laughter is not an act as a blow is an angry act or flight is a fearful act. Neither is it, properly speaking, an ‘act of acceptance’ ” (p. 158). He adds, “The laughter simply holds his sides and laughs— his laughter is an action broken” (p. 158). While cheerfulness and joy involve the release of tension, the contented person is subjectively relaxed like every happy person. And yet the contented person also knows a certain tension; it is the kind of tension we experience in expectation. This is particularly the case in the joy of a friendly encounter, for example, when we approach a child playing with toys: then our approach is filled with a certain anticipation of the pleasant possibilities, the promises that this encounter may hold in store. In such situations, we experience a particular inner pleasure, a secret amusement—secret, because we experience this pleasure as a yet to be kept secret that already within us begins to scintillate, dissipating fog and clouds, making way for a beaming brightness. The smile is the adequate expression of this. It is externalized in the widening of the face, the expression of the eyes, and restrained in the closing of lips—a silent, restrained surrender to what encounters a possibility. Just as playing is always playing with something that also plays with the player, so too we encounter someone who encounters us. And so, there is reciprocity in anticipation of joy, which is reflected in the smile. And because the human being is an inexhaustible source of happiness for sympathetic affection, we see the returned smile  as  the most convincing expression of pure love. Is this not the meaning of the smile evident in so many images of mother love, especially the Holy Mother, who expects our smile as an answer to an encounter? Is it also the secret of the play and opera, La Gioconda [The Joyful One], depicting Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?

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Now I feel that we can give an answer to the question of the meaning of the earlier mentioned event of “moderate stimulation.” It is an excitation that differs from a “strong stimulation,” not quantitatively, but qualitatively. This does not mean that I endorse Bergson’s claim that all quantitative differences in sensations are really qualitative differences (1889). When we say that stimulation is “moderate,” then we mean that it is not only not strong in intensity, but also restrained in its relation to something else. This “something else” is given in anticipation of the encounter. We find joy in the small, the contentment of the moment, in the context of a larger, future, without knowing clearly how this might be fulfilled. That is why the “moderate stimulation” that makes us smile is ambivalent—akin to embarrassment, which also makes us smile ever so easily. Even clearer is the character of a “moderate stimulation” in the second example, which we termed the threat of being tickled. Everybody knows that we cannot help but smile in a situation like that—and that the smile usually turns into some sort of laughter, giggle, chuckle, or related expression when the threat of being tickled turns into the real moment of being touched. Now the tickle in itself is an unstable state of excitement consisting of both pleasant and unpleasant qualities, a changing game of attraction and repulsion. As described by Plessner (1941), it is an imbalance of pleasure and aversion, which represents a constant wavering and oscillation (p.  82). In this anticipation of ambivalence, tickling is already at work, even if it is only in the imagination. It is striking that although the sensation of tickling itself is not yet experienced, the effect is already evident in a way that is similar to feeling repulsed by the sight of a disgusting drink. It occurs to me, moreover, that any approach (and in particular the approach of a strange hand as in the perceived threat of being tickled) is subjectively experienced not only as a diminishing of the objective distance of the hand but also as an increasing of a subjectively sensed happening. The approaching hand is primarily experienced as a personal excitation of being touched that increases with the diminishing distance. This excitation is indeed ambivalent in character. One tends to experience the uncertainty of what is coming. One wonders: What will happen? How far will this go? In this experience of ambivalence, the sense of discomfort is the strongest, while an approaching hand in itself is not sufficient to entice a smile. However, when the manner of approaching and the aim of the hand are associated with the past experience of tickling, then one will more easily be brought to the state of emotional instability. The smile, which then appears, is a different smile than that of the friendly encounter. Under the threat of tickling, the tendency to repress dominates: in the pursed lips or the repressed giggle expressing a cramped tension, which is completely lacking in the joyous laughter. When being tickled, one is forced, as it were, to smile. One cannot help oneself. The smile of the friendly encounter and the smile of the anticipation of being tickled are therefore different in some respect. But what they share is the character of ambivalence. This aspect of ambivalence is already present in the slight

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stimulation of the skin, for example, the cheek or chin, which so easily calls forth a smile in the young child. We call this “stroking.” Stroking is more gentle than tickling, but both possess a definite motoric quality. Stroking is to be distinguished from the response to itching which causes the more localized reaction of scratching. We actually may experience the slight stroking of someone’s hand as an affection that involves us totally, that touches us personally, but that we do not know how to answer and therefore often brings us into a state of shyness or modesty. Consequently we may best qualify stroking and tickling as involving a “sensory shyness.” Shyness is the most pronounced ambivalent condition in which we can find ourselves because this state to which we are subjected affects our very existence. To experience shyness, however, several existential conditions must be met. These conditions can only be described through negations: we cannot be withdrawn from the situation or from ourselves; we cannot be intentionally active; we cannot be asleep, absent-minded, or preoccupied. These same preconditions must be present for the shyness-related affects and modes of existence to become possible (such as in play, in being tickled, or in the experience of a friendly encounter). Now we understand how the infant reaches an age when he or she can be quietly awake without being hungry, sleepy, or restless. Only then can the first smile appear. Only when the child exists in a state of quiet non-involvement that the sensory occurrence of shyness and its response are possible. Then the child may smile and even lightly blush (a typical expression of shyness) when he or she is being tickled, or is listening to the alternately approaching and receding sounds of ta-ta-ta, or when the child feels an uncertain grip under the arms, or is approached by the friendly face of mother or father. Have we realized the conditions that must exist in order to induce a smile? The question of why this manner of stimulation precisely causes this and not another facial expression must be answered more precisely. So, let us also consider an explication by Dumas (1937) that follows a mechanistic line of thought, originating in Spencer (1885). In The Principles of Psychology (1855), Spencer presupposed that diffuse discharges, which spread across the body, occur proportional to the intensity of the emotion, irrespective of its quality, causing the muscles that have the least resistance to contract. According to Dumas though, this principle is not sufficient for the explanation of smiling. Based on the anatomical distribution of mimic muscles, he shows that with stimulation of facial muscles, some reinforce each other’s actions as synergists. And these are precisely the muscles that cause the expression of the smile. The muscles with the opposite effects, the antagonists of the smile muscles, are synergists to a much lesser extent. That is why, according to Dumas (1937), the smile is “the easiest reaction of the face” (p. 344). To clarify his position he adds, “Neither psychology nor aesthetics have anything to do with the spontaneous form of the smile; mechanical physiology alone gives us a real explanation” (p. 344). So, it is clear that, according to Spencer and Dumas, smiles are not a functional event, but a physiological process,

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a motor event caused by a moderately strong, central, unspecific stimulation. To what extent is this physiological, essentially mechanistic explanation correct? The strongest argument is the previously mentioned result of a weak electrical stimulation of the facial nerve. But what does this prove? It demonstrates nothing else than what Duchenne (1876) had already taught us, namely that through artificial stimulation of nerves and muscles, various mimic expressions can be simulated. This is certainly interesting, providing a physiological explanation of certain expressive movements. But is it not also remarkable that it is precisely these movements of expression (and not other actions) that can be induced by stimulating the brainstem in animals, as the Hess (1928) studies on cats have shown? We should also not  ignore  the fact that expressive movements have an anatomical basis, and are phenomenologically unbreakably linked to our physicality. The physiological experiments by Sherrington (1906) on pseudo-affective reactions after decerebration as well as those in which the brain is stimulated do not merely prove that certain parts of the central nervous system play a role in normal functions, but also that the movements of expressions have an anatomic basis, which, under abnormal circumstances (such as experimental stimulation) can be effected to cause an appearance of expressions. Similarly, the result of the stimulation of the motor facial nerve must be explained. The Duchenne test shows that the muscles that produce the appearance of the smile react more easily than other muscles. What is still missing is an accurate measurement of the sensitivity of the facial muscles, since the methods used at the time were too crude to determine them. The so-called chronaxie provisions of Lapicque (1929) and Bourgingon (1923) should be applied. After all, they already found a difference in sensitivity of the skeletal muscles, which explains the prevalence of certain functional features. Moreover, experiments and clinical observations show us that it is not only the excitability that determines the function but vice versa, also that the function determines the excitability (Goldstein, 1934). Because of this interaction, the neurophysiological processes and the psychological functions are a real unity. If we assume the correctness of the Duchenne test, then Dumas (1937) is right that in a calmly relaxed face the smile is physiologically the “easiest reaction” of the face. The smile is not only easy to generate in a physiological sense but also functionally the easiest. In order to understand what is meant here, I want to explain another example, what we meant by “easy movements.” The flexion of the limbs is physiologically easier to generate than stretching of the limbs. Also, functionally, at least with a responsive organism, a bending movement occurs more easily, which happens when someone withdraws from contact with the outside world. Flexion movements take precedence and are therefore  carried out more easily as random reactive acts. Consequently we see that the order of precedence which exists in a functional sense—that is, in the biological, elementary movements of the body’s extremities—is projected on two sides: on the physiological structure and on the perceptible order of intentionality.

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Let us now return to the problem of the smile. Dumas (1906) sees in this physiological organization something coincidental and not the projection of a functional order or a meaningful relation between body and mind. That is why he could write, “It is the chance of our physical organism that makes us smile with our zygomatic and our orbicular eyelids. We would smile differently if the muscles of our face were otherwise arranged, just as facial movements resulting from pain might have been the easiest contractions of the face to produce” (p.  61). Only if one regards the body as “coincidental” in its construction concerning the functional and psychological components, and the mode of existence of the individual in the world, can one make an assumption like that of Dumas. If, however, the organism is understood as a true psycho-physical unity, then it is inconceivable that the expression of pain could be the “easiest” one to elicit when no pain is experienced. It is with the young child in particular that we can observe through direct observation that smiling is easy, but crying requires an effort. And what we observe in the child we can recognize in our own lived experience as well. The smile of the friendly encounter wells up, as it were, from the unstable calmness that already exists against a background of well-being. This comfort within us increases as a heat that radiates through us, like a tidal wave flooding our being. This happens automatically and requires no purposeful, wilful, or intentional action on our part. The feeling of pleasure or well-being that irradiates or inundates us remains inside us, not unlike the feelings of satiety or well-being that follow a good meal and a pleasant drink. In this state, there is no need to do anything, and nothing to accomplish, since we are enveloped, as if by magic, by an ambience that shines peacefully on us and the things around us (Sartre, 1939). We do not, smilingly, trouble ourselves with anything. We do not feel confronted, and we do not react to anything, we do not restrain ourselves, we do not become exuberantly active, and we do not succumb to expressions like laughing. We just smile as “the easiest physiognomic reaction of the face.” Since this peacefulness is the precondition for such smile to appear, we should look a bit more closely at this calm, quiet, labile state of being. It is not a restful state like the state of sleeping, which is completely passive (Buytendijk, 1938). In some respect, it is more an autonomous, active attitude and therefore a determinate, idle relation to the world. This autonomy is true also for the state of quiet sitting, or quiet walking, or other such activity. And it is true for the infant who quietly lies there awake and watching his or her world. In this kind of restfulness, the muscles have a certain tonal quality distributed through the body; they may contain moderate inner tensions that are balanced, but still produce a result that one experiences as a vague, unqualified, and indefinable need. This restful state of being in the world is always in some sense in opposition to the larger world. The paradoxical nature of the smile is that it consists of a tensioning of muscles, which are nevertheless experienced as the beginning of a relaxed, active, restful

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state. Thus, the smile is the expression of a “threshold situation,” of a just not yet bursting of exuberance, of a closedness that is opening itself, of a self-satisfied, immanent sense of well-being as well as an anticipated joy that transcends it all. In the smile there exists at the same time the unstable, tingling, sparkling sensation that is inherent to all joy, as well as the stability, permanence, and closedness of tranquillity. We understand why it is precisely  in the friendly  encounter that the eyes express instability and the mouth calmness. Is it not the glance that emanates from us, that embraces the other, and that probingly moves about the other person’s face and figure to ascertain, as it were, what possibilities are contained in this encounter? All the while, however, the mouth is quiet as if by the mutual understanding of a shared secret and a silent agreement. Of course, it may be different as well. There is also the blissful smile whereby the eyes are closed in the peace of sleep. And there is the lively, playful, mischievous smile in which we find subtle trembling of the corners of the mouth in agreement with the sparkling tingling of the eyes. It would be worthwhile to study phenomenologically the many forms of smiling. Such knowledge may prove to be helpful to those who are pedagogically involved with children or adults in professional practices, because the smile is the expression of our actual and imaginary encounters, and also the expression of our deepest innerness, that is our second nature. But here we are restricted to considering the nature of the first smile of the child, and I feel that this is the moment where we can now answer the question of what its meaning and significance are. The smile is the expression of an emerging humanness in the first reticent encounter, and thus it is an answer in which a sense of self-being is being constituted. But it is also the beginning growth of an awareness of being shy with oneself, now that this small child emerges from a vital loneliness as a vital self, at the threshold of the tender unity with the other. This happens when the child is being called by the mother who is the matrix of pure love. The child reveals his or her human nature through smiling—the child who movingly moves while still caught in the involuntary nature of its nature, in the manner provided for in its physicality. The child overcomes it in the smile; the child who is still caught in the stream of unselfconsciousness, but then overcomes it by the ontic participation in the awakening awareness of a felt security. What awakens from the slumber in the child, like a bird in the morning, springs up and radiates from its deep innerness, is like a reminder of this origin and the sign of a destiny. The vocabularies and theories of psychology contain many referents to these understandings, but psychology does not know what to do with the hidden phenomenological meanings caught in the terminology of “feelings,” “expressions,” “innate activities,” “muscle stimulations,” “moderate excitations,” and so forth. All these only become transparent in the light of the existence of human beings. In this light too the parent sees the first smile of

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the child. And the parent understands this smile, like Frederik van Eden who poetized this most sensitively: Toen hij geglimlacht heeft, ‘t eerst van zijn leeven Kwam hij uit verre, stille landen zweeven.  . . . Hij zond het liefde-teeken tot ons weer Hij lachte zelf—en was niet eenzaam meer. [When he smiled, the first time of his life He came to us from a far still land.  . . . He sent us this sign of love He smiled himself—and was no longer lonely.] (1923, p. 633) Even more thoughtfully ring Virgil’s words through the ages because they sing most pointedly of the unity of life and the awareness of the awakening spirit, that shows itself in the first smile of the newborn. Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem— [Start, little boy, to acknowledge your mother with a smile]3

Notes 1. Buytendijk presented this text at his inaugural lecture at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 1947. It has been translated and edited by Max van Manen and Michael van Manen. 2. From: F.J.J. Buytendijk (1961 [1947]). De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind [The First Smile of the Child]. Utrecht and Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, N.V. 3. This passage is from Eclogue, IV, line 60. A more existential reading would not be inappropriate for incipe may mean that the child “begins to come into being” in acknowledging his mother with a first smile. The context makes it clear that what Virgil is talking about is the acknowledgment that the child (parve puer is masculine) owes the parents, in particular the mother. 4. All original publication dates are in square brackets.

References Bergson, H. (1889). Essai sur les Données Immédiates de la Conscience [Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness]. Paris: Alcan. Bourgingon, G. (1923). La Chronaxie Chez L’homme: Étude de Physiologie Générale des Systèmes Neuro-musculaires et des Systèmes Sensitifs [Chronaxia in Humans: Study of General Physiology of Neuro-muscular Systems and Sensitive Systems]. Paris: Masson. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1938). Grondproblemen van het Dierlijk Leven [Basic Problems of Animal Life]. Antwerpen: Standaard.

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Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1947). De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind [The First Smile of the Child]. In: Inaugurale Rede te Nijmegen. Utrecht: Dekker & van der Vegt, N.V. Buytendijk, F.J.J. and Plessner, H. (1925). Die Deutung des mimischen Ausdrucks: ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Bewusstsein des anderen Ichs [The Interpretation of Facial Expression: A Contribution to the Teaching of the Consciousness of the Other Self]. Philosophischer Anzeiger, 1, pp. 72–126. Darwin, C. (1872). Expression of the Emotions in Humans and Animals. New York: D. Appleton and Company. Duchenne, A. (1876). Mecanisme de la Physionomie [Mechanism of Physiognomy]. Paris: Hachette Livre. Dumas, G. (1906). Le Sourire: Psychologie et Physiologie [The Smile: Psychology and Physiology]. Paris: Félix Alcan. Dumas, G. (1937). Traite de Psychologie [Aspects of Psychology] (Tom. III, fasc. 3). Paris: Félix Alcan. Goldstein, K. (1934). Der Aufbau des Organismus [The Structure of the Organism]. Hagg: Fink-Verlag. Gregory, J.C. (1924). The Nature of Laughter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Hess, W.R. (1928). Stammganglien-Reizversuche [Basal Ganglia-Stimulation Experiments]. Berichte über die Gesamte Physiologie und Experimentelle Pharmakologie, 42, pp. 554–555. Lapicque, L. (1929). The Chronaxic Switching in the Nervous System. Science, 70, pp. 151–154. Plessner, H. (1941). Lachen und Weinen [Laughing and Crying]. Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus. Sartre, J.-P. (1939). Esquisse d’une Théorie des Émotions [Sketch of a Theory of the Emotions]. Paris: Hermann. Sherrington, C.S. (1906). The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. New Haven: Yale University Press. Spencer, H. (1855). The Principles of Psychology. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. Van Eden, F. (1923). Toen Ons Kindje Glimlachte [When Our Child Smiled]. In: Groot Nederland. Amsterdam: Van Holkema & Warendorf, p. 633. Van Melsen, A.G.M. (1946). Natuurwetenschap en Wijsbegeerte [Natural Science and Philosophy]. Utrecht: Spectrum.

7 DESCANT ON “THE FIRST SMILE OF THE CHILD”

Buytendijk’s inaugural Nijmegen University speech, “The First Smile of the Child” (1947), shows his unique method of drawing phenomenological insights, in part from the findings of the natural sciences and clinical research available at the time. And yet, for Buytendijk, the phenomenality of the smile cannot be fully grasped simply by referring to biological events (such as activation of parts of the cerebral cortex involved in smiling) or to psychological constructs (such as the joyfulness that we may feel is involved in smiling). Rather, we need to inquire into the meaningfulness of the existential phenomenon, into “the meaning” of the phenomenon rather than what leads to its genesis: if we wish to consider smiling as an early form of laughing, it is not sufficient to note how the first phenomenon transforms into the second phenomenon. The point is that we must be able to see how, in this transformation, something becomes different and yet remains essentially the same. Moreover, to explain the origin of smiling, it is not enough to study the factors that precede it, whether these are psychological, such as joyfulness or physiological, such as activation of certain parts of the brainstem. Buytendijk criticizes existing physiological theories that aim to explain the appearance of the smile from muscular anatomical and neurological processes such as stimulations of the nervous system. As an expressive phenomenon, the smile presumes an intentional relation to the world and the innerness of the young child. Buytendijk regards the first smile of the child as a first expressiveness that signifies the child’s budding beginning of human understanding. In order to explore the meaning and significance of the first smile of the child, Buytendijk cautions that we should not assume that the smile of the child

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is identical to the smile of an adult. Outward appearances may seem the same but differ in their meaning and significance. He also reminds us how varied people are when they give interpretations to visual expressions. Methodologically, we recognize Buytendijk’s careful preparation to create a space of wonder to consider the meaning of the first smile of the child as he draws on the mechanistic, physiology studies of Duchenne (1876) and Dumas (1906, 1937) to elaborate the stimulation that provokes the appearance of a smile, yet nonetheless does not explain its meaning. To elucidate a phenomenology of the smile, he turns to two examples: the friendly encounter and the threat of being tickled. Through the friendly encounter, Buytendijk engages in the eidetic reduction when he compares the smile with laughter and related expressions of joy, happiness, or playful abandon. The smile possesses a different phenomenological significance than other forms of expression. Buytendijk cautiously and tentatively explores various kinds of smiling and the physiology of mimic responses, as well as how smiles are often regarded as enigmatic and not so easily recognizable in their meaningful expressiveness, especially in the very young infant. Still, the smile seems to externalize a sunny, silent surrender by a broadening of the face, by the expression of the eyes, and by the closed lips, everything that the encounter contains as a possibility. He describes the smile in the friendly encounter as something that opens a space between people. The smile of the friendly encounter wells up, as it were, from an atmosphere of quiet well-being. This inner sense of well-being increases as warmth that irradiates us, like a flood inundating our being. Next, Buytendijk describes the physiology and psychology of being tickled, which brings us to the point of finding it impossible not to smile. He uses the threat of being tickled to explore and elucidate how the stimulation that brings about the smile is “not only not strong in intensity, but also restrained in its relation to something else.” But how can the physiology of the stimulation of facial nerves and muscles bring about the seeming appearance of the smile? How can the causal science of physiology speak to the descriptive and interpretive methods of phenomenology? This is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating aspects of Buytendijk’s work. The reader of “The First Smile of the Child” is challenged to discern Buytendijk’s methodology as he weaves a physiological understanding of the smile as “a motor event caused by a moderately strong, central, unspecific stimulation” into nuanced, concrete descriptions. It occurs to me, moreover, that any approach (and in particular the approach of a strange hand as in the perceived threat of being tickled) is subjectively experienced not only as a diminishing of the objective distance of the hand but also as an increasing of a subjectively sensed happening. The approaching hand is primarily experienced as a personal excitation of being touched

Descant on “The First Smile of the Child”

75

that increases with the diminishing distance. This excitation is indeed ambivalent in character. And elsewhere the smile is understood as the easiest of elicited expressions: We do not, smilingly, trouble ourselves with anything. We do not feel confronted, and we do not react to anything, we do not restrain ourselves, we do not become exuberantly active, and we do not succumb to expressions like laughing. We just smile as “the easiest physiognomic reaction of the face.” While the subjective life of the infant is an enigma in “The First Smile of the Child,” Buytendijk manages to offer phenomenological insight: The child reveals his or her human nature through smiling—the child who movingly moves while still caught in the involuntary nature of its nature, in the manner provided for in its physicality. The child overcomes it in the smile; the child who is still caught in the stream of unselfconsciousness, but then overcomes it by the ontic participation in the awakening awareness of a felt security. For Buytendijk, it is when “the child exists in a state of quiet non-involvement that the sensory occurrence of shyness and its response are possible.” Although natural science research has provided conceptual interpretations of infant smiling, such research is incomplete without considering how its findings fit into human existence. The existential meaning of the smile tends to be passed over, or hidden by the terminology of the disciplines of psychology, biology, physiology, or neuroscience: “feelings,” “expressions,” “innate activities,” “muscle stimulations,” “moderate excitations,” and so forth. The phenomenological task to explore the “appearance” of the smile is thus not to be confused with the empirically visible occurrence of the smile but instead with what comes into existence in the smile: the coming into being of the infant as a human person. What we can learn from “The First Smile of the Child” is that Buytendijk, more than any other phenomenologists of his time, pointed to the necessity of understanding the contrast and the relation of the natural sciences and human sciences ways of thinking, and at the same time testing their connections, to broaden and deepen our understanding of the concrete reality of human existence. Rather than blindly surrendering the natural attitude in favour of the phenomenological attitude, Buytendijk keeps them in reflective dynamic tension.

Notes All unmarked quotes are taken from the preceding essay, “The First Smile of the Child,” by Frederik J.J. Buytendijk.

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References Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1947). De Eerste Glimlach van het Kind [The First Smile of the Child]. In: Inaugurale Rede te Nijmegen. Utrecht: Dekker & van der Vegt, N.V. Duchenne, A. (1876). Mecanisme de la Physionomie [Mechanism of Physiognomy]. Paris: Hachette Livre. Dumas, G. (1906). Le Sourire: Psychologie et Physiologie [The Smile: Psychology and Physiology]. Paris: Félix Alcan. Dumas, G. (1937). Traite de Psychologie [Aspects of Psychology] (Tom. III, fasc. 3). Paris: Félix Alcan.

8 THE EXPERIENCE OF COMPULSIVENESS [De Doorleefde Dwang, 1970] Frederik J.J. Buytendijk

An anthropology cannot be complex enough. Rudolf Bilz (1967, p. 187)

Reflections on Compulsions and Insomnia Every so-called normal person may sometimes experience compulsions. But frequent obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions can only rarely, and then only partially, be understood from an individual’s personal life history. For example, not every child who received strict toilet training suffers from obsessive compulsions, and there is a great deal of variability of limitations, restrictions, and inhibitions experienced by children. In very young children, there are some who “startle” in response to a sudden sound, image, or voice—such occurrences can become insurmountable obstacles in the course of their lives. But the differences of experiences that we find daily in children’s lives are similar to the differences in adults. And yet, we cannot really explain these differences from innate or acquired “character traits.” Compulsions have been connected with experiences of passion in the context of an adventure. Jankélévitsch (1966) has seen through this connection: The human being, passionate about the passionate uncertainty of the adventure, about the passionate risk of the adventure, finds himself in the passionate situation of those crazy lovers who cannot live together or separately . . . They do not know what they want, people say . . . The anxious, insecure person, who seeks adventure, wants and does not want, wants what he does not want, and does not want what he wants. His will is

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willy-nilly, like nolens volens, a mixture of a whim and the suppression of that whim, a kind of unwilling will, analogous to a loving hatred. Does the human being dare? To be willing and unwilling, is that not the back and forth swaying willingness of a person seduced while hesitant, caught in an internal debate with oneself? Human beings are keen to do what they fear the most. As a passionate curiosity and delightful horror, the lure of the adventure becomes like a spell. (pp. 12, 13) Someone who cannot fall asleep, especially if insomnia persists for an extended time, may discover that unintentional (spontaneous) ideas and thoughts arise, that can be annoying, intrusive, or even tormenting. These thoughts do not let us go; we cannot drive them away. Our consciousness remains focused on them compulsively, and not because we intend it. It is a fascination that is comparable to the fascinating, attention-grabbing of some facial impressions and sounds. We then say, “I have to watch it” or “I cannot help but listen to it.” Stopping what we are doing when we see something notable is the basic idea of perception. This is, as Binswanger (1942) says, not to accept something as true, but simply to pay attention to something. Yet, the act of perception itself is not an experience of compulsion because there is no resistance. Perception is an intentional act in which we selectively attend to individual impressions that attract our attention. To attentively observe something that fascinates is a necessary feature in the natural order of animal and human existence. Insomnia, however, is a condition that only human beings seem to experience. An insomniac may still be conscious while unable to fall asleep, but contact with the world is broken. The impenetrable darkness of the night confronts us with an “existence without existents”— with a being that exists, without something existing. Levinas (1947) understood the existential disruption that sleeplessness invokes. He tells how, as a child, he experienced the horror of sleeplessness. While lying awake, there is nothing to listen to, nothing to see in the darkness of the night. And yet, it is as if the silent emptiness itself becomes a presence, the elemental being of some absent being that seems to cause a nonidentifiable murmur behind the walls of his bedroom. This is the same kind of sound that one hears when putting an empty seashell against one’s ear: a murmuring hum from the seashell’s hollow. This utter absence of anything identifiable manifests itself as a presence that is inevitable, all-encompassing, anonymous, and silent. Levinas calls this the “il-y-a” meaning, the “there is.” The “il-y-a” is something elemental, a force that one cannot escape; a force that makes itself noticeable. Therefore, Levinas can say: “There is no discourse. Nothing responds to us, but this silence; the voice of this silence is understood and frightens like the silence of those infinite spaces Pascal speaks of ” (1947, p. 104). “In insomnia it is the night itself that watches. It watches. In this anonymous night-watch where I  am completely exposed to being, all the thoughts

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that occupy my insomnia are suspended on nothing” (p. 111). These anonymous thoughts and images emerge, disappear, and return as autonomous images—in us and for us as obsessions and are therefore compulsive—if we are unable to dispel them and to think of something else or to imagine other ideas. The anxious mood of the sleepless night accords with the general theme that represents obsessive thoughts and coercive images. It is the theme of “evil” in its many forms. This evil appears as worries that we have wanted to forget, as acts that we are not willing to be reminded of, as expectations that cast their threatening shadows, as scars (including those of a sexual nature) that are considered iniquitous outside the normative order of our personal history. When a person becomes aware of not thinking for him or her self, not imagining anything for him or her self, then this person no longer knows his or her personal self as the source and ground of healthy dialogue with a trusted world. In insomnia, which is part of the experience of the “normal” person, the lack of control of thoughts and the loss of contact with a familiar reality can evoke an anxious mood that is related to de-realization and de-personalization. That is why Levinas wrote: “The night gives a spectral allure to the objects that occupy it still” (1947, p. 100).

The Compulsive Experience of Estrangement A consideration of insomnia makes us aware that there are ordinary circumstances in which phenomena sometimes occur that point in a pronounced manner to psychological disorders. In our usual course of existence, we experience every external or physically determined compulsion as a must in the freedom of the will, that is, as decisions that are directed towards the future. We can reflect on something through objectification and reflection, but we remain situated, and this means being present and connected to a familiar environment. The world and our sense of self have an unambiguous reality character: “already our presence to ourselves is mediated by it” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 514). Trust is the mediating medium of the unity of must and will, of compulsion and freedom, of sense of self and sense of reality. It is interesting that, after a prolonged interruption in dealing with a place or with a person, a forced estrangement can be experienced during the reunion. The village in which one used to play as a child, the city where one used to live, the living room that we re-enter after a long journey away, are recognized, even in their details, but they seem to hold a different atmosphere. Everything is a bit strange, somewhat uncomfortable. One no longer feels familiar, and one is no longer at home there. This sense of estrangement is compulsive and can even become an obsession. This compulsively experienced estrangement can be felt after a long absence from a person with whom one was connected in a deep and intimate relationship. This estrangement is felt in all types of expressions and interactions when

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one is addressed by this other person. Even our own expressions are then not felt as “normal,” since they have something unreal about them. In a sense, one seems to live through a process of de-realization and de-personalization.

The Confusion of Lived Compulsion in the Threshold Situation A threshold is a boundary between two living spaces. This boundary acquires a special meaning if one leaves behind a familiar milieu and enters a strange environment; and in seeing the new place, things, and people, one stands confused and still on the threshold. This threshold situation is characteristic of the crisis of puberty. The adolescent turns away from childhood and stands uncertain, without self-confidence, at the entrance to a place that is filled with figures, actions, and words; the meanings of which are vaguely guessed, but cannot be clearly related to one’s personal world and being (Buytendijk, 1969, p. 512). Every threshold situation is a confrontation with confusion, uncertainty and acting, wavering and doubting. In a manner of speaking, one has “lost one’s head.” All of this overwhelms the person, as an obsession, and is experientially lived through as a loss of freedom, as a compulsion, which can attain the intensity of desperation. One is at the mercy of an opaque structure and unclear sounds, and thus one is unable to find the right conduct, the adequate answer. Whoever has experienced something similar, knows that in a threshold situation, a certain degree of de-realization and de-personalization can occur as well as a certain “blindness” regarding the meaning of the compulsive episode. In everyday life, confusing threshold situations are uncommon. However, in the lifeworld of a compulsively neurotic person, the boundaries and thresholds of simple actions may stir habitual confusions, that can be only somewhat controlled by actions involving so-called magic rituals. The disorder can even manifest itself as a disturbance of perception that forces a repeated checking. Carp gave a striking example of such situation: A violinist had to open his violin case time and again to convince himself that he had really put his instrument in it. He explains his compulsive behaviour with the words: “It is as if I did not really see it, and therefore cannot believe it, and this worries me” (1947, p. 334). Indeed, a compulsive bond makes one blind (and deaf). This can already be noticed in everyday life experience.

“I Have to Do Something That I Don’t Want to Do” (1) One can try to resist the tickle of a cough, but when the emerging impulse becomes too strong, one is unable to suppress the cough. Clearly, there are situations where people try to do this such that needing to cough seems an unequivocal experience.

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Yet, it appears that the “cough reflex” is not a completely isolated process. For example, listening to music at a recital often reduces the occurrence of the cough, which, as is known, immediately breaks through afterwards, and with a large number of audience listeners. The cough is, therefore, partly determined by circumstances, and it is, understandably, this reaction, to a certain extent, that is dependent on our “will.” It would be incorrect to interpret this dependence as the result of quantitative variables. The intensity of a sensation changes its meaning with the situation. This too applies to pain as well as to irritation in the upper respiratory tract, and very clearly to skin irritation, which we experience as a need to scratch the itch. (2) The physical action of coughing or sneezing can overtake us so violently that the intensity of the experience feels compulsive. The itch is an example of a physical sensation that may provoke a variety of behaviours, that we tend to respond to in our personal ways, and that we can resist or fight. This “fight” may be motivated by the knowledge that scratching aggravates the itch, perhaps even causes additional inflammation. The social situation in which one finds oneself— for example, a formal visit of guests—can be a reason to suppress scratching. These are trivial experiences, but they nevertheless require our attention because the phenomenon of itching and the (pseudo) compulsiveness of scratching confront us with situations that we are used to qualifying with “should” or “want” to do. Both seem like processes that occur independent to us when we consider them in isolation from the usual way we experience our bodily processes. This independence is so pronounced that people say with conviction: “I have to scratch even if I should not, or even if I do not want to.” We try to resist, but “it”—the compulsion—is stronger than us. Next, we will consider this inner struggle in a different context. It may be pointed out here that the itch presents itself as an autonomous force not in front of myself, but from inside of myself. It is my itch that forces me to scratch. People stop what they are doing when they feel a tickling itch, and this stopping is a moment of reflective objectification and therefore, isolation. In everyday life, the sense of “have to” and “want to” will always form a unity. If I want to walk, I have to move my legs. It goes without saying! That is why Stephan Strasser (1962) correctly noted that “freedom is not a factor in an empirical sense” (p. 260). If one thinks that in the case of feeling itchy one is free to either scratch or not to scratch, then this is a “false” idea. That is why de Waelhens (1951) says: “Any deliberation is fictitious and wrong” (p. 313). Similarly, in cases of contagious virus epidemics people are advised not to touch their face, but knowing this and thinking about not touching one’s face makes it almost impossible not to. A final note: A  dog can also be itchy and scratch itself, even to the point of bleeding. But the animal can interrupt the scratching when it senses danger or when it turns angry. Sherrington (1906) has already demonstrated how these relationships are physiologically embedded. A dog will not scratch when it sees another animal scratch. However, people can get itchy even from just

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talking about itchiness. These simple facts point to an essential difference between animals and humans. A tension between compulsion and freedom presupposes the possibility of distancing oneself from reality. Animal perception, like animal behaviour, is an aspect of living fully “in the world.” However, human beings exist in and also in relation to things. Our reality is open to a sense of purpose that goes beyond the given meanings. It already happens when human perception slips into imagination. Even without explicit fantasy, our consciousness of something always involves a certain kind of annihilation—elimination of the real that addresses us—and therefore, it encompasses freedom (de Waelhens, 1951, p.  311). When something is meaningful, it makes sense “for me and by me” and the meaning is both “centrifugal” and “centripetal” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 501). Put differently: even a simple sensation, such as the itch, can be named and therefore objectified. Then it becomes a “fact,” an isolated moment in a situation that is no longer a matter of having to or wanting to.

“It Is Stronger Than Me” This statement is often heard as a sigh. But, what is this “it,” that turns out to be stronger than “me,” who resists and even fights against this “it”—as they say? Apparently, the answer is easy. This “it” that one fights against can be an intense desire, a drug addiction, alcohol, the need to smoke, or possibly greed, revenge, lust, or ambition. Whatever it is, it is in us, and it is against us, making itself manifest as a force that we are fighting. It acquires the sense of an evil that visits us, but that one should not surrender to when this compulsiveness makes itself felt. Again, it appears that, by the definition of Kuiper (1963), one should only speak of a compulsion when one resists something in vain. This relation of a compulsion and a resistance implies that one is talking about an “inner” struggle. Minkowski has clearly shown that an inner struggle differs in principle from a struggle between two opponents or a struggle against the powers of nature (1936, pp. 7–15). For example, when someone suffers from alcoholism, then the increasing inclination to drink is experienced as a compulsion if the person opposes this inclination. It is, therefore, one’s own resistance that attributes the meaning of a force to the desire, against which an apparent struggle can be fought. The typical person uses the expression “It is stronger than me” if he or she thinks that he or she is being carried away by a desire or temptation, notwithstanding the claim to have resisted it as much as possible. Is this statement true and genuine? Minkowski (1936) rightly pointed out that it is always one’s own desire that drags us along and evokes our resistance. This desire (for example, for alcohol, cannabis, drugs, or nicotine) is not a foreign power, not a demon that has mysteriously penetrated us. And yet, when the addictive matter is out of one’s biological system, it becomes easier to resist the compulsion.

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Every tendency, desire, or passion originated, sprouted, and grew in the personal history of our dialogue with people and situations so that we cultivated this growth ourselves. Desire can seem to rise without cause or be “caused” by a circumstance, a situationally determined mood, a suggestive image or word, a medical necessity. What is then called “cause” is not a natural event, but a force that works because we attribute the sense of seduction or desire to a real or imagined impression. If we “surrender to seduction”—possibly after a long struggle, we look back with the feeling of certainty that we were responsible for it ourselves and so we apologize. Having to live through (the compulsion to drink, for example) is a not wanting to be able and a not being able to want. That is why, in a certain sense, it is right for someone to say: “It is stronger than me.” The responsibility for surrendering to an obsessive compulsion is always relative because it is in part based on someone’s individual choices, and also someone’s destiny. When de Waelhens (1951) describes his practice of smoking while writing at his desk, it is striking that the “inclination to smoke” that he keeps coming back to has the character of a virtual reality, that acts as a seductive impetus, because the habit of smoking has been formed in personal history. Habits form through repetitive situations and our relative freedom of choice. If a pronounced habitual act forms, then a new relationship has already arisen from our personal subjectivity of this behaviour. Every habit has a certain independence for us. It has become a relatively autonomous response to a situation—such as in the case of smoking. It is a response to a physical condition, which we usually call a need, but which is also part of a general mood or sphere. At the time, Wundt (1874) called these acquired customs habits, that is to say, behaviours that are thematically involved in certain situations. One can indeed say that in many cases, our habits are “stronger than me.” One, therefore, can speak of a “force of habit.” But usually, this is an apology for behaviour that deviates from a socially accepted norm. The customary acts that we perform without reflection are not fully experienced as compulsive, but as the reliable scaffolding for the free development of our personal existence. This existence becomes easy and unproblematic due to the repetitive conduct of daily life. All this makes personal existence simple, the civilized world familiar, and social relationships reliable and clear. This simple form of existence changes when a habit becomes conspicuous due to its independent objective automatism. Then the pattern can turn into the purest form of a lived compulsion, which increases with repeated instances of objectification. However, for a habit to turn into a compulsion, a condition still has to be met: The habit should stand out as meaningless, and it is precisely this meaninglessness that provokes resistance. Doing something meaningless or absurd becomes intolerable unless one can assign new meaning to it—for example, assign a magical meaning to the compulsive impulse. Within the limits of everyday life, one recognizes meaningless behaviours, to which someone tries to attribute a social—sometimes religious or superstitious—meaning. It is successful in those cases where the meaning of the action is uncontrollable. It is therefore

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understandable how some habits are associated with behaviours like the cleansing of objects and one’s own body. Whether something is really clean, free of all dirt, is always debatable. Similarly, there are not necessarily objective standards for things like order and certainty. That is why it is always possible to give apologies for habitual tendencies that are overly strict, with respect to order and control. As long as a person is able to give reasons that seem to make a habit meaningful to him- or herself, then there is no obsessive compulsion because there is no reason to exercise resistance. This changes when someone is convinced that his or her preoccupation with cleanliness, order, or control has no reasonable ground, but nevertheless meticulously carries out the actions. Everyday life teaches us that thinking and even paying attention to what one should do unreflectively and spontaneously sharply increases the possibility of experiencing compulsions. The person who pays too meticulous attention to the words that he or she chooses will be hindered in actual speaking, which indeed requires spontaneity. That is why we should not overthink about where to put our feet while walking if we do not want to stumble. The expression “It is stronger than me” is also often used to apologize for negative traits, such as irritation, temper, nastiness, and the like that control our behaviour in certain situations and about which we say that we did not intend. This assertion, which seeks to express our discomfort with negativity, is the prerequisite for the persistently occurring compulsiveness of the “bad” disposition that lurks within us and, as is avowed, occasionally controls us. In this context, too, it is forgotten that our character has formed itself in our own personal history. This personal development finds a starting point in a physical aptitude or a temperament that supports the various sensory-motor types of reactions of infancy and the relationships with the environment and others in childhood. In every community, there are preferred norms for specific conducts in a young person’s upbringing, but there are also always possibilities for individual variation. Moreover, it is an empirical fact that almost everyone would want to be different from the way he or she actually is. The image that one forms of this “ideal” way of being can appeal to such a degree that identification with this ideal image occurs. It may be more or less innocent and harmless, but situations may arise in which a previously formed habit manifests itself again. The “old persona” shows itself as a power that threatens the image of the way one would like to be. It is clear that in such circumstances, the conditions are ripe to speak of an “inner struggle.” Eugène Minkowski offers a dramatic picture: We feel dragged into what is bad, harmful, or at least annoying, while all positive forces turn out to be powerless to stop us from sliding down the inclined plane on which we find ourselves . . . Thanks to what is positive within us, we may hide or retreat, but this resistance proves insufficient, it

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remains in vain and at the point of collapse. So, we exclaim breathlessly, “It is stronger than me.” (1936, p. 13) Having fought against some kind of negativity or evil, notes Minkowski, we invent an illusion for our conscience that wants a justification as an excuse for its ultimate defeat. Is this not a case of an evoked obsessive compulsion that is the result of resisting something harmful or evil? If yes, then this is the prototype of a compulsion in ordinary life, that resists in vain an interfering impulse, where this impulse is the invitation to do some evil or to do harm, and eventually engage in a habituated behaviour that is experienced as meaningless and therefore irrational. The image of an inner struggle that dominates the existence of an individual with obsessive compulsions is a “metaphorical reconstruction.” Jankélévitsch (1936) says, it is as if someone is playing chess with him or herself. However, the doubling of the self, that might evoke the illusion of a struggle based on reasonable considerations, is really no different than the lack of an integrated personality, an unambiguous mode of existence, and therefore freedom, the centre of which lies precisely in the totality of the person’s character. “It is, therefore, futile to seek in motives what it could mean to be free” (de Waelhens, 1951, pp. 316, 317). There would still be much to discover through a careful phenomenological analysis about the struggle between good and evil in the heart of the human being. Finally, it may be pointed out that the statement “It is stronger than me” often refers to a passion, that presents itself as a compulsion. This applies to “bad” passions, which may be termed permanent obsessions. However, as Stephan Strasser points out, there are also noble passions, such as art and science, heroes and saints, which are not resisted and therefore cannot be experienced as compulsions (1956, p. 211).

Touch Wood (Superstitions) For some people, religious faith is just another type of superstition that leads them to believe compulsively in a personalized God. But superstition and faith have a complicated relationship with each other because people sense that the most fundamental and profound existential questions are beyond understanding. Both superstition and faith may be grounded in fears that lead to beliefs in magic and to conducts as seen in myths and rituals. In our time, the appeal to magic has become rather futile, because of the so-called demythologization of our worldview, as influenced by radical and boundless rationalism. There linger some remnants of authentic superstition in our society that were not easy to “reason away.” An example of this is the socalled knocking on wood—preferably on bare wood—that is initially not a seriously intended habit, but that has spread in some semi-intellectual circles, and apparently easily has become a typical compulsion. If one asks someone why he

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or she is “touching wood,” one usually receives an evasive answer. This is typical of the phenomenon of compulsions, that are considered to be irrational and, therefore, not to be explained but nevertheless followed. Knocking on wood is a magical ritual act, an unaccountable incantation of a potential happening of an accident that may follow a bold statement and would belie it. It is likely that the people who cannot resist knocking on wood, without being filled by an emerging vague anxiety, are more or less compulsion-neurotic. We know that people feel embarrassed about this and, when asked, call the superstitious behaviour a “silly joke,” just as one calls, for example, every compulsive check a reasonably motivated habit of cleanliness. In any case, psychiatry teaches that compulsions are usually excused or concealed because people are ashamed of them—just as superstitions. The brief mention of “knocking on wood” as a ritual act still occurring in our society may remind us that the compulsion of it is only experienced if the ritual no longer reveals a primary connection with a belief in empirical reality, but if it has become an isolated behaviour instilled by fearful uncertainty.

“Something Is Bothering Me” We may hear people say, “Something is bothering me.” The statement points to a well-known phenomenon, and it is the expression that we use to refer to the independent and autonomous power of this “something.” The point is that this “something” is not an external obstacle, but is actuality formed inside us through our own existence. And yet, the phenomenon of “being bothered” refers to something that is not part of the flow of everyday existence. What is “bothering” us more or less hinders the progress of life movement, the freedom of action and thinking, of mood and feelings, as we come and go in our dialogue and interactions with the world. What bothers us—such as a painful memory, an uncertain expectation, a worry or fear, a sadness or indignation, a pain or illness—holds us fast, does not let us go, and is, therefore, a clear example of an obsessive compulsion, that can occur in the everyday existence of the person who can objectify things. Jaspers (1948, p. 111) has rightly pointed out that individuals with severe intellectual disabilities and young children (and animals) cannot experience compulsions, because an objectifying act is necessary for it. Indeed, what is bothering us is something that confronts us because we resist it. Sometimes it can be named; sometimes it is something vaguely unsettling; sometimes it feels like a threat or discomfort; or, sometimes it holds our attention, haunting us when we try to turn away from it. When “something is bothering us,” it actually refers to a short-lived characteristic of an obsessive, compulsive existence. What is bothering us, has us in its grasp, impedes us. It transverses our personal course of life, which is always a “becoming,” it intersects with the flow of our personal history, as it unfolds in our

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“being-to-the-world.” When something is bothering us to a significant extent and for an extended time, then we live with it in such a way that it has its origin in our person and it dominates us. It will be rightly noted that the fact that something is bothering us is usually a temporary malfunction. Indeed, in a “normal” existence it is generally possible to attribute to a painful memory, a fearful expectation, or something else of such significance that it can be adopted and adjusted in a reasonable context and understood as one of the many unpleasant experiences that can happen to a person, and which must, therefore, be put into perspective. If this attribution succeeds, then what bothers us is meaningfully traversed and included in the historiology of our existence, that is, in our personal life experience.

“What I Did Is Bothering Me” “What I did is bothering me” is a possible experience of the healthy person, at least if we consider mental health to be a developed sense of normativity. Not only ethical norms are to be considered here, but also proper compliance with the requirements of social reasonableness, and the accepted rules of interpersonal and general social life. It can bother us that we made a stupid purchase, a dumb move in a chess game, or an unacceptable political decision. We should actually be surprised that remaining compulsively fixated on a bad decision is not more common. After all, decisions can have unforeseen consequences. It is almost impossible to foresee all the imports and aftermaths of our actions. Every action is based on some choice. If we turn to the right, then we do not turn to the left. If we demand complete certainty about the correctness of our actions, then all decisions will be paralyzed. It is mentally healthy to dare to trust in the reasonableness of the circumstances, in the order of probabilities and ourselves. The will begins with the will to will, that is to say, with the will that is simply the courage to act, the courage to dare to take action. This courage of will belongs to the norm of human existence to accept risks. If such risks are generally acceptable then it should be less common for someone to experience the compulsions meant by the expression, “What I did is bothering me.” However, if such a compulsion has become the theme of our existence, then our life is disturbed, and one speaks of a compulsion-neurosis. With this illness, every decision can become a source of worry. This is one of the reasons why the obsessively compulsive person cannot act, and is unable to finish anything, or wants to undo what he or she has done ( Jankélévitsch, 1966). We will not, however, discuss the severe changes that this causes in a person’s existence, and which lead to the suffering from obsessive compulsions. We only reiterate that the illness does not explain health, but insight into “normal” existence enables us to understand how it can be disturbed.

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Remorse The meaning of “What I  did is bothering me” acquires a unique, existential value, if “what I did” is understood by myself as morally or reasonably unacceptable. The extent of the duration of the obsessive compulsion and one’s awareness of the seriousness of the iniquity of what one has done is called remorse. The actual sense that comes to pass through remorse is only visible within the horizon of a genuine, differentiated ethical existence, as is possible in an ethics-based society. It is not our intent to investigate the possible transformations in one’s relation to individual transgressions in connection with the altered conscience and self-consciousness and, therefore, with altered or eroded senses of values, norms, and ethics. We merely note that regret and repentance are of an entirely different order and level of suffering than remorse. In the study La Mauvaise Conscience [Bad Conscience], Jankélévitsch (1936) convincingly describes the remarkable character of remorse and how it differs from regret. “The misfortune of regret is simply the impossibility of returning to the past: time alone is guilty, but not me. The tragedy of remorse lies in the fact that I am myself the architect of this impossibility” (p. 48). Remorse is an “obsessive presence,” a “cancerous memory.” “Remorse is the bad conscience of the misuse of our liberty” (p. 48). A remorseful conscience is not being able to forgo the harm that one has done. The irrevocable act is like an indelible image in one’s mind. It presupposes a relation to good and evil founded on the certainty of a confrontation with a personally appealing ethical and communal reality. In Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth there is a portrayal of the desperate compulsion of “what’s done is done” for all times. It is precisely this impressive example of remorse without the prospect of liberation that makes us realize how a mental disturbance can be understood in the context of the historicity of humanity. Is someone still so-called normal who is permanently at the mercy of the compelling anonymous force of knowing what he or she has done? The answer is dependent on the value system and therefore, on the norms that are accepted as valid in a community, including the medical community of psychiatry. To what extent is a “scrupulous” well-known social or political figure normal? Can such a person be defined as compulsion-neurotic? It is not possible to answer these questions unless a person is understood in his or her historical and biographical development and thus his or her existence. Only then does one understand to what extent this individual existence is affected by the tension between freedom and compulsion such that full-fledged human development is ensnared by it.

Notes 1. This text has been translated and edited by Max van Manen and Michael van Manen. 2. From: F.J.J. Buytendijk (1970). Naar een Existentiële Verklaring van de Doorleefde Dwang [Toward an Existential Explication of Lived Compulsion]. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 32 (4), pp. 567–608. 3. Years in square brackets are original publication dates.

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References Bilz, R. (1967). Die unbewältigte Vergangenheit des Menschengeschlechts [The Unresolved Past of the Human Race]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. Binswanger, L. (1942). Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins [Basic Forms and Knowledge of Human Existence]. Zurich: Niehans. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1969). Algemene Theorie van de Menselijke Houding en Beweging [General Theory of Human Posture and Movement]. Utrecht: Het Spectrum. Carp, E.A.D.E. (1947). De Neurosen [The Neuroses]. Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema. De Waelhens, A. (1951). Une Philosophie de L’Ambiguïté [A Philosophy of Ambiguity]. Leuven: Publications Universitaires de Louvain. Jankélévitsch, W. (1936). La Mauvaise Conscience [Bad Consciousness]. Paris: Feix Alcan. Jankélévitsch, W. (1966). De Beleving van de Tijd [The Experience of Time]. Utrecht: Het Spectrum. Jaspers. (1948). Allgemeine Psychopathologie [General Psychopathology]. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Kuiper. (1963). Nederlands Handboek der Psychiatrie [Dutch Handbook of Psychiatry]. Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus. Levinas, E. (1947). De L’Existence à L’Existant [Existence and Existents]. Paris: Fontaine. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phénoménologie de la Perception [Phenomenology of Perception]. Paris: Gallimard. Minkowski, E. (1936). Het Menselijk Aspect van de Kosmos [The Human Aspect of the Cosmos]. Utrecht: Bijleveld. Sherrington, C. (1906). The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. London: Yale University Press. Strasser, S. (1956). Das Gemüt [Feeling]. Utrecht: Het Spectrum. Strasser, S. (1962). Fenomenologie en Empirische Menskunde [Phenomenology and the Empirical Human Sciences]. Arnhem: Van Loghum Slaterus. Wundt, W. (1874). Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie [Basics of Physiological Psychology]. Leipzig: Verlag Von Wilhelm Engelmann.

9 DESCANT ON “THE EXPERIENCE OF COMPULSIVENESS”

Buytendijk’s text “Towards an Existential Explication of Living with Compulsions” (1970) foreshadows our contemporary understanding of the significance of living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Nowadays, we recognize OCD as a chronic condition marked by intrusive, disturbing thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive, ritualized behaviours (compulsions) that a person feels driven to perform (American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5, 2013). Typical themes of obsessions include fear of illness or contamination, unwanted aggressive thoughts, taboo thoughts involving sex or religion, and a felt need for exactness or symmetry. Compulsions involve such actions as excessive cleaning, arranging, checking, counting, repeating, or reassurance-seeking, as a means to lessen the anxiety and distress of obsessions. And, of course, we also recognize that some people have so-called symptoms of OCD, yet not to the extent that these symptoms qualify as a full-blown disorder. In the 1960s, when Buytendijk was writing “Towards an Existential Explication of Living with Compulsions,” psychoanalytic theories dominated clinical psychology such that obsessions and compulsions were considered to reflect a maladaptive response to unresolved conflicts from early stages of psychosexual development and refractory responses to pharmacotherapy. Behavioural therapies were just coming into vogue. Not surprisingly, we find in Buytendijk’s writing references to such understandings and approaches to the treatment of compulsions. And yet, it is as if he identifies such understandings only to push them away. Instead, Buytendijk attentively draws on unsuspected yet familiar experiences to explore experiential insights into the phenomenon of compulsions. By placing compulsions alongside phenomena such as passion, insomnia, fascination, and anxiety, we gain a subtle sense of the existential meanings of living with

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compulsions. For example, Buytendijk reminds us of those unintentional (spontaneous) ideas and thoughts that may arise when sleep is not forthcoming. These thoughts do not let us go; we cannot drive them away. Our consciousness remains focused on them compulsively, and not because we intend it . . . . . . The impenetrable darkness of the night confronts us with an “existence without existents”—with a being that exists, without something existing . . . . . . While lying awake, there is nothing to listen to, nothing to see in the darkness of the night. And yet, it is as if the silent emptiness itself becomes a presence, the elemental being of some absent being that seems to cause a nonidentifiable murmur behind the walls of his bedroom. This is the same kind of sound that one hears when putting an empty seashell against one’s ear: a murmuring hum from the seashell’s hollow. Buytendijk’s writing is vivid in its description, offering the foreign experience of compulsions in such a familiar way that they resonate with the reader’s sensibilities. He deepens such understandings of “anonymous” yet “autonomous” thoughts and images through supportively drawing on key passages of Levinas (1947). As the text progresses, Buytendijk again takes the most everyday of examples, the impulsive tickle of the cough that cannot be suppressed, and the itch that presents itself as needing to be scratched. He explores the compulsive quality of what cannot be resisted and nonetheless is experienced as arising “from me.” It may be pointed out here that the itch presents itself as an autonomous force not in front of myself, but from inside of myself. It is my itch that forces me to scratch. People stop what they are doing when they feel a tickling itch, and this stopping is a moment of reflective objectification and therefore, isolation. In everyday life, the sense of “have to” and “want to” will always form a unity. If I want to walk, I have to move my legs. It goes without saying! The reader of Buytendijk, who expects detours or discussions of the physiology of compulsions, will be disappointed by this selection. It was only in 1975 that the successful use of clomipramine (a potent inhibitor of serotonin reuptake) was described, ushering in physiologic understandings and pharmacologic treatments for OCD (Yaryura-Tobias & Neziroglu, 1975). So, we should not be surprised by the relative absence of physiologic and biochemical research in this text, particularly in comparison to so many of Buytendijk’s other studies. We also need to recognize that although descriptions of OCD date back at least as early as 1866

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when Falret made the distinction between folie du doute [madness of doubt] and délire du toucher [delusion of touching], the formal psychological classification of obsessions compared to compulsions was relatively recent, with the 1952 publication of the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (see American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5, 2013). Despite such historical considerations, we find relevant insights in this text. While the psychological concept of compulsions is in itself rather abstract, Buytendijk concretizes the abstraction by turning to recognizable colloquial expressions such as “It is stronger than me” as themes for questioning what we mean by “it” or “stronger” or “me.” We recognize Buytendijk’s inquisitive voice as he methodically aims to reach a new level of clarity in his explications and clarifications of the meaning of the phenomenon of living with compulsions. We can say that his writing expresses a meticulous attentiveness not only to explore nuanced experiences of compulsions but what eidetically makes a compulsion what it is, compared to other experiences. He explores the meaning of experiences by attending ever so carefully to the language we use to describe those very acts that “we perform without reflection.” Thus, Buytendijk achieves singular insights by intricately attending to related phenomena such as “force of habit” to explore the eidetic (essential) meaning of compulsion as an uncontrollable action that is itself without meaning, such that it is our resistance to it that ultimately gives existential meaning to the phenomenon of compulsion. Ultimately, “Towards an Existential Explication of Living with Compulsions” offers the reader to consider the connection that exists between freedom and compulsion in the day-to-day actions of our lives: “A tension between compulsion and freedom presupposes the possibility of distancing oneself from reality.” From this perspective, Buytendijk offers the reader phenomenological insights not only regarding the experience of living with obsessions and compulsions, but also regarding the existential condition of being human.

Notes All unmarked quotes are taken from the preceding essay “Towards an Existential Explication of the Experience of Compulsiveness,” by Frederik J.J. Buytendijk.

References American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5 Task Force. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 (5th ed.). Washington: American Psychiatric Association. American Psychiatric Association. (1952). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association. Buytendijk, F.J.J. (1970). Naar een Existentiële Verklaring van de Doorleefde Dwang. [Toward an Existential Explication of Lived Compulsion]. Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 32(4), pp. 567–608.

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Falret, J.P. (1866). Discussion sur la Folie Raisonnante [Discussion on Reasoning Madness]. Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 24, pp. 382–426. Levinas, E. (1947). De L’Existence à L’Existant [Existence and Existents]. Paris: Fontaine. Yaryura-Tobias, J.A. and Neziroglu, F. (1975). The Action of Chlorimipramine in ObsessiveCompulsive Neurosis: A Pilot Study. Current Therapeutic Research, Clinical and Experimental, 17 (1), pp. 111–116.

10 MARTINUS J. LANGEVELD

Nothing is so silent as that which is self-evident. Thus, it becomes our task to render audible, readable, articulate, that which is silent. Martinus J. Langeveld (1983, p. 5)

Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989) was a Dutch educator and clinical psychologist who laid the foundations for pedagogy as a clinical practice and as an academic program of studies. In his work as a clinical psychologist, he dealt with parents and children, for example, children and youth who had suffered the damaging psychological effects of abuse or other traumatic events. Langeveld was a perceptive author of more than a dozen books. His pedagogical texts about child psychology, teaching, and parenting were compulsory reading for students of psychology, counselling, pedagogy, and education. Langeveld was born in Haarlem and grew up in Amsterdam. He enrolled in 1925 in the Faculty of Arts for the study of philosophy and Dutch language at the University of Amsterdam. He was mentored by the philosopher and educational theorist Philipp Kohstamm and he studied under the Dutch philosopher and linguist Hendrik J. Pos (1898–1955). Pos was one of the first to apply phenomenological method in the Netherlands. He invited Husserl in 1928 to give the so-called Amsterdamer Vorträge [Amsterdam Lectures] on phenomenological psychology. As well, Langeveld was influenced by such prominent philosophers and scholars as Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Stern, Karl Jaspers, Theodor Litt, Hermann Nohl, Erich Weiniger, Joseph Dolch, Fritz Blättner, Otto Friedrich Bollnow, and Ernst Cassirer (Levering, 2012). Langeveld obtained his doctorate in 1934 with a dissertation on language and cognition. In 1939, he was appointed to the Chair in Pedagogy at the University of Utrecht, where, until World War II,

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pedagogy was largely connected with the preparation of teachers. In 1946, pedagogy became an independent discipline at the University of Utrecht. Langeveld engaged phenomenology at several levels. As a psychologist, Langeveld pursued a phenomenologically oriented clinical psychological practice. For example, for his clinical work with young people, Langeveld (1969) devised “The Columbus,” a projection-test consisting of 24 drawings of situations and places that are recognizable for young and older children. Strictly speaking, this is not a psychological test, but a kind of phenomenological diagnostic probe to assist the psychologist in understanding the inner lives of children. For example, some of the drawing plates show a child in a situation of being in a secret or hiding place. By interpreting the stories that the child will tell about the young person in the picture, the psychologist can gain an understanding of the child’s sense of self, maturity, and the thoughts and feelings that may preoccupy the child. With respect to Langeveld’s research program, one of his most influential texts was Beknopte Theoretische Pedagogiek [Concise Theoretical Pedagogy], in which he elaborated a phenomenological pedagogy. This work was published in 15 editions between 1946 and 1979. Urged by Theodor Litt, he even translated Beknopte Theoretische Pedagogiek into German himself, in 1951. Langeveld analyzed the phenomena of childrearing and related educational experiences by paying close attention to concrete and everyday situations and events in the lives of children and adults. He rejected that pedagogical authority should be understood in terms of a general theory of power structures. Instead, Langeveld linked an existential phenomenological starting point for the determination of authority to his philosophical anthropology, wherein self-responsible self-determination of the growing child assumed a central value (Levering & Van Manen, 2002). Authority is not just a question of moral choice; rather, authority is necessary because children require care for their very existence and to be able to grow up. It is remarkable that many of Langeveld’s studies, such as “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child” (1953), and “The Thing in the World of the Child (1956), are still very readable and formative for understanding the pedagogical lifeworld. Langeveld was quite clear about his relation to the work of Husserl. He replaced Husserl’s transcendental reduction with the method of immanent reduction, which stresses the situatedness and concrete particularity of human experience. In other words, he said “yes” to Husserl’s method but “no” to his philosophical system: We use the term “phenomenology” after Husserl . . . With Husserl “phenomenology” occurs in two meaning contexts: to signify a method, and to signify a philosophy. We use the term exclusively to refer to the method and remain completely impartial to Husserl’s development of a phenomenological philosophy. (Langeveld, 1972, p. 105)

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For Langeveld, phenomenology had to stay focused on the everyday concerns of the concrete lifeworld. He recommended that the phenomenological attitude should reflect “the home, street, backyard” perspective of everyday life. Within the field of pedagogy, Langeveld exercised a strong influence. He also published numerous studies in the German language. Indeed, in Germany, he was assumed to be a prominent “German” phenomenologist and pedagogue. In addition to acknowledging a concrete, nontheoretical thrust to phenomenological pedagogical work, Langeveld posited the primacy of normative or ethical thought in phenomenological reflection about our living with children. He set out to show that the pedagogical situation in everyday life is from the very first ethical, finding its origin in the relation of parent and child or teacher and student. He asserted that pedagogy does not just want to know how things are; pedagogical inquiry always has an inherent practical intent because sooner or later, this knowledge figures in to how one must act (Langeveld, 1979, p. 1). So, for Langeveld, the issue of the place and meaning of phenomenological inquiry is primarily a function of how one stands and acts in the world. With respect to pedagogy, he said, [pedagogy] is a science of experience, it is a human science; indeed it is a normative [ethical] human science which is followed or studied with practical intent . . . [it] is a science of experience because it finds its object (the pedagogical situation) in the world of lived experience. It is a human science because the pedagogical situation rests on human intent . . . It is ethical because it distinguishes between what is good and what is not good for a child . . . It is practical because all this is brought to bear in the practical process of education and childrearing. (1979, p. 178) Langeveld often repeated that there exists no closed or universally acceptable rational system to tell us how we should behave with children in our everyday actions and how we should rationally justify our pedagogical approaches and methods. What is reasonable to one person may appear unreasonable to another. He sought to locate the ethical norms of pedagogical acting in the concrete experiences of everyday living with children around the home, in the community, and at school. The continental use of the term “pedagogy” cannot easily be translated into English because the meaning is wider and more culturally complex than words like education, upbringing, parenting, instruction, and so forth. For Langeveld pedagogy is a practical science that does not merely study its subject for the sake of knowing how things are, but to understand in the short or long term how one should act (1979, p. 1). Of course, there is a difference between reflecting and acting. The pedagogue needs theoretical and historical understanding to appreciate that educational problems we face today are typical of our time and that pedagogical concerns change over time. Historical and

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theoretical pedagogy should provide us with an understanding of the historical and theoretical literature. Langeveld quotes Gunning: Theory without practice is for geniuses, practice without theory is for fools and rogues, but for the majority of educators, the intimate and unbreakable union of both is necessary. (1979, p. 17) But then Langeveld points out that Gunning puts it too sharply. Langeveld adds, “we are all sometimes fools and rogues” (1979, p.  17). Theoretical reflection forces one to be accountable, to subject one’s views and actions to the criticism and discussion by others, and thus to lead to new perspectives and self-understandings. Therefore, to study pedagogy, says Langeveld, is to change one’s self. Pedagogical knowledge does not aim for control of pedagogical situations by rational theory. This kind of control-relation between theory and practice, says Langeveld, belongs to the dominion of the technocrat. One can only speak of control in the human sciences in so far that one can identify and “form” oneself in the experience of the pedagogical encounter, in other words in the life of the child. But this is only possible if one does not lose oneself in this identification but, in spite of, and even thanks to this identification, remains oneself and, at the same time, empathically lives in the situation of the other—the child (1979, p.  14). In order not to lose oneself, two things are necessary, says Langeveld: one must know who one is, and one must become aware of the complex values and forms of knowledge that ultimately reflect, shape, and orient one’s life and give meaning to one’s own experiences. Thus, there is a need for sensitive selfreflection on the part of educators. Langeveld approaches the problem of pedagogy (childrearing and education) first phenomenologically and only afterwards, philosophically. In other words, Langeveld starts from the “phenomenon” of pedagogy itself, as it is experienced, rather than from certain concepts or preconceived educational ideas and ideals that would predispose one to see the challenge of pedagogy in foreclosed ways. This does not mean that one can free oneself from one’s cultural and historical context, but it does mean that one can endeavour to orient to how a situation is experienced in the here and now from another perspective. One of the first things that one can learn from reflectively examining one’s experience with young people is that there exists a “relation of influence” and that the intent of this influence is from the adult to the child. Naturally, children and youths influence adults, but the intent of pedagogical influence is charged with a certain ethics: we are there primarily to serve the child, the child is there not primarily to serve us. Only gradually does the child grow into responsibilities. Indeed, one of the decisive signs of increased maturity for Langeveld is that one can begin to assume responsibility for infants and children.

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It is quite likely that some individuals in our present age do not experience their relation to their children as filled with responsibility. If he were still alive, Langeveld would probably say that such a condition may have eroded for some the possibility of experiencing life pedagogically altogether. And there is little doubt that Langeveld would be a critic of various fashionable strands of contemporary thought in education. In his own time, and based on his clinical work with children, Langeveld (1979) proposed that certain pedagogical values emerge from our living with children. In particular, he suggested that security, reliability, and continuity are fundamental values: children need to experience the world as secure, they need to be able to depend on individual adults as being reliable, and they need to experience a sense of continuity in their relations with those who care for them. How does Langeveld arrive at these ethical values? This is one of the debated aspects of his pedagogical work. He says that these values can be located through phenomenological situation analysis in our experiences with children. Children who lack security, who cannot depend on at least one person in their life, who are not able to establish long-term relationships with an adult, will become a pedagogical concern, suggested Langeveld. In the Curry Lecture (1975), Langeveld describes an incident to illustrate how our personal response to situations in which we find ourselves with children gives us insight into the sorts of practical ethics that are required. He tells the story of how an accident happens in the street, right in front of him, when a 13‑year‑old girl calls her father, whom she sees on the other side of the street. “Hello daddy!” she calls out, waving to a man on the opposite side of the road, who waves back to her. He then steps from the pavement to meet his daughter and, before her very eyes, he is run over by a car. He is killed, but she does not yet know. Soon she will: already she cries loudly. Later she’ll go on crying and seeing the image of her father’s death happening in front of her. She has an irrational feeling of guilt: she knows that she is not guilty, but she called his name, she waved to him and then he stepped off the pavement, and then it happened. (1975, p. 9) Langeveld asks, what does one do in a situation such as that? Of course, some people may hurry by and not get involved. But Langeveld shows that he cannot help but respond. A personal response is required: to be available to the girl who needs help. He had to act. Emmanuel Levinas calls this experience of an ethical response to the demand issued by the appeal of human vulnerability: responsibility for the Other (1981). When Langeveld sees the child’s horror, he cannot help but experience his own response to this vulnerable child—he experiences his own responsibility. Langeveld tells how a personal response became a pedagogical response: What, now, did you do, walking behind the girl whose father was run over by a car? People ran to the place of the accident. Should this girl see her

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father crushed and bleeding? Before you knew what you were doing, you had already decided, and you had taken the girl’s hand in order to prevent her from approaching that horrible sight. “Let us go quickly to find your mother . . . Where do you live? Where is she?” Immediately you brought the child into a different life situation: a mother, a house. Immediately you assured her that people were looking after her father: “Shall I go and have a look?” No, you added immediately, no, let us first find your mother, as you live just around the corner. (1975, p. 9) In his lecture, Langeveld uses the anecdote as a basis to reflect on the ethics of the pedagogical situation. He then goes on to show that pedagogy makes a demand on adults, it demands instant action as well as reflection on the meaning of pedagogical phenomena such as the child’s sense of security, reliability, and continuity. These demands, he suggests, are basic to the experience of pedagogically responsive and responsible action in our everyday relations and situations where we live with children. Often it is a matter of instantly being able to exercise pedagogical tact, or knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do (see van Manen, 2015). Langeveld points out that pedagogically one must often place ethics above rationality: “de zede over de rede” [ethics over reason]. He proposed that it is impossible to reduce pedagogical thinking and acting to solely rational grounds. In fact, often, we must be guided by affective ethical-emotional rather than pure rationalist logical considerations. Purely rationalist theorizing is of limited value for pedagogy. In our living with children, we must constantly act. What we do (or not do) is more a matter of goodness or appropriateness guided by ethical considerations and sensibilities. To reiterate, in our everyday encounters with children, our decisions about how to educate and bring up children, and more concretely what to say or do, first of all, involve normative (ethical) considerations and secondarily, rational ones. And while these normative ethical considerations are always relative to one’s own cultural and social contexts, nevertheless, adults somehow must always act in ways that are “becoming” for this or that particular child. Even refraining from acting is a form of acting, and thus one cannot not act in our living with children for whom we bear responsibility. Phenomenological pedagogy is conducted through situation analysis, which focuses on the situatedness and concrete particularity of human experience. Two portrayals of such situation analysis and immanent reduction are provided in the essays “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child” and “The Thing in the World of the Child.” Langeveld’s position was that one must always start from the child’s experience. Phenomenology was meant to assist in guarding against ideological and prejudicial beliefs, and aim at better understanding how the child experiences his or her world while growing up. Langeveld was a celebrated professor at the University of Utrecht from 1939– 1972. In the year 2001, the university conferred his name to the new main

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university building of the social sciences. The main entrance of the building wall honourably bears the logo of his clearly recognizable signature: “Martinus J. Langeveld.”

Selected Works Langeveld, M.J. (1934). Taal en Denken [Language and Thinking]. Groningen: Wolters. Langeveld, M.J. (1945 [1979]). Beknopte Theoretische Pedagogiek [Concise Theoretical Pedagogy]. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. Langeveld, M.J. (1952). Phaenomenologie van het Leren [Phenomenology of Learning]. Pedagogische Studien, 29, pp. 265–273. Langeveld, M.J. (1953). De “Verborgen Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind [The “Hidden Place” in the Life of the Child]. In: J.H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 11–32. Langeveld, M.J. (1956a). Das Ding in die Welt des Kindes [The Thing in the World of the Child]. In: Studien zur Antropologie des Kindes [Studies Toward an Anthropology of the Child]. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 142–156. Langeveld, M.J. (1956b). Studien zur Anthropologie des Kindes [Studies Toward an Anthropology of the Child]. Tübingen. Langeveld, M.J. (1967). Scholen Maken Mensen [Schools Make Human Beings]. Purmerend: J. Muusses. Langeveld, M.J. (1968). Die Schule als Weg des Kindes [The School as the Way of the Child]. Braunschweig: Westermann. Langeveld, M.J. (1969). The Columbus. Picture of Growth towards Maturity: A Series of 24 Pictures and a Manual (G. Uildris, trans.). Basel: Karger. Langeveld, M.J. (1971). Erziehungskunde und Wirklichkeit [Education and Reality]. Braunschweig: Georg Westermann Verlag. Langeveld, M.J. (1972). Capita Uit de Algemene Methodologie der Opvoedingswetenschap [Capita from the General Methodology of Parenting Human Science]. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. Langeveld, M.J. (1973). De Grenzen der Vruchtbaarheid van Husserls Fenomenologie voor de Opvoedingswetenschap [Fruitful Implications of Husserl’s Phenomenology for Pedagogy]. Tijdschrift voor Opvoedkunde, 19 (2), pp. 151–154. Langeveld, M.J. (1974). Elk Kind is er Een, Meedenken en Meehelpen bij Groot Worden en Opvoeden [Every Child is One, Thinking and Helping in Growing Up and Educating]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Langeveld, M.J. (1975). Personal Help for Children Growing Up: The W. B. Curry Lecture Delivered at the University of Exeter on 8 November 1974. Exeter: University of Exeter. Langeveld, M.J. (1984). How Does the Child Experience the World of Things? Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 2 (3), pp. 215–223. Langeveld, M.J. (1985). De Babylonische Spraakverwarring om het Kind [The Babylonian Speech Confusion about the Child]. In: R. Lubbers (ed.). Hermeneutische Diagnostiek en Probleem Oplossen [Hermeneutical Diagnosis and Problem Solving]. Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt.

References Langeveld, M.J. (1975). Personal Help for Children Growing Up: The W. B. Curry Lecture Delivered at the University of Exeter on 8 November 1974. Exeter: University of Exeter.

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Langeveld, M.J. (1983). (Personal Interview with M. van Manen) Reflections on Phenomenology and Pedagogy. Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 1 (1), 5–7. Levering, B. (2012). Martinus Jan Langeveld: Modern Educationalist of Everyday Upbringing. In: P. Standish and Naoko Saito (eds.). Education and the Kyoto School of Philosophy: Pedagogy for Human Transformation. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 133–146. Levering, B. and Van Manen, M. (2002). Phenomenology and Philosophical Anthropology in the Netherlands. In: Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.). Phenomenology World-Wide. Dordrecht: Kluwer Press, pp. 274–286. Levinas, E. (1981). Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (A. Lingis, trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Van Manen, M. (2015). Pedagogical Tact: Knowing What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. London: Routledge.

11 THE “SECRET PLACE” IN THE LIFE OF THE CHILD [De “Geheime Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind, 1953/1967] Martinus J. Langeveld

“It isn’t really Anywhere! It’s somewhere else Instead!” Alan Alexander Milne (1924, p. 81)

Introduction: Hidden and Secret Places Children are not formed by schooling alone; they are influenced also by their own milieu and their own self-constituted worlds. And for this, children do not need just the formal upbringing of a school curriculum; they also need freedom and openness to pursue what are as yet undetermined and uncertain possibilities. We want to observe the child in such situations to come to an understanding of the whole child. Do we know homes, traditional or modern, that offer the child such special places in otherwise familiar and trusted environments, places like the attic, the deep closet, the tucked-away corners in the basement or shelters, the garage filled with storage items, hidden places in the garden shed, or the space behind the full and heavy curtains? In the lifeworld of the child, there exist “secret” places which permit the child the possibility of experiencing in a normal manner access to strange and unfamiliar worlds. Where does the child find such indeterminate worlds? Worlds pregnant with the possibilities of new meaningful experiences? Let us take an example and turn to the familiar home of the child where one may encounter fascinating secret places. Let us watch the child who not only has secret places in his home but who also knows forbidden places and who therefore knows areas of the house as defined

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and distinct places. In some homes, the parents’ bedroom or office provides this forbidden area; in others, it is sometimes the formal living room, the study, the food pantry, or the furnace room downstairs. Only “well behaved” children seem to be able to live as if the forbidden areas simply do not exist. But the child who cannot remain indifferent to these places is called “naughty” or at least somewhat “daring.” A child may find him- or herself at the threshold of transgression, and the door, which slowly opens lures the child towards misbehaviour. One throws a quick glance into the forbidden realm. The things in there all make long faces and look back at us darkly. At any rate, they are uncommunicative and unrelenting. They do not speak to us. If the child wants to hide, this probably would be the place where no one would search. But the child does not dare to enter. In a forbidden place like this, we would feel as if someone were looking at us with threatening eyes. The silence, if not hostile, is at least lifeless and therefore paralyzing. Nothing can win us over to interest us in its presence. And that is the reason why we get bored in a forbidden place. We flee from it as the lonely person flees from a place like the attic. For here we are not in No-Man’s Land. Here we are quite definitely in “foreign lands,” out of place.

The Attic as a Hidden Secret Place Has there ever been a stranger place than the attic of the older house, as it reveals itself to our spellbound eyes? When we climb up through the stairs, step-ladder, or hatch, the attic confronts us with a gaze that comes out of nowhere. Its omnipresent stare is not aimed at us directly; rather, it suddenly reveals and observes everything at once. As soon as we (after having shut the door or hatch) have descended the stairs or the ladder and find ourselves back in our own safe, familiar world, then its gaze instantly ceases to encompass us. It is at that very moment that the attic door resumes guarding its privacy and ours as well, our own privacy, which we had wanted to conquer through our venture into the attic. Let us climb back into the attic and stay there for a while. Suppose someone else (mother or father, perhaps) comes up suddenly to peer through the stepladder. Whoever it is will come from a different world, a different reality, than that of the attic. The head of the newcomer belongs to that of an intruder who disturbs the quiet peace of the attic. This person’s voice is out of place here. Why? Because the secret place has its own life—the intruder destroys it as if it were a soap bubble. The hidden, unknown world of the secret place becomes our property. It curiously becomes more trusted and personal than any other part of the house. The secret spell of the attic can be encountered in its deserted emptiness, or even in an attic overcrowded with discarded or stored objects. Sometimes a threatening atmosphere hovers in an attic; the attic becomes weird, foreign, unearthly, and secretive. The attic does not seem to belong to the normal

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atmosphere of the rest of the house—the trusted home. The attic can become completely severed from the house and turn into a ship that crosses treacherous waters—or a grotto carved into the cliff of a foreboding mountain—an eagle’s nest crowning on an unreachable mountain-top—a perch from which to watch an unfathomable mystery play. The attic covers the ordinary living spaces below, and yet it seems to stretch unendingly over prairies and oceans bathed in the light of the setting sun. Thus, the attic separates and frees itself from the house in the guise of an airplane or a ship, to take on the changing dimensions of its new being. In some houses the uninhabited space of the attic is found in the basement or the storage cellar that are entered by way of dark stairs that lead down into the bowels of the house. And sometimes the attic is just an available space, a storage room to be used, a back room in the house, or an unused garage or shed partially filled with stored items. One can lay a train track there running through savannas. To be sure, the train does not travel without hindrances, but these hindrances are not the familiar hindrances one bumps into in the common living spaces of everyday objects. Rather, this uninhabited world of the attic, spare space, or basement is full of new significations. Here the train winds its way through a landscape of bundles, boxes, suitcases, and baskets. One encounters objects which once were furniture. In the living room, it would always be a table and nothing else; tables and chairs and such exist within the boundaries of meaning set by their use. Now that this meaning has been discarded, this piece of furniture takes on an unending array of identities in the free and undisturbed world of the attic. It offers itself as a tent on the prairies in which the chief of the Sioux crouches and smokes a peace pipe with Old Shatterhand. Even the most common of things acquires new names, which in the stillness of the old attic, or spare space, seem to be whispered in our ears. Soon we too will be using these new names. Although you might not have expected it, this crowded attic shelters hidden places. There are places to crawl into and hide: huts and havens, places of refuge, retreats, sanctuaries, dens, caves, holes, and narrow passes to travel through. Every object assumes a meaning which best fits it and makes it a part of this landscape. Except for that familiar storage cupboard over there, which we know as the “apple keeper.” This cupboard is a stranger to the scene precisely because of its definite identity and significance. It shows an inscrutable and even disagreeable face. We do not want to bother with it because it refuses to “play along.” We do not expect anything from this cupboard. It will remain merely itself. Just look at it, how it stands there: heavy, dense, and unmovable. And because of this immutable familiarity, it forfeits its worth and significance. It is precisely the fixed and “everyday” character of this common cupboard that robs it of any possibilities of expression in a world where every object secures a voice of its own. Listen to the language spoken by these things. In listening to this language, we may gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the secret place in the world of the young child.

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Can I  be sure that behind the curtain or the old door these lifeless objects are not gazing at me while crouching and getting ready for an unexpected leap? Let us look behind the ruffled creases of the curtain: There stands a docile stove doing what a good stove seemingly should be doing. However, we only need to lift the curtain and welcome the stove into the familiar world of our lived-in daily activities—the stove may only hesitate a moment. But when the stove seizes the opportunity to serve as ship cannon or mechanical robot, it abdicates the idle usefulness of ordinary appliances. It assumes special meaning and thus becomes an essential aspect of the world in which we live. And yet, this world is not entirely “fulfilled by us.” There is something vague and indefinable that seems to force itself upon us. For example, we sense this when behind us, the lightly lifted curtain suddenly drops down. We catch our breath, and the blood rushes to our head: “Who did that?” The “unperson” of the secret place has stirred himself in space, in the flashing moment of the fleeting instant. In the attic, time stands still or time flies: It really amounts to the same. But if time has stopped, it is not because it has been blocked by a weary recoil or nervous density brought about by anxiety or fear. Time simply has disappeared altogether. And when we find our way back from the attic to the living room downstairs, the clock looks at us poker-faced. Maybe time took a rest, but it is also quite possible that the clock stealthily moved its arms forward three whole hours as soon as we had left the room. The time that we lost while dwelling in our secret place, or the time we forgot (“I forgot the time,” we say), has really nothing to do with this clock. We do not lose sight of the time, but it is the clock itself we temporarily forget. The secret place does not know the systematic classification of hours, minutes, and seconds. In the domain of the secret place, time is not being managed nor kept within a sphere of control. Somehow, the secret place knows how to remain outside of the boundaries of time and space. Neither time nor space has room for the indeterminacy of the secret place. And therefore, this is truly a place of secrecy even though it is available for all to see. And so, the child finds here a condition for which he or she might only feel ashamed at school—a state of aimless daydreaming which knows no discipline of time.

Being Alone and Loneliness in the Attic The lonely person who visits the attic or the old storage space in the basement, the crowded garage, or the unused spare bedroom, learns that the unwavering look of this indeterminate realm makes the possibility of stay unwelcome. Often the lonely person has come here to overcome loneliness. He or she places him- or herself amidst the used furniture and the old suitcases, which, through their very superficiality and worthlessness, have become redundant, silly, powerless, and yes, even lifeless: Dead to the dead. This is how the lonely person sees him- or herself in the midst of these objects. But even if this person is misplaced here, the child

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is glad to be alone in the attic. Company is only thinkable in the experience of a commonly felt joy. This commonly held enjoyment of the secret intimacy of aloneness can be experienced in many different places: for example, in bed, in a quiet evening at home, during a hike in the wilderness, or in the simultaneously exchanged glance with a beloved pet. In the attic, mundane quarrels, irritations, and conflicts of daily living fall away from us because here we are asked to create our own world, a world we live through as an indulgent illusion. Above all, it must not be a merely disguised illusion, an illusion in which one partakes with a bad conscience. Whoever wants to live in the secret place, but hesitates to give him- or herself over to the sense of illusion it requires, has already forsaken the place before even entering it. This person has been driven into the straits and must realize that freedom is lost. Time is wasted here. The person is displeased with him- or herself and feels frustrated, ashamed of his or her childishness. And so, this person will soon feel lonely if not already lonely. But whoever truly enters the secret place, enters a real illusion. The reality of a world created by him or her is experienced with an honesty of immediacy. And yet, like the dawning of the morning glory, there is a dawning awareness of the personal quality of this new world and a personal familiarity with it; at the same time, the road to the normal world of shared relations remains familiar and open. But the secret place knows no bad conscience. Here we live in a true state of innocence. The secret place is, then, a home where one finds oneself at home, a place where one is with oneself. Its intimate character is determined, in the first place, by the fact that one finds oneself in the unexpected presence of one’s own self without having tried to make oneself a project of study. Here, one has every opportunity through doing or dreaming: to realize, to make real, a world of one’s own. Nothing interferes with the multiplicity of relations the objects of this world have to “reality.” This box can be a box, but it can also be a cave that surrounds me, or a fortress, a cliff, a boat, an airplane, or a building block. I myself can be an explorer, a pirate, a pilot, or a scientist.

The Stairs At the same time, to spend time in the attic means still to be at home, for there is still the stairway. There one can again climb down. But the stairway has its own significance as well. And this significance becomes stronger when we look up the stairs towards where the steps lead into the unknown or to the unseen. In case we cannot remember this feeling, we should consult the etching by Odilon Redon, “The Haunted House,” in which a stairway is shown in a hallway. To the right is the staircase with accompanying spindles and railing. But to the left, towards the underside of the stairs, we only see shadows. There is an air of uncertainty about it, precisely because of the presence of the unknown and the invisible. There

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dwells the anonymous being, the unperson: Watch out! Soon he will peek over the ramps and look at us. Halfway up the stairs Isn’t up, And isn’t down. It isn’t in the nursery, It isn’t in the town. And all sorts of funny thoughts Run round my head: “It isn’t really Anywhere! It’s somewhere else Instead!” (Milne, 1924, p. 81) Indeterminate space, indeed, that is what the stairs represent because we cannot see where they lead. Of course, staircases can be very familiar and trusted with the exception of those that lead up to the attic: these always contain an element of mystery. For the attic is the indeterminate space itself. Sometimes the staircase looks at us through the eyes of a distant piece of furniture, visible from below and which, in spite of its distance, gives us a feeling of trustfulness. Other times, the staircase is a dark and threatening space precisely because of the peculiar way it is kept bounded by the over-arching roof; yet the unbounded dome of a dark or starlit sky tends to create no fear in us at all. At other times, we may have the feeling that the stairs lead into nothingness: the Jacob’s-ladder and the ladders without end are familiar dream themes.

The Closet Sometimes children have found their secret place in a deep closet. One barely opens the door to see a gaping, dark space, whose emptiness betrays the sense of indeterminacy. This indeterminacy is not to be equated with meaninglessness. Emptiness is a space that speaks to us to be filled, inviting us to explore its cavities and corners. Moreover, the empty space is the dwelling place for occasional visions and strange creatures or appearances: what is empty at one moment suddenly shows an invisible life. In fairy tales, there were always princes and fairies who suddenly became visible. And then, there are the shuddering experiences of Edgar Allen Poe such as when we hear knocking from a closet which we thought was empty. But this is not what we are referring to here. For that experience no longer belongs to the secret place in the life of the child—instead, it would truly be a threat.

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The full utility closet certainly loses its significance as a secret hiding place. It is merely one of those ordinarily useful utensils- or cloth-closets. At best one can only hope to find an unexpected object there. The search for something worthwhile in the inside of a stocked closet bears no relation to the experience of the secret place. For here, there is nothing indeterminate; everything has a use or belongs to someone. Here there is no mystery, no drawing back of oneself from the objective time and space boundaries. Here there is no seeing of oneself as the “other.” Even the shallow closet, occupied by purely useful objects, is without mystery, without practical freedom.

The Lookout In contrast, the lookout from a tower, or a tree, or from the roof, or any such kind of place is for many a child a retreat from the nearness of things. The things to which we direct our attention from a lookout, a lookout post, are always far away. It could even be something from which we are normally barred or locked out. That is how it is for Piers Sparkenbroke in Sparkenbroke by Charles Morgan (1936). The 12-year-old hero retreats to his observation post so that he can follow the annual festival pilgrimage to the family burial grounds. He was not allowed to go along because he was considered “too young!” So, he finds five windows covered with heavy curtains. “He pushed two of the curtains to the side, slid inside and let them fall shut behind him.” Now he stands in an empty room, cloaked in darkness where only the sound of the church bell enters. But this clear sound only heightens his feelings of being shut out, yet at the same time, it increases his pride, which he, Piers, discovers in his search for an encounter with death. He knows, of course, of the fear and anxiety with which the others approach the trip to the grave. For Piers, the bells do not signify fright, but rather a secret revelation. He is beguiled by their mesmerizing spell, which (if only he could uncover their incomprehensible significance) could fill his consciousness of that other life, that out-of-body life, of which he already knew more than a little. Outside of the realm of time, which is seen as if it were a measuring tape that unravels, hour after hour, like a kitchen clock, Piers encounters a mode of being unexplored by humans. The world that he observes while in hiding is the world of isolated and fragmented secrets. One knows what is “actually” going on there. One looks, as it were, unnoticed over the shoulder of the worker and follows with one’s eyes the impulses that flow into the world through his hands and his expressions. In this secret place, then, two experiences come together: that of being the outsider at a distance, and that of having understood a reality. The experience of the outsider, the onlooker, and that of the initiated, the knower, are here united. And that is why, without participating in what is happening, we can be happy in that place. Piers was unable to give expression to his experiences, and yet he could not help but show in his very way of being and behaving that the experiences were somehow consequential. He could no longer deny that he had encountered the

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indeterminate mode of being. And although it may be true that Piers was an extraordinarily sensitive boy, in some deep sense, every child knows such experiential encounters with a secret place, even though it may not always be in the same manner. Piers stood behind the curtains of a trusted room in his house. When these curtains are drawn, they close out the familiar world; when they are open, they provide a view to the world outside. But whoever stands behind the curtains next to the windows stands in no-man’s land, as it were. This is a land belonging neither to the living room inside nor to the world outside the window. Here we are dealing with a narrow, intercontinental strip. Here we are at home, in the real and immediate vicinity of the others, so that really nobody needs to notice our absence. “Here I am!” answers the child after we have been searching for him or her all over the house. “I was here, in the room!” But to his- or herself the child might say: “Indeed, I was here, and yet . . .” Whoever is spying or hiding, therefore, cannot find shelter in a secret place.

A Fantasyland Is Not a Secret Place There are even fantasy worlds that have no relation to the notion of the secret place. We all know how children construct make-believe places and make-believe objects out of ordinary things in the house. Once I heard of a place called “Relevia,” a name that the children gave the make-believe land that they inhabited, which ran criss-cross through the whole house that they shared with their parents. The children had made up this land. It included many everyday household objects, and they spoke of it with such certainty that their mother, who has since become the grandmother of her children’s children, could not rid herself of the picture of this Relevia when she wanted to think of a new world. Much later she published a book entitled Relevia, A New Economic System—an order under which I myself would have liked to live. The comprehensive scheme of a community in which the children go their own way was included in this ordered illusion. Such illusionary worlds are not at all rare. Think of the island of Robinson Crusoe and of how often parents themselves show an indulgent attitude towards such fantasy. The world of fairy tales and actual history interchange here in the yearnings of an everlasting childhood. Here we encounter a phenomenon wherein some of the characteristics of the secret place are found in expansive vision. It is true that children may lose themselves in the experience of the secret place. But why should we insist on the priority of the need for systematization, formulation, explicitness, and order? In the modern world, everything tends to become rationalized and is, therefore, more available to the adult. In contrast, fantasy may create an ordered world but only to work out possible arrangements within the confines of a world of open possibilities that is, after all, still a world in the style of the everyday and shared world. Relevia, for example, had its own monetary system.

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The secret place, however, never has such an orderly structure. Or, to say it differently, the secret place is not a world built up by fantasy and creative imagination. Instead, it maintains the character of a creative simplicity of effortlessness, of the waking dream, of something unique, a mood, which can be recalled time and again. In Relevia, tales like “Eselshaut” or “Rumpelstilzchen” represent a form of celebration, as they do in the normal world. They are related to the spirit of the secret place, albeit distantly. Let us emphasize. All examples of childish fantasy—like Relevia—all of these occasionally entered worlds have a determinate character. They are not places, like the secret place, where the experience of deep mystery is possible; they are not places, like the secret place, untouched by the mood of everydayness.

A Place of Peace and Tranquillity The actual experience of the secret place is always grounded in a mood of tranquillity and peacefulness. It is a place where we can feel sheltered, safe, and close to that with which we are intimate and deeply familiar. In his retreat, the author Jan Ligthart (1917) was forever involved in arranging and rearranging his small, unread religious tract. Others will take their treasures or collections to the secret place to be reinspected and reorganized for the thirty-sixth time. And, although the secret place is an actual place where one feels safe and secure, still it is not a hiding place for something like hide-and-go-seek. It is the place where somehow direct understanding reigns when one child is in the company of another child. Words are unnecessary here. Speech occurs in the deep silence of a priori understanding. Often the tone of voice changes into the tonality of intimacy. Precisely because the secret place is devoid of anything determinate is it a place where the experience of peace and contentment is possible. The secret place is withdrawn from involvement, and therefore it is a place of rest. Peace reigns here because human interaction is suspended: it is held in abeyance. In the secret place, the child can find solitude. Although the child’s interactions with others are temporarily suspended in the secret place, this does not mean that others are not in some sense present in this space. Physically others remain on the outside, but they are still present on the inside because they are still seen or observed by the child. And this normal and disinterested observation can turn into an attentive watching when something sparks the child’s interest. At that moment, the “other” is again there and becomes an object of interest, and the secret place becomes part of the usual world, or a simple hiding place, or lookout post.

Behind the Curtains How deep is the stillness behind the heavy curtains even when the room is full of noise and talk. All the more reason to keep oneself quiet and still. For just as the transparency of the window-pane opens up both the outer and the inner world,

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so the curtain allows sounds to pass through. And just as through the window one sees and is seen, so behind the curtain one hears and is heard. So much more reason to be quiet and unobtrusive behind the curtain. All that this curtain shows us—its snake-like boundary at the floor, the unpredictability even of this shifting and easily moved border, its pliancy, which betrays one at the slightest movement—all of this urges us to remain quietly within our boundaries. Don’t move! Don’t touch the curtain! At other times the curtain hides the location where the mysterious Something remains hidden: the unexpected, the surprise. This is the place that guarantees intimacy and that is always enveloped in stillness. Who is disturbing the curtain? “A  Rat?—No, Polonius!” But when Hamlet stabs his sword through here, he neither kills the one nor the other. Instead, he inflicts retribution on that what was really hidden: Him, the marriage-wrecking lover of his mother, his father’s murderer. The poet Milne knows that in the child’s world there is someone who lives behind the curtains: In a corner of the bedroom is a great big curtain, Someone lives behind it, but I don’t know who; I think it is a Brownie, but I’m not quite certain. (Milne, 1924, p. 14) At first, the child lives on this side of the curtain. But now, the child is about to make the curtain his or her hideout, a retreat. When the child has entered this secret kingdom, “the world” lies “on the other side” for the child. The curtain becomes a sanctuary. The view of life changes completely at the moment when the child enters this haven and becomes an occupant of this hermitage. During the day, it is very bright there behind the curtain and in the nearness to the window. In this miniature room, the presence of tangible mystery hovers and recedes into the jungle of cords, strings, rings, and pulleys of the curtain rods. The child does not hide as Polonius did behind the tapestry nor behind a curtain that is used simply as decor or as a sound barrier for the front of a door. No, it is behind the heavy curtains in the traditionally furnished room, that frame the windows; this is where the child hides and where he or she may play even when it gets dark outside. The window belongs to this secret place because it allows light to enter, because it provides a view to the outside, and finally, because— like the curtain—it separates everything while still supporting unity. How subtle, therefore, is this stay of glass and cloth that surrounds this secret place. It is also a favourite place for self-communion. Here one can quietly withdraw, daydream, and meditate; here one can slip into a slumbering sleep. But this sleep will not be filled with adventures or perilous deeds. The unusual character of this secret place is very unlike that of the attic or the basement cellar, which can be scary or

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spooky. The secret place behind the curtain is normally an unthreatening place to withdraw for the young child. Children who are still younger may hide instead under a table or simply turn their backs to us and sit in a corner. Looking out a window from behind a curtain is a bit like looking at the world from a lookout post. Yet, this looking is not like spying as one may spy on people by looking at them from a balcony, for example. No, a child does not hide in this secret place behind the curtain with the intention of spying stealthily on someone. If that were the case, he or she would simply look for just any kind of place from where he or she could not be noticed. A child who spies on others still maintains a relationship with these others. The others stay with him or her in a shared world as it were. Even the child who playfully hides from others’ view to play or stimulate them into seeking does not find him- or herself in a secret place behind the curtain. Because, in playing hide and seek, the child remains oriented to the “other” as an object of his or her intentions from whom the child hides. Whoever truly wants to enter the secret place must relinquish any intentional relationship toward others. One is either fully immersed in the mood of the secret place or is observing the wide world, which, though it may be far away, is still mysteriously enclosed in this space. So, whether the child is daydreaming or looking out at the world, in either way, the child is encapsulated and submerged in mystery. This capturing and captured observing, this trance-like look of staring eyes, can nevertheless suddenly turn into an awareness of the environment that destroys the mystery of the secret place. One says of someone who is simply staring beyond until some object captures his or her attention that he or she “awoke out of a dream” and that his or her “interest was stimulated.”

Hidden Place According to Age The hidden, secret place changes with time. The three-year-old, crouched in the corner with his or her back to others, has as yet no secret place. The four- or five-year-old discovers by accident the stirrings of the secret place behind a piece of furniture whenever the child may feel sanctuary there, but this child will make sure that he or she is still connected to the familiar, normal world. Sitting under the table is such an experience. It is pleasant and cozy there. Not too dark. You can see the shadows on the walls, and here are the feet of mother or father. You can hear exceptionally well what is being said. This kind of place does not yet force the child to encounter the availability, the emptiness, and his or her own ultimate own creative responsibility. So, the child still tends to look outward: that is, to continue to talk with others and to keep an open eye for his or her interests out there. But at eight years old, a child begins to create his or her own world—between the fence and the bushes, behind the garden fence, and in the ditches. These are “secure” places, and so the child plays games quite openly. The shed and the workshop belong there too—these rooms serve the interests of the practical and the necessary, and yet a different “spirit” reigns

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there as well. There one has escaped from the world of grown-ups where one is only “just a child.” There one is free from this world, and one can create totally useless and quite wonderful and fascinating things out of odds, ends, and pieces. There one may gain a glimpse already into the mysterious world of the secret place. Santa Claus dies. Children over eight can hardly accept him anymore in their real life. Increasingly, make-believe, legend, and science fiction gain favour in the world of adventure created by the child. Life or adventure stories take the place of fairy tales. The child is no longer dependent on the completed pictures offered to him or her. And that which one has called the age of the “reality-fanatic” is, much more accurately, the age of fantasy, discovery, science fiction, and the production of personal creativity. The attic, now transformed into wooded and forested fields, becomes a new play area. Such places are full of dynamic and expansive characters—superheroes, cowboys, detectives, and robbers. Now the most significant period of the secret, mysterious places begins. After a time, when the business of shaping the world and the self ceases being a free and carefree past time, then the secret place becomes childish, and the child descends from the various secret places into his or her “own room.” But the “own room” (if such is available in the modern home) of the adolescent remains a very personal space. The adolescent’s need for creating a personal identity finds its expression through secret contacts, personal possessions, and true friends. The young person is already a more social being and spends more time with grandiose and deep thoughts. He or she may now even begin to think about planning his or her own life. And the older child’s own room becomes the possibility and precondition for creating a personal life and self-identity. More and more, the young person will experience a preference for an individual, determined place or space. Having been a vagabond for some time, the child now develops into a youth who is looking for an own spot. During the change from youth to adult, this search loses its diffuse “serious play” character, and one slides into situations belonging to the social and adult world. Now one inhabits neither one’s secret place nor one’s own room; now one lives at home and works at one’s job.

The Growing Body In other areas, too, we find that children pursue their original childhood or, better, an aspect of youth that is not affected by school. This is typically visible in the way that young people experience their body and its relationship to space. We can clearly see the contrast with school experience and, therefore, the specific contribution of schooling to the growth of the child. We need only remind ourselves how strongly interests of exactness and objectivity determine the classrooms of the school to ask whether the child’s experiences differ from this. We also know how the school dictates forms of behaviour on children according to set codes and policies. But how do children experience their body when allowed to live it in their own subjective world?

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In my own space, phenomena present themselves to me, and the space is simultaneously the place where I can move and dwell. The body, then, is never completely shut out. The body is both the challenge of the jump and the jumper. The child shows this in a childlike fashion. But the adult who sees how a child walks, climbs, slides, dances, jumps, runs, rolls, and bounces perceives these actions in the context of what the adult believes to be a shared space. The adult runs and jumps in the same space as the child. The adult is concerned with the jumping as if it were simply an altogether proper and normal thing for people, animals, and even things to do. And one is convinced that this occurs in the same space in which one finds this vase, or in which that siren howls, or in which the doorbell rings. But such reasonable adult assumptions are only minimally correct: the adult classifies activities according to rules which shut out that which moves itself. The teacher, too, believes him- or herself to be in the same space, this “room,” as the child. But, the teacher is wrong because the child actually lives this “room” in his or her own reality. Thus, the large classroom can really be quite small for a child if he or she is frightened or feels trapped. The same room, however, becomes quite big when one is chasing around in it. Even here, the physical aspects mislead us, adults, for they can be experienced differently by children. School is conducted based on common adult perceptions, and in this, it brings the child to learn to conform to whatever is considered normal. If we do not want to keep the child infantile, then the child must go through some patterns of development, and it is our job to lead him or her through. The experience of space by the child is dynamic and “created” personally. The chair loses its peculiarity as a place under which one sits as soon as other bodily proportions begin to make sense of the space. The “big” objects become “small,” what used to tower over me is now my height, that which was distant draws nearer, what was hidden becomes visible and reachable. The skipping child shapes his or her world differently from the child who is simply walking or the child who jumps over the fence in one motion. The world of the hopping child structures itself hoppingly; these hops and jumps are guided by the patterns of the ground or the drawings on the streets. The child goes from one side to the other, and the direction of movement is determined by the shape of these patterns. For the child who moves forward in this way, who hops through a space, the world shrinks to the short distance that he or she can cover in one leap. By simply lifting one foot and hopping, the small child finds gratification already in the hopscotch play, even if he or she cannot move from his place as yet; the shape of the space, which the child will jumpingly explore, has begun to form itself already. We have already mentioned that the proportions of the child’s body change continually; especially during the period that begins in the tenth year, and then during puberty one encounters sensations like those described in Alice in Wonderland. Everything becomes “curiouser and curiouser.” The whole body grows unendingly. “It unfolds and opens like the biggest telescope. Goodbye, dear feet.”

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As she watched her feet, they retreated from her at “such a rate that she lost sight of them.” This is how Alice lived the experience of discovering her own growth. And so, the child of this age is a tireless wanderer who becomes a hiker and a dancer. For the one as for the other, the horizon stretches further and further ahead. First, there is the feeling of untiring bodily energy, and later the unsatisfiable yearning for some other faraway place. The body and its movements create a world in which this life unfolds, in which “I live.” From a psychological point of view, it makes no sense to emphasize the “threedimensionality” of the child’s space. This space takes on a personal shape of the environment: in this secret place under the table, behind the curtain, in the attic. Space also arises out of the personal shaping of movement—in the schoolyard, place and actions call each other forth.

The Secret Place as Ownness and Invitation In adults, the appreciation for a personal and private place, a space which assumes personal meaning, never disappears because this need is inseparably connected with the essential phenomenality of humanness. However, this space of personal meaning is no longer a “secret” place: that is, a place without destination that has not acquired fixed meaning and in which the world is still free, unformed, and indeterminate. For the adult it has become the place where we live with loved ones and friends, with our family; this is our home, our studio, and our neighbourhood pub where we are patrons. In case of emergency, this place can become a refuge or a place of adventure. A person does not withdraw to the “secret, quiet, mysterious” place for hatching wicked schemes. Instead, an adult comes there to be with him- or herself, perhaps seeking solitude, and give dreams and senses free rein. In the “secret” place, a person can surely experiment with fantasies, like in the closet of Cagliostro. If misfortune happens to occur there, then it was not planned—it just happened by accident. If a child withdraws in order to think about something mischievous, then it is not to his or her secret place, but rather to the place that is merely hidden from others and must remain that way so that mischief can be planned. The secret place is the world of guileless goodwill, the place where the subject innocently reshapes him- or herself and his or her world. So, it is not the world of an adult, whose life consists of fulfilling tasks and duties, who holds notions of having the creative duty of the artist and the childrearing duty of parents. It is also not a place for the “elder” whose personality has already taken on an established character, nor for the person in whose life there is no place for the creative activity of the individual “I.” We have referred to that aspect of the world which has no fixed determinant meaning as the “secret place,” and we have seen that this lived space has the pedagogic significance of an invitation, a necessary part of growing up in one’s personal life history. Therefore, the school, too, must have a fundamental

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understanding of this indeterminate place and must not fall into the mistake of viewing the child’s whole lifeworld as “school.” Many things must be learned outside of the school-world. And although so much must be learned, it does not follow that we must teach it all. The usual kind of awareness or mood found in the secret place is not oriented towards anything in particular, not focused onto any special object or event. Instead, the mode of being and awareness is diffused, object-poor, scattered, and often dreamlike. It acquires significance in the authentic experience of depth, happiness, or melancholy, which can accompany the exceptional quietude of the mode of being that belongs to childhood also. From the phenomenological point of view, quietude is not only the opposite of sheer noise, but also to the noise of life itself. This place, then, is not simply hostile to “loudness” but rather to “noise” in a deeper sense. From this place, the child awakes with a sigh of deliverance. At this moment, the child’s view is panoramic and free. In other words, the child is permitted a new and open attentiveness to the life of his or her personal world, a world that includes inner and outer life, a world in which both possibilities meet. Only when some-“thing” in the world or some other person calls on the child in a manner that forces the child again into an attitude of psychic distance and objective participation is the world again experienced as separate from us, devoid of the inner force. Then disgust can rise up and wash over us like a flood that throws us back onto the steep cliffs of an objective structure of being stripped of all transcendence. Then, we are given back to the world of things, and we find ourselves in a common world that we share with others. But, were we ever farther away from these others than just at this moment? Only after the world has taken us back and greeted us with trust can we concern ourselves with our everyday work, our usual activities.

The Secret Place Is Unlike the Place for Punishment or Work Sometimes we find ourselves in a brief in-between time, an interregnum between the secret place and the common world, in which there is as yet no embroilment: the clock hesitates as it is about to strike the hour; we stand still absently at the threshold. “What is it then, my dear? Are you not quite awake yet?” And there is the noise! Brother and sister are gabbling; we become aware of mother’s voice; the scraping sounds of knives and forks. Is the bus arriving at the stop? A quiet, embarrassed smile signifies the recognition of the others and our relation to them. The child has then, as we say, finally, “come to himself ” or “come to herself.” An appropriate expression in as much as this return to the common world actually signifies a coming-to-oneself. To make it easier for the child, who was “beside him- or herself,” to “come to him- or herself,” the adult sometimes leads the child out of the common space where the other family members reside. Sometimes, the child may be sent away as punishment to come to oneself by oneself.

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At moments like this, a child may take refuge in a secret place. And so, one finds a child behind the curtain in the living room again, or maybe under a bed, in a closet, in the basement, or the loft, possibly asleep, perhaps just relaxing, or still pouting. Usually just the absence of a “public audience” has caused the flowing back of affectivity. The secret place can call forth still more powerful results than quietude and passivity that were meted out as punishment and which release inner experiences of such imbalance that the interference of another person is sometimes necessary to end this mood. But sometimes positive things grow out of the secret place as well, something that springs from the inner spiritual life of the child. That is why the child may actively long for the secret place. But if a child is “forced” to go there, then he or she may begin to panic. It could be wordless panic, and just because of its unspeakable nature, it is all the more frightening and disturbing. Indeed, the punished child may come to him- or herself and find the value of the secret place again as soon as the feelings of punishment have vanished. “To come to oneself ” means to be ready again to adopt an attitude, prepared to give oneself in trust to the place where one finds oneself. At that moment, the “space” of punishment is shut out, and with it, fear and anxiety also disappear. The secret place is only safe and peaceful when it is entered in the act of a free choice, as a preferential place. It could also be that one just came there to look for something or to take something there. Yet, a workplace where we are productively engaged is, of course, a safe place, but it is not a place of indeterminacy, it is not a secret place.

The Unity of the Exterior and the Interior The phenomenological analysis of the secret place of the child shows us that the distinctions between the outer and inner world melt into a single, unique, personal world. Space, emptiness, and also darkness reside in the same realm where the soul dwells. They unfold in this realm and give form and sense to it by bringing this domain to life. But sometimes this space around us looks at us with hollow eyes of disappointment; here we experience the dialogue with nothingness; we are sucked into the spell of emptiness, and we experience the loss of a sense of self. This is also where we experience fear and anxiety. The mysterious stillness of the curtain, the enigmatic body of the closed door, the deep blackness of the cellar, the stairway or ladder to the attic above, and the spying window which is placed too high to look through—all these may lead to the experience of anxiety. They may seem to guard or cover entry or passage. The endless stairway, the curtains which move by themselves, the door which is suspiciously ajar, or the door which slowly opens, the strange silhouette at the windows are all symbols of fear. In them, we discover the humanness of our fears. For the animal, neither the curtain nor the door, neither the stairs nor the cellar are grounds for panic. The animal suspects no threat in the darkness. Only humans know this kind of anxiety, that arises in a world created and given

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significance by humans themselves. The very small infant does not know this specific human anxiety either. His or her life is in such an intense, organic-dynamic symbiosis with his or her immediate environment that this sense-making of the world occurs in a fundamentally dialectic mode. The child sees him- or herself already formed in comparison to external objects; these things ground the child’s existence, but the child’s “I” has distanced very little from his world. As soon as the child begins to be able to distance him- or herself, that is, as soon as we can feel that the child is accomplishing the impossible—the separation of the previously united elements, as soon as the first contrast is traceable in him or her, even if it is only the opposition of the young child’s “I” to the world—then human anxieties gather themselves unto the ego. This happens during the third, fourth, and fifth year of life. And gradually, as the “I” begins to assert itself against the world, the anxieties disappear in degrees. So, we see in the research of Jersild and Holmes (1935) that anxiety lessens significantly after the fifth and sixth year. Their beginnings then signify initially the development of a unique human personality in which the first opposition between world and self becomes conscious, and in which the world is experienced as “other”—a world that is not yet fully understood or under control by the child, a strange world so it seems, a world to which also the school belongs! We have seen that the indeterminate place speaks to us, as it were. In a sense, it makes itself available to us. It offers itself, in that it opens itself. It looks at us in spite of the fact and because of the fact that it is empty. This call and this offering of availability are an invitation and appeal to the abilities of the child to make the impersonal space into his or her very own, very special place. And the secrecy of this place is first of all experienced as the secrecy of “my-own-ness.” Thus, in this void, in this availability, the child encounters the “world.” Such an encounter, the child may have experienced before in different situations. But this time, the child faces the world in a more addressable form; the child must actively fashion or at least actively allow as a possibility, everything that can occur in this openness and this availability. In the world-shared-in-common, things acquire their significance exactly because of this in-common-ness. Others constantly remind us as it were that a spoon is to be used only as a spoon. It is not a boat. The common world is a statute that comes to the child from the past. One cannot argue with it. Our parents, all people, and even all things indiscernible in their particular characteristics, in their materiality, are completed facts. And so we say, “That’s just the way things are.” We can make them the centre of our playful games; we can spin dreams around them; we can project in them whatever it is that we want ourselves to be or become. But they always answer us in their own particular way of doing things, which in turn awakens our own. In the secret place, in comparison, we are far removed from all this. The world is delivered from us—and also, we are delivered from the world. It is the same thing.

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The path that the child must travel to get from the world-in-common to his or her own place is not too far, for this place borders on the child’s own everyday living space. It is an enclave within it. From the familiar everyday living space, the child can dare to take the step into the unformed, and just this unformed realism then becomes part of the “personal” life or part of what is the secret of this place. During all the stages leading to adulthood, the secret place remains an asylum in which the personality can mature; this self-creating process of this standing apart from others, this experiment, this growing in self-awareness, this creative peace and absolute intimacy demand it—for they are only possible in alone-ness.

Notes 1. This text has been translated, adapted, and edited by Max van Manen and Michael van Manen. 2a. Original version: Langeveld, M.J. (1953). De “Verborgen Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind [The “Hidden Place” in the Life of the Child]. In: J.H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (eds.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Bijleveld. 2b. Revised version: Langeveld, M.J. (1967). De “Geheime Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind [The “Secret Place” in the life of the Child]. In: M.J. Langeveld (ed.). Scholen Maken Mensen. Purmerend: J. Muusses.

References Jersild, A. and Holmes, F. (1935). Children’s Fears. Washington: Bureau of Publications. Ligthart, J. (1917). Verspreide Opstellen [Scattered Drafts]. Groningen: Wolters. Milne, A.A. (1924). When We Were Very Young. London: McClelland & Stewart. Morgan, C. (1936). Sparkenbroke. New York: Macmillan.

12 DESCANT ON “THE ‘SECRET PLACE’ IN THE LIFE OF THE CHILD”

Langeveld wrote and published this article originally with the title “De ‘Verborgen Plaats’ in het Leven van het Kind” (1953) [The “Hidden Place” in the Life of the Child]; and 14 years later he redrafted the text and slightly changed the title into “Der ‘Geheime Ort’ im Leben des Kindes” (German edition, 1966) [The “Secret Place” in the Life of the Child], and “De ‘Geheime Plaats’ in het Leven van het Kind” (Dutch edition, 1967). [The “Secret Place” in the Life of the Child]. The fact that Langeveld put part of the title in quotation marks indicates that this is the phenomenon that Langeveld is investigating: the child experience of the secret place. When Langeveld asks whether there has ever been a stranger place than the attic, he brings us to wonder. And wonder is the proper beginning of any phenomenological inquiry. Has there ever been a stranger place than the attic of the older house, as it reveals itself to our spellbound eyes? When we climb up through the stairs, step-ladder, or hatch, the attic confronts us with a gaze that comes out of nowhere. Its omnipresent stare is not aimed at us directly; rather, it suddenly reveals and observes everything at once. As soon as we (after having shut the door or hatch) have descended the stairs or the ladder and find ourselves back in our own safe, familiar world, then its gaze instantly ceases to encompass us. It is at that very moment that the attic door resumes guarding its privacy and ours as well, our own privacy, which we had wanted to conquer through our venture into the attic. Let us climb back into the attic and stay there for a while. A main theme of Langeveld’s phenomenological pedagogy is that to understand the child we have to begin with the child’s experience. Langeveld invites the reader into the world of the child by considering such everyday places as an

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empty closet, the dark basement, a small corner of the kitchen, the space under the bed, or any place in or around the home where a child may withdraw him- or herself. Langeveld gives the reader a resonating understanding of the “felt meaning” of that special place that young children at times seem to seek out, and he does so by expressing the child’s experience through the adoption of the personal pronoun of the “I” and “we” when speaking (expressing) the child’s experience. This “first person” usage of the grammar of experiential expressions is a common methodical feature in phenomenological texts because it tends to draw the reader into the experience—as if it is “our” or “my” own experience. Sometimes, the best way to explore the meaning of a certain phenomenon, such as the secret place, is by showing what it is not. Langeveld offers contrasting examples or counter examples of the secret place and space experiences such as the child’s experience of a lookout from a tree, a tower, or a window. From a lookout, the child experiences the tension between distance and nearness. So, Langeveld shows how this lookout experience differs from the secret place experience. With additional examples of counter-experiences, he shows that the secret place does not involve the child in activities such as hide-and-seek, spying on others, doing mischief, going into forbidden places, or even simply playing with toys. In other words, by drawing us near the phenomenon of the secret place and by imaginatively varying the example and comparing the secret place with the lookout place, the spying place, the hideout, etc. we discover, in part, the unique meaning of the secret place. Rather than see the child involved in spying or hiding activities, what we see is that the child may just “be” in that special place, while perhaps gazing dreamingly into the distance. So, what is going on in this place? The “secret place” is the place where the child withdraws from the presence of others. Langeveld sensitively describes what it may be like for a child to quietly sit in such place where the adult does not pay attention. But, this study of the secret place also shows how it is not really appropriate to sharply make distinctions among the variety of place and space experiences of the child. These various experiences also slip or melt into each other. A child who is spying on others from a certain place may gradually slip into a different mood of inwardness. Now the child is no longer spying but simply withdrawing into this place while submerged in a mood of mystery and secrecy. It may be helpful to say a bit more about the change in title between the 1953 and the 1967 versions of the text. In the edited book Person and World, Langeveld’s “The ‘Hidden Place’ in the Life of the Child” is an independent chapter. But in Scholen Maken Mensen [Schools Make Human Beings], the text “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child” is partially woven into the larger text of the whole book written by Langeveld himself. While the two versions have much in common, they also differ in some respects. Langeveld eventually chose the phrase “secret place” over “hidden place.” He even contrasts the secret place with the hiding or spying place, when he writes: “Whoever is spying or hiding, therefore, cannot find shelter in a secret place.” Of

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course, the notion of secrecy and hiddenness are phenomenologically related to each other. Someone who keeps a secret “hides” something (a thing, thought, feeling, or deed) from someone else. So, in that sense, a hidden place could be like a secret place. And through Langeveld’s text, there are moments where these meanings coalesce, phenomenologically. Another consideration is that Langeveld sometimes orients the phenomenology of the secret place to the younger child, and in later sections of the text, he addresses the older child and the adolescent-aged child. The very young child may have budding experiences of innerness but not yet capable of truly keeping secrets. So, in part, distinctions between hidden and secret places could be read as antecedent to the more mature experience of the older child who actually can keep and share secrets with others. A complicating factor is that the Dutch and German languages have certain connotations that may differ in the English language. The Dutch term “verborgen” means not just hidden but also covert and mysteriously secret. And the related Dutch term “geborgen” expresses meanings such as guardedly secured and safe. A home can feel like a safe haven where one dwells. Ultimately, the reader should be reminded that it matters less whether Langeveld used the phrase “hidden place” or “secret place.” It is more important to realize that he aims to point to and describe a certain phenomenal experience in the life of the child: a place where a child may experience their inner and outer world. It is the phenomenality of the experience and not the word that ultimately matters in a phenomenological text. But, of course, the “right” words do help with explicating and evoking the meaning of certain human experiences. Phenomenological writing is indeed a sensitive and often ambiguous process of weighing words in the attempt to get at the inceptual meanings of human experience and existence. Langeveld’s intention is to show the formative pedagogical significance of the experience of the secret place for the growing child. He describes it as “normally an unthreatening place to withdraw for the young child.” He says: “The actual experience of the secret place is always grounded in a mood of tranquillity and peacefulness. It is a place where we can feel sheltered, safe, and close to that with which we are intimate and deeply familiar.” He portrays various modalities in terms of which the secret place may be experienced. But sometimes the child experiences a space as somehow uncomfortable, or even as looming danger. This would not be a secret place experience. During the fourth and fifth year of a child’s life the “I” gradually begins to assert itself against the world, the anxieties disappear in degrees. These are the beginnings of the developments of a unique human personality in which the first opposition between world and self becomes conscious and in which the world is experienced as “other,” says Langeveld. Now the secret space becomes invitational: We have seen that the indeterminate place speaks to us, as it were. In a sense, it makes itself available to us. It offers itself, in that it opens itself. It

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looks at us in spite of the fact and because of the fact that it is empty. This call and this offering of availability are an invitation and appeal to the abilities of the child to make the impersonal space into his or her very own, very special place. And the secrecy of this place is first of all experienced as the secrecy of “my-own-ness.” Thus, in this void, in this availability, the child encounters the “world.” Such an encounter, the child may have experienced before in different situations. But this time, the child faces the world in a more addressable form; the child must actively fashion or at least actively allow as a possibility, everything that can occur in this openness and this availability. Note, again, how Langeveld’s employs the phenomenological “I” and “us” in telling and evoking the experience of the child. Throughout the text, he empathically takes the experiential perspective of the child when describing certain situations and places. This use of the first-person pronoun and empathic perspective is a common practice in phenomenological texts aimed at inviting the reader to identify with the situation or the happening. But in Langeveld’s view, it is even more important to realize that a special effort must be made to start with the experience of the child and not assume that the adult knows already what a secret place experience is for a child. Indeed, the adult experience of solitude is different from the secret place phenomenon. Importantly, in “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child,” Langeveld describes the phenomenal quality of the secret place experience as conducive to growth. Indeed, the child may find such space experience perhaps under a table, behind a heavy curtain, inside a large empty box, or wherever there is a corner where he or she can withdraw. This is where the child may come to “selfunderstanding,” as it were. For Langeveld the most critical feature of the child’s experience of the secret place is that it is (still) an indeterminate space and place. And as a consequence of its mood of indeterminacy (openness) it gives the child the opportunity to give meaning and shape to his or her inner life (see also van Manen and Levering, 1996). Some readers may feel that they recognize the meaningfulness of Langeveld’s explications in their own lives. This kind of experience remains an aspect of adult life as well, when people feel the need to withdraw and be by themselves. So, adults may feel that they too have enjoyed the experience of a “secret” place in the sense of Langeveld. Perhaps this adult secret place is a certain room in the house, a place in the woods or a favourite spot in the mountains, or at a lake. But the phenomenological question would also ask, is the adult’s secret place the same space experience as the child’s? Langeveld points out that in this the child differs from the adult. The adult also may experience special places where he or she can experience a sense of solitude. However, the adult is already formed and, therefore, may no longer experience the same kind of indeterminacy of the secret place as the young child. Instead,

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the adult may first have to let go of already formed identities in order to become open again to new possibilities. Or perhaps the adult must first let go of his or her developed sense of self in order to come to new realizations. So, the adult too may experience the intimacy of a secret place but he or she has already gained a certain maturity that is still alien to the child’s world. Another consideration is how the phenomenality of our world gradually changes in high-density city housing, suburban dwellings, and rural or country living. In newly built contemporary homes, children may not have an opportunity to discover the secret and indeterminacy of an attic or the secret place behind the heavy curtains. As well, screen technologies and digitized games may interfere with the child’s needed attentiveness to the phenomenon of an indeterminate and secret place. But that is no reason to simply reject the importance of the experience of mystery and secrecy in a child’s life. Modern developments should give us pause to reflect if there may be other child-friendly places where children may have rich experiences of self-becoming and the forming of self-identity. Langeveld emphasizes in his work that we should not assume that we (adults) already understand how a child experiences things and situations. He urges that we need to be attentive and listen to the child in front of us. For example, with regards to conflict in families: Who does one believe? The father who says, “I love my child and I would never hurt or neglect my child.” Or the child who says, “my father does not love me.” No matter whether or not you believe the father, says Langeveld, you must believe the child. You must believe the child’s experience and aim to understand what the child means who feels or says that the father does not love him or her. In Langeveld’s view, we must always start with the child’s experience and try to understand that experience. The reader who attentively follows Langeveld’s concrete accounts, detailed descriptions, and probing interpretations discovers that the phenomenological explications of the phenomenon of the secret place are subtle and would be difficult to generalize and capture as “findings” of a study. But this is the nature of what it means to do phenomenology on the phenomenon. It is precisely the phenomenological quality of the entire text that leads one to recognize and understand reflectively what is the singular meaning of a phenomenon such as the child experience of the secret place.

Notes All unmarked quotes are taken from the preceding essay, “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child,” by Martin J. Langeveld.

References Langeveld, M.J. (1953). De “Verborgen Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind [The “Hidden Place” in the Life of the Child]. In: J.H. van den Berg and J. Linschoten (Hrsg.). Persoon en Wereld [Person and World]. Utrecht: Bijleveld, pp. 11–32.

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Langeveld, M.J. (1966). Der “Geheime Ort” im Leben des Kindes [The “Secret Place” in the Life of the Child]. In: M.J. Langeveld (ed.). Die Schule als Weg des Kindes [The School as the Way of the Child]. Braunschweig: Georg Westermann Verlag, pp. 74–100. Langeveld, M.J. (1967). De “Geheime Plaats” in het Leven van het Kind [The “Secret Place” in the Life of the Child]. In: M.J. Langeveld (ed.). Scholen Maken Mensen [Schools Make Human Beings]. Purmerend: J. Muusses, pp. 71–97. Van Manen, M. and B. Levering. (1996). Childhood’s Secrets: Intimacy, Privacy, and the Self Reconsidered. New York: Teachers College Press.

13 THE THING IN THE WORLD OF THE CHILD [Das Ding in der Welt des Kindes, 1956] Martinus J. Langeveld

Nothing seems so clearly, so self-evidently, given as the “things,” the stuff or objects of our world. Children apparently need only to learn what the things are, and in this way, something that was originally strange becomes familiar. This “strange” thing, however, continues to be the same. From the start, a chair is a chair, and it emerges, through the developmental encounters of the child, as an experienced and familiar chair. So, the question of the nature of the things, in the world of the child, seems to be a rather unpromising theme. Moreover, is the world of the thing not merely the everyday, the ordinary, the normal world? Why should one look for questions in this one area where the world does not present any? Leave the things alone; leave them in their world and let us stay in our own! However, children do not live inside their body like the snail in its shell. Human beings live corporeally in the world with their bodies. And in this way, they also live with the things. This being-in-the-world is not merely a recording process; “recording” would imply “being disinterested.” But disinterested, the child is definitely not. On the contrary, anyone who has lived with children will attest to this. The child is not a recording apparatus. Besides, in spite of what was said earlier, the child does not start out to see the things and the world as strange. Rather, the world and the things in the world issue a challenge to the child. I would have had no qualms about changing the title of this essay to read “The Child in the World of the Things.” No one roams through and into the world so free, uninhibited, and unguarded as a child. As if it were a fairy-tale forest, so ventures the child into the world, lured by the charm of all that is alluring, new, unfamiliar, and pleasant. For the world seems appealing and full of promises. Not senseless, but also not familiar: everything seems possible, so there exists, as yet, no “non-sense” (meaninglessness) for the child.

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The natural assumption that the child has about the world—that it makes sense and has meaning—reflects back on the foundations of being human: that human beings have to give meaning to the world. The world view of the animals is the counterpart of their primal life patterns: only at this primal level is the world clear to them. Humans, however, do not exist at this level of meaning, or if they do, then it is only temporary or partial. Children may be temporarily occupied with the problems of their organic reality, but soon they begin to act on and give significance to the world. In this activity of assigning significances, the child is not altogether free. I would like to point out five important limitations: 1. The human being has a body; this body is not only a springboard, but it is also a fetter; it becomes tired, requires nourishment; it finds itself in a particular place. 2. The child is initially dependent, helpless in fact, and must reckon with his or her limited powers. 3. There are other people present, who care for the child and raise the child, to whom the child must also account. 4. The child lives in a world that provides him or her with a ready-made structure of qualities that offers security; this world serves the child in certain aspects and qualities, but it also may eventually restrain the child. 5. There already is a past that supports the child but which may also limit the developmental possibilities for the child in his or her life. And, there is the next day, the future, with which each person must contend. The child, this particular child, is not directly bound to a particular way of development although possibilities in the double-sided process of creating form and meaning out of his or her being-in-the-world are limited as the child eventually becomes what we will then call “this person.” A  process of sense-making takes place. As child, I give to myself and to the world a sense of meaning and being, of existing. In this connection, however, there are various modes of sense-making or meaning-giving. First, there is the open sense-making. This is the collection of interpretations that we build through our communion and contact with our fellow human beings. This is the sense-making that arises out of, and consists of, common agreements: the meaningful, held-in-common world of daily life. Second, there is also, in contrast, a non-obligatory sense-making. This form of meaning creation is not “bound” to the physical world, and yet it is not structureless. This is the world of play. Through play we see how the things in this world need not have fixed meanings. That which in the open sense-making is a pencil now suddenly is a bridge, a roadblock, a hero, or a house. Nevertheless, one can “play” only when one enters with play-friends into the kind of sense-making that belongs to play. This sense-making is free only when viewed from the outside,

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that is, from the perspective of “open sense-making.” From the point of view of the child, this meaning is realistic and connected to the world. Only the person who, for the purpose of play, accepts this meaning in exchange for his or her own set of presuppositions, can play with the child. When a child plays “bridge” with a pencil, it is a “bridge” only as long as the way back to “open sense-making” (to the ordinary shared reality) exists. When the pencil can no longer become just a pencil, then we enter the realm of illusion (nonsense) and we can no longer play with the child. To be sure, what is nonsense to us is for the other a manner of sense-making, albeit a very restricted one. Third, there is the creative sense-making of the artist. It constitutes its own coherent world. In this discussion we may be allowed to pass over this form of sense-making. Finally, there is also what I would like to call a personal sense-making. It consists of the ways and means by which I constitute myself as a person. I shape the world in my person in the sense that the “I-and-World” becomes a unified duality for me. When we take note of the various barriers to the child’s freedom—the child’s body, dependence, fellow human beings, the “objective” world of things, life history—together with the various modes of sense-making, then it becomes obvious how enormously complicated the work of assigning meanings to the world is for human beings. Then, the nonsense of people hardly discourages us and the complexities and confusions of their ideas of human life become the normal showpiece of the world—more normal than a uniformly dictated world concept. And together we can plead patience for the many who seem to be not at all aware of the world. We must be mindful of the fact that within the various sense-making modes more than one possibility exists for the relationship of the “I” to the objective world and that, therefore, various intentional spheres of objective reality are possible. We will now match the preceding phenomenological explication with a thoroughly common, everyday example. We will choose a slipper. How many things can this slipper actually be? It can be a slipper; it can also be a hairy something upon which one can slobber. In the first instance, it is a simple object-of-use; in the second it is a purely sensual object. The child can also use the slipper as a hammer in order to pound a peg in a hole. In this case the slipper is no longer just an object-of-use; it is a used object: certain objective thing properties—here the hard heel—are chosen to fulfill a thing-like function directed toward another thing. It is therefore a used object but not an object-of-use whose complete properties are directed toward a certain proper use, in this case, as a slipper. But a child can choose a specific property of the slipper whose use is not thing-directed. For example, the slipper could be used as a doll’s cradle. In this case, the slipperbecome-cradle takes its meaning from the realm of the world of play and not from the common world as a tool directed toward accomplishing a task. The slipper can also lose itself in the background against which our actual life is lived. It is simply available to slip on the feet. If this is the case, the slipper is

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simply there and is almost an otherworldly thing; it has little actual significance in the life of this particular child. The slipper can also come to us as from a distance if it is presented, regarded, or treated as a sketched or painted object, or if it is presented as an art object itself. Or, the slipper can be a reminder, a symbol of our loved ones—the small child, the little brother who died. Or (again in another connection), it can be the slipper of the father, and the child realizes the connection. This slipper is a symbol of father, and the child says in his or her glance not “slipper” but “papa, papa” as if the slipper were pars pro toto. What a lot of things a slipper can be! And it can signify much more besides. I would like to mention one more mode of being of an object: the so-called gift or present. When we give the usual vase (with or without flowers) as a wedding present, and the young bridal pair is already gleefully anticipating the day when their firstborn knocks the ugly thing off the table, then we can hardly say we have given a “gift.” I call something like this a “present” because the French have a saying, les petits cadeaux soutiennent l’amitie [small presents maintain friendship]. As we shall see, it is directly reversed with gifts: a present can make friendship, but love and friendship make gifts, even the smallest ones, possible. Consider the four-year-old child who comes to her mother, who is busy with the newborn baby, and has a “treasure” in her hand. It is the tiny feather of a sparrow. “This is for little brother, because he is still so small.” Now that is a true gift! It is not le petit cadeau qui soutient l’amitie [the little present that supports friendship] but rather, here we see l’amour qui soutient les petits cadeaux [love that supports small gifts]. This feather is a sign of a union of love. The feather is small—so be it: Is not the little brother small too? But how delicate and soft the feather is! It almost makes the beholder delicate and soft as well. Whoever gives a gift (and not just a mere present) gives him- or herself. The giver is the thing. And when someone gives his or her lover a ring, all the more so. When one really “gives” a “present,” one becomes shiny and mirror-perfect, and for this person the loved one becomes as bright and clear as a mirror. And when a person gives a proverbial diamond, it is given as the clear sparkle of the eyes and the purity of love. In the present as gift, the giver gives him- or herself. One gives something of oneself. But, in the case of the present as cadeau, one gives something from the store, perhaps just on a suggestion from the salesperson. The small child with her feather would be a miser if she had given her worthless object as a cadeau, a mere present. But she gave her present with all her heart and is, therefore, a rich, free-giving child. And the little feather is not a plain, meaningless, and worthless thing. It is a deep reality of the little child’s heart and is perfectly filled with her subjective intentionality. “This little feather I will give to my feather-small brother.” The thing itself steps far into the background—this fuzzy, worthless thing. Actually, the thing is there only as a symbol of the love of the giver. It is hardly even a feather any longer; it is more like a cradle in which we nestle our emotions. It would take only one more step for the psychologists to say that projection is involved here. “The object merely becomes the bearer of

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subjective emotions.” But a term such as “projection” is the name of a theoretical abstraction, it does not make the phenomenon of the gift more meaningful. Phenomenologically it is clear that the little feather fell onto the cultivated field of a tender togetherness and came to signify a deep love and not just its trivial thing-like being. We all know the peculiar allure of things that are important. Some aspects of a thing appeal to us, and the object speaks to us in a way that demands action: we must do something with it. So, it was with the feather, and we are familiar with this appeal from Erwin Straus’ notion of the pathic quality of the things of the world: the round calls for rolling, the thin for stretching, the elastic for bending, the stick for whipping, and so forth (Straus, 1966). I would now like to bring to attention another aspect of the invitational character of things and choose, as an example, a box. Let us imagine that we give a child a box as a present. We are not just giving a cleverly folded piece of cardboard. We are, actually, giving the child a request, a problem to solve. We ask the child: what belongs in that box? The emptiness silently stares at the child. It just cannot remain that way. The child hears this silent voice very clearly. Before long, the child has put something inside the box, or we suddenly find a little beggar beside us. “But what shall I put into it?” How wonderful it is when we give the child a small candy. Marvellous how the emptiness of the box instantly vanishes, is dissipated by this one candy. The dissipation of emptiness depends on the request for action—a candy used to dispel the emptiness—for as long as it lasts. The candy soon begins to whisper promisingly to the child. Which call will win? In all likelihood the box will soon be forgotten. Sometimes it will be empty, but sometimes a sticky lump will show that the child saw the box as what it is: a container and used it as such. The child succumbed to the appeal of the thing. To summarize: the child has a world and is this world. And the world issues things to do. It is a meaning-giving invitation and challenge, a sense-making activity. In this process, the child is not altogether free, and I have named five limits to the child’s freedom. In the context of these limitations to freedom, these unyielding incorruptible facts, we find the body that is not a mere thing among other so-called things. It may well be that the things, the objects of the world, are incorruptible in their thing-like characteristics, but the sense-making process can attach an extraordinary number of different meanings to the same object as we have seen with the examples of the slipper and the box. In the case of the box, a peculiar possibility arose; something was there that really was not there: the emptiness. The emptiness of the box returns when the small candy, the last one, is taken away. And the emptiness vanishes when this one candy is put into the box again. We are dealing here with a possibility of the thing-world, emptiness, which is associated with this thing, but which is not a property of this thing. In the case of the gift, we saw how the things can be taken into the I-world of a person.

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In the case of the box, we learned how the thing itself reaches into the world beyond its limited properties. Let us imagine that the child is on this earth for the first time. He or she knows nothing about things. The things are intimately unknown. So, how does the child come to know the things? Undoubtedly child psychology has taught us much about this topic, and it is unnecessary to summarize its findings. However, there may exist a completely different aspect of the meeting between the child and the world of things. We have already seen how a thing reaches into the “I” and the “world.” We now choose to examine a seldom analyzed connection among people. Recall that the second limitation on the child’s experienced freedom in sense-making is the child’s dependence on adults, and the closely related third limitation, that other people exist. Now, the child’s recognition of the world and knowledge of the world are largely dependent on the help or influence of others. The child learns many things only in situations in which companion humans are present. In fact, there are things that one can only make sense of in partnership—the see-saw, for example. Only in imagination can one sit alone on a see-saw. It requires two people to make it work. The structure of the object itself shows this up clearly: it has two seats—one to the left and one to the right of the fulcrum. The see-saw only works when there are two players who are together, each of them playing his or her part. Human communion is publicly decreed in the communion of these two players. The players are brought together through the object. We may call this form of communion “conjoint-ness” (the state of being gathered in togetherness). There is no “thing-ness” attributable to the partner in this togetherness (and “togetherness” is a weak word in this context). I think of greetings, the moment in which two people “see” each other, or of every form of human being-together, however pleasant, in which this true sense of “being-together” is really not present. The see-saw accomplishes this total being-together. When there is no partner, then the see-saw is a lost opportunity, a demonstrable impossibility. So we find that here the object necessitates the second person. It does this quite concretely. There are many objects that have this referential character, but where the referential character is not as concretely visible or experiential. A ball shows us this quite clearly. As a rolling sphere it issues an immediate challenge to be handled: a provocation of the pathic or invitational character of the things of the world. That which rolls (is roll-able) demands to be rolled, kicked, or pushed. But let us push this ball away and what happens? Another person comes and pushes it back to us. That is the discovery of a possible reciprocity, a possible human mutuality, which was not evident with the ball as immediately given as it was with the see-saw. The ball plays with the child as long as it bounces back, and once it is pushed or kicked some distance, then it may bring another child into the play space. Sometimes, however, this other child fails to step into this world. Then the child needs other people, parents, to provide the other human as an aspect of the

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object. But these may restrain the child’s free activities with the object. For example, when the child, with dirt on his shoes, climbs onto a chair or onto the seat of the train or car, then we warn: “Watch out! You’re muddying the seat. Soon someone else may come and sit there!” Even if this somebody (or some thing) lived on a deserted island in a different time, now he or she (it) is called into the child’s time frame—there are others who are coming now, or at a certain time. And we admonish the child a thousand times, “Watch out! Careful! Don’t break that!” What does it mean to be broken? If the dear God allows our dead grandmother in heaven to be young and to live again, then there is no need to get so upset when one uses daddy’s special watch as a hammer. But that thing is supposed to stay as it is. And this is the point: it is supposed to stay whole like it was before, as it belonged to us, because it is a familiar part of our world. In this manner too, the family’s plates and cups are to remain whole as they were before, as a part of mother’s or father’s or my world. But see here—a cunning property, a trick of the culture—as long as the plates and cups remain whole, they retain their particular object permanence. And so next year, the new uncle, who is just coming from abroad for the first time, can drink from the cup that belonged to the beloved grandmother. Through this encounter with things, we enter into the world of history and of the future. The things in the world of the child do not just show their own age, they make reference to the lives and worlds of other people who are no longer with us or who are not yet with us. There is, of course, the unfortunate materialistic or bourgeois fear and concern for furnishings and property. There is also, however, an invitation to address things in a language appropriate or respectful to the things, which then makes a proper contribution to social upbringing (socialization of the child). “Others” are very important in this job of learning about things, and this is not only when the objects call us to be partners. Sometimes things are so supervised and so carefully interpreted by grown-ups that the child cannot help but learn through the encounter with things the various dimensions of human sensemaking, such as cooperation, routines and habits, meanings from an ancient past, the continuity of then and now. Behind the things there is always a person, and this person peers through them, as it were. This is seen especially clearly in tools. Tools are like amphibians—they serve two masters. They are of the thing-world and they are adapted to the human body as well. One can only make use of this amphibian when one is able to see beyond the purely organic form of the thing and understand something of the mechanical essence and qualities of it. That is, one has come to eavesdrop on the stones so that one can come to know how they will allow themselves to be sculpted. But, what of the things of nature? We were just speaking of stones. Things of nature are encountered in a world that has a different kind of freedom from the one near us at home. We are not speaking here of animals necessarily, which are especially interesting because they are always “doing” something—flying or

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running to and fro in our world, or giving their particular cry, or even licking my face. And plants also occupy a peculiar place. They are primarily represented through flowers, and yet we step on plants so easily and we wander over them as if they were merely gravel on the garden path. “Let’s go pick some flowers.” We go pluck the plant as if it were a chicken. This is fun because one always “has” something, which one has “taken,” and which shows such nice colours. But how soon we forget the bouquet; how soon we forget the flowers lying on the ground! And yet, the world of nature is a realm of freedom—no less for the child who has learned to care for nature than for the city dweller who regards nature as an exercise yard or a garbage dump. Nature can be experienced as a carefree world. The call of the things is a call to our freedom to be available and responsive. The beauty of nature is a later discovery; its dangers and delights are taken for granted by older people. The child, however, comes to know nature first as the place of freedom. One climbs trees because they invite one to do so, as do the rocks and the cliffs. One plays in the sand, the water, and the snow; one builds with stones, always because they invite one to do so. The flowing water, the swirling sand, and the snow that sticks together well, they speak a totally pathic language and entice us toward play. But soon the unspecified manipulation of formless materials must stop, and organization begins. Whoever wants to build something out of sand or snow or wants to put a bridge over a stream must come to reckon with the objective qualities of sand, snow, and water. Again the thing-world lures the organizing, the sense-making person, just as one is lured into a magic forest. In one’s profound human task of shaping, organizing, and sense-making, the human being advances ever farther into the thing-world. And there, only the voices of the things offer support. As Francis Bacon said, here one rules only insofar as one submits to the thing (1902). But what does it mean to submit one’s self to the things? Does it mean a loss of freedom, or slavery? Not at all. For whoever has come to understand how to put just three stones together in a swirling stream so that they stay together has changed the world. How mistaken is the adult, who, from the height of maturity, smilingly belittles the child’s sandcastle, the snowman, or the bridge as a frivolity. These are actual and essential achievements because human beings have made form and meaning out of formlessness and meaninglessness. These achievements signify a step into the realm of the particularity of the reality of objects. They signify a renunciation of the more primitive freedom to leave things as they are—as when one leaves one’s hand in the water in order to let the sand wash through the fingers. It signifies, in other words, growth: growth of the child’s mind. Spiritual growth always signifies the renunciation of the more primitive freedom and security, too. For whoever leaves the familiar world risks something. This person risks the possibility of running aground. He or she risks failure. Spiritual growth implies the renunciation of security. Learning to live with risk. But this, again, presents a new beginning, a foundational security: one that begins to guide us.

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This last security, the one which is supposed to guide us when our first security leaves us, is a security for which we ourselves must carry or learn to carry the responsibility.

Notes 1. This text has been translated and edited by Max van Manen and Michael van Manen. 2. From: M.J. Langeveld (1956). Das Ding in die Welt des Kindes. In: Studien zur Antropologie des Kindes [Studies Toward an Anthropology of the Child]. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 142–156.

References Bacon, F. (1620 [1902]). Novum Organum: The New Organon or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature. Pantianos Classics. Langeveld, M.J. (1956). Das Ding in der Welt des Kindes [The Thing in the Child’s World]. In: Studien zur Anthropologie des Kindes [Studies Toward an Anthropology of the Child]. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, pp. 142–156. Straus, E. (1966). Phenomenological Psychology. New York: Basic Books.

14 DESCANT ON “THE THING IN THE WORLD OF THE CHILD”

Nothing seems so clearly, so self-evidently, given as the “things,” the stuff or objects of our world. Children apparently need only to learn what the things are, and in this way, something that was originally strange becomes familiar. This “strange” thing, however, continues to be the same. From the start, a chair is a chair, and it emerges, through the developmental encounters of the child, as an experienced and familiar chair. So, the question of the nature of the things, in the world of the child, seems to be a rather unpromising theme. Thus opens Martinus Langeveld’s text, “The Thing in the World of the Child” (1956). It is as if Langeveld doubts that this is a promising subject for inquiry. Yes, it is true, something as banal as a thing hardly seems worthy of our attention. However, Langeveld quickly continues that, to be sure, for the child the world is full of things and their meanings are by no means fixed yet. Things in the child’s world may issue an alluring charm and challenge. But, from a methodological point of view, it is helpful to note how Langeveld immediately evokes a wondering attitude with respect to the question of the meaning of things for children. Now generally, the word “thing” is probably the most underrated and takenfor-granted noun in the English language. “Thing” can mean almost anything and nothing for both the child and adult. But Langeveld has a professional pedagogical interest in the way that children experience the things that inhabit their world. Their active encounters with and relations to the things differ from the adults. So, the phenomenological question becomes for Langeveld: How do things uniquely give themselves to the child?

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Langeveld was not primarily a philosopher but a pedagogically oriented clinical psychologist; he wants to understand the phenomenology of things in the world of the child for their significance to the child’s sense-making experiences. Before explicating the (noetic) ways things give themselves, Langeveld outlines five limiting or restraining barriers in which the things offer themselves to the sense-making child: “the child’s body, dependence, fellow human beings, the ‘objective’ world of things, life history.” He also draws distinctions between open, creative, and personal sense-making. Clearly, this writerly style of methodically explicating features that contribute to and complicate how the child assigns meaning to objects is a sharp contrast to the invitational opening of “The ‘Secret Place’ in the Life of the Child.” And yet, they have in common that both approaches orient the reader towards the lifeworld of the child, preparing for an epiphanous shift in awareness from our taken-for-granted understanding things in lifeworld of the child. To explore the thing in the life of the child, Langeveld uses his observations, interactions, and understanding of the physiology and the psychology of children. The way that things give themselves in the child’s world is in part determined by the child’s situatedness, his or her physical fitness, adult care, the qualities of the space and time that condition the child’s world. He uses the examples of the pencil, the slipper, the gift, the cardboard box, the see-saw, the ball, stones, flowers, and housewares as concrete “things” and examines the meaning of such things through these things, in the child’s world. We appreciate the enigmatic quality of things in the child world. A thing is truly neither just any-thing nor a no-thing. But perhaps it is exactly this multiplicity of plain connotations that reveals the elusive significance of the thingness of things. The online Oxford English Dictionary defines “thing” as “something not specified by name” (under etymology) but it is specifically in the unnamedness where the enigma, strangeness, and otherness of the thingness of the thing resides. Now, it is tempting to be reminded of Heidegger’s well-known phenomenology of “The Thing,” first published as “Das Ding” in 1951 as a lecture given at the Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Kunste, though Langeveld may not have been aware of the text. Heidegger too uses concrete examples in his phenomenological reflections on the nature of The Thing. But mostly it is a single example. In order to clarify that one needs “nearness” so as to properly understand the “thingness of the thing,” Heidegger abruptly announces: “The Jug is a thing” (1971, p.  166). In other words, Heidegger does not bother to say, let’s take the jug as an example—yet that is exactly what he does. He then continues with an extensive descriptive explication of the phenomenological features of The Jug. And, of course, he uses the example of The Jug to address the meaning of The Thing. This essay is an exceptional fine example of Heidegger’s way of “doing phenomenology on the things”— pun intended. True, some parts of the features of “The Jug as The Thing” are so exhaustively detailed that the reader may sometimes feel like being sucked

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into an ontological whirlwind, as one tries to stay attentive to the subtle and profound distinctions of Heidegger’s explications. When we fill the jug, the pouring that fills it flows into the empty jug. The emptiness, the void, is what does the vessel’s holding. The empty space, this nothing of the jug, is what the jug is as the holding vessel. . . . But if the holding is done by the jug’s void, then the potter who forms sides and bottom on his wheel does not, strictly speaking, make the jug. He only shapes the clay. No—he shapes the void. . . . The vessel’s thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds. (Heidegger, 1971, p. 169) The point of this passage is that we cannot understand what a “thing” is, in Heidegger’s special sense of the word, by means of the properties of an object, as a substance with properties, or even the mental representation as “occurrent” (vorhanden). Through the jug as an example, Heidegger shows how the thing things (and shows its essence). He uses the example to show that the meaning of the jug lies, in part, in the relationality that the jug establishes between the person and the earth (how it nourishes thirst in its fullness) and between people (the host and guest). In the pouring people experience the generosity (or skimpiness) of the jug. The notion that the potter merely “shapes the void” draws attention to the peculiar “passivity” that Heidegger takes to be essential to human productivity. Now, Langeveld too utilizes examples in “The Thing in the World of the Child,” as previously mentioned, to provide a tentative foundation for exploring the meaningfulness of things in the life of the child. Yet, his examples orient to make explicit and clarify understandings of a child’s unique bodied, relational, and temporal existence within the world. Consider his example of the gift of the tiny feather of a sparrow. Consider the four-year-old child who comes to her mother, who is busy with the newborn baby, and has a “treasure” in her hand. It is the tiny feather of a sparrow. “This is for little brother, because he is still so small.” Now that is a true gift! It is not le petit cadeau qui soutient l’amitie [the little present that supports friendship] but rather, here we see l’amour qui soutient les petits cadeaux [love that supports small gifts]. This feather is a sign of a union of love. The feather is small—so be it: Is not the little brother small too? But how delicate and soft the feather is! It almost makes the beholder delicate and soft as well. Here is the phenomenological insight: “Whoever gives a gift . . . gives him- or herself.” The thing in itself is more than its tangibility for it bears the “symbol of the love of the giver.” Methodologically, the present (cadeau) is an eidetic for the gift (but the present gives little more than its trivial objectedness). So, the

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feather as a thing is more than a mere object because it is a thing that things, in Heidegger’s sense. But Langeveld does not approach the meaning of things in the manner of Heideger, though some of Langeveld’s explications bring out similar sensibilities. For example, the see-saw is a thing that requires two young people to join each other. It is a thing of physical and human togetherness, a communion. When Langeveld explores the meaning of the gift and the present, he does so by giving an example of a pedagogical situation. A situational analysis makes it possible for Langeveld to show how the phenomenon of a gift differs from the phenomenon of a present. But, of course, a more radical analysis of the gift and gift giving is possible. Jacques Derrida is a master of aporias, showing how our ordinary intentions and actions involve us in paradoxes, insoluble contradictions, and impasses. He calls these predicaments undecidables. For example, when we are hospitable or give someone a gift, we may think that we are doing so with no strings attached. We are giving this gift out of the goodness of our heart. But Derrida (1995) shows how things are not so simple. The conditions of possibility are at the same time the conditions of impossibility. We cannot give a gift without receiving something in return, if only gratitude or the inner satisfaction that we have done good. Gifts create debts. So, is it really possible to give a gift? Or is gift giving ultimately always some kind of exchange? It seems indeed as if authentic giving or hospitality is an undecidable: neither possible nor impossible. Phenomenology makes possible rich interpretive explications that may not only be undecidables but also incommensurables when perceived in contrasting existential contexts. As mentioned, Langeveld offers other things—the filled and empty cardboard box, the ball, a special pen, plates, and cups, to name a few—to show how a child’s sense-making transcends the physical properties of things. The child comes to know freedom from a carefree being in the world with things, and yet, the thing-world also presents the experience of limitation: One plays in the sand, the water and the snow; one builds with stones, always because they invite one to do so. The flowing water, the swirling sand, and the snow that sticks together well, they speak a totally pathic language and entice us toward play. But soon the unspecified manipulation of formless materials must stop, and organization begins. Whoever wants to build something out of sand or snow or wants to put a bridge over a stream must come to reckon with the objective qualities of sand, snow, and water. Again the thing-world lures the organizing, the sense-making person, just as one is lured into a magic forest. The difference between Heidegger’s example of the jug and Langeveld’s example of things such as the slipper or the feather is that the jug is a thing that already has a history of meanings for Heidegger, meanings that are existentially embedded

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in the world in which humans are born. So, in everyday life, seeing a jug is not a matter of sense-making, of wondering what this thing is as it presents itself, but rather the presence of the jug is a matter of reaching for it to pour some its contents. Or one might use the jug to hold some cut flowers. In our everyday world, it is actually rather odd to consider the jug as an example of the phenomenology of a thing. Only when inspired by the phenomenological attitude would one consider the profound inceptual meanings that Heidegger is able to intuitively “see” and explicate in his pathic and vocative language and style about the nature of this thing, the jug. In contrast, when Husserl gives the example of looking at a thing, he does not consider any particular thing but rather things in general—when he gives his famous description of the phenomenon of adumbration. When we look at a thing then every perception for consciousness is perspectival. We never see the whole thing at once but what is visible is first of all a surface: “I see it now from this ‘side,’ now from that, continuously perceiving it from ever differing sides” (Husserl, 1970, p. 157). And yet, we retain a sense-intuition of certainty about the thing. So, as we never perceive a thing from all sides at once, but only in adumbrated perspectives, we become phenomenologically aware that seeing some-thing empirically is not necessarily knowing it fully or completely. So, if Husserl would see a thing like a jug, he would look at its surfaces from above, below, and the inside, but would he know it like Heidegger knows a jug? Husserl is interested in the way that the thing “appears” and “shows itself ” as we look at its perceptual surfaces and dimensions. Heidegger is interested how the jug appears as a meaningful thing in our existential world. Now, in contrast, in the world of the child, things do not have dimensions or meanings yet, but the child can climb over things, throw things, sit inside things (like in a big box), and thus, the child learns to make sense of the meaning of things in an as yet open world. Langeveld’s exploration of the thing in the word of the child reveals indeed a different modality of sense. If the child sees a jug on the kitchen table he or she may curiously look inside or even put or hide something inside it. Similarly, Langeveld shows that when the child sees a slipper, it can be many different things. This imaginative or playful seeing is more a matter of the child’s open sense-making that may or may not be restrained by some of the limitations that Langeveld’s supposes could be part of the way that the thing in the world of the child appears. For example, the slippers are mama’s and so the slippers give themselves as the things that the mother puts on her feet. The sense the child makes is that the slippers embody “mama.” So, Langeveld gives the example of the slipper to show how in the world of the child, the slipper is not simply an object worn on the foot. The slipper becomes sensual as it finds its way into a child’s mouth, or handy as it is employed to hammer some objects, or cradle-like as it becomes a bed for a doll. The slipper as a thing invites playful sense-making for the child. Things do more: through the encounter with things children develop a past with each other. The things bring them together. Ultimately, Langeveld offers

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originary and nuanced reflections on “The Thing in the World of the Child.” We gain insights that are immanent to the thinging of things. We catch phenomenological glimpses and sights into the lifeworld of the child.

Notes All unmarked quotes are taken from the preceding essay, “The Thing in the World of the Child,” by Martin J. Langeveld.

References Derrida, J. (1995). The Gift of Death. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers. Husserl, E. (1970 [1954]). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Langeveld, M.J. (1956). Das Ding in der Welt des Kindes [The Thing in the World of the Child]. In: Studien zur Anthropologie der Kindes [Studies Toward an Anthropology of the Child]. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, pp. 142–156.

15 JOHANNES LINSCHOTEN

In his In Memoriam, Langeveld (1964) remembers Johannes Linschoten (1925– 1964) as a highly gifted and talented scholar who was frantically driven in his work. Linschoten was admired by friends and colleagues for his penetrative insights, brilliant studies, and intense dedication to his experimental as well as phenomenological research. He was constantly choosing new paths and searching for insights with a creative élan, which put much stress on him. Perhaps the long hours and tiring demands of his work wore on his heart. And yet, even in the setting of health concerns, he carried on in his work to produce insightful studies in psychology and phenomenology of the body. For example, in 1949, he wrote a phenomenology of movement perception; in 1950, he published a logical and phenomenological analysis of movement phenomena; in 1955, an essay on insomnia; in 1953, a phenomenological study of sexual incarnation; in 1956, on falling asleep and activity. In addition to other papers, he published in 1959 a book on the phenomenology of William James and a book on psychology (with Benjamin Jan Kouwer). Finally, Linschoten wrote a highly controversial book, Idols of the Psychologist, which was published posthumously in 1964, the same year he died from a heart attack at the young age of 38. Linschoten was born in Utrecht and attended secondary school in Bandung, Indonesia (a Dutch colony at the time). Like others, he fought in World War II, spending three years in a Japanese prison camp. He finished his education back in the Netherlands in Bilthoven, in 1946. Linschoten studied psychology in Utrecht beginning in 1946 under the supervision of Frederik J.J. Buytendijk and Martinus J. Langeveld, before being appointed as a professor in 1949. Linschoten’s oeuvre is interesting in that he engaged in both experimental and phenomenological research. In his laboratory work, Linschoten was involved in experiments from a somewhat phenomenological perspective whereby he conducted observations

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in empirical settings. He published Experimentelle Untersuchung der sogenannten induzierten Bewegung [Experimental Research into So-Called Induced Movement] (1952), where perceived movement is seen in relation to the meaningful interpretation that the individual assigns to visualized figures. For example, he showed how the temporal playback of slow photography of growth movement could give the human observer a strong impression of vitality in the behaviour of a plant. His dissertation, Structural Analysis of the Binokulären Tiefenwahrnehmung:  An Experimental Untersuchung [Structural Analysis of the Binocular Depth Perception: An Experimental Investigation] (1956) is a study of depth perception. Inleiding tot de Psychologie [Introduction to Psychology] (1951), written with Kouwer, was one of his first texts addressing the discipline of psychology. Together, they advocated for a reorientation of psychology: More and more, the awareness increases that man is not a thing, not a machine which one can take apart into its component parts, but indeed an organic being that can only be understood in its totality. (pp. 88, 89) And thus, it is possible for a phenomenological psychology to be a psychology of behaviour and consciousness at the same time, because it takes its beginning in considering the situation, and not in “objectively perceptible behaviour” or the “introspectively perceptible phenomena of consciousness.” (p. 99) During this period, in the early 1950s, Linschoten published his first phenomenological articles: “Logische en Fenomenologische Analyse der Bewegingsverschijnselen” [Logical and Phenomenological Analysis of Phenomena of Movement] (1950), “Over de Humor” [On Humour] (1951), and “Over het Inslapen” [On Falling Asleep] (1952) (for a discussion see van Manen, 1997). Together with Jan H. van den Berg, Linschoten edited a liber amicorum in dedication to Buytendijk on his 65th birthday, entitled Persoon en Wereld [Person and World] (1953). It was the first collection of phenomenological studies that became known as the work of the Utrecht School. The volume was unusual in that it featured phenomenological studies that were not written by professional philosophers, but by professional practitioners in psychology, medicine, law, and related professions. The book received many reprints. It included a contribution from Linschoten, Aspecten van de Sexuele Incarnatie [Aspects of the Sexual Incarnation], exploring the body and world as a condition for the phenomenon of sexuality. Linschoten succeeded Buytendijk as Chair of the Department of Psychology at Utrecht University in 1957. He authored a study of William James published

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in 1959, Op weg Naar een Fenomenologische Psychologie [On the Way Toward a Phenomenological Psychology: The Psychology of William James], which was translated into English by Amedeo Giorgi. Linschoten discussed William James’ writings as a North American approach to phenomenology. He focused on the tension in James’ work between a phenomenological appreciation of experience and an explanatory account of experience in physiological terms. In 1961, he was invited to Duquesne University to teach for a semester. His time was cut short due to a heart attack. Upon his recovery and return to the Netherlands, he was appointed at the University of Utrecht, but his tenure as Chair of Psychology was brief. He died at the age of 38. Idolen van de Psycholoog [Idols of the Psychologist] appeared posthumously in 1964, the year of his death. This book was interpreted as a critique and a rejection of Buytendijk’s phenomenology, whose chair Linschoten inherited. The book is built on lectures given between 1959 and 1964 advocating for empiricalanalytic methods in psychology—a psychology grounded in experimentation and quantitative analysis and yet, with phenomenological aspirations. The text needs to be put into the context of the rising influence of North American empirical psychology. Phenomenology was considered of lesser scientific value. One can only imagine the desire for a psychology (and sub-disciplines of psychology) that could be based on more technical aspects of experimental design, and, therefore, could be more easily accepted and employed by the rising number of doctoral students needing supervisors who could assist them in their academic ambitions, but who were not steeped in the more slowly emerging and more difficult to master phenomenological literature. Linschoten’s book Idolen has often been regarded as the cause for the dying of the Utrecht School of phenomenology. In the Netherlands, much has been written and probably overstated that Linschoten “converted” away from phenomenology (see for example, S.J.S. Terwee, 1990). The phenomenologist Langeveld wrote in “In Memoriam” (1964) that Linschoten did not abandon phenomenology, as both personal conversations as well as Linschoten’s essay “The Unavoidability of Phenomenology” (1963) make clear. But unfortunately, Linschoten’s early death made the assessment of the intent of his last book ambiguous and subject to conflicting interpretations.

Selected Works Linschoten, J. (1949). Ontwerp van een Fenomenologische Theorie der Bewegingswaarneming; Deel 1: De Beweging in de Objectieve Ruimte [Design of a Phenomenological Theory of Movement Perception; Part 1: Movement in Objective Space]. Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht [now Utrecht University], Psychologisch Laboratorium. Linschoten, J. (1950). Logische en Phenomenologische Analyse der Bewegingsverschijnselen [Logical and Phenomenological Analysis of the Movement Phenomena]. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 12 (4), pp. 668–728.

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Linschoten, J. (1951). Over de Humor [On Humour]. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 13 (4), pp. 603–666. Linschoten, J. (1952a). Experimentelle Untersuchung der sogenannten induzierten Bewegung [Experimental Study of the So-called Induced Movement]. Psychologische Forschung, 24, pp. 34–92. Linschoten, J. (1952b). Over het Inslapen [On Falling Asleep]. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 14, pp. 207–264. Linschoten, J. (1953). Nawoord [Afterword]. In: Persoon en Wereld; Bijdragen tot de Phaenomenologische Psychologie [Person and World; Contributions to Phenomenological Psychology]. Utrecht: Bijleveld. Linschoten, J. (1954). Phaenomenologische Psychologie [Phenomenological Psychology]. Typed Manuscripts. Collection of Manuscripts, Papers and Letters of Linschoten. Linschoten, J. (1955). Über das Einschlafen—I. Einschlafen und Erleben [Falling Asleep I: Falling Asleep and Experiencing]. Psychologische Beiträge, 2 (1), pp. 70–97. Linschoten, J. (1956a). Strukturanalyse der binokulären Tiefenwahrnehmung; eine experimentelle Untersuchung [Stuctural Analysis of Binocular Depth Perception; an Experimental Study] (Herausgabe of Ph.D. thesis, printed with support by ZWO, The Netherlands, and with a foreword by Wolfgang Metzger). Groningen: Wolters. Linschoten, J. (1956b). Über das Einschlafen—II. Einschlafen und Tun [Falling asleep II; Falling Asleep and Activity]. Psychologische Beiträge, 2 (2), pp. 266–298. Linschoten, J. (1957a). A Gentle Force; Beschouwingen over het Associatiebegrip. REDE Uitgesproken bij de Officiële Aanvaarding van het Ambt van Hoogleraar in de Experimentele Psychologie aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht [Reflections on the Association Concept. Lecture Pronounced at the Official Acceptance of the Position of Professor of Experimental Psychology]. Groningen and Djakarta: Wolters. Linschoten, J. (1957b). Bij het Afscheid van Professor Buytendijk [At the Farewell of Professor Buytendijk]. Unpublished Memorial. Linschoten, J. (1959a). Aktualgenese und Heuristisches Prinzip [Gestalt Formation and the Heuristic Principle]. Verlag für Psychologie, 6 (3), pp. 449–473. Linschoten, J. (1959b). Op Weg naar een Fenomenologische Psychologie; de Psychologie van William James [Towards a Phenomenological Psychology; the Psychology of William James]. Utrecht: Bijleveld. Linschoten, J. (1959c). On the Way Toward a Phenomenological Psychology; the Psychology of William James. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Linschoten, J. (1961a). Algemene Functieleer [General Experimental Psychology]. In: Inleiding in de Psychologie [Introduction to Psychology]. Utrecht: Bijleveld. Linschoten, J. (1961b). Die phänomenologische Methode in der Psychologie [The Phenomenological Method in Psychology]. Acta Psychologica, 19, pp. 514, 515. Linschoten, J. (1962). Fenomenologie en Psychologie [Phenomenology and Psychology]. Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Wijsbegeerte [General Dutch Journal for Philosophy], 55, pp. 113–122. Linschoten, J. (1963). Die Unumgänglichkeit der Psychologie [The Unavoidability of Phenomenology]. Jahrbuch für Psychologie und Psychotherapie, 10 (3/4), pp. 177–185. Linschoten, J. (1964). Idolen van de Psycholoog [Idols of the Psychologist]. Utrecht: Bijleveld. Linschoten, J. (1979). The Inevitability of Phenomenology. In: A. Giorgi, R. Knowles, and D.L. Smith (eds.). Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology, Volume III. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, pp. 49–59.

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References Langeveld, M.J. (1964). In Memoriam Prof. Dr. J. Linschoten. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie, 19, pp. 101–103. Terwee, S.J.S. (1990). The Case of Johannes Linschoten’s Apostasy: Phenomenological Versus Empirical-Analytical Psychology. In: S.J.S. Terwee (eds.). Hermeneutics in Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Recent Research in Psychology. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Van Manen, M. (1997). From Meaning to Method. Qualitative Health Research: An International, Interdisciplinary Journal, 7 (3), pp. 345–369.

16 ON HUMOUR [Over de Humor, 1951] Johannes Linschoten

Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us; humanity only begins for man with self-surrender. Henri Frederic Amiel (1919, p.119)

Introduction Some 2,000 years ago, Quintilian said, “There is probably not a single aesthetic category that is so resistant to dissection and determination as comedy” (de Bruyne, 1942, p. 393). This is also the judgment of most philosophers after him, and it applies in no lesser extent to humour, which is our concern here. It is rather interesting, though surprising, to encounter Babylonian confusion about the phenomenon that we seek to understand. Humour is spoken about in so many languages. The person from the street, the psychologist, the philosopher, the politician, yes, even the theologian speaks of humour. There are people who, by their profession, are called “comedians” whose task it is to keep humour alive and real. Only when we reflect on what is being talked about, it turns out that we all seem to be talking about something else, although we may mean the same thing. It appears that the meaning of humour is, in some sense, elusive. It is not so easy to lay our hands on it, to grasp the essence of humour, to analyze and determine its meaning and significance. Even more so, there appear to be not only many terms, but also related phenomena that constantly change names in the tricky game that the spirit of humour plays with frustrated reason. The best-schooled researchers slip on humour. They approach it from the sublime, sometimes from the comic, even from the tragic, trying to capture its singular sense. However, humour, like a playful child, always calls from a different place: Here I am! Come and get me!

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Indeed, reflection, critical reflection, is a sober occupation of serious-minded people. Is this seriousness perhaps the reason that one cannot grasp the essence of humour? “They who seek for metaphysical causes of laughter are not mirthful,” Voltaire once said (1775, p. 398). And, perhaps this also applies to all those who look for the cause of comedy and humour. But how could one understand the nature of laughter, comedy, or humour, when one is not cheerful? To learn to speak a language, we do our best to use it. Similarly, to understand humour, we do the most sensible thing, to put ourselves in the middle of humour, and try to experience humour, to live the humour. And yet, that only gives us the experience of humour. Knowing comedy from experience does not mean seeing through the phenomenon of comedy to its essence. If we have to explain what laughing is, then we will fail—and yet, we laugh virtually every day. So, to insightfully see through the essential structure of humour, we need to take some distance from immediate experience, to allow the phenomenon itself to unfold before our eyes—without completely being encapsulated in the direct experience of the humorous situation. Who does not laugh secretly, when reading that some philosophers seriously question whether the experience of humour is actually a feeling of lust, or a strife between pleasure and displeasure; or perhaps a mixed sense of discontent, an increased sense of self, a feeling of superiority, a lustfulness associated with certain drives, or finally a sense of sui generis? (Honecker, 1924). Such questions may be posed by empirical psychology; however, Dugas (1906) is right when he says that there is nothing more foolish than to approach laughter and humour in this way. One cannot reasonably expect, he believes, to find clarity in the traditional philosophical manner; so, there is only one path to renew the question: that method is the phenomenological specification of its meaning. So that is what we will do. In other words, we will seek to gain insight into the phenomenon. Although the language of the field of humour and comedy is continuously changing, we do have a more or less vague “idea” of the phenomenon in question that can serve as a guide for research. And this research means: to explicate what is vaguely intended. If we develop a clear presentation of what humour is, then we are not further interested in whether the term “humour” is ultimately reserved for yet another phenomenon. It is not the word or terminology that matters. First comes the analysis of the phenomena, and subsequently, the terminological fixations. We care about the value of humour, and yet it is not immediately clear where we must look for it. We could trace the practical usefulness of humour, how it makes life more pleasant, whether it offers us opportunities to resolve unforeseen predicaments. But we can also look for the psychological meaning of humour; consider it, for example, as a “defence mechanism” (Freud, 1905) or “source of pleasure” (Reik, 1929). Alternatively, we can search for the nature of humour as a

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state of consciousness. We can look for the laws that govern humour, the conditions or even causes from which it originates. But we must remember that when we choose one of these paths, we are always already talking about humour. We presume that we clearly have in mind what humour itself is. And, indeed, this is our actual interest: what is humour itself, what is its intrinsic sense? We want to understand humour itself, and not reduce it to any other phenomenon. When Eliot says: “Strange as the genealogy may seem, the original parentage of that wonderful and delicious mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, and feeling, which constitutes modern humour, was probably the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhing of a suffering enemy” (1884, p. 70)—then we would rather see such a theory suspended until it has been determined what humour is, what cruel mockery is, and whether it is reasonable to assume that humour develops from mockery. Our question, in other words, is not (developmental) psychological, but phenomenological; our investigation is a preliminary investigation that does not pretend or promise to bring ready definitive results. We notice that humour is mentioned in the same breath with all those phenomena that we can include under the title “comic phenomena.” Is this justified? Do we not actually miss  the sense of humour in what is merely comical and nothing more than laughable and ridiculous? Are the grotesque gestures of the clown really humorous, when performing absurd but highly amusing acts? Can humour be found in the explosive reaction to slapstick comedy? Is the broad, bold, yes thunderous grin the laughter of humour? An identification of humour with the comical is not justified. Humour cannot be thrown together with what is funny, foolish, ridiculous, burlesque, or grotesque. When the clown makes us feel humoured while building fantastic contraptions and then letting them collapse again, it is not because of clownish stunts, but it is due to something else that humour is experienced through and in spite of these acts. We now see that the clown does nothing but personify human existence in general; that we see ourselves standing there, and we laugh at ourselves with ourselves. At that moment, we are ready for humour. We search in vain for humour in parody and satire. Humour does not lie in mocking caricature, in sarcasm or scorn. Humour is too delicate to be the weapon of the cynic. We may laugh when hearing a friendly farce, some mocking ridicule, or sneering scorn—except that we laugh in a different way. And just as clowning can suddenly put humour in a wonderfully mild light, so we can occasionally be humoured by a mocking smile. It was wonderful when I conquered my sinful desires; But if I had not succeeded, I would still enjoy a great deal of pleasure. (Heine, quoted in Bierens de Haan, 1913, p. 81)

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These lines by Heine express a passionate lust. And he utters this sarcasm humorously. We may no longer smile tauntingly along with Nietzsche when he remarks, “The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue” (1921, p. 87). Yet, we grin at the person who says this. What all of this has in common—be it cheerful or mischievous—is laughter, but also wit. With that, we have two themes on which we can build further: wit and laughter, because these themes also concern humour. While humour is neither comedy nor parody, it is still something that makes people laugh, and something that is witty. When we try to gain access to humour through laughter, we do so based on the conviction that a connection exists between these phenomena. But we are equally convinced that humour does not necessarily fall under the category of comedy. Of course, one can take this position and take humour as a kind of genus of comedy. But, an analysis of humour then logically presupposes an analysis of comedy—which we would disregard. Wit and comedy are not discussed in themselves, but only used as access to humour.

Of “Esprit” [Spirit] Wit is, in a certain sense, the crowning of comedy and persiflage, irony and sarcasm. Crowning in the sense that one of the essential traits of these phenomena comes to final perfection in the spirit of wit. Just as an essential purity, for example, the “spirit of salt,” concludes with the noblest part of salt, and abandons raw matter, so esprit or wit is the “spirit of the comic.” Wit is the prince among comics: light-hearted, gracious, brilliant, noble, and high above the ordinary funny folk. But like all princes, wit tends to chill, to raise itself proudly above the ordinary, to be refined, airy, and exquisite. The “spirit of the comic” is no different than the esprit, that the French like to speak about; the esprit that according to Rivarol “sees fast, just, and far” (quoted in Latour, 1949, p. 62) that expresses itself in a prickling and sparkling play, but often also as intellectual cool play (Klanfer, 1936) with words and quick retorts: Nothing is more attainable for the spirit than the infinite. (Novalis, 1923, p. 39) This pure wit, this true “play of words”—something different from the bon mot [well-placed word]—is ingenious, artful, without being artificial like so much comedy. Comedy can be constructed using certain procedures. There exists a “joke industry” which, once one has found the pattern, gives rise to an infinite and therefore hopelessly annoying series of jokes. We think, for example, of the horse joke, the Scottish joke, the Jewish joke. Wit, on the other hand, is

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a gift—requiring manoeuvrability, swiftness, keenness, a sharp look and a quick tongue, an adroit intelligence that cleverly twists and turns. Experience is a good schoolmaster, but the school fees are somewhat heavy. (Gregory, 1924, p. 127) The comical tends toward wit but is saltless and mindless. It does not possess that fine, spicy taste that only the connoisseur, who is intellectually attuned, can appreciate. Anyone who needs to think about a witty remark to understand it will be unable to produce wit, unless by chance. Wittiness is “to the point,” and this pithiness is often experienced cuttingly. Wit says what it says wittfully, and this can be felt as offensive to those who do not follow the rapid turn of the mind. The wittiness then appears, ostensibly, as an attack on a cherished view, which is made fun of. While Egner (1932) goes a bit too far when he says that the French do not know humour, there is nevertheless some truth in his words. Namely this: the esprit flourishes in the French environment, in the land of Voltaire. So, no wonder that the somewhat culturally cumbersome, more convoluted, and yet gründlicher [more thorough] German, who does not move so quickly, thinks he hears a ridicule of Verlachen [mockery] in the snigger of the esprit. Their only means of government are the guilder and the gallows. (a Dutch folk saying) This is the real wit, which throws a sudden and revealing light on things, enters into a noble joust, and strikes the matter in the heart with an unexpected sting. It is comfortable to feel in life like “a fish in water.” It is also the surest way to leave no trace behind. (van der Wal, 1945, p. 31) A distinction could be made between “pure” and “applied” wit. While pure wit, in its aestheticizing form, is determined to draw paradoxical consequences, applied wit does not merely expose a paradox, but is targeted against someone in a cold and aloof manner. Cicero tells the story of a Sicilian, who, when someone came to him in sorrow after his wife had committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree, replied: Dear fellow, I wish you gave me a few cuttings from that tree so that I could plant them in my garden! (1860, pp. 54–71). Dispassionate esprit! Hurtful for the widower and the wife of the Sicilian. It is as if the witty spirit, left to itself, almost inevitably lapses into malice. George Eliot (1884) has rightly said that wit, as the English call it, is crueller than humour. The esprit of wit does not spare its victim; it goes straight for the target, carefree and unencumbered, and therefore often blithely. There is no sympathy in wittiness:

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the witty mind is aloof about pathos. Wit is “reasoning raised to high power” (Eliot, 1884, p. 69). That is why it often seems so dry to us, while humour, as the etymology of the word suggests, is humid, moist, mild, and warm. So, we certainly cannot consider wit and humour the same. However, there is no denying that humour is closely related to wit: they both have a spiritual and illuminating quality. They share the twisting and absurd element, and also a certain distance and reflexivity. Yet, humour and wit are not as self-occupied as comedy. Only when the esprit is witty, then the humour turns spiritual and humanistic. Pure wit is just as rare as genuine humour. In Eliot’s opinion, we usually encounter a mixture of both, as is clearly visible in the works of Molière and Shakespeare. She considers this one “happy conjunction,” “for wit is apt to be cold, and thin-lipped, and Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for humour, whose lungs do never crow like Chanticleer at fun and drollery; and broad-faced, rollicking humour needs the refining influence of wit” (Eliot, 1884, p. 71). After meeting the esprit, we now want to get to know the laugh.

Laughter We may name an endless variety of expressions with the term “laughter.” From the roar of laughter to the twinkling of the eyes, from the Homeric laugh of the gods to the giggle of the teenager, from the ironic, mocking smirk to the smiling laugh of the Buddha. And with every variation, an affective, emotional, or nuanced mood corresponds. How can we discover a fundamental essence in this multitude? No matter how infinite the nuances may be, they are all represented by the phenomenon of laughter. Is it possible to reduce this typical human expression of the laugh to the essence of comedy and humour? If we want to do this, we must take the standpoint of modern philosophical anthropology, which does not primarily seek something behind the laughter, but which finds the whole person and the humanity of the human being in laughter. Laughter, as it shows itself, is human, and can reveal to us the structure of consciousness of laughter and the situation that culminates in laughter. There is no phenomenon as complacent as laughter, says Dugas (1906), laughter has no second thought. It is a state of surrendering or giving over to thoughtlessness, which is incompatible with intelligent thinking, judgment or reasoning, and also value judgments. Laughter has nothing to do with a critical mind; on the contrary, it frees us from it and gives us back a childlike soul, simple and alien to philosophical considerations and sentimental entanglements (Dugas, 1906, p. 577). Lipps (1898) already understood this when he explained the phenomenon of laughter with the image of releasing a brake pedal. Whenever we laugh, we let go of reserves or inhibitions. When we are amazed or surprised as our flow of thoughts is interrupted, then psychic energy builds up. At that point, our attentiveness has been lost, we come to a halt, shrink away, and fail to understand.

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Things and events that are astonishing and new, that are incompatible with what is traditional and familiar, they create an upheaval in us—until someone makes a humorous comment, breaks the silence, and we all burst out laughing. When we laugh, our attention quickly shifts from one element of the comic event to the other, as if our focus is trying to keep up with this movement by following it with quick jumps. But the only thing that happens in laughter is that “attention” becomes paralyzed and slips. Critical experimental psychology has not understood laughter, perhaps precisely because it is so critical. Indeed, Bärwald’s attempt is comical when he tries to find out the “intrapsychic structure” of comic consciousness through a survey. He asks his subjects: Do you notice, when a comic object provokes repeated laughter, that there is a back and forth of awareness between the serious content that you were expecting, or that originally filled your consciousness, and lightheartedness? Or do you notice a constant changing between a conscious and unconscious, a lively and lethargic quality of the entire comic situation? And finally, do you believe that you can identify other psychological causes for the phenomenon of humour? (Bärwald, 1907, p. 240) How should the laugher react to this analysis? Well, not different from what Gregory says, “The laugher simply holds his sides and laughs,” because, “his laughter is an action broken” (1924, p. 158). The laugher does not act at all, and therefore does not respond: The laugher does nothing to anyone or anything other than himself. He does nothing even to himself in the sense that a frightened man moves himself from a dangerous spot . . . Laughter is not an act as a blow is an angry act or flight is a fearful act. (Gregory, 1924, p. 158) So, the laugher does nothing at all—he just laughs. If one wishes to call this a response, then it is of a special nature: an answer, which according to Plessner, is given when there is nothing more to say (1950a, p. 89). Laughter is a human prerogative, for the animal neither laughs nor weeps. The animal keeps going, is on its way, does not look back to the past, but walks on until it meets death without recognizing it. But human beings, pause, stand still where they want, look where they are going, carry their past knowingly with them, see in the distance the “Grim Reaper” beckon—and laugh. One knows about oneself and knows that one knows about oneself. One adopts a distance to the world and to oneself, and this reflexivity is the condition for the possibility of laughter. People orientate themselves in their world and look for something to hold onto, whether on the inside or outside. For humans, it is hard to live without

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this support. The animal continues unknowingly, but the human being knows that in life one is always going somewhere and asks, “Where to?” In the ambiguity of a situation, a decisive choice is made, a line is drawn, a scheme is designed. If the ambiguity of a situation demands a position, then a solution is usually possible. For example, we constantly adopt an attitude, take a stand on something, move on, overcome difficulties, pull ourselves together, do this or that, conduct ourselves, and thus develop our personal history in the dialectic with situations, setting boundaries to pass them, finding firm ground and holding onto them. But when a situation no longer offers opportunities for gathering ourselves, when ambiguities throw us back onto ourselves, then we lose the opportunity to know what to do. Then actions dissolve, crises occur that the animal knows nothing of; the human laughs or weeps, and thus provides an answer where there is nothing to say (Plessner, 1950a, pp. 88–186). Such a paradoxical answer is the laughter of comedy, which is given where the phenomena break the norm to which they are subject (Plessner, 1950a, p. 116). When explicating this formulation of what makes something comical, Kant and Lipps pointed out that we laugh when we expect something meaningful but meet nothing (Kant, 1878, para 54), or something worthless (Lipps, 1898, p. 70); Schopenhauer believed that in a comical situation we experience an incongruity between the concept of an object and the real object as it reveals itself (1937, para 13); Bergson sees the comical in the contrast between a frozen spirit and graceful nature (1947, p. 29); and, De Bruyne points to the disparity that exists in a comical object (1942, p. 405). Contrasts always evoke each other. The human being always stands between the sublime and the worthless, between heaven and earth, between reality and sham, between seriousness and illusion. And when the person realizes the ambiguous predicament of this position and does not know where and what to make of the situation, but instead happily capitulates when faced with such unmanageable discrepancies, then the human being breaks into laughter. Laughter is a kind of crisis, a peculiar split also in person, because, while laughing or crying, the human person loses control, but remains a person in the sense that the body answers for the person. In doing so, laughter reveals a possible interaction between person and body, which usually remains secret because it is not claimed. (Plessner, 1950a, p. 43) In laughter, the body releases itself from the mind, which lets it go, because the situation no longer offers a hold. That is why the person who is completely absorbed in laughter is sometimes taken for a fool, someone whose mind is far away. Jeanson (1950) says: “I suffer the vertigo of my own gesture, and it is from then on the giggle that lurks, and of which I will be, literally, the victim” (p. 92). Once a person has fallen into laughter, cannot stop laughing, he or she is reduced

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to an idly, shaking body—until he or she sees the ridiculousness of this, and regains control with shame. The phenomenon of laughter frames the human milieu, where we must look for humour. Laughter is not only a dissolution of one’s conduct but also dissolves the person from being unreflectively involved in a situation—or at least offers the possibility to do so. Like all human phenomena, laughter has a complicated structure. First, the phenomenon of laughter presupposes the sense of spirit, that is, the phenomenon of reflexivity as an ontological characteristic of the human being. In other words, it poses a distance between the human being and the world, between the soul and the body—a distance that leaves room for manoeuvres in which ambiguity and limit situations can first develop. In this latitude, laughter arises as a genuinely human expression that manifests itself immediately in the physical—but with an immediacy that is at the same time mediated. Second, the burst of laughter, the laughter as it occurs, means a dissolution of actions and their value relations. The real laugh is a carefree laugh that does not concern itself with loss or gain, that does not care about prestige. Laughter is self-surrendered, Penjon says, une liberté visible [a visible freedom] (1893). Perhaps it is more correct to say that laughter creates self-surrender. Where I can choose between the meaningful and the meaningless, between worth and worthlessness, I can hold on to both sides. But in the experience of contrast, laughter appears as a sign of my impotence, of my helplessness, of my self-surrender. Neither the meaningfulness nor meaningless are actually denied; in their disparity, they are understood as disparate wholes, and this is ridiculous. Laughter is not a denial but a release. Those who cannot do this, who do not understand jokes, cannot laugh. The philosopher who always “walks while thinking” does not laugh, because he or she lives entirely in the sublime and the weighty (Dugas, 1906, p. 578). But that is precisely why he or she is the eternal prototype of the comic: the astrologer philosopher Thales who while looking at the stars, fell into a well. Ironically, the animal, who in a different sense, is seriously lost in its existence cannot laugh either. However, the human observer laughs, watching the monkey’s simulated humanity in disparate gestures of complete seriousness (Baudelaire, 1935, p. 172). The animal may be completely absorbed in its situation, in a critical situation, and its behaviour can transform into anger or fear, but it never dissolves into laughter. Third, laughter offers human beings opportunities to be spectators. It is this possibility of laughter that gives us access to the world of humour. That is why we have called Amiel (1919) as the key witness in the epigraph of this paper. Amiel testifies that in our daily lives—burdened by our worries, absorbed in our activities, preoccupied with our personal existence—we do not meet the ideal of humanity as he sees it: free of self-interestedness. The person who is engaged in laughing is attitudeless: while laughing, one does not take a position. Actually, one cannot really “help” this; whatever is laughable forces the person to laugh. That is why laughter is a release, and not just

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severance or detachment. We do not laugh out of selflessness, but once laughing, we discover the meaning of self-surrender: abandoning the personal position. Does this mean that humour merely watches and laughs? The matter is not that simple. Humour does not arise from indifference. Moreover, humour is not being laughed at; humour awakens the smile. With a discussion of laughter, we have not yet reached the level of humour. Comedy motivates laughter. But where lies the border between comedy and humour?

Comedy, Tragedy, and Humour When we inquire into the border between comedy and humour, we can also inquire into the boundary between tragedy and humour. When a phenomenon that breaks its norm is comical, why is it not tragic at the same time? Why is the figure of Lucifer standing up against God tragic, while the fateful description of the prophet Jonah, who also disagrees with God’s decisions, is so thoroughly comical? Why is the contrast between appearance and norm, between reality and idea, sometimes comical and at other times tragic? Wherein do we find the particularity that determines the specific meaning in the experience of the contrast? Will people find the humour between the comic and the tragic? In a certain sense, yes. However, not when humour is equated with tragicomedy: the “consciously humorous against the tragedy of the world . . . including one’s sense of personal destiny” (De Bruyne, 1942, p. 440). Whatever the meaning of tragicomedy may be, it is certainly not humorous. Tragicomedy is one of the bitterest and deepest categories of aesthetic experience: abjection is a form of tragicomedy when it appears at the same time terrible and grotesque, creepy and burlesque like Berlioz’s Fantastique, or perhaps like some medieval tortures of ridiculously dressed victims, who were put to death with crazy gestures and in ridiculous postures as the spectator crowd laughed convulsively while shuddering with pity. (De Bruyne, 1942, p. 439) When humour jokes, it does not do so in such an abhorrent manner. Tragedy, comedy, and humour relate to the fundamental discrepancy between idea and reality that characterizes human existence. We will not attempt to give a precise description and analysis of this discrepancy here, which is heard everywhere when humanity is discussed in minor and major tones. All we have to do is quote the familiar words from Pascal, who, as one of many, sought to express it: For after all what is  man in nature? A  nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. . . . He is equally incapable of

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seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed. (Pascal, 1949, p. 46) Is this realization recognized in the experience of the comic? No! Comedy lives in the discrepancy between appearance and norm, but it regards this contrast as merely incidental. We laugh at the funny actors and the crazy situation in which they end up. We do not consider that the comical lies on the surface, and that this other discrepancy is hidden underneath: the human being breaks through the norms to which people are subjected because the person exists ambiguously—as a “thinking animal.” In the comic experience, we laugh heartily and heartlessly at the discrepancy between the meaningful and the meaningless, the sublime and the worthless, and we let go of our “attitude.” But in the tragic experience, we no longer laugh; there we discover the impotence of the quotidian to fulfill its sublime destiny. “It is the meaning of life that it is meaningless” (an existentialist saying). If one wants to laugh at this tragic humour, then it is necessary to take a distance so that we can free ourselves from the entanglement and resignation into which this statement threatens to draw us. The pursuit of self-realization is frustrated, making any attempts meaningless because all our striving is just a hopeless gesture for what is beyond our reach; for what we can only aspire to capture in a desperate or heroic attempt. The impossibility of perfect happiness, the continual struggle between good intentions and inevitable failure, affects us tragically. In the context of the tragic, we experience abandonment and loneliness, feeling lost and meaningless with respect to the absurdity of the existence of heaven and earth, sense and absurdity, endurance and failure—which is why we laugh comically. This is the place for despair and crying, that just like laughter is not a form of acting, but rather a surrender that brings no solution. That is why the wretched can only weep (Plessner, 1950a). To arrive, from the experience of the tragic to humour, a true “conversion” is required. An insight into the relativity of the tragic is necessary and distancing with regards to one’s own inevitable fate. The humorous person does not resign but is reconciled with the brokenness of human existence. This does not necessarily mean that this existential reconciliation is brought about through religion or faith. In the last Credo of the martyr, a certain conviction and rock-solid trust may be heard—but no humour. The smile of the martyr is that of faith, of reconciliation, of forgiveness, of resignation; when he realizes how to break free from the terror of the cross, it is because his soul is already with God. The distancing of humour is different. When Thomas Morus mounted the scaffold, it shook a

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bit, and he said to the executioner who gave him a helping hand: “Help me to ascend—I will shift for myself coming down” (quoted in Eastman, 1921, p. 93). Although certain bitterness may have been contained in these words, they still point back to that curious attitude of humour. Here the tragic is not spoken with a sense of doom and even less a light-heartedness. The insipid smile about the comical predicament frees itself from discrepancy; the tragic is ruined, but humour is in a strange way reconciled with it. Comedy and tragedy give rise to particular emotions: pleasure as well as suffering and sorrow. Humour has no specific emotion. Humour seems to lie between the comic and the tragic, without being a mixture of the two. Humour is neither heavy and raptured, nor is it pathetic. It falls neither into an empty smile nor into despair but looks at both, and smiles. However, humour has in common with tragedy the sense of the brokenness of existence, which is not part of the experience of comedy. At the same time, humour shares with comedy the cheerful, happy climate, while tragedy remains low-spirited and depressive.

Cheerfulness and Sympathy The humorous person seeks contrast, contradiction, difference, opposition, incongruity. Humour is responsive and sensitive, and yet distanced. In humour, we do not listen for conflict, but for the acquiescence of the sublime and the quotidian, the superior and the ordinary, in their incommensurable togetherness of human existence and its paradoxical structure. The acquiescent acceptance already implies that the humour is not intent to critique and on the basis of that mock or joke. (Bierens de Haan, 1913, p. 74) Humour may seem ironic, but it is too cheerful and sympathetic to take the shape of real irony. While humour destroys many illusions, it never attacks a real value, an ideal. The humourist may laugh and sneer at the folly of this world, but lovingly touches the heartfelt goals of an individual. In other words, the laugh of the humourist does not come from cold understanding but a warm heart overflowing with compassion. (Gottschalk, 1928, p. 21) The human is a paradoxical being: neither animal nor angel. The humourist sees this, accepts it, and shows it to us with unselfish love. When we try to find out how we “feel” when experiencing humour, we discover that these feelings are of a different nature than emotions. When reciting a comic or tragic story, we usually know the right tone; we know how to speak to make our words sound

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convincing, passionate, or indignant. This means that we can evoke the appropriate emotion or the corresponding affect by putting ourselves in the required situation. After all, it is the emotion and the affect that give to words their convincing, compelling, and transforming power. In contrast, rational science has abandoned the vital emotions, and therefore cannot fascinate us in the same way as a drama story. However, humour lacks emotionality. When we want to tell a humorous story, it is difficult for us to find the right tone. If we want to recite an ironic poem or a mocking passage, then it seems simple enough to make them sound like mockery, irony, or sarcasm. But when we interpret them in such a way, we “know” or “feel” that this is not it, that it should be different. And while we can find the correlating emotional stance for ridicule, joke, sarcasm, and whatever else, this is lacking for humour. There is no humorous emotion or humorous affect. And yet humour is not cold but warm, not dry but moist. Sartre (1948) described emotion as expressing a transformation of a situation. In the experience of humour too, the world is disclosed in a certain way. When we understand humour, a particular perspective opens; and this discovery transforms the situation radically, but not explosively. Humour does not lead to a loud laugh, but to a smile. So, it is neither situations nor emotions that are humorous, and yet we can experience and feel humour. Since we can experience and feel humour, the question arises what is this “feeling?” The point is that a humorous feeling is a real feeling, that is, an experience of things as they are (Buytendijk, 1950, p. 127), or in this case: as they elude us. This could, therefore, mean that “there are humorous things,” and that such experiences evoke a humorous sense. But, the problem is not that simple. A humorous perspective is first created by humour: just as a perspective motivates a certain feeling, so also the humorous feeling motivates the humorous perspective. To enter into this Gestaltkreis [formative circle] of humour (von Weizsäcker, 1947), requires a specific “attitude” that, in our everyday life, we do not easily adopt, since this attitude constitutes a withdrawal from our usual way of approaching things. This attitude is a prerequisite for the appearance of humour and is based on a very specific mood. The feeling of humour, therefore, shows a fundamental similarity with an undefinable sense of fear, or worry, or cheerfulness; undefined, because they are not concerned with a specific object, a specific situation, but betray a mode of existence that can serve as a basis for specific emotions. Humour is, therefore, literally affable: resting on a state of mind, that we may describe as sympathy, and vaguely defined as knowing oneself connected with fellow human beings and with humanity, human existence. Only on this basis can humour flourish. “Every mood is in three ways a commensurability,” says Bollnow: between the inner and outer world, between body and soul, and between the “inner things,” which are attuned to the same basic tone (1943, p. 24). Concerning this tone, we, therefore, seek humour only among harmonious people, and not among

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torn persons, as far as they experience this tornness tragically. And that is why we do not approach humour through the tragic, but rather through the comic and laughter. Laughter may indicate a temporary disharmony between body and mind, but it is a disharmony that is based on a deeper harmony, and traces back to that. As Kierkegaard already observed, we seem to prefer to read comic material in the company of others, but tragic material we tend to read by ourselves (referenced in Bollnow, 1943, p. 89).

The Smile Happiness is a mood that attunes the inner and the outer world while gracing the well-tempered person with a smile. So, we regard the attunement of humour, enlightened by the smile, under another aspect: that of “inner harmony.” Opinions are still divided as to whether animals laugh. We do not find facial laughs in animals; but whether there is no body-laugh, expressing the same vital “joy” that can show laughter in humans, is doubtful (Plessner, 1950a, p.  32). Where the dog rolls excitedly in the grass and turns back and forth, humans might laugh, a healthy and vital laughing. If laughter is a specific human phenomenon, then this is because laughter reveals the boundary between nature and spirit, it participates in both, but does not belong to either of them entirely (Baudelaire, 1935, p. 171). The smile is a different matter. The question of whether the animal smiles seems rather senseless. This becomes clear to us as soon as we understand why Plessner (1950a) calls the smile the Mimik des Geistes [mirror of the soul]. In laughter, the spirit lets the body laugh; in the smile, the spirit itself laughs, in control of the body, or better, intimately bonded with this body. In the smile, the mindful person becomes a presence to us. Humour does not have to verbalize itself, but it can suffice with a smile. Henri Borel tells a story about a student who has learned everything about truth, Tao, from his wise Master. And then it is put like this: “I thank my old Master very much,” I said. “When will I ever be able to remunerate you?” He looked at me quietly. His gaze was as expansive as the ocean. He was as quiet and gentle as the night. Then he laughed, as the sun laughs above the earth. And he left, in silence. (Borel, 1919, p. 111) Now, how do we imagine the nature of this laughter? Not as loud laughter, not as mocking laughter, but also not as joyful laughter. Actually, this is not laughter at all, but an exceptionally still smile, nothing more than a gleam in the eyes of a person, who sees the humour in the intention of the other, wanting to reward him or her for something that is given freely.

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The smile lacks the explosiveness of laughter: it is soundless and muted, a diminutive expression, not loaded with affect. No affect can express itself in the smile, but one would be mistaken to believe that the smile only originates in weak moments (Plessner, 1950b, p.  367). Just like laughing, smiling can mean anything. Buytendijk says, No other mimic expression assumes quite such a wide range of feelings, moods, and personal characteristics. And no other mimic expression can appear in so many shades and nuances. For example, we know the real and the inauthentic smile, just as we may recognize a restrained, frank, resentful, painful, contemptuous, cheating, mocking, bitter, sarcastic, compassionate, intelligent, stupid, kind, shy, affectionate, cheerful, peaceful, or delighted smile. We know the more mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa, the stone sculpture of Le Sourire de Reims [The Smile of Reims], and the still smile of the death-mask of the unidentified girl from the Seine River, L’Inconnue de la Seine [The Unknown Woman of the Seine]. (1947, p. 3) A smile can spread over the entire face, but it can also localize itself in the eyes or the corners of the mouth. Yes, even the haughty sarcastic smile can simply be the asymmetrical lifting of the muscles above one of the corners of the mouth. And yet, here too, the multitude of forms finds its unity in the smile; and it is this that we want to investigate on its characteristics to see how these characteristics correspond to the “harmony” of humour. The humorous smile is a real and full smile, not the twinkling of the eye of wittiness, not a shooting star. The humorous smile is not an effect, and is not intended to be a spectacle—in the double sense of the word—rather, the smile of humour is a quiet light; it discloses a very wide view. In every smile, whether it has become a mask or gesture, or whether it develops spontaneously, there is a certain distance that underlies all human endeavours. There is a very big difference between smiling and laughter: in laughing and weeping, humans sacrifice their mind, in smiling, they express their mind (Plessner, 1950b, pp. 368, 373). This is why the smile can bear witness to a spiritual power. An English lady from Yokohama, Japan, told Lafcadio Hearn, an author, how one day her Japanese servant came smiling at her as if something very pleasant had happened to her. But she told him that her husband had just died, and asked Hearn to be present at the funeral (quoted in, Dumas, 1948, p. 80). There is no humour in this gesture, but a tendency towards the “humourization” of life is undeniable. And although this specific Japanese smile is indeed a polite gesture, it is also true that this gesture expresses a sentiment such as: please, do not worry about my loss, just let me be. That is to say, keep your distance, as I do mine, from each other, from the loss, and from oneself.

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The gesture of the smile tends towards a detachment from what touches us in our personal existence. But the smile is also the sign of sympathy, and not of world-despising asceticism. Whoever smiles involves the other in a relation of complete self-surrender, in which no question and no answer, but only giving and reciprocity is possible. That is why Buytendijk relates the smile to the sense of satisfaction: “A contented human being is, therefore, quieter, more tranquil, and more restful while remaining open to the world. ‘Contentment’ is more an attitude of reserve than of complete surrender” (1947, p. 6). We might say: cheerfulness. Cheerfulness grasps things with enthusiasm. If we look at the smile in this way, we see that it is joy incarnate, not an act or a standpoint, but quiet, self-surrender, and detached acceptance. The smile does not come from capitulation, such as laughter or crying, but it is a relaxed gesture, just like humour is an actless act: innocent in the double sense of pure and harmless. That is why the smile is par excellence the sign of humour, without resentment, excitement, or Schadenfreude [pleasure from someone else’s misfortune]. The smile is quiet, not really restricted in the sense of being oppressed, but loose and free. The accompanying gestures can only be grace and graceful, the voice calm and eyes friendly. In smiling, we do nothing but suspend all activity in an attitude of total selfsurrender. The same goes for humour: the humourist does nothing but suspends. That is why humour is free, and it also frees—or evokes wonder about the uneasiness that we experience when we see that something is happening smoothly. A humorous person cannot be an opponent—that is why he cannot be resisted. Like humour, the humorous person cannot be pinned down to a position. The only way that we can resist humour is by exploding in a frenzy, in other words, to capitulate. Humour interrupts and defeats any argumentative conversation. It renders an opponent speechless. The conversation ends because it cannot deal with this. Humour creates one of those paradoxical situations in which the listening person is brought to the limits of his or her behavioural possibilities. That is why we can laugh at humour, we call the other person comical—or we can weep, calling the humour tragic—or we can fall into a frenzy, avoiding or surrendering to the humour and smile.

The Biological Scandal We will have to be careful not to see the smile too rationally, or to want to interpret it biologically. Even the young infant produces a real, clear laugh as well as a smile before even speaking. Does this child laugh at a “phenomenon that breaks its norm?” Or is not this laughter itself a phenomenon that breaks the norm of laughter? Purely vital, but already human laughter, an expression of a carefree joy of existence, in which the possibility of distance and care are already preordained? A laughter that is already free, even before the laughter can liberate, whereby the spirit frees the

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body, even before it can have it in its grip (Baudelaire, 1935, p. 174). The child laughs already before knowing what is comical, and therefore, nothing is as comical as a child who laughs and does not know why. But is this laugh a biological laugh? There is a theory that links the smile and humour to physical well-being. For example, humour may arise, just like the smile, when one has eaten well, as an epiphenomenon of the pleasantly filled stomach, relishing in a state of physical well-being. But humour is free from such saturation. Humour is certainly not a side effect, but a completely new, original phenomenon. Laughter has no biological function, and this applies even more to the smile. Buytendijk (1950–51) speaks of a biological scandal: the smile is a pure and lavish luxury. And yet, there is a certain truth to comfort theory. In the opinion of Bollnow, satisfaction and cheerfulness were given to humans as a gift of their natural existence (1943, p. 29). But anyone who understands “nature” here as biological nature, well-being as digestive harmony, and relaxation as lack of muscle tone, has found this understanding of the smile and humour already cut off. We understand the origin of the smile not from a bio-physiological balance, but from the harmony between the lived body and the peaceful inner world. This peace shows itself in the smile and relaxation, and is also motivated by it. When we have eaten well, and relax comfortably on that basis—and not as a causal consequence—we have the opportunity to enter a peaceful world. That is the reality on which the comfort theory of the smile is founded. But this peace has no function in the struggle for life. On the contrary, the strong who indulge in comfort lose their grip on the world. Experiencing the mood of real peace is only a gift granted to the human being; like the smile, it is a paradoxical phenomenon for every biological view of human nature. The paradoxical nature of the smile is that it consists of a tensioning of muscles, which are nevertheless experienced as the beginning of a relaxed, active, restful state. Thus, the smile is the expression of a “threshold situation,” of a just not yet bursting of exuberance, of a closedness that is opening itself, of a self-satisfied, immanent sense of well-being as well as an anticipated joy that transcends it all. In the smile there exists at the same time the unstable, tingling, sparkling sensation that is inherent to all joy, as well as the stability, permanence, and closedness of tranquillity. (Buytendijk, 1947, p. 12) We enter the realm of the human, of the mind, of the apractical situation. The smile is the sign of an attitude that is alien to the animal kingdom. We now want to take a closer look at the special form of the apractical attitude that has been realized in humour.

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The Humorous “Attitude” In our everyday social life, the existential modalities of transcendence and incarnation are shown through humour. Humour points transcendentally to the sublime. The sublime refers to everything that exceeds the mundane, and not just the nuances of the true, good, and beautiful. The Grim Reaper is the personification of an extreme reality who undoubtedly belongs to the sublime, and, therefore, the expression of “Grim Reaper” can bear witness to humour. In the novel De Kleine Johannes [Little Johannes], the young boy, Johannes lives with his father in a big house with a large garden. His father tells him, “There are those who seek their whole lives to come to know what they are actually seeking. Those are the philosophers, Johannes. But when the Grim Reaper shows up, their search also ends” (van Eeden, 1948, p. 129). We could take this for humour if the story of the young Johannes was not so tragic and somewhat less sarcastic. How completely differently does the Grim Reaper appear in the truly humorous Death Dance woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger! The Dance of Death series is here so down to earth and so human in every way (von Manteuffel, 1920). Death brings the old, bent, and sick man to the doctor, who will neither be able to save his patient nor himself. The Grim Reaper enters with an almost graceful step, kindly humoured, with head slightly bent. Both look at each other seriously: the doctor is already considering his advice while the sick patient is waiting. But between them stands the Grim Reaper, who needs no guidance, and who is waiting for both. While the servant hands the colourful dress and the golden chain to the countess, he is already standing behind her, and with a courteous gesture, he slips the necklace of dead bones around her neck. The Grim Reaper has always been helpful. He already helped Adam to break the ground; he approaches the Pope with the mitre of the cardinal; meets the duchess with a violin; and, he drives up the team of horses for the farmer’s plough. Hans Holbein understands and depicts the essence of human beings. And although many had already painted and sculpted Death before him, there remains an inalienable bond between Holbein and the Dance of Death. Because, and this is the strange thing, he renewed a tradition. The human being and Grim Reaper appear here as partners, neither tragic nor ridiculous, but connected by a secret covenant. Holbein does not mock Death, nor does he preach: he shows the humour of human existence without making a judgment or adopting a stance. In the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 22, verses 19–22), we read how the Pharisees approach Christ with a trick question, secretly triumphing because they could secure Him. Do we have to pay taxes to the emperor or not? But Jesus answers: “Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back Caesar what

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is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed. So, they left him and went away. They were surprised and left. No answer is possible here. Here humour spoke without taking a position. What a strange attitude is that of humour. Or is this an attitude? Is the smile still an expression here? A  gesture? Humour does not reach for anything but opens something up by pointing at it with a word. Humour is not aiming at achieving a result, does not even expect to be understood. There is no objective. One is not humorous to be funny or witty, ironic or sarcastic. Irony means the opposite of what it expresses but thereby assumes that the listener understands its real meaning. Irony is born from an attitude, but humour is attitudeless, does not take a position for or against anything. Humour can, therefore, seem ironic, but also compassionate. Bierens de Haan explains it as follows: “The humourist is full of goodness and compassion; a lover of humans and more lenient toward their defects, because he also trusts that in spite of their imperfections they bear fundamental goodness. It is his inclination not to frighten them” (1913, p. 79). We already saw it: neither the prophet or philosopher, nor the animal is disposed toward humour. To experience humour, one must have knowledge of the sublime and the useless, and one must be able to unite these two in a peculiar acquiescence. Höffding (1916) speaks of this high kind of humour as a way of life, an art of living. It is a way of life that does not hurt the other person but approaches him or her with a smile. One can use laughter, and even the smile, as a weapon. Ridicule and scorn make great use of it: those who have laughter on their side have won the cause. There is a theory of laughter based on this idea. “The one who laughs feels superior to who or what is ridiculous,” says De Bruyne (1942, p. 402), thereby formulating a thought that has appeared in the literature many times since Plato and Aristotle. Überhorst (1896) too, bases his work on this thesis: laughter is sparked by the sign of a bad quality in someone else, while we ourselves are not aware of this quality, and the observation of it does not give rise to unpleasant feelings. Several authors have pointed out, that one should understand laughter not only from a comic but also from a psychological point of view (Honecker, 1924; Sterzinger, 1932; Von Kries, 1925). That is, the humorous fundamental phenomenon is viewed as an attitude, and in many cases as an attitude of superiority. Recently, this thought was reformulated by Jeanson: “We laugh to feel superior on the occasion of some event, then we laugh to prove that we are superior: this doubling of the intention from the other to the self carries within it the possibility of mockery” (1950, p. 177). Bergson’s view is no different: the pleasure of laughter is not a pure, not just an aesthetic pleasure, because the intention to humiliate creeps in, even though people will not admit it (1947, p. 104). And even Jeanson extends this view to the smile: “the smile is undoubtedly the most

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advanced over-determined, the most evolved, form of laughter: it manifests discreetly the desire not to be too obvious in one’s behaviour—the smile is a laugh that shows that we will not be so stupid to laugh” (1950, p. 178). This tragic existentialism cannot fail but turns freedom into a malicious freedom, the smile into a diabolical grin that hides more secrets than it shows. It is not surprising that Jeanson quotes Baudelaire (1935) with approval, who sees the essence of the smile as a satanic grimace. Accordingly, such people must view Madonna’s smile with the utmost stupefaction and amazement. Where is the repressed malice, the pursuit of evil satisfaction in this smile? The truth is that the real smile is not rooted in any intention, it simply blossoms; it is not a position, but a gift. Therefore, if the smile is an act, then it is an “aesthetic act.” If humour arises from an experience, then it is a disinterested but sympathetic experience that is beyond any “setting of goals or purposes” in everyday action (Häberlin, 1929, p. 17). A humorous experience is thus an aesthetic experience, concerned with the beauty of human existence as such. No doubt, the smile can be manipulated; but, humour cannot become ridicule and still be humour. Nobody is taken advantage of in humour. It is said that at an international meeting, Warren Austin once stated that the Russian delegate reminded him of a farmer from Pennsylvania. A neighbour came to this farmer to borrow his scythe. But the farmer answered that this was not possible because he still had to shave himself. Afterwards, his wife asked him what he meant: surely he did not shave with a scythe? To which the farmer replied: If one really does not want something, then every excuse is equally good. In such jokes, someone is put on a stage, becomes the object of attention, and is expected to feel taken. There is a clear, intentional position, and it is this that cannot be found in humour. Humour does not know this idea of “taking advantage of someone’s weak spot,” so aptly described by Binswanger (1942, p. 308). Humour is neither modest nor immodest; not sharp but also not blunt; neither self-righteous nor naive; not judgmental and not condemning; never coarse nor fine as in a cunning allusion or deliberate subtlety—humour is not sought, but it is not easily found either. It has already been said previously: humour is not a thing that one finds somewhere; one cannot enter into a humorous situation as one enters a room. Humour comes from a peculiar interplay between person and situation, which resists any analysis. What Jeanson says about laughter also applies, in a sense, to humour: “I do not laugh because an event is comical in itself: I laugh with a certain intention, and in doing so, I make myself into a comedy of the event about which I laugh” (1950, p. 88). And yet, again, this is also an exaggeration. As little as humour is found, so it is neither made nor designed. The humorous situation, that contains the humourist and the humour, arises dialectically in a Gestaltkreis [formative circle]; that is to say, the intentions and the meanings of a phenomenon motivate each other reciprocally. I laugh because the situation is comical, but only in my laughter do I create a comical situation, but it is the phenomenon of the comical in the situation that provokes my laughter, but it is my laughing

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intentionality that motivates the comical aspects of the situation . . . and so forth. Precisely because there is no causality here, but motivation, and therefore ambiguity, it is possible that there are two theoretical points of view, both of which are possible, but one-sided: the appearance of the phenomenon of the comical is sufficient ground for laughter (stimulus-response), and the intention to laugh makes the comical appear and show itself (intention-realization). Is humour situated in the object or in the attitude? That is the question that is constantly asked. The answer is simple: in both, and in neither. Humour is a mode in which a situation constitutes itself; humour is an understanding.

The Humorous Perspective In this way, we arrive at the actual phenomenon that we normally miss. What we notice is a person having an “attitude” of humour, that strikes us as odd. Typically, we understand what the other person is saying, but now something seems to escape us; the humorous person says something, and we are surprised, perhaps a little annoyed, and look for something humorous in the person’s words and gestures. But we search in vain for humour in the words, in the pronunciation, in the smile, in the content of consciousness. Humour is given neither in nor to the human being nor to expressions: instead, the actual phenomenon of humour lies in the opening of a perspective. We see the humorous smile, hear the humorous word, but we do not readily see where they are pointing. Among the Galgenlieder [The Gallows Songs] from Morgenstern, we find the following verse: Der Lattenzaun Es war einmal ein Lattenzaun, mit Zwischenraum, hindurchzuschaun. Ein Architekt, der dieses sah, stand eines Abends plötzlich da— und nahm den Zwischenraum heraus und baute draus ein grosses Haus. Der Zaun indessen stand ganz dumm, mit Latten ohne was herum. Ein Anblick gräszlich und gemein. Drum zog ihn der Senat auch ein. Der Architekt jedoch entfloh nach Afri- od Ameriko. [The Picket Fence There used to be a picket fence with spaces to gaze from hence to thence. An architect who saw this sight

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approached it suddenly one night removed the spaces from the fence, and built of them a residence. The picket fence stood there dumbfounded with pickets wholly unsurrounded, a view so naked and obscene, the Senate had to intervene. The architect, however, flew to Afri- or Americoo.] (Morgenstern, 1950, p. 59) At first reading, this is a funny poem, in which many techniques are used to increase the comic effect. We laugh at the house, built out of emptiness, and at the fence, with no spaces between the slats: it is too idiotic to stay serious. The whole thing is a clever idea, told in a witty manner. But then we listen to a comment by Von Uexküll about this poem: Even before Einstein invented the idea of space, Morgenstern already sang the consequences of such an invention of our sense of space with delicious humour! (1932, p. 238). Von Uexküll assigns a perspective to the poem. He shows us an exemplary vision of humanity and its science. Who now is ridiculous? The philosopher, Einstein, we citizens, Morgenstern, or maybe Von Uexküll? The empty space or the architect? Well, none of them! There is nothing absurd anymore, and certainly, nothing here is a target for ridicule. There is only “humanity,” which, though tied to this world, frees itself from it by reconceptualizing space as a rational void, which reconstitutes the universe that in the opinion of some cosmologists, mainly consists of a void between constituent atoms. Humans should neither be elevated to mere spirits, nor be degraded to raw matter, but humanity may be caught, with a smile, in playing a game for its own paradoxical way of being. Such is the perspective of humour. Jünger points to the healing effect of humour (1936, p. 62). Humour concerns the generally human, and not the specific person, and therefore cannot hurt. Still, it offers opportunity, when one regards one’s own destiny as an exemplification of human existence, to feel peace with it. In this respect, the essence of humour differs from the essence of the comical, which always relates to something, to someone, an incident, a fact, a concrete situation. This essence of the comical makes it possible in principle to see laughter as laughing at. So, we must understand the tenacity of this theory. As far as humour is concerned, the theory of ridiculousness basically does not apply. One can see through its relativity and smile. Meredith is, therefore, right in his description of the humorous spirit, but wrong in his interpretation of it as an act of rejection. Meredith says, The laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy

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enormity. lts common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels, without any fluttering eagerness. Humanity’s future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and, whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastic, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastical, delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hood-winked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their profession, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them in consideration, one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, individually or in the bulk—the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit. (1919, p. 89) That this spirit looks malign will only apply if it pays attention to the individual, special, and factual. When it looks through to general humanity, it will look benign, and its “act” will consist of an act of acceptance.

The Ambiguity Can one speak of sadness and joy with humour? Is it not true that we, the listeners, always want to understand humour from an emotion or a position—a standpoint of defence or attack—while the humorous person actually does nothing but says what he or she sees? The same spectacle can be objectively tragic and comical. It is tragic when the experience is earthly, within the limits of this limited life; it is comical when viewed from heaven, from the perspective of what is eternal and most profound. If the tragic feeling is deep and utterly human, the comic smile is the privilege of the gods. (De Bruyne, 1942, p. 412) But when humour happens between earth and heaven, then humour is neither comic nor tragic. Anyone who understands humour from the position of earth or heaven will grasp it in his or her own way. By that, we mean humour itself is essentially ambiguous; one can only understand it in its ambiguity if one is in a humorous mood. When the neutrality of humour is understood by the listener as taking a certain stance, it is because the listener expects an answer based on his or her standpoint. Humour does not answer but says something that slips out of the conversation.

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Hence, it is thought that humour is ambivalent, laughs with one eye, and weeps with the other: “close to the deepest well of human wisdom lies humour, and in that twilight, no one can distinguish whether it is a laugh or is a tear,” says Verhoeven (1948, p. 18). But humour is neither laughter nor crying. Verhoeven assumes it is both, but it is neither: “We know, finally, that joy and sorrow, having met in the nocturnal forest, loved each other without knowing each other; and he was born to them a son, who was humour” (Baldensperger, 1907, p. 210). We are deeply moved by Saint Mael, the old and myopic saint, who mistakes to see penguins as people and proclaims the Gospel to them. Thus, spoke the old man. As everywhere throughout nature voice calls the voice, as all which breathes in the light of day loves alternate strains, the penguins answered the old man by the sounds of their throats. And their voices were soft, for it was the season of their loves. And the holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people, and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian faith, invited them to receive baptism. (France, 1924, p. 23) Here too: sweet and sound Credo, saint and penguin; a combination that arouses the smile—or ridicule and annoyance. But anyone who still smiles in this way, without properly understanding, thinks that Anatole France’s true intentions can be clearly discerned as soon as the debate in heaven starts about whether the baptism of penguins is valid. Somewhere in this discussion, God says, “Thus, I can foretell that when the sun will have turned around the earth two hundred and forty times more:” “Sublime language,” exclaimed the angels. “And worthy of the creator of the world,” answered the pontiffs. “It is,” resumed the Lord, “a manner of speaking in accordance with my old cosmogony and one which I  cannot give up without losing my immutability . . .” (France, 1924, p. 32) Is this still humour, where joking is done with God, who cannot get rid of ancient cosmology? This is scorn, sarcasm, cynicism! But is that true? Does this not depend entirely upon how it is understood, upon the perspectives that we can see? If it is understood against the Church or faith, as atheism, then it is ridicule, with which no joke fits. We must again remember that humour is not something that one finds, such as a stone or a coin. Humour is not a thing; humour does not exist as an object but as a perspective. And if we do not pay attention to the perspective, then we

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may be mistaken in its intention, though we can still understand the passage on the basis of its ambiguity as humour. We can never prove from an essay that humour is meant here. There is a well-known saying: “It is the tone that makes the humour” (Gottschalk, 1928, p.  2). And this tone has disappeared from the printed word. Nonetheless, it is believed that we can often taste that indefinable quality, which almost compels us to understand a text as humour. The piece then receives its humorous sense from the context; provided, however, that this context itself is understood as the literary expression of a humorous perspective. Humour, as we meet it, is ambiguous, because the apractical humorous situation, from which the humourist speaks, suspends every standpoint or position.

Suspension and Epoché In the last cited passage of Anatole France, we find the construction of wordplay. God speaks, and now the author lets God be interrupted by the angels and bishops. As a result, France reinforces a sarcastic effect. But since we lose identification with the Speaker, we move from His reason into that of the angels and bishops, and then return to Him again. We are detached from the unambiguously recorded speech situation, and we move between a multitude of points of contact with which we do not have to identify ourselves. In reading such a text, the possibility arises of a purely neutral, non-assertive situation, in which we leave word and answer their value, without identifying ourselves with any one of the presented positions. The spoken word leaves us this possibility of abstinence to a much lesser extent, since it drags us along with the conviction of the speaker, or repels us with a different, adopted position. The word spoken with conviction is unambiguous and engages the listener; the word written with conviction is ambiguous and leaves the reader free to choose a position or to abstain from it. When we finally pay attention to the attitude of the person who constructs and writes down such a passage, we see that the author by interrupting the progressive speech, by crafting a finer way of saying, by constant reflection, has the principle possibility of neutralizing his or her own position. One restrains oneself, and this breakthrough of the pre-reflexive entanglement already tends towards that absolute “neutrality,” which is a condition for experiencing humour. Whoever wants to slap another in anger, but first counts to ten, is able in the meantime to better calculate the blow. But the aggressive intention thereby decreases—or even turns ridiculous. Perhaps it is more correct to say that the delayed reaction correlates with a loss of sense of the practical situation. One must strike immediately to confirm the provocative appeal of the situation. If one does not do this, then one controls oneself, one acts reasonably: one takes a step back from the situation and reflects on one’s own reaction. This breakthrough of the coherency between subject and situation, in which the psychological subject first comes to

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the self-realization of “coming to oneself ” and “not letting oneself go”—may appear impractical when we see the breakthrough as a postponement of reaction. Fortune favours the bold. One must act immediately! Postponing the reaction means losing an advantage. Now, interestingly, the humourist does not behave impractically, but apractically. The humourist does not postpone but suspends “inner” and “outer” actions. A renewed reflection on a delayed reaction can very well provide access to this apractical attitude. This is even more the case when the original postponement had already been played, as is the case in the construction of a story. We, therefore, have no doubts that Anatole France in writing his essay must have smiled sarcastically and smugly while occasionally also smiling humorously. With the smile itself, it is no different. Whoever can smile has acquired the opportunity to discover humour. Because even as a pure “gesture,” the smile tends to retreat from its position (Plessner, 1950a, p.  9). The Japanese “stoic” smile, mentioned previously, is also a possible entrance to the humorous perspective, even when it is nothing more than a purely traditional, polite gesture. Kierkegaard saw humour as the last stage before faith (1910, p. 137). He means humour—not clowning, joking, or the aestheticizing activity of esprit [wit]. Even more than for the esprit, which in a certain sense is naive, is it for Husserl’s disinterested transcendental observer the “un-human” duty to see, through the phenomena to their essential phenomenality—in a purely rational way. Only the epoché can make such an investigation possible. When we speak of the epoché, we do not mean a purely contemplative modification of neutrality, but a rational “impure,” emotional neutrality, a sympathetic disinterest. It is a sympathy, which nevertheless, requires the abstention of any positive or negative appreciative opinion. But, the disinterestedness of humour is not the pure disinterest of the transcendental observer, not the indifference of wit ( Jankélévitch, 1950, p. 143), not the licentiousness of laughter, but detachment coupled with a love for the sublime and the quotidian everydayness. Humour itself is, therefore, paradoxical. On the one hand, it asks for distancing and putting things into perspective. On the other hand, it needs a close connection with what is human: a knowing that one is like that, that humans are like that, and that means, although absurd, one is still good and beautiful (Carlyle, 1905). In Carlyle’s words: The essence of humour is sensibility; warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence . . . True humour springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity; exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. The former is scarcely less precious or heart-affecting than the latter; perhaps it is still rarer, and, as a test of genius, still more decisive. It is, in fact, the bloom and perfume,

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the purest effluence of a deep, fine and loving nature; a nature in harmony with itself, reconciled to the world and its stintedness and contradiction, nay, finding in this very contradiction new elements of beauty as well as goodness. (1905, p. 16) Seeing through humanity to its paradox, and demonstrating this paradox without approval or disapproval, but happily accepting it as one’s own paradox—that is humour. Bierens de Haan (1913) is, therefore, not entirely correct when he says that the humourist is full of pity and condemns human flaws. Humour is too distanced, too neutral, and at the same time too innocent. Humour does not comfort and appreciate, but sees and shows, in a humane way but disinterestedly—at least at the moment that the humour expresses humour. Being able to see and practise humour, therefore, means that we are dealing with a person who has accepted the inner paradox of human existence and thereby assumes this mode of existence in a completely new way. De Lof der Zotheid [In Praise of Folly], written in 1515, by Desiderius Erasmus (1912)—although somewhat rough here and there in the style of the times—is pre-eminently a humorous work, and perhaps one of the first, although Erasmus himself calls on a whole succession of classical satirists as his predecessors. What is Folly? It escapes every definition, and yet is well-known to us as a friend. In the inaugural lecture on Thomas Moore, the discourse is called a rebuke, an exhortation and didactic, directed against nobody personally, but aimed at vice and stupidity. Yet, we do not believe that this is meant to be an articulation of a certain standpoint; rather, it takes the shape of a perspective that shows that “the whole human life . . . is nothing but a play of folly” (Erasmus, 1912, p. 44). The exalted, highly placed person is dressed in the garment of the jester. But without a doubt, there is always the possibility of interpreting the Erasmus text in a comical, ironic, and sarcastic manner. “But the fact that the naked Truth is disguised as a buffoon, wearing the jelly-red robe of the joker and hiding behind folly—that is just the humour” (Lazarus, 1883, p. 260). That is why the inhabitant of Argos was not so wrong when he seemed apparently so insane that he spent entire days alone in the theater, laughing and clapping his hands and enjoying himself, although there was no theatre taking place on the empty stage; yet in all other relations of life he behaved like a good man: Good to his friends, kind to his wife, gracious to his slaves, not angry, even if sometimes they had opened a bottle. (Erasmus, 1912, p. 66) This story, derived from Horace, can be regarded comical as an incident, tragic as a description of destiny, but also humorous as an example of human folly. In the latter case, folly is no longer a trait of a single person, but inherent to being

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human. Erasmus does not write a hateful history of human stupidity; he describes the true dignity of the human being, who appears comical to the gods, and tragic to the mortals. It is by no means our intention to discover a new precursor of existentialism in Erasmus. Still, a certain structural affinity seems evident: humans choose to be jesters, and yet that choice can only be folly. The highest salvation is a kind of madness for humans. One who loves deeply no longer lives with oneself, but there with what one loves, and one’s joy increases the more the one is there. And if the soul desires to travel out of the body and does not use its organs, then this may rightly be called a frenzy. What else do those commonly used expressions mean: He is outside of himself. Come to yourself. He has come back to himself again. . . . What kind of life in heaven will it be, to which the devout souls sigh with such intimate desire? . . . they would like nothing more in the world than to be mad forever in this way. And this is, so to speak, just a small taste of their future happiness. (Erasmus, 1912, p. 165) The tragic seriousness of Jean-Paul Sartre compensates Erasmus’ light-heartedness. The occasional, but extremely “modern” psychological remarks of Erasmus about being-with-the-things find a philosophical reformulation with Sartre (1946, pp. 62–92). Both show how it is the human destiny to lose oneself in yonder, to discover on our return to ourselves that we ourselves are empty, that we can only catch ourselves in our transcendence, in that which we are not. We may even think this is how we will be in our hereafter. But, a humorous existentialism that we are still awaiting may even say: we should cheerfully accept our earthly existence, and that is precisely wherein our dignity lies. Real, full-fledged humour occurs when human existence is regarded with a cheerful and, at the same time, childlike naivety as a play of contradictions, but not as a mere game. Kierkegaard has quite rightly seen that humour possesses a childlike property, without being childish: the childlike quality shines through the forming of the person who knows humour. When one brings together a child and a well-educated person, they discover humour together: the child says it and knows nothing about it; the other knows that it was said (1910, p. 233). We have no illusions; the humourist is a person who has to take a position in life, must embrace herself, since she is a human being and does not live just with herself, but in the world. And, yet, suddenly we will see her smile, hear humorous word spoken, and know that she has retreated from worldly entanglements and sees the play of folly in which we are all involved; we will know that the humorous person fell out of her role, and we will be surprised that she will gladly assume this role again. And we misunderstand her smile unless we are willing to step back and hear the humour.

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Conclusion: The Finesse of Humour By way of conclusion, we have the task, as it were, of condensing the essence of humour by indicating and evoking it with a single term. We have experienced too well how objectionably humour can be defined conceptually, so we will not make another attempt in that direction. That is why we choose this other approach, phenomenology, which also fits in better with the method of letting humour make itself present once again and let it show itself. We approach the essence of humour best by referring to the “finesse” of humour. By this finesse, we mean a qualitas that we encounter only in a direct turning to the phenomenon. Finesse can realize itself in infinitely many ways, but it always represents a significance that derives its meaning from the contrast with its opposite: meaning poor, thick, or coarse. We speak of finesse as of a graceful curve, of almost liquid fine sand, of selected fine food or of a pure drink, of a precious gem. Fine is an elegant gesture, a wellplaced word, and a unique thought. And there is the thin sharpness of a pencil, the sharp distinction, and the sharp saying. We have seen how the finesse d’esprit [spirit] changes into witty irony, and even into spiky sarcasm; we know how hurtful something can sound that is said in a sharp manner, and we understand how extreme finesse can be reduced back to its opposite: blunt coarseness. That is why we must further define the finesse of humour as the fineness of a border. The horizon separates the sky from the water without anyone being able to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins, yet everyone clearly sees the boundary line. Similarly, the grace of a gesture does not lie in a compromise, but in the extremely fine line between freedom and control. Whenever one wants to determine this fine line specifically, it appears to be elusive, ethereal, and rare, and can only be perceived as a border. Looking back at what was discussed earlier, we see how we have constantly met the qualitas of humour in the form of the fineness of a border. Humour is a border between reserve and dedication, between the aloof esprit and the uplifting participation. The cheerful mood of humour lies between the exuberant expansiveness of comedy and the desperate conspiracy of tragedy. In humour, play and seriousness, sadness and joy, are boundary features. Where comedy laughs about the coarse transition from the sublime to the vulgar, humour smiles at the almost imperceptible blending of the sublime and quotidian. Tragedy lives in the chasm between idea and reality; humour sees human existence as the dividing line between transcendence and incarnation. Fine humour balances on the edge of comedy and tragedy. But that is also why humour is absurd, an illusory reality, and an impossible possibility. This means nothing less than that its ambiguity appears as an unstable balance, the pivot between decadence and magnificence. In the Dutch vernacular, the word “humour” has little definitive meaning. It includes the comic and all kinds of jokes and gags. This ambiguity is partly grounded in the alluring character of the humorous phenomenon.

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In the current investigation, we question humour on its essential meaning. Such an analysis of humour is not intended, from the outset, to be aesthetic, psychological, ethical, or sociological in orientation. We try to demarcate humour phenomenologically against phenomena related to it. First, we question the “spirit” of wit. This spirit, called the Esprit by the French, is the “spirit of the comic,” in the sense that in it, one of the characteristics of the comic finds its final perfection. The person with wit is intellectually cool. He or she suddenly, and without compassion, reveals a paradox. The reference to the absurd is its affinity for humour. The humorous person is less sober, not so pointed, but more comfortable and friendly. The esprit of wit does not lead to a hearty laugh because it does not really touch the mind. An analysis of the phenomenon of laughter shows that it is a crisis of behaviour (Plessner, 1950a). Laughter is the surrender of a person to the impossibility of contrast. In laughter, we lose our attitude and self-control. It is this explosiveness of laughter that is beyond humour. The laugh does not worry about the value it laughs at; it laughs badly because the contrast between the appearance and its norm causes the laugh to laugh. The laughing person does not see that the ridiculous contrast is grounded in a deeper discrepancy: in the discrepancy between real being and the ideal norm of humanness. It is above all the tragic view that discovers this fundamental discrepancy. The sense of the tragic person is based on this knowledge. His or her confrontation with the world and with him or herself unfolds in the mood of depression, in loneliness and desolation. The tragic person does not succeed in distancing him or herself from the tornness of existence while laughing. The laugh offers laughter the opportunity to gain distance from the contrast. It can, therefore, act as an access to humour, which cheerfully recognizes the discrepancy, in contrast to the tragic. Humour speaks of the absurd without hostility or grief, but also without exuberance. Humour does not, however, wrap itself in indifference. Humour is found in an upscale mood and behaves sympathetic to fellow human beings and human existence. The sign of humour is, therefore, the smile, the mimic of the mind (Plessner, 1950a), a harmless gesture that reveals a suspension of the inner attitude as the external action. Humour abstains from any opinion. Humour shows with pleasure the inconsistency of life without dealing with it. Humour refuses to attack the other person in their weak spot. Humour does not intend any sort of purpose. Humour blossoms like a gift of contentedness in the context of its own paradoxical existence. Because of its neutrality, and the ambiguity implied in it, humour is so difficult to grasp. The listener, who is inaccessible to humour, is always inclined to interpret humour from a specific attitude and thus seeks judgment or attack, sympathy or gags in the humour. Humour does not deal with the opinions of others but calls on the fellow human being to a common view on the contrast of something, its depth and its relativity. The essence of humour lies in its fineness and tenderness. This fineness is the fineness of a boundary. It is the essence of humour to

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be on the border between the comic and the tragic. The humour neither laughs nor cries, but smiles happily at the paradox of existence. That is why humour is actually out of place as a permanent way of being in the world.

Notes 1. This text has been translated and edited by Max van Manen and Michael van Manen. 2. From: J. Linschoten (1951). Over de Humor [On Humour]. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 13 (4), pp. 603–666. 3. Years in square brackets are original publication dates.

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Eastman, M. (1921). The Sense of Humor. New York: Scribner. Egner, F. (1932). Humor und Witz unter Strukturpsychologischem Gesichtspunkt [Humour and Jest from a Structural Psychological Point of View]. Archiv für die Gesamte Psychologie, 84, pp. 330–371. Eliot, G. (1884). Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. Erasmus, D. (1912). De Lof der Zotheid [In Praise of Folly]. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. France, A. (1924). L’île des Pingouins [Penguin Island]. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Freud, S. (1905). Der Witz und Seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten [The Joke and its Relationship with the Unconscious]. Wien: Franz Deuticke. Gottschalk, W. (1928). Die Humoristische Gestalt in der Französischen Literatur [The Humorous Figure in French Literature]. Heidelberg: Winter. Gregory, J.C. (1924). The Nature of Laughter. New York: Kegan Paul. Häberlin, P. (1929). Allgemeine Aesthetik [General Aesthetics]. Leipzig: Basel Kober. Höffding, H. (1916). Den Store Humor [Disturbing Humour]. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske. Honecker, M. (1924). Komik und Einstellung [Comedy and Attitude]. Archiv für die Gesamte Psychologie, 47, pp. 94–107. Jankélévitch, V. (1950). L’ironie ou la Bonne Conscience [Irony or Good Conscience]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Jeanson, F. (1950). Signification Humaine du Rire [Humanistic Meaning of Laughter]. Paris: Seuil. Jünger, F.G. (1936). Ueber das Komische [About the Comical]. Berlin: Vittorio Klostermann. Kant, I. (1878). Kritik der Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgement]. Leipzig: Philipp Reclam. Kierkegaard, S. (1910). Philosophische Brocken/Abschlieszende Unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift [Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments]. In: H. Gottsched and C. Schrempf (trans.). Gesammelte Werke. Jena: Diederichs. Klanfer, J. (1936). Das Wortspiel und die komische Rede [The Pun and Comical Speech]. Zeitschrift für äesthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, 30, pp. 209–234. Latour, M. (1949). Le Problème du Rire et du Réel [The Problem of Laughter and Reality]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lazarus, M. (1883). Das Leben der Seele [The Life of the Soul]. Berlin: Schindler. Lipps, T. (1898). Komik und Humor [Comedy and Humour]. Hamburg: Vero Verlag GmbH & Co.KG. Meredith, G. (1919). An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit. London: Constable & Co. Morgenstern, C. (1950). Alle Galgenlieder [The Gallows Songs]. München: Insel-Verlag. Nietzsche, F. (1921). Menschliches, Allzumenschliches: Ein Buch für freie Geister [Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits]. Leipzig: Kröner. Novalis. (1923). Religiöse Schriften [Religious Writings]. Köln: Marcan-Block-Verlag. Pascal, B. (1949). Pensées [Thoughts]. Paris: Nelson Editeur. Penjon, A. (1893). Le Rire et la Liberté [Laughter and Freedom]. Revue Philosophique, 36, pp. 137–138. Plessner, H. (1950a). Lachen und Weinen. Eine Untersuchung nach den Grenzen menschlichen Verhaltens [Laughing and Crying. A Study of the Limits of Human Behaviour] (2nd ed.). Bern: Francke. Plessner, H. (1950b). Pro Regno et Santuario. Festschrift für G. van der Leeuw [Pro Regno and Santuario. Commemorative Publication for G. van der Leeuw]. Nijkerk: Callenbach. Reik, T. (1929). Lust und Leid im Witz [Lust and Suffering in Jokes]. Wien: Franz Deuticke.

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Sartre, J.P. (1946). L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme [Existentialism Is a Humanism]. Paris: Octavo. Sartre, J.P. (1948). Esquisse d’une Théorie des Émotions [Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions]. Paris: Hermann. Schopenhauer, A. (1937). Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung [The World as Will and Representation] (Bd. 1 & 2). Loschberg, Altenmünster: Jazzbee Verlag Jürgen Beck. Sterzinger, O. (1932). Zur Psychologie des Witzes [On the Psychology of Jokes]. Archiv für die Gesamte Psychologie, 83, pp. 457–466. Überhorst, K. (1896). Das Komische I: Das Wirklich-Komische [The Comical I: The Really Comical]. Leipzig: Wigand. Van der Wal, G.M. (1945). Aphorismen [Aphorisms]. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. Van Eeden, F. (1948). De Kleine Johannes [Little Johannes]. Gravenhage: V. H. Mouton. Verhoeven, B. (1948). Over de Lach [About the Laugh]. Utrecht-Brussel: Het Spectrum. Voltaire. (1775). Questions sur L’Encyclopédie, par des Amateurs [Questions about the Encyclopedia, by the Amateurs] (Vol. 4). Paris: Genève. Von Kries, V.J. (1925). Vom Komischen und vom Lachen [The Comical and the Laughter] Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 74, pp. 241–263. Von Manteuffel, K.Z. (1920). Hans Holbein der Maler [Hans Holbein the Painter]. München: Hugo Schmidt Verlag. Von Uexküll, J. (1932). Der gedachte Raum [Perceived Environment-World]. In: H. Prinzhorn (ed.). Die Wissenschaft am Scheidewege von Leben und Geist: Festschrift Ludwig Klages zum 60. Geburtstag [Science at the Crossroads of Life and Spirit: Commemorative Publication of Ludwig Klages on his 60th Birthday]. Leipzig: Verlag Von Johann Ambrosius Barth, pp. 231–239. Von Weizsäcker, V. (1947). Der Gestaltkreis [The Gestalt Circle]. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag KG.

17 DESCANT ON “ON HUMOUR”

“Over de Humour” [On Humour] (1951) is a representative example of Linschoten’s fastidious phenomenological style of writing. In this essay, originally presented as a conference keynote at Utrecht, Linschoten carefully probes the meaning of humour. In reflecting on this work, one can appreciate his critical attentiveness to detail. He constantly contrasts, tentatively tests, and exquisitely explicates the phenomenality of humour and its associated phenomena of comedy, tragedy, wittiness, esprit, laughter, and smile. True this phenomenological text requires the reader to be patiently attentive to the numerous subtle aspects of meaning that Linschoten presents us with. But the careful and committed reader is richly rewarded with wonderful insights (insights full of wonder) into the phenomenon of humour as a core dimension of human existence. This essay is again an example of doing phenomenology on the phenomena. As all phenomenology, it is perfect in its imperfection, meaning that it also makes room for additional original understandings that enrich and contrast with this phenomenology of humour. Compared to van den Berg’s study of conversation, Buytendijk’s first smile, and Langeveld’s secret place, Linschoten draws more frequently and more exhaustively on existing resources. He effortlessly engages various philosophical and literary works, fine arts matters, cultural idioms, and phenomenological insights to explicate the meaning of humour. This bringing into play of a variety of sources shows that phenomenological studies can greatly benefit from an educated mind. As well, Linschoten regularly makes comments that are, in essence, about the methodology of doing phenomenology. In other words, while Linschoten does not theorize or philosophize about phenomenological method, he includes numerous methodological remarks to show how the meaning of humour may be revealed phenomenologically. At the same time, Linschoten’s writing is by

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no means detached from the topic of study; he offers his playful reflections on humour with humour. In the opening paragraphs, Linschoten begins by wondering about the elusive nature of humour. He says, “It is not so easy to lay our hands on it, to grasp the essence of humour, to analyze and determine its meaning and significance.” It is as if, what we name as humour resists its naming, playing a frustrating game with rationality. Both academic language and theoretical assumptions seem to block our access to humour’s meaning. So, it would seem, according to Linschoten, that our approach to humour needs to be founded by going back to the ways we experience it: “to put ourselves in the middle of humour, and try to experience humour, to live the humour.” And yet, simply going back to humorous experiences is not enough. The meaning of humour needs to be mined: “to live the humour . . . only gives us the experience of humour.” We must adopt a phenomenological attitude to let the meaning and significance of humour show itself: to insightfully see through the essential structure of humour, we need to take some distance from immediate experience, to allow the phenomenon itself to unfold before our eyes—without completely being encapsulated in the direct experience of the humorous situation. Linschoten recognizes that the vocabulary of humour is of a secondary order to its phenomenality: “It is not the word or terminology that matters. First comes the analysis of the phenomena, and subsequently, the terminological fixations.” This is a methodological reminder that phenomenology does not aim at textual meaning attribution; instead, the focus is on the phenomenon (the experience itself) in its originary appearance. Linschoten tells the reader that we need to place in abeyance questions that presuppose understanding humour, such as those about the practical value of humour, the psychological meaning of humour, and the social science theories that govern humour. He emphasizes that he wants to explore the unique phenomenality of humour—to understand humour as a phenomenon. This is the core idea of every phenomenological study that is performed on the things themselves. Explicating the meaning of a phenomenon is not a matter of linguistic study; it is the phenomenological meaning, not the word meaning, that must be elucidated. Even though Linschoten seems to spend much time on terminology in this essay, the reader should keep reminding him- or herself that what is at stake is not the semantic but the experiential or primal meaning, and its presumptions of this enigmatic phenomenon of humour. Linschoten confronts humour with related phenomena such as comedy and wittiness. This well-known method of varying the example and comparing the selected phenomenon with allied phenomena are at service to Linschoten’s basic question: “what is humour itself, what is its intrinsic sense?” In other words, the

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extensive nomenclature of the language of humour is only explicated in great detail so that the phenomenon of humour gradually begins to show itself in its pure phenomenological sensibility. So, where should humour be found? We search in vain for humour in parody and satire. Humour does not lie in mocking caricature, in sarcasm or scorn. Humour is too delicate to be the weapon of the cynic. We may laugh when hearing a friendly farce, some mocking ridicule, or sneering scorn—except that we laugh in a different way. And just as clowning can suddenly put humour in a wonderfully mild light, so we can occasionally be humoured by a mocking smile. Linschoten seems to use the term “humour” in a very special and constrained sense. Now, a reader may say that this is all good, but in everyday life, we tend to think of humour more broadly and encompassing all kinds of funny events and situations. To that reader, we want to say that it is fine to disagree on the meaning or use of the term or concept of humour. But Linschoten is describing a certain phenomenon that may perhaps require the use or coinage of a different word. Or perhaps put a capital “H” on the term “Humour” that is meant to refer to its phenomenological phenomenality. It is easy to confuse phenomenological analysis of humour with concept analysis. While it might not be wrong to see elements of concept analysis in some phenomenological texts, the overall approach of Linschoten is phenomenological analysis. Concept analysis is primarily based on the principle that the meaning of a concept lies in its usage. Accordingly, conceptual clarification consists of the activities of tracing how concepts such as humour, comedy, tragedy, and wittiness are used and how these usages differ from one another. But ultimately, phenomenological analysis is the exact opposite of concept analysis. Concepts are linguistic abstractions, and that makes them useful in referring to their meanings in objectifying discourses. In contrast, the phenomenological meaning is to be sought in the concreteness and subjectivity of human experience. The opposite of a “concept” is an “incept” (see Polt, 2006, pp.  115–128). The difference between a concept and an incept is this: a concept (in German, Begriff) abstracts from particulars of meaning: it generalizes. An ordinary concept leaves out all but one aspect of a being: its precise conceptual meaning or usage in ordinary and scientific language. In contrast, an incept (in German, Inbegriff) evokes the concrete richness, ambiguities, and originary uniqueness of particulars: it singularizes while doing justice to the fullness of its phenomenal meaning. An incept is a grasping of the epitome, quintessence, or “what is essential in the sense of the original-unique” (Heidegger, 2012, p. 52). At one point, Linschoten remarks, “objectionably humour can be defined conceptually,” and so it is clear that he does not wish to engage a conceptual approach. Linschoten uses associated traits of wit, such as sarcasm, persiflage, or light banter, to show that the spirit of humour cannot be equated with the esprit

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[spirit] of wit. For example, when he first turns his attention to esprit, in comparing humour to wittiness, he intends to show that wit is a highly refined phenomenon: “the prince among comics.” While it may be tempting to see wittiness as a cousin of humour, for Linschoten the phenomenality of humour has a humanity of its own. Later, Linschoten makes explicit that to understand the phenomenon of humour, one cannot help but think about laughter. But the term “laughter” may refer to an endless variety of expressions. Therefore, Linschoten aims to show that, while the general phenomenon of laughter evokes the full range of human qualities and conditions, the laughter of humour is unique and should not be confused with other kinds of pleasure, cheerfulness, or fun. Laughter may be the expression of both wit and humour, but by grasping the difference of these, we begin to discern how both wit and humour are singularities in themselves. While pursuing the phenomenological meaning and significance of humour, Linschoten provides the reader with an insightful exploration of laughter as a related but separate human phenomenon. For example, he convincingly shows that laughter is not really an expression of a certain disposition: “The person who is engaged in laughing is attitudeless.” Next, Linschoten compares humour with cheerfulness. Again, we see Linschoten’s method in appealing to our experience. While humour may put us in a cheerful mood, and while cheerfulness may spark an attitude of humour, still, humour cannot be reduced to cheerfulness. The same is true for such socalled boundary phenomena as tragedy and comedy. Linschoten is especially keen on examining the relation between tragicomedy and humour because it is ambivalent. Indeed, the reader starts to anticipate that humour possesses an affinity to discrepancies such as the sublime and the quotidian, effort and fate, idea and reality. In other words, humour arises in the tension of these polarities. “Whatever the meaning of tragicomedy may be, it is certainly not humorous.” Quoting De Bruyne, “Tragicomedy is one of the bitterest and deepest categories of aesthetic experience.” To the onlooker, it appears at the same time terrible and grotesque, creepy and burlesque, like some medieval tortures of victims, who were put to death with crazy gestures and in ridiculous postures. While the spectator crowd may laugh, they also shudder with pity of the pain they witness. Linschoten reminds us, “When humour jokes, it does not do so in such an abhorrent manner.” As readers we discover how Linschoten is hiking along the trails of the landscape of humour to patiently and persistently proceed to vantage points where we gain a glimpse of its essence. So, Linschoten suggests to the reader that humour is quite benign; it is too cheerful and sympathetic to critique, mock, or make fun of something or someone. When we are in a humorous space, then we know that this is not the moment to be sarcastic or to ridicule. Humour does not express itself in loud laughter but rather in a smile. But, like laughter, there are many kinds of smiles. So, patiently

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and carefully, Linschoten examines the physiognomic phenomenology of smiling to clarify the phenomenality of humour further. The humorous smile is a real and full smile, not the twinkling of the eye of wittiness, not a shooting star. The humorous smile is not an effect, and is not intended to be a spectacle—in the double sense of the word—rather, the smile of humour is a quiet light; it discloses a very wide view. For Linschoten, this kind of smile is “par excellence the sign of humour, without resentment, excitement, or Schadenfreude [pleasure from someone else’s misfortune].” In these passages, we see Linschoten’s gift for nuanced, rich, yet also evocative description. He shows that smiling and humour have in common that they both tend to suspend all activity in which we are engaged. Because of this suspension, humour is free, and it also frees—or evokes wonder about the uneasiness we may feel in certain situations and relations. Linschoten quotes an existentialist saying, “It is the meaning of life that it is meaningless.” This may sound like a witty pronouncement, but Linschoten means that humour has no specific meaningdriven agenda, a particular purpose, a certain standpoint that would charge it with meaning. Linschoten uses the phrase to point to the paradoxical nature of humour that may elicit a quiet smile. Linschoten’s reflections raise humour to a transcended status beyond what is laughable, ridiculous, foolish, grotesque, or otherwise erroneously conflated with the phenomenon of humour. His method is to explicate the meanings of the entire complex, surroundings, and intersections of related and distant phenomena to show, isolate, and identify humour’s hidden, singular, and originary meaning. Interestingly, Linschoten also compares the attitude of humour with the phenomenological attitude and with the Husserlian notion of the epoché. But Linschoten does not wish to follow the pure transcendental view of the epoché as encountered in Husserl’s The Crisis of the European Sciences (1970). As Linschoten says above: When we speak of the epoché, we do not mean a purely contemplative modification of neutrality, but a rational “impure,” emotional neutrality, a sympathetic disinterest. It is a sympathy, which nevertheless, requires the abstention of any positive or negative appreciative opinion. Drawing on Jankélévitch (1950) and Carlyle (1905), Linschoten contrasts the impartiality of humour with the disinterestedness of the transcendental attitude that remains attached to the worldly reality of human existence, as also affirmed in the works of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and subsequent phenomenologists: But, the disinterestedness of humour is not the pure disinterest of the transcendental observer, not the indifference of wit ( Jankélévitch, 1950, p. 143),

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not the licentiousness of laughter, but detachment coupled with a love for the sublime and the quotidian everydayness. Humour itself is, therefore, paradoxical. On the one hand, it asks for distancing and putting things into perspective. On the other hand, it needs a close connection with what is human: a knowing that one is like that, that humans are like that, and that means, although absurd, one is still good and beautiful. (Carlyle, 1905) In other words, Linschoten seems to suggest that the attentive awareness of humour is actually a kind of phenomenology. When he focuses on concrete examples, he aims to reflect on the quotidian sensibility of the world, to ultimately show the unique yet elusive meaning of humour as a phenomenon that we may reach for, but that can remain difficult to hold in our grip. Because of its neutrality, and the ambiguity implied in it, humour is so difficult to grasp. The listener, who is inaccessible to humour, is always inclined to interpret humour from a specific attitude and thus seeks judgment or attack, sympathy or gags in the humour. Humour does not deal with the opinions of others but calls on the fellow human being to a common view on the contrast of something, its depth and its relativity. The essence of humour lies in its fineness and tenderness. This fineness is the fineness of a boundary. It is the essence of humour to be on the border between the comic and the tragic. The humour neither laughs nor cries, but smiles happily at the paradox of existence. That is why humour is actually out of place as a permanent way of being in the world. It should become evident that by the end of Linschoten’s phenomenological essay, the phenomenon of humour has gained in richness and unsuspected depth. But the inceptual phenomenological explication of humour has also gained in ambiguity, existential uncertainty, and paradoxical sublimity. As we arrive at the conclusion of his phenomenological essay, we may wonder whether Linschoten remains faithful to his phenomenological project when he condenses “the essence of humour” by indicating and evoking it with a single term—by referring to the “ ‘finesse’ of humour.” This single term, let alone the concluding paragraphs, should not be read in isolation from the entire text. And yet, perhaps, from such a distillation of meaning, the reader can appreciate humour as “absurd, an illusory reality, and an impossible possibility” meaning “that its ambiguity appears as an unstable balance, the pivot between decadence and magnificence.” Finesse, as a term, does not reveal a substantial inceptual meaning of humour. Still, it points at the phenomenological finesse that is required to interpret the elusive meaning of humour with the finesse of humour: in the end, we can only nod and smile.

Descant on “On Humour”

185

Notes All unmarked quotes are taken from the preceding essay, “On Humour,” by Johannes Linschoten.

References Carlyle, T. (1905). Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (Vol. I. Centenary ed.). London: Chapman and Hall. Heidegger, M. (2012). Bremen and Freiburg Lectures: Insights into That Which is and Basic Principles of Thinking (A.J. Mitchell, trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenology (D. Carr, trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Jankélévitch, V. (1950). L’ironie ou la Bonne Conscience [Irony or Good Conscience]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Linschoten, J. (1951). Over de Humor [On Humour]. Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 13 (4), pp. 603–666. Polt, R. (2006). The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

INDEX

ambiguity 153, 154, 166, 168, 170, 174, 175, 184 analysis 147, 149, 152, 155, 165, 175, 180; concept 181; phenomenological 48, 85, 117, 141 – 143, 181; psycho 145; quantitative 143; radical 138; scientific 61; situational 98, 99, 138; structural 142, 144 anecdote 12, 14, 17, 19, 31, 48, 50, 99; narrative 4, 14 – 20, 37, 47; story 16, 18, 19, 31, 48, 98, 150, 157 – 159, 171, 172; vignette 14, 17, 19, 47, 50 attitude 6, 10, 35, 54, 153, 156, 158, 161, 164, 166, 170, 175, 184; attitudeless 154, 164, 182; humorous 163, 182, 183; natural, naturalistic 4, 9, 10, 13, 75; phenomenological 3, 5 – 12, 14, 20, 21, 47, 51, 75, 96, 139, 180, 183; self-surrender 65, 161; theoretical 11; transcendental 183; wondering 135 cogito 14; cogitatio 15 comedy 146 – 149, 151, 153, 155 – 157, 165, 174, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183; tragicomedy 155, 183 compulsion, compulsiveness x, xi, 20, 54, 77 – 88, 90 – 92 consciousness 3, 8, 10, 21, 44, 54, 78, 82, 108, 139, 142, 148, 151, 152, 166; internal time 17; non-thetic 35; primal impressional 17; stream of 15 conversation ix, x, 8, 18, 20, 31 – 52, 161, 168, 179; eristic 37

de-realization 79, 80 disposition 8, 10, 11, 14, 84, 182 eidos, eidetic 6, 15, 16, 19, 20, 48, 49, 74, 92, 137 embodiment, embody 56, 139 emotion, emotionality 36, 56, 63, 66, 67, 99, 129, 130, 151, 157, 158, 168, 171, 183 epoché 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 48, 170, 171, 183 essence 9, 13, 15 – 19, 44, 48, 51, 53, 61, 62, 64, 132, 137, 146, 147, 151, 163, 165, 167, 171, 174, 175, 179, 180, 182, 184; essential 6, 14, 16, 19, 27, 28, 43, 48, 60, 61, 68, 73 evocative 56, 183 example, concrete, singularity 3, 5, 11, 12, 14 – 21, 31, 38, 47 – 50, 80, 81, 121, 136 – 139, 184; science of 14; varying the example 121, 180 exegetical xi, 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 20 existential x, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 16, 21, 26, 64, 67, 73, 75, 78, 85, 88, 90, 92, 95, 138, 139, 156, 163, 184; existentialism 156, 165, 173, 183 experience: concrete 3, 5, 14, 20; conscious 15; fictional 6, 16; lived, unreflective 4, 8, 13, 19, 65, 96; phenomenality of 122; science of 96 humour 8, 18, 20, 142, 146 – 176, 179 – 184

Index  187

intuition 9, 15; (non)empirical 15 laughter 18, 64 – 66, 74, 147 – 156, 159 – 169, 171, 175, 179, 182, 184 metabletics 27, 28 method, methodological 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 28, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 68, 73, 74, 92, 96, 121, 135, 136, 137, 143, 174, 179, 180, 182, 183; epoché, reduction 3, 9, 11, 95; indite 16; phenomenological 4, 5, 8, 11, 15, 16, 55, 94, 147, 179; research xi neurophysiological 68 originary 3, 4, 7, 8, 16, 18, 19, 21, 47, 140, 180, 181, 183 paradox 13, 17, 18, 44, 48, 49, 51, 69, 138, 150, 153, 157, 161, 162, 167, 171, 172, 175, 176, 183, 184 passé sous silence 40 pathic 130, 131, 133, 138, 139 phenomenality, phenomenalizing x, 8, 9, 14, 50, 51, 73, 115, 122 – 124, 171, 179, 180 – 183

quotidian ix, 1, 2, 48, 156, 157, 171, 174, 182, 184 reduction 3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 48, 49, 74; immanent 95; transcendental 4, 9, 95 secret place 8, 20, 95, 99, 102 – 124, 136, 179 sense-making 118, 127, 128, 130, 131, 133, 136, 138, 139 singularity 16 – 19 smile ix, x, 18, 20, 60 – 76, 116, 148, 149, 155 – 169, 171 – 176, 179, 181 – 184 thing 95, 99, 126 – 140 transcendental 4, 9, 10, 11, 95, 163, 171, 183 Utrecht University 1, 2, 8, 27, 53, 54, 94, 95, 99, 141 – 143, 179, 180; movement 7, 21, 28; proponents 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 19, 20; school 1, 2, 3, 6, 19, 142, 143; tradition, works 4, 5, 13 vocative 16, 56, 139, 183